There are a huge humber of people in the US who are simply unable to get a bank account.
My dad kept the same bank for 10 years after he lost his ID, because the tellers and the bank manager recognized him. When they closed the branch he went months without being able to get to his SS, because he didn't ask anybody for help. From his perspective he was being held down by The Man, and didn't think of that as being very notable, and it wasn't what he wanted to spend his time talking about.
I'd be surprised if this sort of situation doesn't cover over 1 million of those ~70 million bank-less Americans.
using direct deposit is not only easier but it's also cheaper.
If you have financial staff, sure. For a lot of small businesses the actual equation is: hire somebody to handle the payroll using direct deposit, or write out the checks myself.
Also if you're using a third-party payroll service, there is a bunch of extra work you have to do interfacing between the employee and the vendor, to get the (secret, sensitive) banking information from the employee to the vendor in a safe way. What is a safe way? How do you know if you're doing it right? You don't know if you're doing it right, because you don't have anybody in-house with that specialty. So it might well save time, effort, and money to pay the few extra cents per printed check that the payroll firm charges.
What I don't get is why would any company bother to deal with paper money and/or checks(?! good god, I think it was the 80's when I actually saw one last time).
For example, one client I have has a small big city payroll firm prepare the checks, and mails them in a big envelope, and then the owner can double-check the amounts before sending them on to the employees. This is done because it is a non-tech business, and the owner is non-technical. If it was electronic and somebody got overpaid, how would he even find out? If the employee didn't mention it, he'd just have to hope somebody else noticed; but why would they? Only if it was a large enough amount to throw the monthly numbers off enough to really stand out.
In a larger business where you have full time accounting staff and regular audits then it is a totally different thing.
In the US, most banks have free checking accounts. Why don't these people just use a bank?
Not anymore. Banks were doing that for a few years because of competition. Now most charge a fee or have a minimum balance (usually $1500)
Here is a situation I was in when I was younger: the company I worked for closed, and I lost my job. My checking account ended up -$120 at the end of the month. (because I made the mistake of freely using the "free" $400 overdraft protection; which they marketed to me as being credit) Then when I didn't pay them back within 30 days, they closed the account; but since it was a checking account, and negative when they closed it, instead of filing the debt as a credit debt, they filed it as the account closed for "check abuse." So then for 7 years I couldn't open a checking account.
A few months later I went into the bank with a $3000 check and they refused to even attempt to find any way of letting me pay back the account. And even if I had brought them back cash after paying a "check cash" place, they wouldn't have removed the false "check abuse" claim.
Check cashing places serve lots of people, most of whom are enemies of the bank for credit reasons; many of whom have poor banking histories; and even for varied reasons like hiding money from relatives.
Please state exactly which "civil rights" were violated and how they were violated.
The right to be Free in his movements. Just grabbing the oldest and most basic one. A good lawyer could probably talk on this for a couple hours, improv.
by falsely reporting his medical equipment as being something criminal,
False report? Excuse me, but are you an idiot? Google Glass is not medical equipment.
Prescription glasses are medical equipment. The Google Glass was permanently attached (by the vendor) to said medical equipment. The non-medical stuff attached to the medical equipment was turned off and not in use. Are you... an idiot? Just to clarify, I mean this word only in the medical sense, not in the pejorative.
they had no evidence of a crime,
Except for him pointing a video recording device at a movie screen
No. Pointing a device that may or may not be capable of recording at a screen is not in any way illegal. You underscore my point; what they accuse him of is not a crime, and the accusation itself admits they didn't know if he recorded or not. There is no crime, there is no accusation of a crime. It is not a crime to point a device capable of recording at things.
Perhaps you should actually LEARN what the law before commenting on it.
No, putting a lien on a bank-owned property causes the bank to auction it instead of trying to sell it. Getting a lien can be the quickest way to get a good new neighbor.
The combination of a lien and a HOA means all the institution all players will want to cut losses and end their interest. In the case of a member who is the full owner, they can often be forced to sell by being kicked out of the HOA; something you normally can't do to somebody, but it becomes much easier if you've got a lien, and they're still in rules violation after the lien is placed.
If it is still hard, it means the tin gods aren't listening to the lawyers, probably they keep trying to spew political propaganda at the courts instead of saying what their lawyers told them to say.
The difference between being able to prove embezzlement and not being able to comes down, almost entirely, to hiring the forensic accountants to collect the evidence... or not.
Something like a HOA isn't likely to have untraceable income and assets. Everything they get is somebody else's home ownership expense, it is normally all done with legit financial instruments, and lots of record keeping.
I certainly wouldn't expect the office workers who discover the embezzlement to ever be able to recognize or collect evidence. More likely, other people were also involved, and just wanted to lay all the blame on the old person, at least in the eyes of the new person. If they just say, "well, there is no way we can prove it" enough times, nobody will even file a report.
No, they are contracts with the buyers of the land, that attach to the land deed, and that have a GPL-like clause that requires new buyers to agree to the contract before purchasing. So there is no expiration date. Eventually the owner of record has to die, and their heirs have to agree to the contract just to take ownership.
You can try, but unless you have a zillion dollars to throw at this you'll lose because the covenants are supported by developers who use it control the character of new developments. For them it is part of an advertising strategy aimed at snooty rich people. Which is why in my city, it is only snooty neighborhoods that have them.
There would be other complications to a timed expiration: often the home owners association actually owns some land that the members have shared access to. In some cases even private roads. (this is mostly so that they can have stricter on-street parking regulations than a public street; for example letting members control the spaces in front of their house). There is no guarantee that the city is even willing to take over that ownership. Generally when you build a street in a new development, if you want the city to own the street you have to design it in the way the city wants. The developer often doesn't want to design streets in the same way, where the process is driven by traffic engineers. Instead, marketing drives the process; there might only be 1 or 2 ways in/out, because they maximize the salable land and reduce connector streets, and they want to control the view that people viewing homes will see as they come into the neighborhood. The city might not want to take over those kind of sucky streets.
Violating his civil rights by falsely reporting his medical equipment as being something criminal, when they had no evidence of a crime, and could have cleared with a simple conversation. They had every right to ask him to leave, but not to make a false report.
In Oregon, as in many places, if you don't follow the covenant rules they can not only fine you and sue you, they can get a restraining order to do whatever is necessary. In the case of things like noise rules, you can get banned from your own property in a manner more normally associated with rentals.
As far as overgrown lawns, if they care they can probably hire a crew to cut it for you, bill you, and even get a lien on your property over it.
In some cases they don't do anything, but it is generally because anything they would do would be unpopular with the homeowners. Sometimes they write stricter rules than they even intend to enforce.
Other times, they are really serious about having a community with strictly enforced rules.
It isn't a binary question. You can make an argument for any life form being intelligent. Where we draw that line sometimes determines life and death. Chickens are more intelligent than worms. Chickens are more intelligent than tofu cultures.
When I hear about marine mammals being slaughtered, it makes me sad in exactly the same way it makes me sad when I hear about distant humans being slaughtered.
In the US covenants are almost always contractual conditions imposed by a private party that are signed as a (perpetual) condition of purchase or transfer. Generally this is where the developer builds a "subdivision" all at once, and forms a "neighborhood association" composed of some of the original owners. They come up with a list of things that can't (or have to be) done with the property; common ones in my area are restrictions on removing trees (without some sort of vote by the association), banning of manufactured homes, parking restrictions on private roads, stricter "quiet hours" than the municipal code provides, and in some cases even a ban on building a house from the same design as any existing house in the neighborhood.
Sometimes even the allowed colors of homes are controlled. It is almost unrestricted. Here in the US, there is actually very limited things that the local government can do with regards to property restrictions. Arbitrary restrictions are generally thrown out by the courts, as are things that restrict your freedom of speech. However, a neighborhood association is not a government, and since the restrictions are contractual in nature, you can include a wide variety of severe, arbitrary, and speech-related restrictions.
And by "crush" you mean, what? AT&T is going to come in with a backhoe and dig up his lines? Derp! If they wanted into his neighborhood's market, it is currently open, it would cost them less now than if there is local competition. You can't just make DSL cheaper to compete for the customers that want faster connections. Obviously if you're just trying to re-sell what is already available in the neighborhood, you're in a bad position. Totally different than running your own cable.
Covenants are there to restrict what you can do with land you... long-term lease from the neighborhood association under the guise of land ownership.
If you don't like the restrictions... don't like on snooty restricted land. If you're not rich enough to just bring your own fiber in underground, why are you living in wannabe snootyville?
They can't possibly be moving their missile program forwards without some solid scientific training, at least for the technical elites. Look how many other countries, with more money and less sanctions, have so much more trouble pushing that tech forwards. I doubt they are investing a lot of time in "pure" science, but in that case they probably have a large number of scientifically-minded engineers who are ripe for exposure to western scientific culture.
A lot of what he says is totally bogus stuff, and I'm sure he knows it. They (him and Rodman) are probably correct that individual exposure to friendly Americans in non-political settings is a good thing.
There is very little danger here, because if you watch the media coverage, lil Kim doesn't really get any sort of political advantage out of it. He ends up looking a bit like a big spoiled kid. So it doesn't help the baddie, it doesn't really hurt much else, and other than the people who have to throw themselves under buses to save these schmucks, everybody else comes out ahead.
I also agree with the US response, to mildly criticize it without trying to interfere.
It isn't that sort of experiment. The "experiment" is that the North Koreans kill or remove from the breeding population a large number of people, using different selection factors than normally exist in the human population. This is not some sort of set-up experiment; it is a political situation with real consequences where the data is simply the result of the political situation, not some "experiment" set up by the researcher.
You might want to slow your skimming down, and think about the difference for a minute.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a huge humber of people in the US who are simply unable to get a bank account.
My dad kept the same bank for 10 years after he lost his ID, because the tellers and the bank manager recognized him. When they closed the branch he went months without being able to get to his SS, because he didn't ask anybody for help. From his perspective he was being held down by The Man, and didn't think of that as being very notable, and it wasn't what he wanted to spend his time talking about.
I'd be surprised if this sort of situation doesn't cover over 1 million of those ~70 million bank-less Americans.
using direct deposit is not only easier but it's also cheaper.
If you have financial staff, sure. For a lot of small businesses the actual equation is: hire somebody to handle the payroll using direct deposit, or write out the checks myself.
Also if you're using a third-party payroll service, there is a bunch of extra work you have to do interfacing between the employee and the vendor, to get the (secret, sensitive) banking information from the employee to the vendor in a safe way. What is a safe way? How do you know if you're doing it right? You don't know if you're doing it right, because you don't have anybody in-house with that specialty. So it might well save time, effort, and money to pay the few extra cents per printed check that the payroll firm charges.
What I don't get is why would any company bother to deal with paper money and/or checks(?! good god, I think it was the 80's when I actually saw one last time).
For example, one client I have has a small big city payroll firm prepare the checks, and mails them in a big envelope, and then the owner can double-check the amounts before sending them on to the employees. This is done because it is a non-tech business, and the owner is non-technical. If it was electronic and somebody got overpaid, how would he even find out? If the employee didn't mention it, he'd just have to hope somebody else noticed; but why would they? Only if it was a large enough amount to throw the monthly numbers off enough to really stand out.
In a larger business where you have full time accounting staff and regular audits then it is a totally different thing.
In the US, most banks have free checking accounts. Why don't these people just use a bank?
Not anymore. Banks were doing that for a few years because of competition. Now most charge a fee or have a minimum balance (usually $1500)
Here is a situation I was in when I was younger: the company I worked for closed, and I lost my job. My checking account ended up -$120 at the end of the month. (because I made the mistake of freely using the "free" $400 overdraft protection; which they marketed to me as being credit) Then when I didn't pay them back within 30 days, they closed the account; but since it was a checking account, and negative when they closed it, instead of filing the debt as a credit debt, they filed it as the account closed for "check abuse." So then for 7 years I couldn't open a checking account.
A few months later I went into the bank with a $3000 check and they refused to even attempt to find any way of letting me pay back the account. And even if I had brought them back cash after paying a "check cash" place, they wouldn't have removed the false "check abuse" claim.
Check cashing places serve lots of people, most of whom are enemies of the bank for credit reasons; many of whom have poor banking histories; and even for varied reasons like hiding money from relatives.
... stop it before it gets to the children!!!
Please state exactly which "civil rights" were violated and how they were violated.
The right to be Free in his movements. Just grabbing the oldest and most basic one. A good lawyer could probably talk on this for a couple hours, improv.
by falsely reporting his medical equipment as being something criminal,
False report? Excuse me, but are you an idiot? Google Glass is not medical equipment.
Prescription glasses are medical equipment. The Google Glass was permanently attached (by the vendor) to said medical equipment. The non-medical stuff attached to the medical equipment was turned off and not in use. Are you... an idiot? Just to clarify, I mean this word only in the medical sense, not in the pejorative.
they had no evidence of a crime,
Except for him pointing a video recording device at a movie screen
No. Pointing a device that may or may not be capable of recording at a screen is not in any way illegal. You underscore my point; what they accuse him of is not a crime, and the accusation itself admits they didn't know if he recorded or not. There is no crime, there is no accusation of a crime. It is not a crime to point a device capable of recording at things.
Perhaps you should actually LEARN what the law before commenting on it.
lolololololol roflcopter
I know, right? I tell customers that every day, "works for me, must not be a real bug."
No, they'd just have to resort to hip, modern cinemas and avoid the national chains.
The good news is, these new-fangled places serve beer, European style.
No, putting a lien on a bank-owned property causes the bank to auction it instead of trying to sell it. Getting a lien can be the quickest way to get a good new neighbor.
The combination of a lien and a HOA means all the institution all players will want to cut losses and end their interest. In the case of a member who is the full owner, they can often be forced to sell by being kicked out of the HOA; something you normally can't do to somebody, but it becomes much easier if you've got a lien, and they're still in rules violation after the lien is placed.
If it is still hard, it means the tin gods aren't listening to the lawyers, probably they keep trying to spew political propaganda at the courts instead of saying what their lawyers told them to say.
The difference between being able to prove embezzlement and not being able to comes down, almost entirely, to hiring the forensic accountants to collect the evidence... or not.
Something like a HOA isn't likely to have untraceable income and assets. Everything they get is somebody else's home ownership expense, it is normally all done with legit financial instruments, and lots of record keeping.
I certainly wouldn't expect the office workers who discover the embezzlement to ever be able to recognize or collect evidence. More likely, other people were also involved, and just wanted to lay all the blame on the old person, at least in the eyes of the new person. If they just say, "well, there is no way we can prove it" enough times, nobody will even file a report.
No, they are contracts with the buyers of the land, that attach to the land deed, and that have a GPL-like clause that requires new buyers to agree to the contract before purchasing. So there is no expiration date. Eventually the owner of record has to die, and their heirs have to agree to the contract just to take ownership.
You can try, but unless you have a zillion dollars to throw at this you'll lose because the covenants are supported by developers who use it control the character of new developments. For them it is part of an advertising strategy aimed at snooty rich people. Which is why in my city, it is only snooty neighborhoods that have them.
There would be other complications to a timed expiration: often the home owners association actually owns some land that the members have shared access to. In some cases even private roads. (this is mostly so that they can have stricter on-street parking regulations than a public street; for example letting members control the spaces in front of their house). There is no guarantee that the city is even willing to take over that ownership. Generally when you build a street in a new development, if you want the city to own the street you have to design it in the way the city wants. The developer often doesn't want to design streets in the same way, where the process is driven by traffic engineers. Instead, marketing drives the process; there might only be 1 or 2 ways in/out, because they maximize the salable land and reduce connector streets, and they want to control the view that people viewing homes will see as they come into the neighborhood. The city might not want to take over those kind of sucky streets.
What the fuck were you thinking going into a movie theater wearing your Google Glass in this time and age.
Yeah, freedom is so last millennium.
Violating his civil rights by falsely reporting his medical equipment as being something criminal, when they had no evidence of a crime, and could have cleared with a simple conversation. They had every right to ask him to leave, but not to make a false report.
Being detained is considered a form of arrest by the Courts.
In Oregon, as in many places, if you don't follow the covenant rules they can not only fine you and sue you, they can get a restraining order to do whatever is necessary. In the case of things like noise rules, you can get banned from your own property in a manner more normally associated with rentals.
As far as overgrown lawns, if they care they can probably hire a crew to cut it for you, bill you, and even get a lien on your property over it.
In some cases they don't do anything, but it is generally because anything they would do would be unpopular with the homeowners. Sometimes they write stricter rules than they even intend to enforce.
Other times, they are really serious about having a community with strictly enforced rules.
It isn't a binary question. You can make an argument for any life form being intelligent. Where we draw that line sometimes determines life and death. Chickens are more intelligent than worms. Chickens are more intelligent than tofu cultures.
When I hear about marine mammals being slaughtered, it makes me sad in exactly the same way it makes me sad when I hear about distant humans being slaughtered.
More broadly, move to a place where you own the land you "own."
In the US covenants are almost always contractual conditions imposed by a private party that are signed as a (perpetual) condition of purchase or transfer. Generally this is where the developer builds a "subdivision" all at once, and forms a "neighborhood association" composed of some of the original owners. They come up with a list of things that can't (or have to be) done with the property; common ones in my area are restrictions on removing trees (without some sort of vote by the association), banning of manufactured homes, parking restrictions on private roads, stricter "quiet hours" than the municipal code provides, and in some cases even a ban on building a house from the same design as any existing house in the neighborhood.
Sometimes even the allowed colors of homes are controlled. It is almost unrestricted. Here in the US, there is actually very limited things that the local government can do with regards to property restrictions. Arbitrary restrictions are generally thrown out by the courts, as are things that restrict your freedom of speech. However, a neighborhood association is not a government, and since the restrictions are contractual in nature, you can include a wide variety of severe, arbitrary, and speech-related restrictions.
And by "crush" you mean, what? AT&T is going to come in with a backhoe and dig up his lines? Derp! If they wanted into his neighborhood's market, it is currently open, it would cost them less now than if there is local competition. You can't just make DSL cheaper to compete for the customers that want faster connections. Obviously if you're just trying to re-sell what is already available in the neighborhood, you're in a bad position. Totally different than running your own cable.
Covenants are there to restrict what you can do with land you... long-term lease from the neighborhood association under the guise of land ownership.
If you don't like the restrictions... don't like on snooty restricted land. If you're not rich enough to just bring your own fiber in underground, why are you living in wannabe snootyville?
They can't possibly be moving their missile program forwards without some solid scientific training, at least for the technical elites. Look how many other countries, with more money and less sanctions, have so much more trouble pushing that tech forwards. I doubt they are investing a lot of time in "pure" science, but in that case they probably have a large number of scientifically-minded engineers who are ripe for exposure to western scientific culture.
A lot of what he says is totally bogus stuff, and I'm sure he knows it. They (him and Rodman) are probably correct that individual exposure to friendly Americans in non-political settings is a good thing.
There is very little danger here, because if you watch the media coverage, lil Kim doesn't really get any sort of political advantage out of it. He ends up looking a bit like a big spoiled kid. So it doesn't help the baddie, it doesn't really hurt much else, and other than the people who have to throw themselves under buses to save these schmucks, everybody else comes out ahead.
I also agree with the US response, to mildly criticize it without trying to interfere.
I know, right? At least he took the time to understand their accent, though.
It isn't that sort of experiment. The "experiment" is that the North Koreans kill or remove from the breeding population a large number of people, using different selection factors than normally exist in the human population. This is not some sort of set-up experiment; it is a political situation with real consequences where the data is simply the result of the political situation, not some "experiment" set up by the researcher.
You might want to slow your skimming down, and think about the difference for a minute.
Nobody in North Korea is a volunteer, so informing them of the risks of having an autocratic dictator is kinda... out there.
No, but sledding accidents by statistical geneticists with funny beards, now that is important nerd business!