If that happens, leave the item in the store (with proof if you can) and do a chargeback and let the CC company negotiate with the business as to whether they are being reasonable. If you do too many of *those*, then you'd have a problem. The CC companies already do act as a check against businesses trying to screw you and not following their own policies, I don't expect that to change as it's not in their interest.

I'm a bit surprised they'd do that, honestly. I think the customer expectation is that you need the receipt, but it's also fairly common for stores to accept returns by crediting the credit card that was used for the purchase (after having looked up the purchase from the card number). I've never heard of a cash return without the receipt (and sometimes the receipt has to indicate the purchase was in cash, if it were a CC they'd refund that instead).

If a store refused no-receipt returns for cash I think nobody would notice except scammers.

Why?

That would be a better solution, there's no question, but surely you agree that'd take time especially given all the examples of Comcast et al suing to block municipal fiber? In the meantime why not have common-sense rules preventing the worst of the monopolistic excesses?

Look, I'm not a parent, but I have been a kid. Both "doing well in school" and "being nice to people" aren't necessarily things you want tied to rewards - they might just learn that. My parents were always very clear with me that while they expected me to do well in school, there wouldn't be any rewards for it. I knew kids who got $20 for each report card A or something and even as a kid that seemed like a bad attitude. As a side benefit, Tiny Tim won't think of his $FADITEM as transactionally due to him, he'll be more grateful when/if it comes.

(BLS here, not ALS)

Oh man, you put it much better than I could. And then there's the not-even-ethically-ambiguous situations. We went to an extremely elderly woman in a hospital bed at home once and asked the family, everyone around, whether the patient had a DNR and nobody knew what I was talking about and certainly didn't produce it. ALS showed up and said "does this patient have a DNR" and the family was like "oh, here you go" - meanwhile we'd been coding her for 5 minutes! We stopped and medics pronounced and we left, but we weren't doing anybody any good in the meantime.

When resuscitation is required, there are literally seconds to act. Doing CPR sucks, it rarely works, and even if you "get a pulse back" the odds of them having any decent quality of life or even leaving the hospital is small. But the only thing worse than doing it is not doing it, and the only thing worse than doing it right away is doing it too late. If we delay CPR hunting for a DNR, we know that each second is making it less and less likely it'll work. Unless someone is literally blocking our way presenting some official form, we are we are more likely to begin CPR. We can't go on an easter egg hunt, we don't have the time or manpower to spare. Honestly if the patient is alone I'm not looking further than their chest/shirt (you can pin it to your clothing) or bedside table, unless it's posted prominently on the front door or similar. If family is around I'll ask them and if they don't have it immediately, it's CPR time. I just can't justify reducing someone's chances with each second of hunting around - what if they *do* want to be resuscitated and I've wasted what little chance they had?

Honestly the "tattoo on the chest" being questionable surprises me. It's pretty much the simplest case I can imagine for a valid DNR. We've been taught that a valid DNR can be written on a napkin or - indeed - a tattoo, and a chest tattoo makes it impossible to miss when about to perform CPR. And its placement on the chest makes intention to signal unambiguous. I'd imagine I'd honor it without question, unless I have *any* reason to suspect that wasn't your current desire (e.g. family member). You can tattoo an "X" over your tattoo if your wishes change and you don't want to get it removed.

I find the presumption of profit motive insulting. DNRs are largely an emergency medical concern, for the most part hospitals are for people in a position to make their wishes known more clearly. There's no profit for us - we're volunteers, we don't get paid, and we don't bill anybody. The residents of the town donate money for us to buy equipment. We're not in the business of resuscitating anybody who doesn't want it (did I mention it's miserable?), but just think about how you'd convince someone you've never met of your intentions within 15 seconds of seeing you when they're not looking around for paper - oh, and you're unconscious. It's really hard, and we always will err on the side of life since the alternative is not what we're here for.

The easiest thing to do is set it up so that people around you don't call 911 if you end up requiring resuscitation. If you're to a point, hospice can help with end-of-life palliative (pain reduction, etc) care that's not lifesaving. When my grandfather died, he was at home in bed and we were all around, and when the time came nobody called 911 because there was no emergency. He had a DNR, but it was never used.

Oh, and don't get a "DNR" tattoo because you lost a bet - I don't know the joke, and I might just honor it. (And it'd probably stand up in court, too.)

They wouldn't be the same bandwidth though, which is literally in the summary:

Fiber is typically symmetric. Even FiOS, which is fairly lousy as an ISP in many respects, is symmetric on all plans. My folks have their "gigabit" plan - it's only 940Mbps actually, but it is symmetric and does hit that speed even in real-world use. That's one of the nice things about fiber, actually - you have the bandwidth, might as well do something with it

This attitude bothers me. As a 14 year old I was pretty sure where I was making good and bad decisions, when I could do something properly vs when I didn't have enough information or experience, etc. But adults kept telling me I wasn't old enough, I lacked maturity, and so on.

So a few years later I went to college. And now I wasn't some high school kid, but I still wasn't an adult. Adults told me I lacked maturity, I wasn't old enough, my brain was still developing, etc.

Then I graduated college and I learned the secret: there's no difference and adulthood as a concept is all a scam. The *person* is what matters. Every kid attaches a certain amount of weight to things "adults" say because that title carries weight. But I learned: some adults are smart, and some are basically that dumb kid in high school you got sick of listening to. Just like in high school, some kids were smart, and some were basically dumb.

My personal theory is people are basically who they're going to be by age 15-16, and don't change much from that point on. Society changes around them.

Why do people assume you - to use your words, "know the music"? You're presumed to because... why? Something you did? Something you've demonstrated? No, when you walk into a room, people observe that you've over this arbitrary age threshold and figure you're basically mature. Sure, you could dispel them of that presumption, but some mature teenager has to start from the presumption that they're immature. Some might call this "privilege" (not I, but it's the same concept).

Ultimately this wouldn't matter much except by devaluing teenagers, we overvalue adults and do dumb things because we overestimate the average person. If we looked at the people around us and though of our high-school classmates I think we'd have a much more realistic outlook. "Immature behavior" is really just standard human weakness by another name, but easier to dismiss and harder to address since you assume people just grow out of it, when really they just lose the excuse.

And for the record, I've got a full-time job (going on 5 years and 2 promotions), an apartment, a 401(k), stocks and other assets, savings, life insurance, I do my taxes, etc. I'm 27 and I haven't changed a bit since 16 - people just give me more credit. To be clear I don't say I'm "wise" - I don't have that kind of experience - but I'm as mature as I'm ever going to be.

If you *steal* the secret it's a crime, but if you reverse-engineer it correctly they have no recourse. That's the whole point of patents, actually - if you want to keep people from using your invention, you have to publish it and you get a time-limited exclusive right to the idea. That's the cherry to get people to release their invention for everyone's (eventual) benefit. If you don't want anybody else to have it ever - well you just have to keep it secret and hope nobody figures it out, because if they do you're out of luck.

To be honest it's a big inconvenience wherever the president goes. Obama's 2-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard always coincided with my yearly week on Cape Cod and the outer ring put a big wall through that airspace as well. The difference IMO is that Obama mostly was at the WH (or Camp David, both of which have permanent - and charted - flight-pain zones) and his yearly vacation, with the occasional excursions typical of any president - whereas it's a rare weekend Trump isn't at one or the other golf course. His presence will directly put several small businesses out of business - flight schools, FBOs, and maintenance shops - at airports in Florida, specifically KLNA, which has had multiple closures and businesses moving away since it's within the 10NM no-fly zone where basically nothing but air ambulance and military flights are permitted even with a flight plan.

I don't think it's even on Trump's radar (so to speak) though. While they were both still candidates, the AOPA sent them questionnaires about their view of general aviation - HRC answered with the standard "economic engine, best in the world, keep it going safely, fund the FAA" thing some staffer prepared, but Trump didn't even bother to respond.

Oh. That would be this TFR (7/8422) instead, from 3:30pm Thursday through 5:30PM Friday. The other was 7/8426.

(There's been a lot of TFRs.)

Yeah the TFR is pretty painful. I'm a fixed-wing pilot based out of one of the airports in the outer ring. I'm working on my instrument rating, so I'd be on a flight plan, but since flight training is a prohibited activity we have two options -
1) fly to a nearby airport outside the ring on a visual flight plan (with me as pilot-in-command so it's not technically flight training yet) then start our instrument flight plan (since I can't be PIC under instrument rules until I'm rated, and I can't not be PIC since that'd be flight training), do our thing, come back, land, and go back visually.
2) Do the whole flight as instrument rules, under my instructor's authority, and pretend I'm just some guy - not a student - until we leave the outer ring, at which point he'll start training me

Neither is very good. From the rules the first is better, though it's not clear to me it'll actually make much difference. The FAA's busted an instructor who was present in the plane - in the back seat sleeping - while his fully-rated buddy was up front flying them back from dinner and broke a rule. The FAA seems to believe that any time an instructor's in the airplane he is - or should be - providing instruction. If everything's fine it's not an issue, but if there's a problem don't see how (1) keeps the instructor safe... though if the FAA's decided there's a problem it hardly matters what the text of the rules say, they have broad statutory privilege to interpret their own rules.

The school contacted the Secret Service, and to their credit they basically said "yeah we don't care what you do as long as you're not maneuvering near by and you're talking to ATC and have a transponder code". But the FAA has their blanket restrictions and you have to comply.

They've been reasonably accommodating... the Hudson River VFR corridor has been exempted from the TFR, which is nice (though it makes it even more dangerous than usual) and there's several cutouts for airports near the edge, and a special corridor for Morristown flights. It's much worse down in Florida at Mar-a-Lago because of the heavy flight training operations down there.

I'm no fan of Trump, but in fairness he - and any president - gets little say over their protection. Though I will say it would be nice if he stayed in either of the two mansions we're paying for for him a little more frequently.

The Blackhawk was around because the President is spending the weekend ~20 miles away.

Due to President Trump spending (yet another) weekend at his golf course in Bedminster NJ, there was a 30NM temporary flight restriction from 0-18,000FT: here from Friday night through ~5PM Sunday. Staten Island is wholly included.

The drone pilot should have gotten a flight briefing. The standard restriction for VIP TFRs, which this one shares, is:

My emphasis. That's why the Blackhawk was around, by the way - obviously it's allowed in the flight restriction in support of the Secret Service. All non-military aircraft have to be outside the 10NM inner ring, on a flight plan talking to ATC and with a transponder code uniquely identifying them on radar, and even then there's a ton of restrictions over permissible activites - basically you can leave directly, or enter and land directly, or you can maybe get permission to fly though.

Wow you didn't even read what you linked:

Basically that means if there's a helicopter route or altitude restriction published you should use it (usually they follow highways or rivers) but otherwise you can fly low.