This is a bit of a strawman. Not all customer facing roles are call centres, and not all bureaucracy actually comes from above.
I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago I changed the address on my car but didn't receive the documentation and didn't realise for a few months. Then I realised the tax was due and I hadn't had a reminder or this paperwork - one of which is needed to tax it.
I phoned them and they said I need to pay for the new documentation because I had a time limit to report it undelivered. Fine, that's my fault, but I need to tax it now otherwise I'll get fined, and I have no way to do it. I asked her how to do it and she said there is "no way" she can tax it over the phone I need to wait for the documentation. I told her I'll get fined and she said there is no way to tax it over the phone unless I have the VIN number which I won't have. Sorry, there's nothing she can do.
I told her I actually have the VIN number to hand, does she want me to read it for her? Suddenly she didn't need it and just needed card details. The impossible bureaucratic process was suddenly gone now. She just hadn't wanted to help.
I'm baffled that people in this thread are acting like almost everyone hasn't had a similar experience at one time or another.
> I'm baffled that people in this thread are acting like almost everyone hasn't had a similar experience at one time or another.
Nobody is saying that. Government employees have bad days, too, and some are probably just assholes. That's a far cry from saying malicious stuff like "bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy. They often seem to take a perverse pride in this job."
Presumably the blog writer has never worked in a corporate hierarchy, let alone at the lowest of the low of being in a call centre. They sound like a horrible person whose interactions with the outside world being driven from being terminally online (the choice of Karen was telling)
> He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings
Perhaps "Karen" was disabled, having lost both her legs from a drunk driver as she selflessly threw herself into harms way to rescue some innocent kids. I hope she gets a happy ending.
Perhaps Karen was made of marshmallow and worked at the cookie factory. We don't know. All we know is that the author says she was uncaring and unapologetic while asking a blind person with cerebral palsy to either fax or mail documents to them instead of sending them in the format they were already in
The Council, which is headed by the government of each member state in equal measure - similar to the Senate in the US
And Parliament, which are directly elected by the people, with each member state having representitives in proportion to their population, so Germany has far more than Ireland. This is similar to Congress.
Now this site says Germany supports it, but then says that MEPS
> 49 oppose, 47 in favor (45 confirmed, 2 presumed based on government stance)
I would thus infer that the "most member states" refer to the national governments (that were elected by their population) position and not the direct MEP position.
However a quick look at the json it's loading and I can't see
Now as the parliament has blocked it, a grouping, the "EPP" (Think Ronald Reagan type republicans) is trying to use their influence to bring it back to a vote.
> "The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning. This is a direct attack on democracy and blatant disregard for your right to privacy."
Is that fair? Ireland should surely have a say the same way Germany does in parliament too, if it's affecting Ireland just as much. If one considers countries as units.
I get it.. my question wasn't exactly what I meant to ask. I meant isn't there some kind of compensating factor. So that a country with a 100 million doesn't completely and utterly outshine a small country of 4 million, even in the parliament?
Or is the idea that the Council is sufficient to achieve this?
I actually think the Council is more than sufficient to achieve this, we kind of see the opposite problem way more.
Hungary, a country of 9M people, keeps vetoing stuff the rest of the Union wants to do. 450M people, held back by the despot ruling over a tiny fraction of them.
Yes it's fair that it has more to a degree, but North Dakota can't have literally proportional since it will completely swallowed up on Congress. How does this work in the US?
I can see the reasons even if I don't think they're legitimate. I can see the reasons why someone steals from someone else, or rapes or kills. Those reasons aren't good enough, but most people have reasons to do something.
Why is America attacking Iran? What's the official reason? What's the actual reason? Does anybody know?
Yes, if it was acting rationally the US Would not have spent billions trying to blow up an 80 year old man while massively increasing the price of oil and fertiliser globally leading to economic instability
But the US has not acted rationally. It hasn't since January 2021.
There could be a rational explanation if you assume US administration is compromised by Russia and Ayatollah's son wanted him out to assume power. One phone call to Putin, Putin's one phone call to Krasnov and everyone is happy. Son gets the power, Russia gets sanctions lifted, higher oil price, US and allies spend kit that cannot be now sold to Ukraine, Krasnov gets to play the stock market. Win-win-win.
APKWS interceptor is about 35K USD and works much better than drone-based interceptors. The problem is to scale the production, training and deployment. Another problem is detection. One needs wast multilayered system that US military missed to build as big stationary radars are very hard to defend.
Air-launched interceptors like this have the problem on relying on a super-expensive manned carrier (fighter or helicopter).
The intercept cost is now not only the cost of the interceptor, but also the cost of the flying hours of the launching platform, and the risk of losing the launching platform.
If you equip even some of your Shaheds with AA missiles (cheap manpads with autonomous IR target acquisition and guidance), like is already happening in Ukraine, the feasibility of APKWS becomes problematic. The technology is developing fast these days.
APKWS launching from air is a stop-gap measure in any case. The detection range for Shahed-type drones is tenths of kilometers, not hundreds, like with fighter jets or big missiles. One cannot have that many fighter jets in the air all the time even without the threat of manpads.
But ground-based platforms work just fine and cheap enough to scale up the deployment to cover the big area.
The big advantage of APKWS over interceptor drones is the rocket engine, they are much faster and can catch Shaheds within much bigger radius or within much smaller timeframe than interceptor drones.
First, if I understand correctly, APKWS is laser guided (one of the reasons it is relatively cheap is cheap simple guidance), it needs the carrier to designate the target.
Second, it is rather short range, and that range is helped significantly by the speed and altitude of the launching platform. Launching from the ground upwards would significantly reduce its range, which is anyway just a few km.
Due to the short range, you will need a densely distributed significant numbers of them, and still be in danger of saturation attack (the attacker can saturate one route, you have to be ready for all possible routes). Having a carrier platform allows the missiles to be quickly brought where they are needed, so overall you need much less of them (still too much, as having enough carriers in air imposes limits as well).
You can have longer-range ground missiles, but then the costs rise. Also, I am not sure how feasible/robust is to laser designate air targets from the ground. I suspect it does not work over longer distances, i.e. you need a more sophisticated and costly guidance system/sensor suite on the missile.
The beauty of an anti-drone drone is that you have a much more robust human-assisted guidance, for cheap (camera and communication link). With advances to AI, even that human and communication link are becoming obsolete...
With rocket propelled missile you have much faster closing speed, and quite limited energy budget - essentially you have to make a correct decision fast and precisely, otherwise the missile is wasted. With a drone, everything is slower and easier to correct.
https://xkcd.com/1053/
And for those who are feeling smug, that last one (which I still consider fairly recent) was 14 years ago
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