Or buying _The Essential Hal Clement, Volume 2: Music of Many Spheres_

Seeing photos of these always reminds me of Hal Clement's hard SF short story ``The Mechanic'' --- still copyrighted though, so not at: http://www.unz.org/Pub/AnalogS...

Well worth tracking down a copy of the book _Space Lash_ to read it though.

Let me guess, they outsourced this particular code to EDS?

That's not quite true for dental work, but the price is capped, so you'll typically pay £18.50 to see a dentist, £50.50 if you need something done, or £219 if you need something serious. It's only free if you qualify for extra assistance, which is automatic if you are under 18, under 19 (25 in Wales) and in full-time education, on income support or similar.

Your comment would be much more insightful if you're read all of the way to the end of the first sentence of the post that you replied to.

I can't get how such an idiotic drivel would be considered "insightful" by anyone.

Did it ever occur to you that the East German government (which was always under considerable pressure from the USSR, and remembering Russian tanks rolling through East Germany), and the East German people didn't quite agree about politics and economy? How does your statement "private property was outlawed" match the fact that in any decent family, as soon as a child was born the parents would order a car for him and her (which, due to long waiting lists, would just be ready for the child's 18th birthday).

The article just claims "cheating". However, cheating happens in different situations. There is cheating on your friends or family or neighbours, and there is cheating on authorities.

In East Germany, the authorities were out to get you. Spying on you. Trying to catch you out. Your neighbours on the other hand were the people that you had to rely on and that had to rely on you. A person coming to you and asking questions was highly suspicious and probably up to no good. Everyone would lie to them. But not to your friends and neighbours.

That's probably still there, so if some scientists will come and ask questions, whatever the questions, nobody raised in East Germany will have any problem lying to them. Will they cheat to take advantage of their neighbours? I doubt it.

Of course a company can hire back fired employees. It could be seen as an admission that the firing shouldn't have happened and was wrong, but there is nothing wrong with the hiring. Especially since it would at least partially fix the wrong that happened with the firing.

If you think I'm conservative and pro-gun, then you've clearly never read any of my other posts. In fact, if your entire reply is not just an ad hominem, but one attacking views that are diametrically opposed to the ones that I've publicly stated on numerous occasions, I can only assume that you are completely lacking any meaningful responses.

How many factory workers were middle class, during this heyday of which you speak?

That's a distinction without a difference.

It looks like they thought it was a Ukraine military plane and were a bit too trigger happy, not realising it was a civilian aircraft until too late.

Here's the thing: if the Ukraine were responsible, then Russia would have a vested interest in a visibly transparent investigation and be in a position to ensure that it happened. If they could convincingly portray the Ukraine as having shot down a civilian aircraft then that would significantly alter the political sympathies in the current conflict. Instead, they have done everything in their power to block it.

The problem is in your phrasing of it as 'government abuses'. In the most part, it's not 'the government', as a monolithic entity acting based on policy that is abusing the power, it's individuals whose abuses are enabled by the government's programs. There's a political split over whether you can trust 'the government', but both sides agree that you probably can't trust an underpaid civil servant with a napoleon complex.

A tiny step further: If the employer has no money, make their customers pay the fine. Suddenly the customer has much less reason to buy from someone who is cheap because they employ cheap labour.

In general, I'd much rather use the kiosks (or, ideally, check in using the web or a mobile app) than go to a human check-in desk precisely because it presents the information more efficiently and it's a lot faster than a face-to-face interaction would be. The only time I prefer to go to the human-behind-a-desk lines are when I'm doing something unusual (e.g. my flight's delayed enough that I'll miss my connection and I need re-routing[1]) and I need an actual brain on the other side of the conversation (contrary to popular belief, I've found the people at the desks to be very helpful - and quite creative - in this regard). For anything purely routine, don't pretend to be a human, just give me an efficient interface.

[1] Actually, given that this has happened on about 70% of my trips to the USA over the last couple of years, I can't really justify calling it unusual.