What you can compare is outcomes, how often the patient recovers without complications. Robotic surgery is a clear winner there
You can only make that claim if you are comparing similar patient populations or can control for the differences. If robotic surgery is used on an patient population with less difficult conditions then it wouldn't be at all surprising if the outcomes were better. If the patient populations aren't statistically similar then any comparison which doesn't account for that difference is meaningless.
Not true. Marketing done well is VERY honest with customers. You can lie in marketing but that doesn't mean marketing is nothing but lies. Marketing fundamentally is about creating and maintaining a relationship with a customer. It's not actually about selling the product - not directly anyway. You have a product and you are trying to find a way to communicate the existence and benefits of that product to others - that is marketing. Along side that you are communicating with potential customers about who you (the seller) are and what you are about. At its core that is all marketing is - developing relationships. You'll note that lying is no way required to do that and frankly it is largely counterproductive in the long run.
People don't buy Coca-cola because Coke Inc is lying to people about what it is and frankly they don't really need to lie about it. Sure they are selling flavored carbonated sugar water but they are also selling a brand which is intangible but clearly valuable to many people. Lying in marketing is kind of like a guy falsely claiming to be a doctor to pick up a girl in a bar. It might work but it isn't likely to last. While it is possible to lie in marketing and be successful for a time with it. But that does not mean that marketing is intrinsically deceptive.
Marketing is not the same thing as sales. Sales is the actual act of convincing someone to buy a product or service. Marketing is developing a relationship with a customer and an awareness of the product. Those things are related but are different stages in the process.
Facebook hate was around by the time G+ was released. Had they simply released an Ad-free, private clone of FB it would taken the world by storm.
Google can't do that. Google makes well over 90% of its revenue from ads and almost everything they do supports that engine. Android was simply a defensive play to keep them from getting locked out of the mobile ad markets by Apple, Microsoft and others. Maps is a play for location sensitive advertising. Gmail is a way of mining personal communications for data. Aside from a few research projects (like cars and robots) pretty much everything Google does is to help them throw more ads your way.
Now Facebook has ads too but to your point nobody really cares if it is Google or Facebook throwing ads their way. If both are doing it there is no reason to switch. Google needed to make G+ something life enhancing. Something that provided extra value over what they already had. Nobody is going to switch to G+ when all their friends are on Facebook unless G+ offers something pretty amazing that Facebook doesn't have. I have no idea what that might be but clearly neither did Google.
The other big mistake Google made was the branding was confusing. They must have taken a page from.NET and java regarding how to make the product as difficult to understand as possible. G+ was/is more than just a Facebook clone but it wasn't especially clear exactly what it was or why we should care. They got too clever with it and confused all their potential customers. Plus they didn't respect the fact that people already think Google knows too much about them.
Because nearly everybody was already on Facebook and Facebook gave them no reason to move that they cared about. Look up network effect if you need a more detailed explanation. Plus Google was more than a little pushy about G+ early on which didn't enhance the appeal. Nobody likes to feel forced into something.
People argue that they "already have a social network" but that didn't stop them from leaving MySpace in favour of FB.
People will leave if they have sufficient reason. Myspace was sort of focused on music and entertainment which is fine but not diverse and perhaps a bit too narrow. It's ties to News Corp probably didn't help and it didn't innovate nearly enough. They probably chased the money too quickly. Wikipedia has a decent overview of what happened.
Hmm, some security firm I've never heard of, releases a tool I've never heard of, which is supposed to tell me if I've been got spyware with alleged government ties. Yeah, that sounds super trustworthy...
Oops, I left the sarcasm bit turned on. Sorry about that...
Individual that differs more than 6-sigma from the population's mean has trouble with automated tools designed for the average person.
Exactly. I use Gmail and I honestly haven't had a false positive (flagged as spam when it isn't) in over two years. I still get the occasional false negative (spam that isn't flagged) at a frequency of a few per week. It's good enough that I don't even bother to routinely check my spam filter. It also is pretty good on the training - once you've spent a little time telling it what is spam and what isn't for you in my experience it is pretty good after that. Frankly if you have to check your spam filter often it isn't a very good spam filter.
I suspect Linus has rather unusual email requirements. Perhaps Gmail isn't the ideal solution for him. Very few tools are perfect for everyone. I'm a little surprised he's having that much trouble but stranger things have happened.
Yet whenever anyone wants to raid a fund to pay for something... its the military budget. Why is that?
Because that is where the money is and we spend ludicrously more on our military than is sensible or necessary. We apparently spend more on our military than the next 7 or so largest military spenders COMBINED. There is no reasonable justification for that. That is just rampant paranoia.
And I should point out that the military is one of the few things the government does that it is supposed to do and it is one of the few things the world... especially our allies need us to be competent in.
Remind me again why we have to be the ones to defend other countries that are perfectly capable of paying to defend themselves? Europe should not need the US to defend them and yet their largest military spender (France) spends literally 1/10th of what the US does.
So why are you raiding the military budget? Do you want the US to pull out of NATO? Maybe sunset its guarantee to protect Japan? We could let Israel get genocided. Maybe let the Russians run wild in Eastern Europe. Possibly allow the North Koreans to invade and enslave the south koreans?
Let's address those: 1) NATO: NATO has 28 members yet the US pays for 3/4 of the budget. The other members can pony up more. 2) Japan: Japan SHOULD be responsible more for its own defense. WWII ended 70 years ago. 3) Israel: Israel is quite capable of defending themselves and have shown that several times. They also are not working productively for peace (nor are the palestinians) so until they get serious they can get help elsewhere. 4) The Russians already are running wild in Easter Europe (see Ukraine) and we are doing nothing about it. 5) North Korean "enslaving" the South? Spare me. That's just ridiculous on the face of it. South Korean can handle their business just fine.
Where would you like to cut the US military budget?
Let's start with the items like hardware the military says it doesn't need but congress still forces them to buy. Then I would move on to cutting programs like the F35 that are wildly over budget and under performing and arguably unnecessary. We probably don't actually need 11 aircraft carriers with their attendant fleets. I'm quite sure we don't need as many nuclear weapons as we currently have. We have numerous military bases that we no longer need and which are only being kept alive because they are congressional pork. We don't need to maintain Guantanamo Bay and the prison it contains. We could get out of the money pit that is the Middle East. I could go on and on.
Seriously, did you even give this a moment's thought?
Hardly. This points more to poor vendor selection and a crap procurement process. In many cases the costs of faults should be contractually passed back to the vendor. The end result is a more costly product but with higher quality as a result.
Even good vendors sometimes make mistakes. Even good engineers sometimes overlook important details. I can assure from personal experience you that even draconian claw-backs (if you can get them) will not result in a good product and frankly are unnecessary in most cases. It is FAR more complicated than that. You are right that the problem is with flaws in procurement but the answer isn't just claw-backs. Good vendor relationships require quite a lot of oversight, interaction, structure and cooperation. New vendors typically require a lot of oversight until the interaction, structure and cooperation can develop.
The problem is that salesmen are lying bastards.
That should not be relevant once the engineering staff gets their hands on the product specifications which would be necessary prior to quotation for anything built for a company like SpaceX. To build any custom product the engineers will have to evaluate and sign off on the production process. Purchasing would have to sign off on the procurement. Any company that simply lets their sales people throw out randomly generated numbers for engineering intensive products isn't going to be around for long. I know because I run a manufacturing company that makes such products. The dumbest thing we could possibly do would be to give our sales representatives carte-blanche. We'd be out of business within a year if we did that.
When you get the technical people on the phone (if you can get them) the complete and typically trustworthy story comes out.
I am an engineer (among other things) and I work with engineers all the time. I can assure you that getting a complete answer out of engineers at other companies can be exceptionally challenging at times. It's not that they lie but rather that they are busy, hard to track down (esp in big companies), you are a distraction, sometimes they are lazy and more than you would think are not especially competent. I run into a LOT of engineers that are really quite bad at writing engineering documentation. I run into quite a few others who have an exceptionally poor concept of design for manufacturing. Working with engineers can be great but I can assure you from first hand experience that it can be quite a challenge at times too.
And as an engineer, I know that most engineers want to act in good faith. Some are inept or inexperienced but they still have good faith. The problem lies in management. Once you get the lawyers and bean counters involved is when asshole decisions like that get made.
I'm an engineer but I'm also an accountant (aka a bean counter). I also am management in my company and I'm in charge of the engineering, production and accounting among other things. You are absolutely right that most of the time the fault for most failures ultimately is due to management decisions. At the end of the day the buck stops with them and that is how it should be. HOWEVER, management ultimately relies on the expertise of engineers and the reasoned opinions of those who report to them. If management gets bad information (happens all the time) then management decisions are more likely to be bad ones. That's not to say that management can't introduce cock-ups all their own (we all know they routinely do) but bad management decisions normally don't happen in a vacuum. Most serious screw ups in a company happen because people at multiple levels in a company made a mistake. It's not just management or engineering or accounting alone. Rockets blow up when all these mistakes made by multiple people line up in just the right way. Business is a team sport and most failures in business involve more than one person.
Engineering is kind of like playing chess. You can see the entire board and you know (or should) what is possible at any given moment because you have close to perfect information. If you are good enough mistakes are largely predictable. Management is more like playing poker. You rarely have perfect information and you have to guess based on your assessment of the probabilities and sometimes you'll be wrong even if you play the hand perfectly. The mindsets needed for success in each for each are very different and can be hard to reconcile at times.
It has also been my experience that there are FAR more inept engineers that most people realize. Specifically too many engineers are inept at product and process documentation. It's boring and despite its importance it tends to get overlooked and engineers often spend as little time with it as they can get away with. I run a contract manufacturing company that makes wire harnesses. I can count on my fingers the number of product drawings that I've received in the last 5 years from all our customers combined that I could manufacture without having to get substantial clarification from the engineering staff at our customer. I routinely see ambiguous dimensions, incompatible parts, improper or incomplete specifications, missing part numbers, internal part numbers (useless to anyone else), incoherent diagrams, unnecessary lookup tables, obsolete or hard to get parts, and more. Most engineers I've run into are really quite terrible at documentation. I see drawings daily that were clearly not written with the expectation that anyone else might ever read them despite the fact that someone else reading it is the entire point of the document.
Apparently you never heard of the Burning Platforms memo. We'll never know if Elop was actually a mole inside Nokia,
Did you read the last sentence of my post? I'm well aware of what transpired with Elop & friends. But Nokia was on thin ice even prior to that. They were already hemorrhaging market share well before Elop got involved. Elop just added gasoline to the fire and burned the house down while they were still in it.
But just when maemo/meego was stable enough to depreciate Symbian after >10 years of development, they choose to throw everything away and go the W7->W8 way.
Bizarre isn't it? It made no sense at all. Not at the time and not in hindsight. They threw away years of work to go to a closed source system which they didn't control with close to zero market share. Worse they announced it a year before they had any products on the new system thus killing any demand for their existing products. They'll be teaching that as a case study in stupid management decisions in business schools for the next 50 years.
This decision was made when Nokia still dominated the smartphones market (yes, Symbians were smart phones), android was a bag full of crap, and the Iphone 1 was prettier but inferior than the N900.
Symbian phones were technically smart phones but generally rather poor ones. I owned several myself and they were disappointing to say the least. I bought a Symbian phone right when the first iPhone came out because it seemed to be a better deal. It had a little better specs and a physical keyboard too. But in hindsight it was a mistake. The email was almost unusable and the web browser was totally unusable. The calendar didn't integrate with anything, the to-do list didn't etc. It technically had all the features the iPhone had and more but you couldn't actually use any of them. The phone was clearly made so that they could say it had all those features but clearly no effort was put into actually making them useful.
Maybe before the end Nokia figured Symbian out but by then I and most other people were long gone. They had years to get it right before Apple and Google came to the party and they couldn't be bothered.
Meanwhile in a parallel world, Nokia's meego might have stood a chance (or might lay somewhere between Palm and BlackBerry )
Perhaps. I never got my hands on one to evaluate but by most accounts they were promising. But we'll never know. My guess is that it's technical merits were insufficient by the time it was released. Google was giving Android away to every other handset maker. Apple had a tight vertically integrated solution. Nokia on the other hand was unfocused. They had several different operating systems, no coherent design strategy, and a close source system. Basically take all the worst things about Android and the worst things about iOS and mash them together and you have Nokia's "strategy". It's hardly shocking it failed.
I thought the N95 was amazing, and the N90 was pretty awesome too....and the N9 was spectacular.
Nokia made some fine products over the years. I never claimed otherwise and I used their phones exclusively for over a decade. But I have never once used a Nokia phone where the software wasn't terrible. On their old non-smart phones the interface was usable but clumsy. On their smartphones (at least every one I tried) it was just rubbish. Not just on the phone either. Their PC software like their Nokia (Ovi) Suite was absolutely hopeless. I'm aware they came out with some arguably decent smartphones but they were too little, too late and some like the N9 were abandoned before they were even released. Nokia's approach to software was schizophrenic at best and largely incompetent in general.
Miss the boat when it came to smart phones...they were *years* ahead of the current crop.
So if Nokia was so far ahead of everyone like you claim then why are they gone? They were financially sound, their hardware was fine and Symbian was the most popular mobile OS until about 2010 but it's market share plummeted. It's fundamentally because of their software. Nobody wanted it once there were alternatives available. Worse Symbian was fragmented with tons of incompatible versions. Smartphones are almost entirely about the software. It's the only thing that really sets one apart from another. Ergo Nokia failed because they failed in their software for smartphones.
Love them or hate them Apple was the one who figured out the basic formula for what we now consider smartphones. They nailed the interface which is something Nokia struggled with and people liked it better than what Nokia offered. Other handset makers went with Android because Google was giving it away. I actually bought a Nokia smartphone after the first iPhone came out because on paper it was a better device. Had more features and better battery and I'm not a brand loyal person. But it was utterly unusable, never updated, and pretty much neglected by Nokia. Emailing was a pain, web surfing basically impossible, and syncing with my PC via their suite served no purpose. Nokia's software sucked and after that I've never been back because their software was so bad.
Actually, I find myself disagreeing with almost everything you say...not much point in continuing.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Nokia dug their own grave with their incompetence at software. They filled the grave in when they threw their lot in with Microsoft.
Don't forget battery life. I miss when my non-smart Nokia would last for days on one charge.
Umm, yeah great. Of course the phone couldn't do shit except for making calls and the odd bit of text messaging (usually without the benefit of a QWERTY keyboard). I'd certainly like longer battery life but that wasn't a feature unique to Nokia or something special. It was possible because the phones had tiny displays, slow processors and they couldn't do much.
And re software, yes it was pretty basic, but don't forget predictive text. If they weren't first with that feature, it sure felt like they were. And it was a killer app, definitely.
"Pretty basic"? No it was terrible. Flat out terrible.
Predictive text was not a killer feature under any reasonable definition of the term. It didn't even work terribly well. I tried it on several of my Nokia phones and every time ended up turning it off because it was more annoying than useful. If you liked it that's fine but it was hardly earth shaking.
The N9 had a large Retina (really high DPI) screen? Because that's the only thing the latest iPhone has that the previous generation did not.
You mean except for: * Optical image stabilization * 1080p video recording @60fps * VoLTE and VoWiFi calling * A barometer * ApplePay * Faster processors * Larger screens * Better camera
I suspect that your knowledge of iPhones and iOS begins and ends with the names.
Why would I buy a phone that had an operating system that was dropped by Nokia prior to the phone going on sale? Plus it was never released in the US so Nokia apparently didn't value my business very much.
Had Nokia continued their line and distributed it to more countries, it would have taken a significant bite of the market.
That is extremely doubtful. It was too little, too late and not supported by the company that made it.
Would the Nokia "design and branding" actually still be viewed as a net contributor to product value?
No. Nobody thought Nokia designs were all that amazing even when they were the top dog in the market. They were solid but never anything earth shaking. And they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones. Today pretty much nobody cares about Nokia any more and whatever value their brand once had is just a fraction of a shadow of its previous glory.
I've never had a Nokia phone myself, but I always had the perception that they haven't been any good for a while
I owned several. I used Nokia's exclusively from 1999-2010 or so. They were fine but never great. Generally pretty durable though their reputation for durability exceeds the reality of it. The hardware design was decent if unspectacular. The software however SUCKED big time. I actually got to meet their CEO about 10 years ago during a speech he gave. He admitted during the Q&A the criticality of software to their business. But from my own experience with Nokia software they never really quite figured it out. They thought their customer was the phone companies and tailored their software efforts accordingly. They were wrong and Apple showed them just how wrong they were.
Nokia phones would have what I call checkbox features - great on paper but not in actual use. I bought one of their smartphones around the same time as the first iPhone. Both on paper had roughly the same capabilities but the Nokia's were basically unusable in the real world. The Nokia could technically email or surf the web and it could but even a geek like me couldn't really use it productively because the software and the interface were just horrid. Syncing with a PC was an exercise in futility. Updates to the phones were uncommon if they happened at all and sometimes involved sending the phone to Nokia.
I really cannot imagine why they would want to get back into the business.
There are only two companies making substantial profits in cell phones (Apple and Samsung with Apple making by far the largest profit. Samsung makes pretty much all the profit in Android with nobody else really even being a player. Nokia would bring nothing to the table that I can see to change that equation. Their brand is nothing special today. They would be just another me-too Android phone with nothing uniquely valuable to offer. Basically they are hoping some suck.., err... partner will license their brand in the (probably vain) hope that it would set them apart. This is a near zero risk strategy to Nokia but it has a near zero chance of succeeding.
It's like picking up an old cigarette that is almost used up and trying to get a few puffs out of it before it goes out forever.
And by the way, when we hook them on that, we have a phone app. This strategy is path dependent, which is a term I use that means where you start is not where you end up. And therein lies a lot of the nuance. The fundamental truth for developers is they will build if there are users. And in our case the truth is we have users on desktop.
Translation: We have a monopoly in desktop computers that we need to leverage to get into other markets where we have been getting our ass handed to us.
Tigers cannot change their stripes. Hail to the new boss - same as the old boss.
So sayeth Faux news and scattered anecdata. (And the rest of your comment is just the same - rightwingnut talking points.)
Here's the funny thing. My politics are anything but right wing. I'm probably center left if anything. I can count the number of republicans I've voted for in the last 20 years on my fingers with lots left over. I support workers rights, socialized medicine, emissions taxation, a reduced military, and plenty of other items that generally are considered left wing. I listen to John Stewart, Bill Maher and that crowd for entertainment. I don't think you could pay me to listen to the wingnuts on Fox news. So there's that.
If you think what I said is wrong, show me the evidence to the contrary. Actual evidence. Do you have actual evidence that shows that not having valuable skills and not working hard results in better outcomes? By all means show me how I can do well by being lazy and having no skills anyone values. That would make my life a lot easier.
That's an interesting reply to my original '1%' post. You've taken the employer perspective as many other employers would.
You seem to have some fantasy that people who own companies are raking in millions at the expense of those who work for them. Real world businesses are rarely that profitable and most employers would be very happy to have a large well paid work force because it means that the business is doing very well. That is NOT what the real world is like however. In the real world business owners live in terror for much of their existence because they are taking enormous risks. Most people who lose their job can usually find another one. It sucks but it's manageable. Entrepreneurs often literally are risking everything they have.
I ran my own construction company and helped run another.
Fair enough. Then you should understand the need to keep costs under control. A business that goes out of business employs nobody. Most small businesses are under-capitalized and don't have deep pockets.
There is plenty of room in construction work for people to drag their feet, to slack off and take advantage of their employer. In our companies, we took a personal interest in our employees (typically around 30) and their families.
You seem to be implying that I don't care about my employees. Most of our full time employees have been with us for many years. We support our employees as well when we have dips in orders. We employ temp workers to meet labor needs when we have a spike in production. But if there is no work then there is no work. In our industry generally when work dips it is because a job has ended. We compete with China on price and we have customers that will move the business for a few pennies per part savings. So should I adjust labor costs to keep the company healthy or should I continue to employ people while the company loses money risking everyone's job, including my own? Employing more people than I have to means that I must pay everyone less. Should I pay some people a better wage or pay more people a worse wage?
Treating a business like a charity helps no one in the long run. Pay your people as well as you can and treat them as well as possible but you HAVE to make sure the business is profitable. A business that isn't profitable will not be a business for long.
During the inevitable slow periods we tried everything imaginable to keep everyone on payroll. We bid jobs below cost at times just to keep them active.
That's very kind of you but you can only do that if there is a reasonable likelihood of business picking up. Construction is a seasonal business. Manufacturing like what we do is much less so. Our business cycles last years. Getting a new job might take 18 months or longer if it is of any substantial size. We have down periods too but you cannot employ people indefinitely for work you don't have no matter how much you care about them. If we employ too many people or over pay them, we will kill the company faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
I'd prefer to make slightly fewer millions knowing that my employees can thrive.
"Slightly fewer millions"? Cute. That is why I was dubious you have ever owned a business because very few businesses are in a real position to make "slightly fewer millions". If you made millions good for you but most manufacturing companies have profit margins in the single digits if they are profitable at all. Our company makes enough money to cover payroll with just a little left over for some small capital improvements. The owners of my company take home less than $100K annually after tax. Millions? Yeah, actually running a real company isn't the 1% fantasy you seem to think it is for most business owners.
It is illegal. The drivers don't have taxi medallions.
It is NOT illegal in many places. Plenty of places don't require medallions and there are no laws against companies like Uber in those places. Furthermore even if it is illegal IT SHOULDN'T BE. I haven't heard a single compelling economic or moral argument that we should protect traditional cab companies at the expense of companies like Uber.
No cab companies provide real jobs, Uber does not.
Both provide taxi services. Both get compensated for that service. QED both are "real jobs", whatever that means. To be perfectly clear, I don't care about protecting traditional cab companies or their drivers. They can compete like everyone else or they can go out of business. You have provided zero reason why we should protect these companies. If another company can provide the same service, make a profit and provide better value to customers then so be it. By your logic we should all still be working on a farm because that is a "real job".
What I said about drunk driving is obvious.
You made an unsupported assertion without evidence based on your own opinions. Back it up with facts. If you are actually correct that should not be difficult. The fact that you believe it to be "obvious" does not make it true.
Not long before you were born there was a system of employment called 'piece work'. If you work in a sweat shop or on a farm or in a factory, you got paid according to what you produced. Usually this meant that you worked your butt off and still got paid less than hourly workers. This has been frowned upon until recently.
Piece work is still around and in many cases it is a very appropriate way to pay for services rendered. If I'm an employer and I've got two employees and one is twice as productive as the other, why should they receive equal pay? What is the less productive person doing that makes them worth just as much despite doing less work? If the piece work rate is too low that is a different issue but there is nothing inherently wrong with compensating on a piece work basis.
Furthermore piece work is used in many place you aren't really thinking about it. Doctors get paid per-procedure which is basically piece work. (it's why they have to hustle through so many patients) Truckers often get paid per delivery or per mile which is basically piece work. Lots of professions get compensated on a piece work basis that have nothing to do with making widgets and there is nothing wrong with that. Piece work incentivizes efficient deliver of services.
The problem with piece work is that it can also incentivize shoddy quality if there aren't controls in place to keep quality high. Sometimes that is not easy to do which is why piece work isn't used in some place where it might otherwise make sense.
People raising a family, paying a mortgage, saving for retirement or children's education need a reliable income.
A reliable income can be assured through having valuable skills and working hard. If you lack a valuable skill and/or are not willing to work hard then a reliable income will be hard to come by. People are not and should not be entitled to a reliable income merely for existing - they need to earn it. Your choice to have a family or buy a house isn't my problem. Work hard and develop some skills that others value and chances are you'll do fine.
Corporations don't want to get weighed down with that burden--they want people that they can call when needed and dump when the need passes.
So corporations are supposed to pay people to sit idle and do nothing? How many people do you employ so that they can sit on their ass and collect a paycheck for no work? I'm guessing you've never run a company. I do run a manufacturing company. Paying people to do nothing (read work inefficiently) is pretty much the best way I know of to put a company into bankruptcy. No company should be required to employ someone when there is no work for them to perform or if they are providing sub-standard performance.
Uber is an illegal cab company and should just be shut down.
It is not clearly illegal in many places and even it it is illegal in places it is not clear that it should be illegal. If Uber is providing competition in the taxi industry then more power to them. If they are innovating in an industry that sorely needs it then I see no reason to prohibit that. It sounds to me like a lot of taxi companies have had a sweetheart deal for a long time and are pissed off that they are having to compete. Not seeing why I should be sympathetic.
If Uber puts the cab companies out of business it most certainly take away a lot of "real" jobs.
If the cab companies get put out of business because they are inefficient and can't compete then they deserve to go out of business. I see no reason that they deserve special protection from competition. The fact that they bought overpriced taxi medallions (read artificial scarcity) is not my problem. That was a risk they took. Just because some drivers get replaced with other drivers is not a problem and it certainly isn't "taking away real jobs".
Furthermore, we'll all be slaves to "surge pricing".
Spare me the hyperbole. "Slaves"? Only if there are no other transportation options. You think Uber will have no competition? Furthermore what is wrong with pricing having something to do with supply and demand? A taxi SHOULD be more expensive when there is more demand for taxis. That's how it works.
And make no mistake, surge pricing is going to increase drunk driving fatalities.
Sometimes the cause is known 100%. For the rest of the time, there's prednisone.
You don't want to use prednisone (or any other steroid) if you have a fungal infection. It can actually suppress the immune system and make the fungal infection worse while having no beneficial effect on the problem.
That will come as a shock to my wife who actually is a doctor and provides diagnosis all day long.
Seriously my friend, you have NO idea what you are talking about if you truly believe that.
Remember the TV shows about doctors when they would try to figure out what kind of disease you had, possibly opening up one of those medical books on the shelf behind their desk? Yeah, they don't do that any more.
Once again you are completely, 100% wrong about this. I will be happy to introduce you to as many physicians as you can stand to meet (I know a LOT of them) who will be happy to show you what they actually do when they are stumped. They absolutely do crack open the text books on a routine basis. Furthermore, real doctors don't actually do what they show on TV shows. Shocking I know that they would do something fictional on TV.
Then the physician makes a derogatory comment about patients consulting Dr. Google.
Because a lot of patients DO self diagnose despite having absolutely no idea what they are talking about. They simply do not have enough knowledge to come up with an appropriate differential diagnosis. It is a real problem. People actually get upset when they wrongly "diagnose" their condition and then the doctor who actually went to medical school politely corrects them.
They're not shy at all about telling you to fuck off (sorry, referral to another doctor) or giving you the middle finger (sorry, I meant a suggestion to try "alternative medicine").
They only tell you to not come back (a figurative "fuck off") if you are either abusive or obviously wasting their time. Given your attitude I'm guessing the former might apply here. If they refer you to another doctor it's because they think you need to see someone more specialized in the condition. While I'm sure there are a few out there, basically no credible doctor will suggest "alternative medicine". If they do, run the other way as fast as possible.
Source: my own experience at the hands of physicians. Sad but true. It does, in fact, mean they just don't care.
If indeed any of what you say is true then you need to get a new physician immediately.
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What you can compare is outcomes, how often the patient recovers without complications. Robotic surgery is a clear winner there
You can only make that claim if you are comparing similar patient populations or can control for the differences. If robotic surgery is used on an patient population with less difficult conditions then it wouldn't be at all surprising if the outcomes were better. If the patient populations aren't statistically similar then any comparison which doesn't account for that difference is meaningless.
Marketing by nature is deceptive
Not true. Marketing done well is VERY honest with customers. You can lie in marketing but that doesn't mean marketing is nothing but lies. Marketing fundamentally is about creating and maintaining a relationship with a customer. It's not actually about selling the product - not directly anyway. You have a product and you are trying to find a way to communicate the existence and benefits of that product to others - that is marketing. Along side that you are communicating with potential customers about who you (the seller) are and what you are about. At its core that is all marketing is - developing relationships. You'll note that lying is no way required to do that and frankly it is largely counterproductive in the long run.
People don't buy Coca-cola because Coke Inc is lying to people about what it is and frankly they don't really need to lie about it. Sure they are selling flavored carbonated sugar water but they are also selling a brand which is intangible but clearly valuable to many people. Lying in marketing is kind of like a guy falsely claiming to be a doctor to pick up a girl in a bar. It might work but it isn't likely to last. While it is possible to lie in marketing and be successful for a time with it. But that does not mean that marketing is intrinsically deceptive.
Marketing is not the same thing as sales. Sales is the actual act of convincing someone to buy a product or service. Marketing is developing a relationship with a customer and an awareness of the product. Those things are related but are different stages in the process.
Facebook hate was around by the time G+ was released. Had they simply released an Ad-free, private clone of FB it would taken the world by storm.
Google can't do that. Google makes well over 90% of its revenue from ads and almost everything they do supports that engine. Android was simply a defensive play to keep them from getting locked out of the mobile ad markets by Apple, Microsoft and others. Maps is a play for location sensitive advertising. Gmail is a way of mining personal communications for data. Aside from a few research projects (like cars and robots) pretty much everything Google does is to help them throw more ads your way.
Now Facebook has ads too but to your point nobody really cares if it is Google or Facebook throwing ads their way. If both are doing it there is no reason to switch. Google needed to make G+ something life enhancing. Something that provided extra value over what they already had. Nobody is going to switch to G+ when all their friends are on Facebook unless G+ offers something pretty amazing that Facebook doesn't have. I have no idea what that might be but clearly neither did Google.
The other big mistake Google made was the branding was confusing. They must have taken a page from .NET and java regarding how to make the product as difficult to understand as possible. G+ was/is more than just a Facebook clone but it wasn't especially clear exactly what it was or why we should care. They got too clever with it and confused all their potential customers. Plus they didn't respect the fact that people already think Google knows too much about them.
Why the hell did it not catch on like FB?
Because nearly everybody was already on Facebook and Facebook gave them no reason to move that they cared about. Look up network effect if you need a more detailed explanation. Plus Google was more than a little pushy about G+ early on which didn't enhance the appeal. Nobody likes to feel forced into something.
People argue that they "already have a social network" but that didn't stop them from leaving MySpace in favour of FB.
People will leave if they have sufficient reason. Myspace was sort of focused on music and entertainment which is fine but not diverse and perhaps a bit too narrow. It's ties to News Corp probably didn't help and it didn't innovate nearly enough. They probably chased the money too quickly. Wikipedia has a decent overview of what happened.
Hmm, some security firm I've never heard of, releases a tool I've never heard of, which is supposed to tell me if I've been got spyware with alleged government ties. Yeah, that sounds super trustworthy...
Oops, I left the sarcasm bit turned on. Sorry about that...
Individual that differs more than 6-sigma from the population's mean has trouble with automated tools designed for the average person.
Exactly. I use Gmail and I honestly haven't had a false positive (flagged as spam when it isn't) in over two years. I still get the occasional false negative (spam that isn't flagged) at a frequency of a few per week. It's good enough that I don't even bother to routinely check my spam filter. It also is pretty good on the training - once you've spent a little time telling it what is spam and what isn't for you in my experience it is pretty good after that. Frankly if you have to check your spam filter often it isn't a very good spam filter.
I suspect Linus has rather unusual email requirements. Perhaps Gmail isn't the ideal solution for him. Very few tools are perfect for everyone. I'm a little surprised he's having that much trouble but stranger things have happened.
What does Wayland solve for me, a standard Ubuntu user?
Only you can answer that question.
What I have wordks ok, why does it need to change?
And there is the answer to your question. Isn't open source great? No need to change if you don't want/need to.
Yet whenever anyone wants to raid a fund to pay for something... its the military budget. Why is that?
Because that is where the money is and we spend ludicrously more on our military than is sensible or necessary. We apparently spend more on our military than the next 7 or so largest military spenders COMBINED. There is no reasonable justification for that. That is just rampant paranoia.
And I should point out that the military is one of the few things the government does that it is supposed to do and it is one of the few things the world... especially our allies need us to be competent in.
Remind me again why we have to be the ones to defend other countries that are perfectly capable of paying to defend themselves? Europe should not need the US to defend them and yet their largest military spender (France) spends literally 1/10th of what the US does.
So why are you raiding the military budget? Do you want the US to pull out of NATO? Maybe sunset its guarantee to protect Japan? We could let Israel get genocided. Maybe let the Russians run wild in Eastern Europe. Possibly allow the North Koreans to invade and enslave the south koreans?
Let's address those:
1) NATO: NATO has 28 members yet the US pays for 3/4 of the budget. The other members can pony up more.
2) Japan: Japan SHOULD be responsible more for its own defense. WWII ended 70 years ago.
3) Israel: Israel is quite capable of defending themselves and have shown that several times. They also are not working productively for peace (nor are the palestinians) so until they get serious they can get help elsewhere.
4) The Russians already are running wild in Easter Europe (see Ukraine) and we are doing nothing about it.
5) North Korean "enslaving" the South? Spare me. That's just ridiculous on the face of it. South Korean can handle their business just fine.
Where would you like to cut the US military budget?
Let's start with the items like hardware the military says it doesn't need but congress still forces them to buy. Then I would move on to cutting programs like the F35 that are wildly over budget and under performing and arguably unnecessary. We probably don't actually need 11 aircraft carriers with their attendant fleets. I'm quite sure we don't need as many nuclear weapons as we currently have. We have numerous military bases that we no longer need and which are only being kept alive because they are congressional pork. We don't need to maintain Guantanamo Bay and the prison it contains. We could get out of the money pit that is the Middle East. I could go on and on.
Seriously, did you even give this a moment's thought?
Hardly. This points more to poor vendor selection and a crap procurement process. In many cases the costs of faults should be contractually passed back to the vendor. The end result is a more costly product but with higher quality as a result.
Even good vendors sometimes make mistakes. Even good engineers sometimes overlook important details. I can assure from personal experience you that even draconian claw-backs (if you can get them) will not result in a good product and frankly are unnecessary in most cases. It is FAR more complicated than that. You are right that the problem is with flaws in procurement but the answer isn't just claw-backs. Good vendor relationships require quite a lot of oversight, interaction, structure and cooperation. New vendors typically require a lot of oversight until the interaction, structure and cooperation can develop.
The problem is that salesmen are lying bastards.
That should not be relevant once the engineering staff gets their hands on the product specifications which would be necessary prior to quotation for anything built for a company like SpaceX. To build any custom product the engineers will have to evaluate and sign off on the production process. Purchasing would have to sign off on the procurement. Any company that simply lets their sales people throw out randomly generated numbers for engineering intensive products isn't going to be around for long. I know because I run a manufacturing company that makes such products. The dumbest thing we could possibly do would be to give our sales representatives carte-blanche. We'd be out of business within a year if we did that.
When you get the technical people on the phone (if you can get them) the complete and typically trustworthy story comes out.
I am an engineer (among other things) and I work with engineers all the time. I can assure you that getting a complete answer out of engineers at other companies can be exceptionally challenging at times. It's not that they lie but rather that they are busy, hard to track down (esp in big companies), you are a distraction, sometimes they are lazy and more than you would think are not especially competent. I run into a LOT of engineers that are really quite bad at writing engineering documentation. I run into quite a few others who have an exceptionally poor concept of design for manufacturing. Working with engineers can be great but I can assure you from first hand experience that it can be quite a challenge at times too.
And as an engineer, I know that most engineers want to act in good faith. Some are inept or inexperienced but they still have good faith. The problem lies in management. Once you get the lawyers and bean counters involved is when asshole decisions like that get made.
I'm an engineer but I'm also an accountant (aka a bean counter). I also am management in my company and I'm in charge of the engineering, production and accounting among other things. You are absolutely right that most of the time the fault for most failures ultimately is due to management decisions. At the end of the day the buck stops with them and that is how it should be. HOWEVER, management ultimately relies on the expertise of engineers and the reasoned opinions of those who report to them. If management gets bad information (happens all the time) then management decisions are more likely to be bad ones. That's not to say that management can't introduce cock-ups all their own (we all know they routinely do) but bad management decisions normally don't happen in a vacuum. Most serious screw ups in a company happen because people at multiple levels in a company made a mistake. It's not just management or engineering or accounting alone. Rockets blow up when all these mistakes made by multiple people line up in just the right way. Business is a team sport and most failures in business involve more than one person.
Engineering is kind of like playing chess. You can see the entire board and you know (or should) what is possible at any given moment because you have close to perfect information. If you are good enough mistakes are largely predictable. Management is more like playing poker. You rarely have perfect information and you have to guess based on your assessment of the probabilities and sometimes you'll be wrong even if you play the hand perfectly. The mindsets needed for success in each for each are very different and can be hard to reconcile at times.
It has also been my experience that there are FAR more inept engineers that most people realize. Specifically too many engineers are inept at product and process documentation. It's boring and despite its importance it tends to get overlooked and engineers often spend as little time with it as they can get away with. I run a contract manufacturing company that makes wire harnesses. I can count on my fingers the number of product drawings that I've received in the last 5 years from all our customers combined that I could manufacture without having to get substantial clarification from the engineering staff at our customer. I routinely see ambiguous dimensions, incompatible parts, improper or incomplete specifications, missing part numbers, internal part numbers (useless to anyone else), incoherent diagrams, unnecessary lookup tables, obsolete or hard to get parts, and more. Most engineers I've run into are really quite terrible at documentation. I see drawings daily that were clearly not written with the expectation that anyone else might ever read them despite the fact that someone else reading it is the entire point of the document.
Apparently you never heard of the Burning Platforms memo.
We'll never know if Elop was actually a mole inside Nokia,
Did you read the last sentence of my post? I'm well aware of what transpired with Elop & friends. But Nokia was on thin ice even prior to that. They were already hemorrhaging market share well before Elop got involved. Elop just added gasoline to the fire and burned the house down while they were still in it.
But just when maemo/meego was stable enough to depreciate Symbian after >10 years of development, they choose to throw everything away and go the W7->W8 way.
Bizarre isn't it? It made no sense at all. Not at the time and not in hindsight. They threw away years of work to go to a closed source system which they didn't control with close to zero market share. Worse they announced it a year before they had any products on the new system thus killing any demand for their existing products. They'll be teaching that as a case study in stupid management decisions in business schools for the next 50 years.
This decision was made when Nokia still dominated the smartphones market (yes, Symbians were smart phones), android was a bag full of crap, and the Iphone 1 was prettier but inferior than the N900.
Symbian phones were technically smart phones but generally rather poor ones. I owned several myself and they were disappointing to say the least. I bought a Symbian phone right when the first iPhone came out because it seemed to be a better deal. It had a little better specs and a physical keyboard too. But in hindsight it was a mistake. The email was almost unusable and the web browser was totally unusable. The calendar didn't integrate with anything, the to-do list didn't etc. It technically had all the features the iPhone had and more but you couldn't actually use any of them. The phone was clearly made so that they could say it had all those features but clearly no effort was put into actually making them useful.
Maybe before the end Nokia figured Symbian out but by then I and most other people were long gone. They had years to get it right before Apple and Google came to the party and they couldn't be bothered.
Meanwhile in a parallel world, Nokia's meego might have stood a chance (or might lay somewhere between Palm and BlackBerry )
Perhaps. I never got my hands on one to evaluate but by most accounts they were promising. But we'll never know. My guess is that it's technical merits were insufficient by the time it was released. Google was giving Android away to every other handset maker. Apple had a tight vertically integrated solution. Nokia on the other hand was unfocused. They had several different operating systems, no coherent design strategy, and a close source system. Basically take all the worst things about Android and the worst things about iOS and mash them together and you have Nokia's "strategy". It's hardly shocking it failed.
I thought the N95 was amazing, and the N90 was pretty awesome too....and the N9 was spectacular.
Nokia made some fine products over the years. I never claimed otherwise and I used their phones exclusively for over a decade. But I have never once used a Nokia phone where the software wasn't terrible. On their old non-smart phones the interface was usable but clumsy. On their smartphones (at least every one I tried) it was just rubbish. Not just on the phone either. Their PC software like their Nokia (Ovi) Suite was absolutely hopeless. I'm aware they came out with some arguably decent smartphones but they were too little, too late and some like the N9 were abandoned before they were even released. Nokia's approach to software was schizophrenic at best and largely incompetent in general.
Miss the boat when it came to smart phones...they were *years* ahead of the current crop.
So if Nokia was so far ahead of everyone like you claim then why are they gone? They were financially sound, their hardware was fine and Symbian was the most popular mobile OS until about 2010 but it's market share plummeted. It's fundamentally because of their software. Nobody wanted it once there were alternatives available. Worse Symbian was fragmented with tons of incompatible versions. Smartphones are almost entirely about the software. It's the only thing that really sets one apart from another. Ergo Nokia failed because they failed in their software for smartphones.
Love them or hate them Apple was the one who figured out the basic formula for what we now consider smartphones. They nailed the interface which is something Nokia struggled with and people liked it better than what Nokia offered. Other handset makers went with Android because Google was giving it away. I actually bought a Nokia smartphone after the first iPhone came out because on paper it was a better device. Had more features and better battery and I'm not a brand loyal person. But it was utterly unusable, never updated, and pretty much neglected by Nokia. Emailing was a pain, web surfing basically impossible, and syncing with my PC via their suite served no purpose. Nokia's software sucked and after that I've never been back because their software was so bad.
Actually, I find myself disagreeing with almost everything you say...not much point in continuing.
Disagree all you want but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. Nokia dug their own grave with their incompetence at software. They filled the grave in when they threw their lot in with Microsoft.
Don't forget battery life. I miss when my non-smart Nokia would last for days on one charge.
Umm, yeah great. Of course the phone couldn't do shit except for making calls and the odd bit of text messaging (usually without the benefit of a QWERTY keyboard). I'd certainly like longer battery life but that wasn't a feature unique to Nokia or something special. It was possible because the phones had tiny displays, slow processors and they couldn't do much.
And re software, yes it was pretty basic, but don't forget predictive text. If they weren't first with that feature, it sure felt like they were. And it was a killer app, definitely.
"Pretty basic"? No it was terrible. Flat out terrible.
Predictive text was not a killer feature under any reasonable definition of the term. It didn't even work terribly well. I tried it on several of my Nokia phones and every time ended up turning it off because it was more annoying than useful. If you liked it that's fine but it was hardly earth shaking.
The N9 had a large Retina (really high DPI) screen? Because that's the only thing the latest iPhone has that the previous generation did not.
You mean except for:
* Optical image stabilization
* 1080p video recording @60fps
* VoLTE and VoWiFi calling
* A barometer
* ApplePay
* Faster processors
* Larger screens
* Better camera
I suspect that your knowledge of iPhones and iOS begins and ends with the names.
Pot meet kettle.
You should have tried the N9
Why would I buy a phone that had an operating system that was dropped by Nokia prior to the phone going on sale? Plus it was never released in the US so Nokia apparently didn't value my business very much.
Had Nokia continued their line and distributed it to more countries, it would have taken a significant bite of the market.
That is extremely doubtful. It was too little, too late and not supported by the company that made it.
Would the Nokia "design and branding" actually still be viewed as a net contributor to product value?
No. Nobody thought Nokia designs were all that amazing even when they were the top dog in the market. They were solid but never anything earth shaking. And they completely missed the boat when it came to smart phones. Today pretty much nobody cares about Nokia any more and whatever value their brand once had is just a fraction of a shadow of its previous glory.
I've never had a Nokia phone myself, but I always had the perception that they haven't been any good for a while
I owned several. I used Nokia's exclusively from 1999-2010 or so. They were fine but never great. Generally pretty durable though their reputation for durability exceeds the reality of it. The hardware design was decent if unspectacular. The software however SUCKED big time. I actually got to meet their CEO about 10 years ago during a speech he gave. He admitted during the Q&A the criticality of software to their business. But from my own experience with Nokia software they never really quite figured it out. They thought their customer was the phone companies and tailored their software efforts accordingly. They were wrong and Apple showed them just how wrong they were.
Nokia phones would have what I call checkbox features - great on paper but not in actual use. I bought one of their smartphones around the same time as the first iPhone. Both on paper had roughly the same capabilities but the Nokia's were basically unusable in the real world. The Nokia could technically email or surf the web and it could but even a geek like me couldn't really use it productively because the software and the interface were just horrid. Syncing with a PC was an exercise in futility. Updates to the phones were uncommon if they happened at all and sometimes involved sending the phone to Nokia.
I really cannot imagine why they would want to get back into the business.
There are only two companies making substantial profits in cell phones (Apple and Samsung with Apple making by far the largest profit. Samsung makes pretty much all the profit in Android with nobody else really even being a player. Nokia would bring nothing to the table that I can see to change that equation. Their brand is nothing special today. They would be just another me-too Android phone with nothing uniquely valuable to offer. Basically they are hoping some suck.., err... partner will license their brand in the (probably vain) hope that it would set them apart. This is a near zero risk strategy to Nokia but it has a near zero chance of succeeding.
It's like picking up an old cigarette that is almost used up and trying to get a few puffs out of it before it goes out forever.
And by the way, when we hook them on that, we have a phone app. This strategy is path dependent, which is a term I use that means where you start is not where you end up. And therein lies a lot of the nuance. The fundamental truth for developers is they will build if there are users. And in our case the truth is we have users on desktop.
Translation: We have a monopoly in desktop computers that we need to leverage to get into other markets where we have been getting our ass handed to us.
Tigers cannot change their stripes. Hail to the new boss - same as the old boss.
So sayeth Faux news and scattered anecdata. (And the rest of your comment is just the same - rightwingnut talking points.)
Here's the funny thing. My politics are anything but right wing. I'm probably center left if anything. I can count the number of republicans I've voted for in the last 20 years on my fingers with lots left over. I support workers rights, socialized medicine, emissions taxation, a reduced military, and plenty of other items that generally are considered left wing. I listen to John Stewart, Bill Maher and that crowd for entertainment. I don't think you could pay me to listen to the wingnuts on Fox news. So there's that.
If you think what I said is wrong, show me the evidence to the contrary. Actual evidence. Do you have actual evidence that shows that not having valuable skills and not working hard results in better outcomes? By all means show me how I can do well by being lazy and having no skills anyone values. That would make my life a lot easier.
That's an interesting reply to my original '1%' post. You've taken the employer perspective as many other employers would.
You seem to have some fantasy that people who own companies are raking in millions at the expense of those who work for them. Real world businesses are rarely that profitable and most employers would be very happy to have a large well paid work force because it means that the business is doing very well. That is NOT what the real world is like however. In the real world business owners live in terror for much of their existence because they are taking enormous risks. Most people who lose their job can usually find another one. It sucks but it's manageable. Entrepreneurs often literally are risking everything they have.
I ran my own construction company and helped run another.
Fair enough. Then you should understand the need to keep costs under control. A business that goes out of business employs nobody. Most small businesses are under-capitalized and don't have deep pockets.
There is plenty of room in construction work for people to drag their feet, to slack off and take advantage of their employer. In our companies, we took a personal interest in our employees (typically around 30) and their families.
You seem to be implying that I don't care about my employees. Most of our full time employees have been with us for many years. We support our employees as well when we have dips in orders. We employ temp workers to meet labor needs when we have a spike in production. But if there is no work then there is no work. In our industry generally when work dips it is because a job has ended. We compete with China on price and we have customers that will move the business for a few pennies per part savings. So should I adjust labor costs to keep the company healthy or should I continue to employ people while the company loses money risking everyone's job, including my own? Employing more people than I have to means that I must pay everyone less. Should I pay some people a better wage or pay more people a worse wage?
Treating a business like a charity helps no one in the long run. Pay your people as well as you can and treat them as well as possible but you HAVE to make sure the business is profitable. A business that isn't profitable will not be a business for long.
During the inevitable slow periods we tried everything imaginable to keep everyone on payroll. We bid jobs below cost at times just to keep them active.
That's very kind of you but you can only do that if there is a reasonable likelihood of business picking up. Construction is a seasonal business. Manufacturing like what we do is much less so. Our business cycles last years. Getting a new job might take 18 months or longer if it is of any substantial size. We have down periods too but you cannot employ people indefinitely for work you don't have no matter how much you care about them. If we employ too many people or over pay them, we will kill the company faster than you can say "Chapter 11".
I'd prefer to make slightly fewer millions knowing that my employees can thrive.
"Slightly fewer millions"? Cute. That is why I was dubious you have ever owned a business because very few businesses are in a real position to make "slightly fewer millions". If you made millions good for you but most manufacturing companies have profit margins in the single digits if they are profitable at all. Our company makes enough money to cover payroll with just a little left over for some small capital improvements. The owners of my company take home less than $100K annually after tax. Millions? Yeah, actually running a real company isn't the 1% fantasy you seem to think it is for most business owners.
It is illegal. The drivers don't have taxi medallions.
It is NOT illegal in many places. Plenty of places don't require medallions and there are no laws against companies like Uber in those places. Furthermore even if it is illegal IT SHOULDN'T BE. I haven't heard a single compelling economic or moral argument that we should protect traditional cab companies at the expense of companies like Uber.
No cab companies provide real jobs, Uber does not.
Both provide taxi services. Both get compensated for that service. QED both are "real jobs", whatever that means. To be perfectly clear, I don't care about protecting traditional cab companies or their drivers. They can compete like everyone else or they can go out of business. You have provided zero reason why we should protect these companies. If another company can provide the same service, make a profit and provide better value to customers then so be it. By your logic we should all still be working on a farm because that is a "real job".
What I said about drunk driving is obvious.
You made an unsupported assertion without evidence based on your own opinions. Back it up with facts. If you are actually correct that should not be difficult. The fact that you believe it to be "obvious" does not make it true.
Not long before you were born there was a system of employment called 'piece work'. If you work in a sweat shop or on a farm or in a factory, you got paid according to what you produced. Usually this meant that you worked your butt off and still got paid less than hourly workers. This has been frowned upon until recently.
Piece work is still around and in many cases it is a very appropriate way to pay for services rendered. If I'm an employer and I've got two employees and one is twice as productive as the other, why should they receive equal pay? What is the less productive person doing that makes them worth just as much despite doing less work? If the piece work rate is too low that is a different issue but there is nothing inherently wrong with compensating on a piece work basis.
Furthermore piece work is used in many place you aren't really thinking about it. Doctors get paid per-procedure which is basically piece work. (it's why they have to hustle through so many patients) Truckers often get paid per delivery or per mile which is basically piece work. Lots of professions get compensated on a piece work basis that have nothing to do with making widgets and there is nothing wrong with that. Piece work incentivizes efficient deliver of services.
The problem with piece work is that it can also incentivize shoddy quality if there aren't controls in place to keep quality high. Sometimes that is not easy to do which is why piece work isn't used in some place where it might otherwise make sense.
People raising a family, paying a mortgage, saving for retirement or children's education need a reliable income.
A reliable income can be assured through having valuable skills and working hard. If you lack a valuable skill and/or are not willing to work hard then a reliable income will be hard to come by. People are not and should not be entitled to a reliable income merely for existing - they need to earn it. Your choice to have a family or buy a house isn't my problem. Work hard and develop some skills that others value and chances are you'll do fine.
Corporations don't want to get weighed down with that burden--they want people that they can call when needed and dump when the need passes.
So corporations are supposed to pay people to sit idle and do nothing? How many people do you employ so that they can sit on their ass and collect a paycheck for no work? I'm guessing you've never run a company. I do run a manufacturing company. Paying people to do nothing (read work inefficiently) is pretty much the best way I know of to put a company into bankruptcy. No company should be required to employ someone when there is no work for them to perform or if they are providing sub-standard performance.
Uber is an illegal cab company and should just be shut down.
It is not clearly illegal in many places and even it it is illegal in places it is not clear that it should be illegal. If Uber is providing competition in the taxi industry then more power to them. If they are innovating in an industry that sorely needs it then I see no reason to prohibit that. It sounds to me like a lot of taxi companies have had a sweetheart deal for a long time and are pissed off that they are having to compete. Not seeing why I should be sympathetic.
If Uber puts the cab companies out of business it most certainly take away a lot of "real" jobs.
If the cab companies get put out of business because they are inefficient and can't compete then they deserve to go out of business. I see no reason that they deserve special protection from competition. The fact that they bought overpriced taxi medallions (read artificial scarcity) is not my problem. That was a risk they took. Just because some drivers get replaced with other drivers is not a problem and it certainly isn't "taking away real jobs".
Furthermore, we'll all be slaves to "surge pricing".
Spare me the hyperbole. "Slaves"? Only if there are no other transportation options. You think Uber will have no competition? Furthermore what is wrong with pricing having something to do with supply and demand? A taxi SHOULD be more expensive when there is more demand for taxis. That's how it works.
And make no mistake, surge pricing is going to increase drunk driving fatalities.
And your evidence for this is what exactly?
Sometimes the cause is known 100%. For the rest of the time, there's prednisone.
You don't want to use prednisone (or any other steroid) if you have a fungal infection. It can actually suppress the immune system and make the fungal infection worse while having no beneficial effect on the problem.
Did you know doctors don't do diagnosis any more?
That will come as a shock to my wife who actually is a doctor and provides diagnosis all day long.
Seriously my friend, you have NO idea what you are talking about if you truly believe that.
Remember the TV shows about doctors when they would try to figure out what kind of disease you had, possibly opening up one of those medical books on the shelf behind their desk? Yeah, they don't do that any more.
Once again you are completely, 100% wrong about this. I will be happy to introduce you to as many physicians as you can stand to meet (I know a LOT of them) who will be happy to show you what they actually do when they are stumped. They absolutely do crack open the text books on a routine basis. Furthermore, real doctors don't actually do what they show on TV shows. Shocking I know that they would do something fictional on TV.
Then the physician makes a derogatory comment about patients consulting Dr. Google.
Because a lot of patients DO self diagnose despite having absolutely no idea what they are talking about. They simply do not have enough knowledge to come up with an appropriate differential diagnosis. It is a real problem. People actually get upset when they wrongly "diagnose" their condition and then the doctor who actually went to medical school politely corrects them.
They're not shy at all about telling you to fuck off (sorry, referral to another doctor) or giving you the middle finger (sorry, I meant a suggestion to try "alternative medicine").
They only tell you to not come back (a figurative "fuck off") if you are either abusive or obviously wasting their time. Given your attitude I'm guessing the former might apply here. If they refer you to another doctor it's because they think you need to see someone more specialized in the condition. While I'm sure there are a few out there, basically no credible doctor will suggest "alternative medicine". If they do, run the other way as fast as possible.
Source: my own experience at the hands of physicians. Sad but true. It does, in fact, mean they just don't care.
If indeed any of what you say is true then you need to get a new physician immediately.