The thing is, by making pay public, it basically forces companies to use a quality-of-work metric.

If someone makes more, but obviously doesn't pull weight, everyone else will be offended, and ask for raise to match, or have slackers pay reduced.

If someone makes less, but is quite valuable, he'll demand more money, or leave; rather this be content in his position/compensation blissfully unaware he's making less than people less important/productive than he.

The net effect is more merit pay, and leveling of wages.
Which in the end is better for everyone (except perhaps for companies wanting to be cheap)

Back at a company I worked for in So Cal (2009)
We switched to publically maing available everyone's salary.

It basically quickly turned the tide on everyone there.
Those where were hard workers but paid less got raises,
And those making more but were obviously (to other developers) not pulling their weight, were either given a hefty salary cut, or let go.

The net effect, was everyone was happier, and wage equalization among the general seniority levels.

I personally thing this information should be made publically available across the country.
Wage equalization and stopping the money from poolings up the social ladder is worth it.
Large income disparities for "Silver tongued" and charismatic people shouldn't be allowed.

And net benefit: wages across geographic areas owuld balance out, as companies won't be able to
  : pay H1B people less/more
  : under/over pay people as co-workers would quickly be able to tell if someone is under-performing
  : ability to easily switch companies with knowledge of their pay-grades
  : ability for companies to lure talented people by simply paying more making it more attractive
        - but not be able to do so on one-off bases, as existing staff would be offended
        - so wage leveling. Pay everyone more, or offer new person less.

This would be awesome to implement.

It became illegal here to have a car unlocked like 10 years ago.
Sales of remote car starters increased.
I think it was mainly due to the rare car-thefts of people going outside, starting the car, and then letting it warm up outside while they get ready in the cold winter mornings.

And not all phones will allow you to disable the alerts.
Particualry, most phones not purchased in the US; or unbranded phones.
Mine falls under HTC unbranded. I get the alerts, but have no option to disable (most of the world won't let you opt out of the Emergency Broadcast System)

Regarding #2. That was an intentional design of the system. Since the notices are either issued for specific counties, or state-wide; that's millions of cell-phones getting the message (hopefully) at one time. They did not want people to have easy immediate access to more information, by triggering a data-connection, potentially overloading the cell-towers.

As for point #1. THat would be nice, but they wanted to harmonize it with the Emergency ALert system as on TV. (loud blaring alarm, (possibly) reading out the message, can't opt-out short of turning off your TV) I'm so glad we don't get the "*KLAXON* Heavy Rain Warning for the following counties" every week during the summer like out east.

At least you have the option to disable the alerts on your phone.
I have an unbranded phone; that apparently supports WEA; but doesn't have any options to disable the alerts (since that's a US specific functionality)

As for the alert going across the state; you can blame the Gov't for issuing the alert state-wide, rather than for specific counties.

It's due to the custom ROM.
The WEA alert is sent via Cell Broadcast to every phone connected to a cell-tower.
If your phone supports the feature, it will display it (buzzing, as SMS, as Emergency Notification, etc) Normally just a software update.

But, the down side is that most new phones support WEA....
But the option to disable it is a Carrier add-on... I don't have any means of disabling the alerts on my phone due to the fact it's a factory-direct unbranded HTC phone. (Only the US has the alerts as far as I can tell; and US law says presidential alerts cannot be disabled -- so by definition to be maximal compliant worldwide -- assume you can't disable the feature; and for those on US branded phones, install option to disable AMBER alert, and maybe Weather Warnings...)

However, if I buy anything out of state, I am required to report it and pay the tax on it in California by law.
Anything purchased online or physically out of state needs to be reported and taxes paid.

And it just translates American Spelling Alphabet (French). Which is mostly one handed spelling.
It would bomb horribly trying to understand any British (English) based finger-spelling, which is two-handed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Sign_Language_chart.png

And the next question is... which finger spelling language are they translating? American? Irish? British? Australian? International (a mish-mash of English finger-spelling systems) ... every language uses a different set.

The EU Regulatations still have bans on animals and vegetables grown in Germany, UK, Spain, France, and most of Europe. The quarantine range has been reduced since the 80s, but it's still in place, and will probably be for many years to come.

All sheep in parts of Britain still need to be tested for radiation before they're allowed to enter the food-chain.
Wild Boar in Germany for the most part still can't be safely consumed.

We had a full model UN in high school. Since all the seating was assigned ahead of time; the vote-keeping was done entirely on pre-printed ballot sheets. basically in the format:

Sheet 1
Name: Y N A ...
Name: Y N A
Total: [blank] [blank] [blank]

And they were based on the seating at the university's lecture hall we used, they all listed countries in order as they were seated, starting with the centre.
You pass out the sheets to the centre people, and then they pass it along to the end; they're forwarded up;

At the front: Tallied per sheet;
the totals transferred to the log sheet
Sheet 1 :[blank] [blank] [blank] ...
Sheet X :[blank] [blank] [blank]
Totals :[blank] [blank] [blank]

And you had totals, with fairly rapid turn around and summations. Secret votes just had a stack of paper with "Country: ____ Y N A" and they were required to fill it out and put it into the box going around. to be condensed and summarized onto the above formattetd sheets at the front by the two lackies.

Junk character filter? Really? I wonder what the threshold is. Wow, this really makes it a bit difficult to nicely explain the formats, but then what can you really do about it. I wonder what the thresholds are.

I think that is insane that the US can be one of the few countries left in the world that VISA and MASTERCARD don't force the required use of Chip-and-PIN for all purchases. Canada switched over a few years back, most of the EU switched recently. Japan and Korea has switched, as have some south american countries.

Only once in the US had the merchant a terminal and provider that declined my card under "Service not available. Use Chip-and-PIN" when they tried to swipe my card. (That caught me off guard, since I've gotten used to only signing)

But, it's standard practise for VISA/MASTERCARD to require the use of Chip and Pin for all card-present transacions, and with every year, more of the world is upgrading their infrastructure.to support these requirements. I know on my latest agreement it was expilictly stated that "The magnetic stripe is only valid for use in the United States. All credit card transactions must be completed with the use of Chip and Pin"

-- Canada

Not to mention that outside the US, all VISA/MASTERCARD cards require a PIN on the card for the transaction to complete. The magnetic stripe on the credit card has been rendered "Only valid for use in the United States" in most of the world as well. Becasue they are required to use Chip-n-PIN for all in-person transactions.

Only once in SoCal have I been required to use my pin, and that's just because they have international customers. Since I lived there, they swiped the card, and it errored : "Service not authorized. Use Chip And PIN." (I hadn't used the pin on my card in the 4 years since moving to the US, so I had forgotten it, and needed to pay with cash, but that's besides the point)

You obviously have never banked outside the US.
Where if you want to do -anything- you need to look up the TAN from a one-time use pad that's mailed out to you. They ask fory our password, and then "Enter tan 82:"