I'm an American. Join the club. Unfortunately our political system is turning into a plutocracy where the money of a few drowns out the voice of the many. A lot of us are beyond genuinely disgusted too - but have little choice in the matter.

But that was the point I was making :)

It's totally the employee's fault. They violated the store policy in exactly the way that you're saying. I'm not agreeing with, or condoning it. I knew enough not to make that mistake, but knowing what I know about the pressures put on you as an Apple salesperson, I was saying I can totally see how someone less experienced or who didn't give a shit would do that. ;)

I'm totally not disagreeing with you at all. If you've spent any time in Retail, you'll know that 90% of the time, Customers really have no idea what they want or what the rules are. Most customers are pretty dumb. Hell, I couldn't even trust them to remember a password that they JUST created minutes before. They are the absolute WRONG source of any useful information - especially about transactions.

Exactly. Apple Store employees (or Retail Employees in General) couldn't give a shit when they're incredibly busy. One person on a (somewhat) busy day could easily make up 10 times whatever revenue was lost due to that bad transaction.

I used to work at The Apple Store. And that's really the way it should work. However, from my time there, we had credit cards declined all of the time. The Apple Store is a huge place for fraudulent purchases and credit cards routinely auto-blocked access when purchases were for Apple and outside of typical purchases. We actually had the VP of BOEING's Business credit card declined. The standard procedure was to have the customer call the bank, validate that they were them, and that they indeed DID want to make the purchase. After about a minute, we could re-run the card and it'd work.

Now, when the payment device asked for an Override code, it was the job of the EMPLOYEE to got to the back and call up the bank. We're provided special numbers to call and special codes we have to type in. It's a horribly clunky and long process which everyone hated to do, but that was it. So, this is completely the employee's fault - albeit it's really a training issue and the blame rests with Apple. I can totally see why an employee would

#1) Not want to go through that process when they need to get to the next sale

#2) Possibly be new and not completely understand the process

#3) Be susceptible to some clever social engineering - ie: There are some cases where the customer must call the bank. I need an override code from the bank to process this. The customer is calling the bank, so that means I don't have to!

So it's a big f-up, but I can totally understand how and why it happened.

Definitely my favorite internet quote! :D

From TFS: "If you were feeling especially paranoid, but wanted to keep the hardware intact for the next user, what would you do? "

I do have 3D vision, my strabismus is very slight compared to when I was younger. The surgery did work! I was worried that I would actually have to have surgery again because of how my eyes were acting up when I had my normal glasses and I would have to change focus from near to far to near again. Fortunately, the bifocal lenses help that tremendously to the point where it's not even an issue. I'm about 10-20 years younger than most people who need bifocals, but I can't argue with the results! I love reading and I'm a data analyst, so I use computers all the time - I think my eyes get a lot of training! :D As far as Lasik goes, it really doesn't seem like a worthwhile proposition because it won't really change anything for me! Thanks for the contemplation though... My appointment is coming up soon, maybe I'll look into it!

Save up some money to go to Europe and do the treatment there?

My eyes don't line up in the exact same place when I look at things. I had surgery when I was 15 to correct it, after 20 years, it's coming back a little (although to a much less significant degree). Fortunately, it's small enough that I can use lenses to correct it - I have to wear bifocals now - but that also means that Lasik will never work for me to improve my vision. I could have better than perfect vision in each eye and I'd still need corrective lenses. :|

I see what you're saying. My takeaway was that he wasn't saying robots weren't more competent at specific things (in fact, he commented on how they can do very specific things much better than humans) but that they're not competent in replacing all human tasks. In the example he gave, he said a car-welding robot could weld faster and better than a human, but if asked to install upholstery in the car, it'd probably destroy it.

As part of that, cars are looking like they're going to be robots that are significantly more competent at driving than we'll ever be - but they'd make horrible robots to help an old lady go the bathroom in a nursing home, or any number of tasks not related to driving.

They're not competent in their ability to be "Bishop" from Aliens, but they are/will be plenty competent in driving. :)

I have to agree. When I was there, it was easily 40% H1B workers in my department. Walking around the halls and cafes, I could see even more. I never actually sat down and counted anyone, but I would say that 40-50% of the people were H1Bs, easy.

If particular species have gone extinct, then I would assume their environment could no longer support them. If we manage to bring back those species, and introduce them into environments that could support them, it seems that we have the potential to unbalance that ecosystem by introducing an invasive species which has no natural predator there. How would you manage this risk?

*sniff* Smells ok to me.

Because, unfortunately in some regards, (almost) everyone uses Excel for EVERYTHING. Most people outside of Slashdot could probably name one Database program (Microsoft Access) that they've heard of, and I'm willing to bet most of them don't know how to use it.

Because this is Slashdot. Anytime there's ANY post (positive or negative) about Apple, Microsoft, or any other large technology company, there will always be an inane, anti-"whichever company is being discussed" comment from the person who says, "You still use [product/software/operating system] from [company]?? The only true way to use a computer is by using the command line on [random Linux distro] running off of a Beowulf Cluster of Raspberry Pi's - Just like I have setup!!! If you use anything else, you're a loser!"

And there's always that guy somewhere. It's uncanny.