Thread: Only in America!

Man sues former hostages, says they broke promise - Yahoo! News

Смешные комментарии!

Thanksgiving spat over chair ends in knife attack - Yahoo! News

Комментарии!

Bicyclist Gets Nearly $100G After Fall On Icy Trail | Fox News

haha if I got that every time I've fallen off a bike, i'd be quite rich!

"Only in America:

a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

there are handicap parking places in front of our skating rinks.

drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions, while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a Diet Coke."

banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

every single toaster has a setting so high it burns the toast to a terrible crisp which no decent human being would eat.

When a waiter/waitress delivers our meal from the kitchen we tip %15 but when someone drives to our house through rain and snow to deliver pizza we give them a dollar.

I forgot which comedian said that.

Scott

fortheether, is that what people do in real life in US? Or it was just said by the comedian? Anyway, that's a very interesting thought.)))

Originally Posted by alexsms

fortheether, is that what people do in real life in US? Or it was just said by the comedian? Anyway, that's a very interesting thought.)))

Alex, good question - as for the restaurant, that's accurate - 15%, or 20-25%, if you have some reason to be overly kind. (In general, restaurants here don't have "gratuity" added on, so if you don't tip, the waiter/waitress doesn't make very much money... In fact they are paid well below minimum wage, and expected to get tips to cover the difference.. I knew a girl, a waitress, who made 3.15/hour, and the rest of her paycheck was supposed to be tips. (Everywhere she went she would have infinite $1-dollar bills, hehe) )

As for the delivery guy - I'll tip $3 or $4 on a $25 order. Most people go a little short of that. I just never want to take the chance of finding that my food was.. given... special attention by an angry delivery guy. =)

In my neighborhood, if you tipped $1, the guy would remember you as a bad tipper.

Originally Posted by alexsms

fortheether, is that what people do in real life in US? Or it was just said by the comedian? Anyway, that's a very interesting thought.)))

I generally tip the pizza delivery person $2 for the first pizza and add a dollar for every additional pizza. Never 15 or 20 percent like in a restaurant.


Another tipping options has happened in the past few years. At smaller stores pizza place, doughnut shops, etc. leave a jar on the counter with a sign taped on it "Tips". I rarely put anything in it as I should tip a cashier for doing their job? Does Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc. have such a thing?

Scott

Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia - Yahoo! News


Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia

By CARLA K. JOHNSON | AP – Thu, Dec 1, 2011



CHICAGO (AP) — Mystery solved. A reported cyberattack on a water district in central Illinois turned out to be a false alarm set off when an American contractor logged onto the system remotely while vacationing in Russia.

Jim Mimlitz of suburban St. Louis says he hopes he'll be able to laugh about it someday. For now, the contractor is puzzled. Why didn't terrorism investigators pick up the phone and call him? He says he could have straightened out the matter quickly.
Instead, investigators assumed someone had stolen Mimlitz' password and hacked into the system from Russia, causing a water pump to shut down five months later. A blogger spread word of the possible hack, touching off a minor panic.

The truth is, Mimlitz was on vacation with his family in Russia in June. Someone from the Curran Gardner Public Water District near Springfield called his cell phone and asked him to check data on the system. He did, but he didn't mention he was doing so from Russia.
Months later, after the water pump failed, a repairman examining the logs saw a Russian IP address linking to the system with Mimlitz' sign-on. The water district reported that to a state agency and the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center got involved.
The center released reports about a potential cyber compromise at the water district. The reports were meant to be initial raw reporting and not conclusive. A security consultant and blogger wrote about the reports and released the documents to reporters. The incident was reported as possibly the first successful cyberattack on the U.S. infrastructure.

"A quick and simple phone call to me right away would have defused the whole thing immediately," Mimlitz said. "All I did was I logged on. I tried to help. I looked at some data and gave them my advice."

The story of Mimlitz' vacation was first reported by Wired magazine's Threat Level blog. Mimlitz spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday.
There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the Illinois State Police, which took part in the investigation. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred to the department's previous statements saying there was "no evidence to support claims made" in the initial Illinois report "which was based on raw, unconfirmed data and subsequently leaked to the media ..."

Mimlitz has only kind words for the FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators he met with last week for nearly four hours.
"I was as open as I could be," he said. "I wasn't trying to hide anything. I was just trying to help them find the problem. Even if the end result was not going to be good for me, that wasn't my concern. It was a very productive meeting and they were extremely sharp people."
Mimlitz's company — Navionics Research in Eureka, Mo. — helped set up the system that remotely manages computers controlling machinery in the water district. Security experts have pointed out such Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems are vulnerable to hacking.
"I think our system's very secure," Mimlitz said. "It doesn't mean we're not going to keep working on it."


Comments: Ill. pump failure wasn't cyberattack from Russia - Yahoo! News


_______________________________________________


http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/m...restarts-cold/

Man on vacation confused for a Russian spy, almost restarts cold war

By James Trew posted Dec 1st 2011 2:35 PM

Threats of Russian espionage can come from the unlikeliest of sources, as Jim Mimlitz, owner of Navionics Research, a small integrator firm, knows only too well. Curran Gardner Public Water District, just outside of Springfield, Illinois, employed Mimlitz's firm to set up its Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA), and the spy games began when Mimlitz went on vacation in Russia. While there, he logged into the SCADA system to check some data, then logged off and went back to enjoying Red Square and the finest vodka mother Russia has to offer.

However, five months later a Curran Gardner water pump fails, and an IT contractor eyeballing the logs spots the Russian-based IP address. Fearing stolen credentials, he passes the info up the chain of command to the Environmental Protection Agency (as it governs the water district) without bothering to contact Mimlitz, whose name was in the logs next to the IP address. The EPA then passed along the paranoia to a joint state and federal terrorism intelligence center, which issued a report stating that SCADA had been hacked. Oh boy. A media frenzy followed bringing all the brouhaha to Mimlitz's attention. After speaking with the FBI, the massive oversight was identified, papers were shuffled, and everyone went about their day. So, next time you delete all your company's e-mail, or restart the wrong server, remember: at least you didn't almost start World War III. Tap the source link for the full story.



169 comments!!!

Florida teen detained by TSA for design on her purse | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News

Originally Posted by fortheether

Another tipping options has happened in the past few years. At smaller stores pizza place, doughnut shops, etc. leave a jar on the counter with a sign taped on it "Tips". I rarely put anything in it as I should tip a cashier for doing their job?
Scott

It's the same at coffee shops. The girls and I go to a locally owned coffee shop not a national chain like Starbucks and there is a tip jar there. I do tend to leave a dollar now and again as it is usually high school kids working there. At our local doughnut shop there too, one of their high school friends actually works there in the morning BEFORE he goes to school. He brings in doughnuts to school with him!

What about the people selling things or just begging for money on the street corners? Our county is trying to pass a law that you need a permit to do such as it really is out of hand here. It has already been ban in other counties near us FOX News - Politics - State & Local News - Washington, D.C., Suburb Pushes Regulations on Panhandlers

What is the situation like in Russia with panhandlers?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/ny...2&pagewanted=1

A $250 Million Fraud Scheme Finds a Path to Brighton Beach

189 comments so far.

Concealed Carry Permit Reciprocity Maps - USA Carry


В Америке только в Иллинойсе не разрешается носить оружие.

At the post offices in my area, if you go to the counter and you haven't completed all of your forms or you filled out the incorrect forms, they ask you to step aside and finish the forms so they can assist other customers and then have you come back to them as soon as you finish. They don't make you wait in line all over again. Apparently, now you need to announce to everyone that you are doing so and NOT butting in line!

Police Say Man Stabbed at Silver Spring Post Office Over Cutting in Line - Colesville, MD Patch

Police Say Man Stabbed at Silver Spring Post Office Over Cutting in Line

A 58-year-old male was stabbed outside of the U.S. Post Office in Colesville Thursday afternoon. Police say another man mistakenly thought he had cut in line.

Originally Posted by rockzmom

At the post offices in my area, if you go to the counter and you haven't completed all of your forms or you filled out the incorrect forms, they ask you to step aside and finish the forms so they can assist other customers and then have you come back to them as soon as you finish. They don't make you wait in line all over again. Apparently, now you need to announce to everyone that you are doing so and NOT butting in line!

Police Say Man Stabbed at Silver Spring Post Office Over Cutting in Line - Colesville, MD Patch

Police Say Man Stabbed at Silver Spring Post Office Over Cutting in Line

A 58-year-old male was stabbed outside of the U.S. Post Office in Colesville Thursday afternoon. Police say another man mistakenly thought he had cut in line.

If something like that was happening in the USSR, they could've had their population decreased by almost 100%, as people had to stand in lines everywhere, to get anything. Basically, the whole nation would've gotten stabbed. =))

Anyone other than me finding the tipping culture a bit intimidating? I wouldn't know when/how/how much to tip - in the places I've lived it is rarely necessary to tip.

For Lampada and everyone else who moved to the USA from Europe - how did you learn how to tip? How long did it take until you knew how much to tip where, and how to do it...?

Originally Posted by Hanna

Anyone other than me finding the tipping culture a bit intimidating? I wouldn't know when/how/how much to tip - in the places I've lived it is rarely necessary to tip.

For Lampada and everyone else who moved to the USA from Europe - how did you learn how to tip? How long did it take until you knew how much to tip where, and how to do it...?

Having lived in the US my whole life, I'll share what I feel about this (hope I am not intruding). If you go to a coffee shop, ice cream parlor, sandwich shop, etc. and see a "tip" jar on the counter you are not expected to tip by any means. In fact, most people just use it to dump loose change. However, some people will tip because of the friendly customer service they received.

However, when you go to a restaurant it is quite different. The majority of the restaurant staff makes lower than minimum wage - usually about three dollars per hour less. Depending where you are in the US, how much you tip changes. Where I live, it is (usually) customary to tip about 18% of the total bill.

Usually a travel guidebook will include info on tipping.
In the US I usually tip 15-20% in restaurants. Rarely toss coins into a jar on the counter.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Anyone other than me finding the tipping culture a bit intimidating? I wouldn't know when/how/how much to tip - in the places I've lived it is rarely necessary to tip.

For Lampada and everyone else who moved to the USA from Europe - how did you learn how to tip? How long did it take until you knew how much to tip where, and how to do it...?

It was too long ago, do not remember. But why intimidating? It's a norm. I am a good tipper regardless of whether the service was good or bad.