I've run into this a lot; in dorms, in a house with other mates from uni, at work, and so on. Here are some things that work for me:
- If you can afford it, noise canceling headphones are awesome. If you put yourself in a quiet place, they help a huge amount. Expensive though.
- Always have ear plugs in your bag. They are small, and you can use them in a pinch. Super good for exam situations where things are quiet anyway and you just want to block out that guy who keeps clicking his pen.
- Go to a hardware store, and find the ear protection section. For 20-40$ you should be able to find industrial grade ear protection. This works really, really well; and lasts longer than ear plugs. These are more effective than bose noise canceling headphones, but less comfy and won't play music.
Note that all of the above will only lessen the sounds around you; if you are already in a loud place, it won't make it silent. Which leads me to my next piece of advice:
Go somewhere else. I still have to do this to this day. There is a quiet, distraction free place somewhere on campus where you can go. You have to find it though. I ended up with a collection of about 6 places that were generally super quiet. You'll also want to find places that are distraction free in other ways too (eg. a desk in a basement at the end of a hall; there was nothing there but what I brought with me, and very few people ever came by). Try to avoid populous study areas; there are other distractions there. Extra good if you can find somewhere that's not too far from a toilet for those long study sessions. If I had to walk too far to find a bathroom, it would take me 10 minutes to get there, and 90 to get back on account of interesting everything.
Music that you can't process. In my case it was chinese pop music, or very loud punk rock. Experiment with different things, you'll probably find something that your brain considers passive background noise. Note that it's not enough to simply change the language or find something without words. I'll happily hum along to classical, and I have no problem singing along to bhangra music. I'd suggest looking at pop music from other cultures, or genre's that are known to be loud and noisy.
Watch the chemicals. Getting the right amount of caffeine is a tricky balance. Obviously it keeps you awake, which is a plus. But having a hit can help sharpen your mind to the work at hand a little bit. Having too much will end up being a huge distraction.
Have a refocus point. Eventually you're mind is going to wander, I found it was helpful to have something that brought it back. Some people use excercise, or a smoke break for this. For me, I printed a little sign that I would stick at eye level that read simple "GRADUATE". Whenever my mind went, this little sign would act as a mental kick in the pants. Most times I could pull it together and get back to the task at hand. Maybe after a few breathes, or something.
Know when to quit. If it's just not working; stop. Take a break (ideally, a limited break; like having no more than three printed sheets of sudoku in your bag), or just switch tasks and come back in a bit.
This was actually a feature of Facebook for a while, at least when I joined up. The number one driver for me to create an account on facebook was that I already had a sort of ghost account created by the people I knew. Even though I didn't have an account, people could still tag me in photos (prompting an email), view collections of photos that I'd been tagged in, and a few other basic functions. I joined solely so that I could change my privacy settings.
Gotcha -- thanks for that. However, that still has a workflow where you edit my file directly, and diffs are tracked by revisions. Is there anyway to make it so that I have to accept/reject changes, or where changes are managed on a change-by-change basis?
As for passing copies of files around, I think it's a fine workaround to put a doc on a file share, in sharepoint, or in source control. Google Docs is actually way better for simultaneous collaboration though, I have to agree with that.
"Usually she agrees, but not always, and she can always see exactly what I did and easily revert what she doesn't like."
How?! I've started using it a ton for collaboration, but I haven't been able to find a reasonable replacement for Track Changes that you'd find in Word. Sure, I can comment, or I can just change the text. But, if I want to make changes to the text and have someone be able to see what was changed and accept/reject, I can't seem to do that.
I think Microsoft's strategy is to generate revenue by accepting licensing payments from android manufacturers. This is good for their bottom line as they are making steady income from other people.
Apple's strategy, I think, is to damage their competitors. By keeping android in court, they are hurting sales numbers directly (samsung products being banned for sale, even for just a few months), or indirectly (third party developers question whether android is the right platform; manufacturers reducing their focus on android phones).
They aren't making any money directly from their legal action, but if you look at the whole picture, I'll bet they are doing at least as well as Microsoft. The iPhone still has a hefty market share - which is important for Apple because they make the bulk of their iPhone related money on the iTunes store commissions. If they took licensing payments instead, they would get some money from the manufacturers, but potentially lose their cut on movies, music, apps, etc.
Given the restrictions that you have (keep doing what you're doing, but more advanced) then I would suggest one of two things.
[1] Change to a completely new set of problems. If you've been working in business software, change to games. In this way you will still be doing dev, but the kinds of problems that you are trying to solve will be completely different, which will lead to new challenges.
[2] Try changing up the 'how' of what you're doing. For example, look for a team that's using scrum methodology, or test-driven-development. Alternately, new tools, programming languages, platforms (Mostly focussing on windows? Go mac/mobile/unix/web.). Even just somewhere with a vastly different release cycle could be interesting - by last employer measured their dev cycles in years; my current employer in weeks. If you put the focus on the skills, instead of the work, it can be really rewarding. See Software Craftsman movement for related inspiration in this direction.
[3] Move. I'm on my third country now, and I can tell you that doing the same thing in a different country totally changes the game. French engineers do not think the same way as Canadian engineers. So much of our work is about problem solving, and being able to transform real world problems into software. It's been very cool to working through a problem with someone with a totally different world view.
To use an analogy: You are a great French chef; you've worked in a wide range of sit down restaurants from very small to very large. And you've always felt successful, but you now feel you're only option is to start your own business. I'm recommending that you [1] go work at a japanese restaurant, [2] try a catering company or 'fast food', or [3] try working in Vietnam.
Have you considered hiring a Technical Writer on contract? From the work you describe, someone with the right experience should be able to pull all of that together for you in about a month -- maybe a bit longer to make sure that it's usable for you in the long term. Writers spend a lot their time summarizing, re-organizing, and pulling together disjointed pieces of information. I'd consider hiring someone to get you running, and then having them show you a few things for how to keep the wheels greased in the long term.
It'll cost a bit extra, but it's likely to get done faster than if you DIY, and you won't have to take as much time off from your existing IT duties.
He describes his reasons differently, but arrives at the same conclusions. For those of you worried about the missing option of the BSD license, he does talk about this a little bit. But only a little bit -- it's quite a short article. Worth a read for an alternate take of the same point of view.
I can tell you what happened, at least from the people I know in doc and training. You mostly got it right, btw.
Documentation used to be a big investment area. Then training came along. Training made money; Documentation cost money. Companies started by de-investing in doc, and investing heavily in training departments. After a while, organizations would start to ask their doc teams to intentionally include less information so that customers would be 'encouraged' to buy training.
But, there was a problem. Where did the training teams get their information from? Documentation.
Documentation fills the role of a primary researcher for the training departments. They know what's going into the product, how it is supposed to work, and what it actually does as soon as the product is released. Training teams follow a several month lag, as they need to train what's installed on the customers site, not what's in development. Without the source material coming from Doc, it's a lot harder for trainers to pull together great content. They now have to do both the primary and secondary research, but with the added difficulty that the developers are now working on the *next* iteration, and aren't really that interested in talking about the last release.
"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"
When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out. A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?' The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.
Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.
Let's be open here -- these people were highly educated, yes, but where they using their education in this role? I think not.
What they were doing was simply reading through mounds of material looking for something that could be interesting to the case. It requires some deduction, some common sense, a good grasp of the concepts of the problems they are trying to solve, etc. But, it does not require a law degree. This is grunt work. One could easily imagine a situation where several legal assistants do the same work, and report into a senior person who really does need that education.
From other job sectors, one could make this distinction between Nurses and Doctors. (Yes, i know Nurses are also skilled, but not as much so as a Doctor for most definitions of 'Nurse'). You don't need your MD to answer a slough of 'Does this rash look funny to you?' questions at a health clinic. Just a simple 'No, put this cream on it' or 'OMG, what did you do? You need to see a Doctor' will suffice. Four good nurses and one doctor is as effective as 5 doctors for most family style medicine, and a heck of a lot cheaper.
Or, closer to home, you don't need someone with a degree and 6 certifications to work Tier 1 tech support. Tier 2 or 3, perhaps. But not Tier 1.
Apple charges a 30% tarrif on things sold through their store. Part of this is the cost that the developer pays to have crazy amounts of customer visibility. (Think: Walmart takes a cut to cover operational costs, and their own profits, in trade, the manufacturer gets a ton of views.)
So, the last thing that Apple, as a company, will want to do is allow you, as a manufacturer, the ability to use Apple's platform to give away an app that is essentially a platform of it's own. Amazon, as an example, will give away the app on the appstore, and take 100% of the profit through their own book site. They get all of the benefits of Apple's appstore, without any of the costs.
I don't know about savings ads for a long time, but I would love a queue of the last 100 ads that I've seen pass my screen. So many times I've clicked a link on a web page and at the last second seen some interesting looking ad out of the corner of my eye. When I hit back on the browser, the random-ad-generator hates me, and won't show what I've just been looking at.
Sounds stupid, but it would be really super useful.
Slashdot is actually one of the biggest offenders here (that, and a few of the webcomics I frequent).
Yes, I have the "Disable Advertising" option. No, I don't use it.
Please be aware that we don't have 'Free Speech' laws in Canada like those protected by the First Amendment in the USA.
What we have instead is a freedom of expression (Section 2b of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms). The Freedom of Expression is very similar, but not quite as wide reaching as those rights protected by the 1st Amendment in the US Constitution.
One of the subtle differences is that you are free to express anything you like, as long as neither the message, nor the means of conveying that message, is considered illegal under another law. There aren't many cases where another law infringes on the freedom of expression, but one notable example is the Canadian Hate Crimes laws, which prohibit the proliferation of hate material based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc.
The top 10 luxury brands reviewed in the article are: Prada, Fendi, Moet, Cartier, Hennessy, Rolex, Channel, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton
Could we get a summary correction to specify that it's actually the Luxury brands that are looked at, not 'normal' brands? I think it's a pretty important distinction, as the luxury brands likely have much less traffic, and have traditionally not been designed for content consumption but are more advertising platforms.
OK, for the record, I agree with you. The entire premise of a for-profit health insurance system makes no sense to me. Based upon the vitriolic response, I guess I didn't make that clear enough in the previous post -- sorry about that. *waves socialist peace flag*
What I'm wondering about, is how the American system will function. As a non-American (Canadian living in France), I really don't have any idea.
In only one of my examples (the drunk driver) do I place any blame on the insured. In all other cases, I'm trying to represent how the insurer - someone that is trying to maximize their own profit (again, something I disagree with) - would view the situation.
They need to mitigate their own financial risk somehow if they are to make a profit, presumably this will take the form of charging low risk clients (young healthy people) less than high risk clients (old, sick, or old sick people).
There is a really common complaint that I've seen a lot about the new provisions. And that is that it is financially a better choice to remain uninsured and pay the financial penalty until such time that you are sick. When you become really sick, then you should apply for insurance. This whole argument is based on the idea that taking out insurance only when you will use it will cost you the same as if you took out insurance years before.
I have to believe that this is not the way it works, but I don't honestly know. This is why I'm asking.
As for your question "Should you really pay less because you've been lucky enough to enjoy good health?" I don't think so, and that's why I support socialized, state-run medical coverage for all. But, if you were a for-profit, publicly traded health insurance company, then you'd financially foolish to think otherwise. Or, at least, I don't understand the economics behind any other decision.
I've seen a lot of people talking about the clause that says that insurance companies cannot deny you insurance for pre-existing conditions.
One thing that's never clear to me is whether they are allowed to charge you a premium for pre-existing conditions. I assume yes: can anyone enlighten me?
For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One is a smoker that has had cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life. In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge him outrageous premiums to cover their risk.
Now, the insurance companies cannot turn him away. But, they can still charge higher premiums, right? It would make no sense to me if each of these guys was paying the same price, but this seems that most comments about the issue are suggesting that they would be the same price.
For reference, I've been comparing it to car insurance. If I have a perfect drivers record (clean bill of health) I should be able to buy cheap insurance. If I have gotten a few tickets, or into a no-fault accident (pre-existing condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a little more. If I have a sports car and live in a bad neighborhood (chronic condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a lot more. If I got drunk and crashed into a pizza hut (pre-existing condition that could be controlled: smoking, obesity due to lifestyle, heavy drug user), I should be able to buy insurance, but either with heavily reduced coverage or dramatically higher premiums.
Is this how it works with medical insurance under the new rules?
I think it will never fly as discrimination. If you are dyslexic, you can claim that you have a disability, and require special accommodations. This can be verified by a qualified third party, and you can then apply for an exemption to the rule (which I assume the school will grant automatically).
I had a lengthy discussion with some of our field engineers, and a few of our customers, about a year ago about how they use the documentation to troubleshoot problems. My main goal was to see if there was something that we could do to get customers to read the docs more (and call support less).
Eventually, someone cut to the heart of the issue from there side. Basically, he said "Do you know how much I pay each year for my support contract? No? Well, it's a lot. If I have any problems that don't fix themselves in under five minutes, I'm going to pick up the phone and call you. I'm paying you to support me if I have trouble, I shouldn't have to troubleshoot it myself."
I prefer a generic email address if at all possible. yourname@{gmail | hotmail | yahoo}.com or something like that.
Anything crazy before the @ is bad news. I don't mind too much what comes after the @, with one exception. If you have a domain that I am not familiar with (for example, yourname.com) I am going to go and check out whats there, and I *will* judge you on what I find.
Specifically if it includes anything non-professional. yourname@yourname.com is perfectly ok, as long as yourname.com isn't a website about torrents, nakedness, complaining about your previous boss, doing anything at all with questionable legality, etc. in which case it becomes as bad as seeing yourname@{istealsoftware | lookatmenaked | ihatemyboss | chronic4life }.com
I moved to France last year and was pleasantly surprised at the ISPs attitudes towards sharing wifi.
My provider, Free.fr, by default enables guest access on my router. However, it's not completely open. In order to access the connect, you must enter your account details (login and password), and then you are given access to a limited connection. Should you not want to share your connection with other people, you can easily disable this feature; but doing so also disables your account from being able to access roaming wifi.
I really love that the community sharing feature is enabled by default. As long as I'm willing to share my connection with other subscribers, then I get access to their bandwidth when I'm away from home. And, as one of the larger providers in the area, this means I have access from just about anywhere I go.
Slashdot Mirror
I've run into this a lot; in dorms, in a house with other mates from uni, at work, and so on.
Here are some things that work for me:
- If you can afford it, noise canceling headphones are awesome. If you put yourself in a quiet place, they help a huge amount. Expensive though.
- Always have ear plugs in your bag. They are small, and you can use them in a pinch. Super good for exam situations where things are quiet anyway and you just want to block out that guy who keeps clicking his pen.
- Go to a hardware store, and find the ear protection section. For 20-40$ you should be able to find industrial grade ear protection. This works really, really well; and lasts longer than ear plugs. These are more effective than bose noise canceling headphones, but less comfy and won't play music.
Note that all of the above will only lessen the sounds around you; if you are already in a loud place, it won't make it silent. Which leads me to my next piece of advice:
Go somewhere else. I still have to do this to this day. There is a quiet, distraction free place somewhere on campus where you can go. You have to find it though. I ended up with a collection of about 6 places that were generally super quiet.
You'll also want to find places that are distraction free in other ways too (eg. a desk in a basement at the end of a hall; there was nothing there but what I brought with me, and very few people ever came by). Try to avoid populous study areas; there are other distractions there. Extra good if you can find somewhere that's not too far from a toilet for those long study sessions. If I had to walk too far to find a bathroom, it would take me 10 minutes to get there, and 90 to get back on account of interesting everything.
Music that you can't process. In my case it was chinese pop music, or very loud punk rock. Experiment with different things, you'll probably find something that your brain considers passive background noise. Note that it's not enough to simply change the language or find something without words. I'll happily hum along to classical, and I have no problem singing along to bhangra music. I'd suggest looking at pop music from other cultures, or genre's that are known to be loud and noisy.
Watch the chemicals. Getting the right amount of caffeine is a tricky balance. Obviously it keeps you awake, which is a plus. But having a hit can help sharpen your mind to the work at hand a little bit. Having too much will end up being a huge distraction.
Have a refocus point. Eventually you're mind is going to wander, I found it was helpful to have something that brought it back. Some people use excercise, or a smoke break for this. For me, I printed a little sign that I would stick at eye level that read simple "GRADUATE". Whenever my mind went, this little sign would act as a mental kick in the pants. Most times I could pull it together and get back to the task at hand. Maybe after a few breathes, or something.
Know when to quit. If it's just not working; stop. Take a break (ideally, a limited break; like having no more than three printed sheets of sudoku in your bag), or just switch tasks and come back in a bit.
It is streamed: https://developers.google.com/events/io/
Most of the talks will be available on YouTube following the event as well.
This was actually a feature of Facebook for a while, at least when I joined up. The number one driver for me to create an account on facebook was that I already had a sort of ghost account created by the people I knew. Even though I didn't have an account, people could still tag me in photos (prompting an email), view collections of photos that I'd been tagged in, and a few other basic functions. I joined solely so that I could change my privacy settings.
Gotcha -- thanks for that.
However, that still has a workflow where you edit my file directly, and diffs are tracked by revisions. Is there anyway to make it so that I have to accept/reject changes, or where changes are managed on a change-by-change basis?
As for passing copies of files around, I think it's a fine workaround to put a doc on a file share, in sharepoint, or in source control. Google Docs is actually way better for simultaneous collaboration though, I have to agree with that.
"Usually she agrees, but not always, and she can always see exactly what I did and easily revert what she doesn't like."
How?!
I've started using it a ton for collaboration, but I haven't been able to find a reasonable replacement for Track Changes that you'd find in Word.
Sure, I can comment, or I can just change the text. But, if I want to make changes to the text and have someone be able to see what was changed and accept/reject, I can't seem to do that.
I think Microsoft's strategy is to generate revenue by accepting licensing payments from android manufacturers. This is good for their bottom line as they are making steady income from other people.
Apple's strategy, I think, is to damage their competitors. By keeping android in court, they are hurting sales numbers directly (samsung products being banned for sale, even for just a few months), or indirectly (third party developers question whether android is the right platform; manufacturers reducing their focus on android phones).
They aren't making any money directly from their legal action, but if you look at the whole picture, I'll bet they are doing at least as well as Microsoft. The iPhone still has a hefty market share - which is important for Apple because they make the bulk of their iPhone related money on the iTunes store commissions. If they took licensing payments instead, they would get some money from the manufacturers, but potentially lose their cut on movies, music, apps, etc.
Given the restrictions that you have (keep doing what you're doing, but more advanced) then I would suggest one of two things.
[1] Change to a completely new set of problems. If you've been working in business software, change to games. In this way you will still be doing dev, but the kinds of problems that you are trying to solve will be completely different, which will lead to new challenges.
[2] Try changing up the 'how' of what you're doing. For example, look for a team that's using scrum methodology, or test-driven-development. Alternately, new tools, programming languages, platforms (Mostly focussing on windows? Go mac/mobile/unix/web.). Even just somewhere with a vastly different release cycle could be interesting - by last employer measured their dev cycles in years; my current employer in weeks. If you put the focus on the skills, instead of the work, it can be really rewarding. See Software Craftsman movement for related inspiration in this direction.
[3] Move. I'm on my third country now, and I can tell you that doing the same thing in a different country totally changes the game. French engineers do not think the same way as Canadian engineers. So much of our work is about problem solving, and being able to transform real world problems into software. It's been very cool to working through a problem with someone with a totally different world view.
To use an analogy: You are a great French chef; you've worked in a wide range of sit down restaurants from very small to very large. And you've always felt successful, but you now feel you're only option is to start your own business. I'm recommending that you [1] go work at a japanese restaurant, [2] try a catering company or 'fast food', or [3] try working in Vietnam.
Have you considered hiring a Technical Writer on contract?
From the work you describe, someone with the right experience should be able to pull all of that together for you in about a month -- maybe a bit longer to make sure that it's usable for you in the long term. Writers spend a lot their time summarizing, re-organizing, and pulling together disjointed pieces of information. I'd consider hiring someone to get you running, and then having them show you a few things for how to keep the wheels greased in the long term.
It'll cost a bit extra, but it's likely to get done faster than if you DIY, and you won't have to take as much time off from your existing IT duties.
There was a similar article from Bruce Perens a few years back: http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/1633200/How-Many-Open-Source-Licenses-Do-You-Need
He describes his reasons differently, but arrives at the same conclusions. For those of you worried about the missing option of the BSD license, he does talk about this a little bit. But only a little bit -- it's quite a short article. Worth a read for an alternate take of the same point of view.
That Yahoo article was a nice summary. Thanks for the link.
I can tell you what happened, at least from the people I know in doc and training.
You mostly got it right, btw.
Documentation used to be a big investment area.
Then training came along. Training made money; Documentation cost money.
Companies started by de-investing in doc, and investing heavily in training departments.
After a while, organizations would start to ask their doc teams to intentionally include less information so that customers would be 'encouraged' to buy training.
But, there was a problem. Where did the training teams get their information from?
Documentation.
Documentation fills the role of a primary researcher for the training departments. They know what's going into the product, how it is supposed to work, and what it actually does as soon as the product is released. Training teams follow a several month lag, as they need to train what's installed on the customers site, not what's in development. Without the source material coming from Doc, it's a lot harder for trainers to pull together great content. They now have to do both the primary and secondary research, but with the added difficulty that the developers are now working on the *next* iteration, and aren't really that interested in talking about the last release.
"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"
When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out.
A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?'
The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.
Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.
Let's be open here -- these people were highly educated, yes, but where they using their education in this role?
I think not.
What they were doing was simply reading through mounds of material looking for something that could be interesting to the case. It requires some deduction, some common sense, a good grasp of the concepts of the problems they are trying to solve, etc. But, it does not require a law degree. This is grunt work. One could easily imagine a situation where several legal assistants do the same work, and report into a senior person who really does need that education.
From other job sectors, one could make this distinction between Nurses and Doctors. (Yes, i know Nurses are also skilled, but not as much so as a Doctor for most definitions of 'Nurse'). You don't need your MD to answer a slough of 'Does this rash look funny to you?' questions at a health clinic. Just a simple 'No, put this cream on it' or 'OMG, what did you do? You need to see a Doctor' will suffice. Four good nurses and one doctor is as effective as 5 doctors for most family style medicine, and a heck of a lot cheaper.
Or, closer to home, you don't need someone with a degree and 6 certifications to work Tier 1 tech support. Tier 2 or 3, perhaps. But not Tier 1.
This does make some sense, if you think about it.
Apple charges a 30% tarrif on things sold through their store. Part of this is the cost that the developer pays to have crazy amounts of customer visibility. (Think: Walmart takes a cut to cover operational costs, and their own profits, in trade, the manufacturer gets a ton of views.)
So, the last thing that Apple, as a company, will want to do is allow you, as a manufacturer, the ability to use Apple's platform to give away an app that is essentially a platform of it's own. Amazon, as an example, will give away the app on the appstore, and take 100% of the profit through their own book site. They get all of the benefits of Apple's appstore, without any of the costs.
I don't know about savings ads for a long time, but I would love a queue of the last 100 ads that I've seen pass my screen.
So many times I've clicked a link on a web page and at the last second seen some interesting looking ad out of the corner of my eye. When I hit back on the browser, the random-ad-generator hates me, and won't show what I've just been looking at.
Sounds stupid, but it would be really super useful.
Slashdot is actually one of the biggest offenders here (that, and a few of the webcomics I frequent).
Yes, I have the "Disable Advertising" option.
No, I don't use it.
That was a really great summary -- thanks for that.
Please be aware that we don't have 'Free Speech' laws in Canada like those protected by the First Amendment in the USA.
What we have instead is a freedom of expression (Section 2b of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms). The Freedom of Expression is very similar, but not quite as wide reaching as those rights protected by the 1st Amendment in the US Constitution.
One of the subtle differences is that you are free to express anything you like, as long as neither the message, nor the means of conveying that message, is considered illegal under another law. There aren't many cases where another law infringes on the freedom of expression, but one notable example is the Canadian Hate Crimes laws, which prohibit the proliferation of hate material based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc.
Back in 2006: Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
And again in 2000: Hawking on Earth's Lifespan
The comment about the 'Top 10 brands' in the post is very misleading.
"...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading worldwide brands don't display on the iPad..."
What is actually demonstrated is that "...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading [LUXURY] brands don't display on the iPad..."
The top 10 brands (listed here: http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx) are:
Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, McDonalds, Google, Toyota, Intel, Disney
The top 10 luxury brands reviewed in the article are:
Prada, Fendi, Moet, Cartier, Hennessy, Rolex, Channel, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton
Could we get a summary correction to specify that it's actually the Luxury brands that are looked at, not 'normal' brands? I think it's a pretty important distinction, as the luxury brands likely have much less traffic, and have traditionally not been designed for content consumption but are more advertising platforms.
OK, for the record, I agree with you.
The entire premise of a for-profit health insurance system makes no sense to me. Based upon the vitriolic response, I guess I didn't make that clear enough in the previous post -- sorry about that. *waves socialist peace flag*
What I'm wondering about, is how the American system will function. As a non-American (Canadian living in France), I really don't have any idea.
In only one of my examples (the drunk driver) do I place any blame on the insured. In all other cases, I'm trying to represent how the insurer - someone that is trying to maximize their own profit (again, something I disagree with) - would view the situation.
They need to mitigate their own financial risk somehow if they are to make a profit, presumably this will take the form of charging low risk clients (young healthy people) less than high risk clients (old, sick, or old sick people).
There is a really common complaint that I've seen a lot about the new provisions. And that is that it is financially a better choice to remain uninsured and pay the financial penalty until such time that you are sick. When you become really sick, then you should apply for insurance. This whole argument is based on the idea that taking out insurance only when you will use it will cost you the same as if you took out insurance years before.
I have to believe that this is not the way it works, but I don't honestly know. This is why I'm asking.
As for your question "Should you really pay less because you've been lucky enough to enjoy good health?"
I don't think so, and that's why I support socialized, state-run medical coverage for all. But, if you were a for-profit, publicly traded health insurance company, then you'd financially foolish to think otherwise. Or, at least, I don't understand the economics behind any other decision.
I've seen a lot of people talking about the clause that says that insurance companies cannot deny you insurance for pre-existing conditions.
One thing that's never clear to me is whether they are allowed to charge you a premium for pre-existing conditions. I assume yes: can anyone enlighten me?
For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One is a smoker that has had cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life.
In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge him outrageous premiums to cover their risk.
Now, the insurance companies cannot turn him away. But, they can still charge higher premiums, right?
It would make no sense to me if each of these guys was paying the same price, but this seems that most comments about the issue are suggesting that they would be the same price.
For reference, I've been comparing it to car insurance.
If I have a perfect drivers record (clean bill of health) I should be able to buy cheap insurance.
If I have gotten a few tickets, or into a no-fault accident (pre-existing condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a little more.
If I have a sports car and live in a bad neighborhood (chronic condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a lot more.
If I got drunk and crashed into a pizza hut (pre-existing condition that could be controlled: smoking, obesity due to lifestyle, heavy drug user), I should be able to buy insurance, but either with heavily reduced coverage or dramatically higher premiums.
Is this how it works with medical insurance under the new rules?
I think it will never fly as discrimination.
If you are dyslexic, you can claim that you have a disability, and require special accommodations. This can be verified by a qualified third party, and you can then apply for an exemption to the rule (which I assume the school will grant automatically).
I had a lengthy discussion with some of our field engineers, and a few of our customers, about a year ago about how they use the documentation to troubleshoot problems. My main goal was to see if there was something that we could do to get customers to read the docs more (and call support less).
Eventually, someone cut to the heart of the issue from there side. Basically, he said "Do you know how much I pay each year for my support contract? No? Well, it's a lot. If I have any problems that don't fix themselves in under five minutes, I'm going to pick up the phone and call you. I'm paying you to support me if I have trouble, I shouldn't have to troubleshoot it myself."
I prefer a generic email address if at all possible. yourname@{gmail | hotmail | yahoo}.com or something like that.
Anything crazy before the @ is bad news.
I don't mind too much what comes after the @, with one exception. If you have a domain that I am not familiar with (for example, yourname.com) I am going to go and check out whats there, and I *will* judge you on what I find.
Specifically if it includes anything non-professional. yourname@yourname.com is perfectly ok, as long as yourname.com isn't a website about torrents, nakedness, complaining about your previous boss, doing anything at all with questionable legality, etc. in which case it becomes as bad as seeing yourname@{istealsoftware | lookatmenaked | ihatemyboss | chronic4life }.com
I moved to France last year and was pleasantly surprised at the ISPs attitudes towards sharing wifi.
My provider, Free.fr, by default enables guest access on my router. However, it's not completely open.
In order to access the connect, you must enter your account details (login and password), and then you are given access to a limited connection.
Should you not want to share your connection with other people, you can easily disable this feature; but doing so also disables your account from being able to access roaming wifi.
I really love that the community sharing feature is enabled by default.
As long as I'm willing to share my connection with other subscribers, then I get access to their bandwidth when I'm away from home. And, as one of the larger providers in the area, this means I have access from just about anywhere I go.