We have a caretaker, but he doesn't answer the door for deliveries.
Genuinely curious; why not? If he's there, why wouldn't he accept deliveries?
He perhaps would if he happened to be walking by the front door when someone came (but could only leave them in the lobby). However, he doesn't sit around in the lobby, and I doubt he would want to sign for a delivery. I'm not sure what his duties really are, but most often I see him vacuuming hallway carpets, organising maintenance contractors, and trying to get out of conversations with the elderly lady who lives in the flat below mine.
He works pretty standard hours (8:30-16:30?) and "emergencies" outside that. It sounds like the buildings in NYC have a doorman on duty 24/7, presumably somewhere near the door...
In the places in the US where doormen are common (mostly just NYC for apartment buildings), the doormen are in unions and so are very difficult to do away with.
Why? If you don't want a doorman any more, going on strike isn't going to help him keep the job...
Loads of people in London use online grocery delivery services.
Amazon don't do this -- the four oligopolistic supermarkets all do. They offer timed deliveries, within an hour or two-hour slot, at varying cost (sometimes free). They promise to choose the food as you ask -- e.g. you can ask for very ripe fruit, or unripe fruit, or furthest-future use-by dates. I don't know how reliable this is. I used the service once, from the cheaper supermarket that offers it (Asda), when I last moved house. It was convenient, but not enough to use it again. I spend enough time on the computer already, I don't mind wandering round a shop choosing food.
I'm clearly in their target demographic (late 20s and no children, from my "loyalty" card) and I'm always handed a voucher for "£15 off your first online delivery when you spend £60" when I buy things in Sainsbury's.
I don't buy ready-meals etc. I think people buying them would be less likely to use the delivery service, since it's pretty easy to stop in at a smaller supermarket on the way home and pick from the refrigerated boxes. Quicker than picking vegetables etc.
(There's no doorman on my building, with ~120 flats. I thought that was a super-luxury thing. We have a caretaker, but he doesn't answer the door for deliveries. I don't know if larger buildings in London/UK have them.)
(The vulnerability in this proprietary encryption system isn't so much mathematical, but social. The readers validate the PIN, which means criminals can demand someone's PIN -- and then verify it! Two students from my university were killed, possibly because they first a false PIN http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jun/04/french-students-murder-guilty-verdict )
500€ were removed from circulation (the money exchanges agreed to stop providing them) in the UK, as it was suspected that 90% of them were used for crime. The note weighs 1.1g (many -- maybe even most -- countries have different sizes for different notes).
I once saw someone pay for a lot of drinks at a bar with a €200, and have once used a €100 (which was accepted in Germany), but I don't live in the Eurozone so I don't know how much these notes are used.
There is a limit in the UK of €15,000 before a company has to register as a "high value dealer" with HMRC. They then must ask for id, report anything suspicious, and keep records. There are presumably similar rules across the EU, otherwise the British regulation would be in pounds.
A friend worked for one of the very expensive hotels in London for a while. In the summer, rich Arab men would stay, and liked to flaunt their cash. They'd walk to the bank, bring about £100,000 in cash (and the bank would send a security guard to follow), then flaunt it about at reception to pay for their rooms (often a whole floor).
The receptionists would count it up, then take it straight back to the bank. ("If the prince would prefer, he may pay by cheque, debit card or electronic transfer.")
I don't think that's the case. We should be proud that we insisted that evidence gained through torture wasn't used against Abu Qatada, and that we see "human rights" as universal -- not just for British people, not just for those on British soil, but for everyone, everywhere. (So, we can't [shouldn't] have the situation like in the US where the constitution can be ignored in Guantanamo, or for immigrants.)
The media, MPs and ministers should have been blaming Jordan for why the UK was unable to deport him, but instead they blamed the EU. That's backwards!
"The Palestinian-Jordanian cleric's deportation was finally able to proceed after the UK and Jordan signed a treaty agreeing that evidence obtained through torture would not be used against him."
Although Congress routinely wipes its ass with the constitution, at least it gives Americans a rallying point and something concrete to get upset over. The lack of one in the UK means it's easier for the government to walk over basic principles.
We could rally round the Human Rights Act / ECHR, but somehow the mainstream media (and the Tories) have convinced lots of people that it's a bad thing.
How much of that is due to the relentless fuel tax hikes, soaring insurance costs and general expenses of owning a vehicle, which puts it out of the affordability range for increasing numbers of people.
The cost of driving has reduced (increased less than inflation) in the UK. Most of the fuel duty increases which should have happened were 'postponed'.
It's not a fair test. Railroads could deliver that speed today if not for government regulation. Even today's high speed rail projects only get rail travel speeds up to what was normal 100 years ago.
Rubbish! The fastest train (record) in 1910 was 210.2 km/h (131 mph) -- Germany. It's now 574.8 km/h (357 mph) -- France. The trains used for the latter record are modified TGV trains, to remove some of the safety limits.
For a whole journey: "As of 2007, a TGV service held the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h (173.6 mph)"
Also, government regulation and investment is what's led to zero passenger fatalities on trains in Britain in the last five years. Any accident, or "near miss", is investigated without trying to assign blame, but to identify how it can be prevented in the future.
I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA: the USA has much more long-distance freight movement. I assume -- tell me if I'm wrong -- that someone sending food across California doesn't ship it by rail. The extra time + logistics (farm - road - rail - road - shop/warehouse at worst) isn't worthwhile.
The blue and yellow diagram shows that most freight in western European countries is national, which means the maximum distance is less than the average width of a US state.
Indeed, in a world of increasing teleconferencing and telecommuting, you'd think the attraction of high-speed travel would be less pressing with each year that goes by.
Since 1993, the number of journeys by rail has gone up in the UK every year except 2008.
Better teleconferencing and better journey times means more business happens, which more than compensates for the people who no longer need to travel. A manufacturer likes to have their suppliers nearby. The distance "nearby" increases with better railways, and the number of potential suppliers the manufacturer is aware of increases with better telecoms.
Yeah, to give another European perspective: I'm in the UK and I've never had an IT employment contract without a minimum notice period. They generally start at 2 weeks for either side, rising to a month's notice after the sucessful completion of a trial period.
Similarly for me. In the public sector in the UK the periods (for me) are a bit longer: min(years_served, 4) weeks from the start, and min(years_served, 4) + 1 weeks from the employer. Those on the higher pay grades (mostly managers, but also the senior developers) replace 4 with 12. This is normal for most jobs, AFAIK. A quick search shows Asda's shop staff have a 2-week notice period.
Unfortunately the UK now has lots of zero-hours contracts, but that's another issue...
Being forced to work for a certain amount of time after deciding you don't want to work anymore seems like something less than employee protection. At will employment is brutal, but it is fair.
More importantly, it works both ways. Depending on position, my colleagues and I have to give either 4 or 12 weeks notice. However, the company has to give either 5 or 13 weeks notice.
The employee not giving the notice pretty much means they won't get a reference. The company wouldn't not give notice; even if they don't want the employee to come in they still must pay them. (Except for serious misconduct, etc.)
You obviously know nothing about how San Francisco actually works. Even if the GoogleFacebots kicked in ten percent of their salaries to public transport, service would not only not improve, it would continue to deteriorate. The only thing that would improve would be the number of bus drivers making $100k plus salaries.
It doesn't make sense that the "best" part of the "best" country in the world can't work this stuff out...
If you have the time to read it, the article in the New Yorker is much more interesting. The/. summary is poor -- to much focus on the buses. The point with the buses is only to illustrate how the tech workers are insulating themselves from the communities, and their general attitude to government.
Compare what's normal here: companies provide interest-free loans to staff for buying annual train/bus tickets. They join in with the public system, rather than creating their own. The article has other examples -- schools, healthcare, etc.
OK, maybe it's because I'm an old-school Missouri farm boy, but... that sounds an awful lot like cows at a stockyard.
Don't they have school buses in Missouri? This is pretty much the same thing.
And maybe it's because I'm from a European city, but it sounds like the public transport isn't very good if companies run private buses. The Google, Facebook etc here don't need buses, nor (presumably) do the offices in New York. (We don't have school buses here either, children are expected to use the normal public transport. It's free for them.)
Is that really a stereotype? When I visited the US and carried a bag, did people assume I was foreign?
Thinking about it, I generally assume people with a bum bag (US fanny pack) in London are American, though Americans usually do more than just one thing to stand out (e.g. be overweight, talk too loudly on public transport, say inappropriate things in public.)
Carrying a rucksack on ones' back while standing on a train is a sure sign of a visitor, but doesn't suggest they're American. Hold it in front (perhaps on one shoulder), or on the floor between your legs, so you don't bash people with it.
I also prefer to use a fountain pen, but here in Britain they're not sold only as expensive fashion accessories (though there's certainly a market for that).
So, save $80-$180, and buy a good quality fountain pen from eBay.co.uk or eBay.de. I have a couple of "Online" ones, and they're fine -- one was £3 (probably because it's an ugly yellow colour) and the other about £10.
(I still have the one my mum bought me when I started secondary school. Still works fine! I use it at work. It was "Made in West Germany" and everything...)
There's a page where you can submit MACs to opt-out of the service. Setting up a scanner somewhere in the City (i.e. the financial district -- every other part of London funds recycling bins without outsourcing it to advertisers) and automatically submitting them to the opt-out site would be good.
Rubbish, although those speeds are, even in Germany, not common they are an everyday event.
Obviously risk increases with speed but this can and is mitigated by preparations like other travellers expecting it and the driver, the car and road being fit for purpose.
Yet Germany has a higher accident (and fatality) rate on motorways than comparable countries (France, UK).
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We have a caretaker, but he doesn't answer the door for deliveries.
Genuinely curious; why not? If he's there, why wouldn't he accept deliveries?
He perhaps would if he happened to be walking by the front door when someone came (but could only leave them in the lobby). However, he doesn't sit around in the lobby, and I doubt he would want to sign for a delivery. I'm not sure what his duties really are, but most often I see him vacuuming hallway carpets, organising maintenance contractors, and trying to get out of conversations with the elderly lady who lives in the flat below mine.
He works pretty standard hours (8:30-16:30?) and "emergencies" outside that. It sounds like the buildings in NYC have a doorman on duty 24/7, presumably somewhere near the door...
In the places in the US where doormen are common (mostly just NYC for apartment buildings), the doormen are in unions and so are very difficult to do away with.
Why? If you don't want a doorman any more, going on strike isn't going to help him keep the job...
Loads of people in London use online grocery delivery services.
Amazon don't do this -- the four oligopolistic supermarkets all do. They offer timed deliveries, within an hour or two-hour slot, at varying cost (sometimes free). They promise to choose the food as you ask -- e.g. you can ask for very ripe fruit, or unripe fruit, or furthest-future use-by dates. I don't know how reliable this is. I used the service once, from the cheaper supermarket that offers it (Asda), when I last moved house. It was convenient, but not enough to use it again. I spend enough time on the computer already, I don't mind wandering round a shop choosing food.
I'm clearly in their target demographic (late 20s and no children, from my "loyalty" card) and I'm always handed a voucher for "£15 off your first online delivery when you spend £60" when I buy things in Sainsbury's.
I don't buy ready-meals etc. I think people buying them would be less likely to use the delivery service, since it's pretty easy to stop in at a smaller supermarket on the way home and pick from the refrigerated boxes. Quicker than picking vegetables etc.
(There's no doorman on my building, with ~120 flats. I thought that was a super-luxury thing. We have a caretaker, but he doesn't answer the door for deliveries. I don't know if larger buildings in London/UK have them.)
Anyway, chips, magnetic strips, what is the difference when ordering stuff via internet?
You could cryptographically sign the transaction, although at present this isn't done (as far as I know).
It's used for online banking (e.g. http://www.lloydstsbbusiness.com/internetbanking/cardreader.asp ).
(The vulnerability in this proprietary encryption system isn't so much mathematical, but social. The readers validate the PIN, which means criminals can demand someone's PIN -- and then verify it! Two students from my university were killed, possibly because they first a false PIN http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jun/04/french-students-murder-guilty-verdict )
I'm sure if this wasn't a white British journalist parliament would be equally outraged about illegal detention. Sure.
Erm, Guantanamo is in the US, and the UK has (in public, at least) asked for its closure.
David Miranda isn't white and British either. He's Brazilian.
500€ were removed from circulation (the money exchanges agreed to stop providing them) in the UK, as it was suspected that 90% of them were used for crime. The note weighs 1.1g (many -- maybe even most -- countries have different sizes for different notes).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500€#Crime
I once saw someone pay for a lot of drinks at a bar with a €200, and have once used a €100 (which was accepted in Germany), but I don't live in the Eurozone so I don't know how much these notes are used.
There is a limit in the UK of €15,000 before a company has to register as a "high value dealer" with HMRC. They then must ask for id, report anything suspicious, and keep records. There are presumably similar rules across the EU, otherwise the British regulation would be in pounds.
A friend worked for one of the very expensive hotels in London for a while. In the summer, rich Arab men would stay, and liked to flaunt their cash. They'd walk to the bank, bring about £100,000 in cash (and the bank would send a security guard to follow), then flaunt it about at reception to pay for their rooms (often a whole floor).
The receptionists would count it up, then take it straight back to the bank. ("If the prince would prefer, he may pay by cheque, debit card or electronic transfer.")
I don't think that's the case. We should be proud that we insisted that evidence gained through torture wasn't used against Abu Qatada, and that we see "human rights" as universal -- not just for British people, not just for those on British soil, but for everyone, everywhere. (So, we can't [shouldn't] have the situation like in the US where the constitution can be ignored in Guantanamo, or for immigrants.)
The media, MPs and ministers should have been blaming Jordan for why the UK was unable to deport him, but instead they blamed the EU. That's backwards!
"The Palestinian-Jordanian cleric's deportation was finally able to proceed after the UK and Jordan signed a treaty agreeing that evidence obtained through torture would not be used against him."
Although Congress routinely wipes its ass with the constitution, at least it gives Americans a rallying point and something concrete to get upset over. The lack of one in the UK means it's easier for the government to walk over basic principles.
We could rally round the Human Rights Act / ECHR, but somehow the mainstream media (and the Tories) have convinced lots of people that it's a bad thing.
How much of that is due to the relentless fuel tax hikes, soaring insurance costs and general expenses of owning a vehicle, which puts it out of the affordability range for increasing numbers of people.
The cost of driving has reduced (increased less than inflation) in the UK. Most of the fuel duty increases which should have happened were 'postponed'.
It's not a fair test. Railroads could deliver that speed today if not for government regulation. Even today's high speed rail projects only get rail travel speeds up to what was normal 100 years ago.
Rubbish! The fastest train (record) in 1910 was 210.2 km/h (131 mph) -- Germany. It's now 574.8 km/h (357 mph) -- France. The trains used for the latter record are modified TGV trains, to remove some of the safety limits.
For a whole journey: "As of 2007, a TGV service held the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h (173.6 mph)"
Also, government regulation and investment is what's led to zero passenger fatalities on trains in Britain in the last five years. Any accident, or "near miss", is investigated without trying to assign blame, but to identify how it can be prevented in the future.
I think you fail to account for a big difference between the EU and the USA: the USA has much more long-distance freight movement. I assume -- tell me if I'm wrong -- that someone sending food across California doesn't ship it by rail. The extra time + logistics (farm - road - rail - road - shop/warehouse at worst) isn't worthwhile.
Europe has much less inter-state freight movement, and thus there's less advantage to rail freight. See: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics (and, as it points out, there's a lot of freight carried by sea, and no statistics on that).
The blue and yellow diagram shows that most freight in western European countries is national, which means the maximum distance is less than the average width of a US state.
The whole EU moved 2.3 trillion tonne-km by all transport modes. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_usage_statistics_by_country#Freight_rail_by_billions_of_tonne-kilometers shows the US moved 2.4 trillion tonne-km by rail alone!
Indeed, in a world of increasing teleconferencing and telecommuting, you'd think the attraction of high-speed travel would be less pressing with each year that goes by.
Since 1993, the number of journeys by rail has gone up in the UK every year except 2008.
Better teleconferencing and better journey times means more business happens, which more than compensates for the people who no longer need to travel. A manufacturer likes to have their suppliers nearby. The distance "nearby" increases with better railways, and the number of potential suppliers the manufacturer is aware of increases with better telecoms.
Yeah, to give another European perspective: I'm in the UK and I've never had an IT employment contract without a minimum notice period. They generally start at 2 weeks for either side, rising to a month's notice after the sucessful completion of a trial period.
Similarly for me. In the public sector in the UK the periods (for me) are a bit longer: min(years_served, 4) weeks from the start, and min(years_served, 4) + 1 weeks from the employer. Those on the higher pay grades (mostly managers, but also the senior developers) replace 4 with 12. This is normal for most jobs, AFAIK. A quick search shows Asda's shop staff have a 2-week notice period.
Unfortunately the UK now has lots of zero-hours contracts, but that's another issue...
Being forced to work for a certain amount of time after deciding you don't want to work anymore seems like something less than employee protection. At will employment is brutal, but it is fair.
More importantly, it works both ways. Depending on position, my colleagues and I have to give either 4 or 12 weeks notice. However, the company has to give either 5 or 13 weeks notice.
The employee not giving the notice pretty much means they won't get a reference. The company wouldn't not give notice; even if they don't want the employee to come in they still must pay them. (Except for serious misconduct, etc.)
You obviously know nothing about how San Francisco actually works. Even if the GoogleFacebots kicked in ten percent of their salaries to public transport, service would not only not improve, it would continue to deteriorate. The only thing that would improve would be the number of bus drivers making $100k plus salaries.
It doesn't make sense that the "best" part of the "best" country in the world can't work this stuff out...
Maybe your journey would be better if all Google, Facebook employees using these buses were instead paying in to the city's transport system.
(2-3 hours -- that's there and back, I hope?)
If you have the time to read it, the article in the New Yorker is much more interesting. The /. summary is poor -- to much focus on the buses. The point with the buses is only to illustrate how the tech workers are insulating themselves from the communities, and their general attitude to government.
Compare what's normal here: companies provide interest-free loans to staff for buying annual train/bus tickets. They join in with the public system, rather than creating their own. The article has other examples -- schools, healthcare, etc.
Huh.
OK, maybe it's because I'm an old-school Missouri farm boy, but... that sounds an awful lot like cows at a stockyard.
Don't they have school buses in Missouri? This is pretty much the same thing.
And maybe it's because I'm from a European city, but it sounds like the public transport isn't very good if companies run private buses. The Google, Facebook etc here don't need buses, nor (presumably) do the offices in New York. (We don't have school buses here either, children are expected to use the normal public transport. It's free for them.)
Is that really a stereotype? When I visited the US and carried a bag, did people assume I was foreign?
Thinking about it, I generally assume people with a bum bag (US fanny pack) in London are American, though Americans usually do more than just one thing to stand out (e.g. be overweight, talk too loudly on public transport, say inappropriate things in public.)
Carrying a rucksack on ones' back while standing on a train is a sure sign of a visitor, but doesn't suggest they're American. Hold it in front (perhaps on one shoulder), or on the floor between your legs, so you don't bash people with it.
Be European... get a bag. Not a purse, a bag.
Is that really a stereotype? When I visited the US and carried a bag, did people assume I was foreign?
What kinds of bags? Does a rucksack count, or only something like a satchel?
I also prefer to use a fountain pen, but here in Britain they're not sold only as expensive fashion accessories (though there's certainly a market for that).
So, save $80-$180, and buy a good quality fountain pen from eBay.co.uk or eBay.de. I have a couple of "Online" ones, and they're fine -- one was £3 (probably because it's an ugly yellow colour) and the other about £10.
(I still have the one my mum bought me when I started secondary school. Still works fine! I use it at work. It was "Made in West Germany" and everything...)
If you're ever in SoHo in New York, look down. See all those marbles embedded in the sidewalk next to stores? Same thing.
They're very common in Britain, generally in the denser (and older) bits of cities. Some searching shows they're called "pavement lights".
http://www.newageglass.co.uk/glass-block-services/details/in-situ-pavement-lights
I'd love to see activists "recycle' some iron oxide and aluminum powder in these fuckers.
That's been done before (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London and search the page for " bin").
There's a page where you can submit MACs to opt-out of the service. Setting up a scanner somewhere in the City (i.e. the financial district -- every other part of London funds recycling bins without outsourcing it to advertisers) and automatically submitting them to the opt-out site would be good.
I don't work in the City, or I'd give this a try.
Rubbish, although those speeds are, even in Germany, not common they are an everyday event.
Obviously risk increases with speed but this can and is mitigated by preparations like other travellers expecting it and the driver, the car and road being fit for purpose.
Yet Germany has a higher accident (and fatality) rate on motorways than comparable countries (France, UK).