Standing around the kitchen, they smarmily chat about their own parties and offer tips for hosting a Windows 7 party. They toss their heads back and smugly laugh at each other's comments with that I-could-kill-you-with-this-cheese-knife look on their faces.
You keep hoping, searching desperately in the 6-minute, 14-second clip for some relief: A joke. A mass murder. Porn. SOMETHING.
I didn't know that but I don't think it changes the point of the comment.
Those features were added to the Unix system so that people wouldn't have to write out scripts to do those features every time. So if people nowadays had to use perl to implement the functionality of the cat command it would be a bad thing.
The usability of software for a given function can be increased until the point where features get in the way of the work. I think to most average users Linux crosses that line in some areas and falls short in others. So does Microsoft software but not as often on the short side. The ease of use (real world general usability) of the features for basic everyday tasks is a priority, not the highest obviously, but a higher one than with most linux distrobutions. Lately there has been some attempts at fixing this but as a whole I think they have a long way to go to be overall on the same page.
User satisfaction with software is inversely proportional to how much work they must do - how many separate actions they must take - to accomplish something.
Yes.
I.e., competently designed software obsoletes the user, making user acceptance testing extraneous.
No.
Competently designed software allows users to do the tasks they have to do without unnecessarily complicated actions and time wasting steps. That's why we don't code in MS Word and do excel spreadsheets in machine language within emacs. We could use those methods but the software has been written that allows us to do them better. The software does not do it for us and it cannot create as varied an output as is capable from humans yet. So the software should not get in the way of the user and should help perform tasks. The STFU method tells us that if a group of users strugled to find a simple or easy feature to perform a task, the software may need to be adjusted. Perhaps just the GUI color or menu label, but if the people out there cannot find something or have trouble doing a task that the software can perform if they just new how. There is a problem. More training is easy to prescribe but it can be avoided for good promotion of user experiences. How many times have people fixed a linux distro to make it easier to do a task. Cat, Grep, etc. Rather than programming in perl all the time to get basic features, these tools have been added to make it easier. Same thing in the GUI world. Make it easier and it is more useful.
"I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice" Perhaps, but how do you do that and keep the study valid?
By the history and diagnosis of the patients as terminally ill entering a study and having reactions. It's not being presented here that it would allow the statistics to be directly entered with the rest of the data since these are extreme cases. But if you can say that so many people that were terminally ill lasted well beyond their estimated time of death VS those that did not recieve treatment. That's just added data for the study isn't it? And you get to possibly help people or at least give them hope.
"*(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)" That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests.
Seriously, people have been dealing with these issues forever. It's a hard one for people who actually understand the science process and the value of good studies.
First I really don't know what you mean by "That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests." I'm not mocking or joking, I really don't get that sentence for the most part. But to the "not a good overall tests" If that's not good for overall testing then I didn't say it was, just that I didn't want to offend others that may think I was saying to perform more animal testing and get off topic. I didn't want to bring that into this.
Just because people have been dealing with these issues doesn't mean that they are doing it right and couldn't benifite from some outside perspective once in a while. There are some benifits in PR to be had from opening these up for earlier testing since the alternative is so grave.
Then there's the flip side of that coin. I'm sure someone will remember the movie but the point stands as a reasonable example.
The trials have to have a baseline or control group usually and that means a placebo or no treatement for those unlucky ones in the trial.
So you have a group that is suffering from an ailment and they get into a trial and then don't get treated anyway. So while the drug was being delevoped and during the testing and all the way up until it is released to market, the person doesn't get treatment. This can take decades for some companies although 12 years is common. During that time people will have died. If the drug is worth anything and would have saved lives, a percentage of that number are those that drug testing didn't save during the trials.
I'm not saying that the trials are completely heartless or wrong, but that there are multiple sides and perspectives that have to be addressed in this issue.
Holy crap. Your post actually proved your point about waiting and testing, or in your case proof reading.:)
But your point is a small one if that in the perspective of medical testing. I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice. There is quite a large number of people out there that are terminally ill and suffering. They are looking forward to death to get away from the pain and drug induced mental state that they are prescribed to try and combat that pain. The choices in front of them are:
1. Take enough pain medication to dull the pain to a tolerable level and miss out on life since it's a trip now.
2. Try and tolerate the pain to be able to remember and converse with those they love but in doing so have to watch the looks on their faces as they see such pain and suffering. (also the PAIN can cause blackouts depending on the conditions)
3. Get in a drug trial to possibly have an extended period of lucidity and responsiveness to pain medications/treatments that would possibly extend their life.
Given an educated choice when not even in that much pain I think that prohibiting those that would from entering into the testing phases is not an easy choice. You'll have the get rich crackpots that think Draino will cure cancer and want to do the trials but a basic first level test would weed out the vast majority of those so that the others could start testing on the human equivalent * sooner and then move to human testing before thousands die without a chance. The cost of the basic screening and the choice of those that would offer their last months or years for the possibility would be a good thing I would think. *(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)
You actually think that they have no record of a serial number of the device that your account is linked to? How would they send you the books you purchased? Your account is tied to the device so you can use it. That's not any more "tracking" than your cell phone company does to give you the calls to your cell phone. They have "activated" it to be tied to your account.
Just as Amazon should be able to have the accout owner log in online and enter in their username/password and validate a captcha to disable ther device. They purchased it didn't they? It's tied to their credit card to be able to buy books with it right? So If you can make a binding purchase with the devices authentication and that is enough for them to charge your credit card, isn't it enough verification for them to disable the device?
"Do not seek medical care if you are not ill or have mild symptoms for which you would not ordinarily seek medical care. If you have more severe symptoms of fever, cough, sore throat, body aches or are feeling more seriously ill, call your health care provider to discuss your symptoms and if you need to be evaluated."
But that's not really the reason the numbers are different.
An estimated one third of the world's population (or 500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to 0.1% in other influenza pandemics. Total deaths were estimated at 50 million (5-7) and were arguably as high as 100 million.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as on August 21, there have been 1,799 deaths in total 182,000 laboratory confirmed cases across the world, which makes 0.9 per cent the mortality rate across the world.
But the stats are not all that clear taken as a whole. From the same article:
With 584 deaths, Brazil tops the list of countries reporting fatalities due to the H1N1 virus. The mortality rate in Brazil is 0.29 per cent. However, if one takes into consideration the 5,206 laboratory confirmed cases, the mortality rate is 10 per cent -- much higher than India's.
I think that the article is trying to say that "fewer than 83 percent" means that the remaining percentage is the "fewer", AKA the 17 percent. I'm hopeful that it's just a case of poor wording, as it wouldn't be an effective test or really news worthy other than a study if it got 83% false positives. Making the actual testing device seems to give credit to the idea that it is a mis-statement of the results.
They have policies for both advance notice and missed flights. They also have policies for connections, customs, linked flights and late cancelations which are under 1hr for most.
Overbooking and Involuntary Bumping on U.S. Airlines U.S. airlines are allowed to overbook flights to allow for "no-show" passengers. However, if passengers are involuntarily bumped, airlines are required to do ask for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for compensation. Most involuntarily bumped passengers are subject to the following minimum compensation schedule:
-There is no compensation if alternative transportation gets the passenger to the destination within one hour of the original scheduled arrival.
-The equivalent of the passenger's one way fare up to a maximum of $400 for substitute domestic flights that arrive between one and two hours after the original scheduled arrival time or for substitute international flights that arrive between one and four hours after the original scheduled arrival time.
-If the substitute transportation is scheduled to get you to your destination more than two hours later (four hours internationally), or if the airline does not make any substitute travel arrangements for you, the compensation doubles to a maximum of $800.
So the most they would have to pay (in money not PR) would be $800. Even if your ticket was $2000 they are only required to refund you $800. They also have sections for voluntary bumping but it's pretty much between you and the airline and not a regulation.
They would most likely try and go out of their way to keep you happy but allowing the situation to begin with is a bet against people using their services 100% Sometimes I'm sure they lose out to keep some customers happy but it's not the same as honoring the purchase of a flight when it's advertised at a certain price for a certain time. Small print notwithstanding.
"I don't think that's accurate. For starters, your description of the airline's policy is wrong:"
I don't think so.
"They sold the tickets to those 1% and get the money whether they show up or not."
No. They get a portion of that money since almost every one of the major airlines have missed flight policies that charges the customer the difference between the ticket price they paid and the "ticket desk price" for the next flight if they want in addition to a standard change fee if the airline charges one. South West does not have a change fee so you only have to pay the difference in what you already paid and the new ticket. If you can fly out a day later the difference is pretty small. In the neighborhood of 20 bucks from PHX to SEA.
This is very similar to the ISP method of just delaying your data since you still get it, just a bit later due to their capping or limiting. Although not really the way they advertise, price or sell their plans.
"Second, overbooking doesn't make the top 10 list of things that airlines do to make people mad. Why? They ask for volunteers and offer incentives to be bumped. If no one jumps, they increase the incentive. Even on a small plane that's the last chance to get home before Christmas, someone will volunteer once their price is reached. I would be pissed if I were involuntarily bumped, but so far they've been smart enough to make that not happen."
Fair enough. They offer encentives to take the edge off. I personally think that it's not really voluntary, since if no one agreed to it, they would have to cancel the last purchased ticket (unless it was 1st class:)
We overbook our flights to save you money because some poeple don't show. So for that 1% that hurt our business we have to lie and sell you a service that we cannot possibly deliver on.
Just like the ISPs that overbook their network by selling a service that they could never deliver if all the poeple decided to show up at once and try and use their tier of 10/1.5 or whatever they pay for every month.
So the bet that not everybody will use the service doesn't pay off when some people regularly try and use what they have purchased. They get turned away at the gate or get 1/3rd of the service they paid for or even just get cut off. All for paying for a service and thinking that they have a right to use it.
I think that all of those flash physics games are about as popular as educational games get before they require a long lead in. You can do the first few levels of fantastic contraption and get the basics, then have fun and compare solutions. The replayability is good too. Since you can set up your own rules for beating levels again. All water, no power, etc. There are a couple good ones out there that have a real following.
The next step is those that require an investment to get to know the environment. These have a higher payoff as the storyline plays out but they require a lot more attention and time in the beginning and have to be engaging. That's the hard part. To get the person to stay long enough to become invested in the characters or cause while teaching them how to manuver and build up a playing stratagy to advance into the real meat of the game.
And it doesn't even matter if his "...radio communications were never followed..."
He could have been talking over some important directions, or distracting from critical legitimate communications, or if someone thought that it was him and ignored a real direction it is the same thing. He's an idiot on their frequency, thereby endangering the passengers.
Kinda the point of your argument. You don't like my attitude but won't even admit my point of view exists as a rational response to the environment my position requires. You don't even allow for the experiences of the other posters to mean that what we are going through exists since you haven't been there at those jobs. Couldn't you at least think for a second that there are jobs out there that are designed to be unseen and that are at the same time, very important in an immediate sense. That others couldn't step in and do if needed within a company.
So let's take a look at where you are coming from:
"You think the Quality Assurance department gets congratulated when federal regulators don't decide to cite violations"
If they have a good year and meet their goals, yes I think they get congratulated. They should, I hate bad products as much as anybody. The QA department at my work does get the praise when they have no issues. They get an award that they had no problems with the quality control system and no systems had to be recalled or modified after production. It saved the company so much money that they got a freakin party.
"You think the equipment engineers get congratulated when their systems don't breakdown on high volume three shifts per day production lines?"
I think that it's not one person in charge of those machines and they have layers between the engineers and the actual production machines that are built by seperate manufacturing companies that may warranty their products. If a machine fails on the line multiple people are responsible for the maintenance, upkeep, usage and design. It's not all on one person's shoulders. I also think that if a company has a long run of uptime on a line then the employees see a reward. I haven't personally worked on a line but I do think that they occasionally get a pizza party if they do well for a year. I have worked near the line maintenance crew and the boss would take the guys out for a beer or get them gift certificates to the movies if they worked hard to get a machine back up quickly.
"You think the hospital systems engineer gets congratulated when their nurse alarm systems don't fail resulting in patient death?"
I do think that those systems are infinitely less complex and require much less daily weekly and monthly updates, patches, repairs and redesigns. I am not trying to minimize the importance of those systems and the necessity that they be kept working, or even the responsibilities that those people have, but I do think that they are a hell of a lot more static in their use than the servers you are trying to compare them to. They have a lot fewer security updates pushed out by the manufacturer and much less of a load on them from day to day users. Less change and less complexity lend to less problems and less downtime. I do agree though that if one failed it would look pretty bad but again it isn't about just the negative. I have heard of those systems saving lives and the staff, as well as the systems and their designers are in the paper or on the company newsletter that month if it was a heroic event. I have saved the companies millions of dollars and other sysadmins have probably saved lives by keeping systems running or getting them back on line in time for the hospitals and emergency rooms but it's all on the back end. There's a tenuous connection at best in the minds of the management. But that connection is as solid as any other piece of the puzzle and the recognition is missing since the understanding isn't important to the rest of the departments. It just has to work for them to do their jobs. We as system admins have to understand what all the departments want and give them the ability to do as close to that as physically possible but they don't try and understand the hurdles and complexities that are required to get them those services.
"Where is the manufacturing appreciation day?"
They have jobs where if one person doesn't show up to work the business keeps going if something goes wrong on the
No, the point is that the people who know how to make the integral parts of the system that glues all of the other positions together and lets it function, should be getting as much recognition on a company wide basis as say, the secratary. Who has an appreciation day.
To say that the people who spend years carefully crafting systems that have contradictory requirements and multiple departmental roles are just and only as important as every other department in a company is overly idealistic. Yes, everybody should be equally appreciated. But that's not the real world and you should be ashamed of using that fallacy of an argument on slashdot.
The point is that there are people that get blamed if something goes wrong but not congradulated if everything works perfectly for months on end. There are jobs out there that the sole purpose is to make it seem like the position is not needed by making the system have no problems on the user side. There are jobs where people work until the 7am hours of the morning monday so that everybody can come in and not notice that the entire server cluster has been moved to a new version since the old one had security holes and Microsoft released an updated OS.
Saying things like: "IT is no more or less important than the functions of a company that produce, design, and sell their product."
Is like going to your boss and saying that their job is no more or less important than the custodial crew and why are they compensated so much more than them.
You really think you'll have a job if they don't think you're joking? Are you that out of touch with the real world that you think that those idealistic arguments hold any water?
The stock holders know nothing about what OS service pack or Linux Kernel the servers are running. They see the reports of other departments sometimes blaming the IT department for downtime or cost overruns. Unforseen increases of budget, without the explination of what worm, patch, or user error caused the initial problem.
This is the problem with the industry. The whole job of the sysadmin is to make him/herself not seen. To make it look like the systems are fine and running smoothly. Any reports that there are problems are like any other department reporting that something they are doing broke and is going to cost the company money. Like the marketing department comming the the president and saying that the next few weeks are going to be problematic because the graphics department is not working on new designes since they all need to be replaced with designers with faster fingers so in the future they won't be too slow.
There's usually no middleground between the IT department having a problem and the boss/users seeing it immediatly. It doesn't get to go the the IT manager and get fixed at that level. Everybody sees or hears about the problem when it happens. Very publicly. But when was the last time you heard anybody say that the IT department at your work did a good job upgrading or migrating a server?
You are probably just as guilty of widening the devide between departmental appreciation. Most businesses that are not completely computer centric are guilty of this. Since I know quite a few sysadmins and I haven't heard that any of their jobs were appreciative, I'd say that your statements and theirs help to prove that this day is not even given the lip service it was intended to create. Is it too hard for you people to admit that the ones who make everything easier should get a little nod, instead, we get the arguments and belittling that our jobs are just the same as everybody elses.
Without all of the other reasons the professionals need the servers, there are others that also need them. Say if the google servers go down. Not only will google suffer but the dependent users and other third party positions that utilize those informational sources.
Now the other extreme, say your companies servers go down, you will be unable to log in to your computer if it is a domain. You will be unable to get into outlook since exchange is down. (assuming a windows environment here since it's easier for other non sys admins to fix)
We haven't even gotten into the backup proceedures and data management yet. Even database admins need the servers to have redundant power supplies, raid and offsite backups or the data they manipulate will be gone. Now do you think that they will manage these things and keep everything running smoothly if their SQL box goes down?
So saying that " without other professions to do the actual work of your company, there's not even a need for you and your servers."
It's kind of like saying that without people to need air, what's the purpose of air? It's not just a direct link to the professional people inside a company, it's all the interwoven ties outside the company and all of the consumers and all of the people who use the data that relies or comes from those servers ten steps away that are effected.
You order a book from amazon: you went through your local ISP routing servers, the backbone of the internet, their local ISP, their servers, their credit card processing servers, your banks servers, the shipping company servers, etc...
come on. Someone keeps all these things talking together and the first time you can't access your online banking site you complain. When do you say thanks. Just a thanks, good job keeping these things up with more regularity than most people do in their jobs. We're on call all the time and expected to keep it all up with five nines since that's what gets advertised to the managers.
Slashdot Mirror
From the link:
Standing around the kitchen, they smarmily chat about their own parties and offer tips for hosting a Windows 7 party. They toss their heads back and smugly laugh at each other's comments with that I-could-kill-you-with-this-cheese-knife look on their faces.
You keep hoping, searching desperately in the 6-minute, 14-second clip for some relief: A joke. A mass murder. Porn. SOMETHING.
I didn't know that but I don't think it changes the point of the comment.
Those features were added to the Unix system so that people wouldn't have to write out scripts to do those features every time. So if people nowadays had to use perl to implement the functionality of the cat command it would be a bad thing.
The usability of software for a given function can be increased until the point where features get in the way of the work.
I think to most average users Linux crosses that line in some areas and falls short in others. So does Microsoft software but not as often on the short side. The ease of use (real world general usability) of the features for basic everyday tasks is a priority, not the highest obviously, but a higher one than with most linux distrobutions. Lately there has been some attempts at fixing this but as a whole I think they have a long way to go to be overall on the same page.
User satisfaction with software is inversely proportional to how much work they must do - how many separate actions they must take - to accomplish something.
Yes.
I.e., competently designed software obsoletes the user, making user acceptance testing extraneous.
No.
Competently designed software allows users to do the tasks they have to do without unnecessarily complicated actions and time wasting steps. That's why we don't code in MS Word and do excel spreadsheets in machine language within emacs. We could use those methods but the software has been written that allows us to do them better. The software does not do it for us and it cannot create as varied an output as is capable from humans yet. So the software should not get in the way of the user and should help perform tasks. The STFU method tells us that if a group of users strugled to find a simple or easy feature to perform a task, the software may need to be adjusted. Perhaps just the GUI color or menu label, but if the people out there cannot find something or have trouble doing a task that the software can perform if they just new how. There is a problem. More training is easy to prescribe but it can be avoided for good promotion of user experiences. How many times have people fixed a linux distro to make it easier to do a task. Cat, Grep, etc. Rather than programming in perl all the time to get basic features, these tools have been added to make it easier. Same thing in the GUI world. Make it easier and it is more useful.
What did he just tell you? STFU!
"I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice"
Perhaps, but how do you do that and keep the study valid?
By the history and diagnosis of the patients as terminally ill entering a study and having reactions. It's not being presented here that it would allow the statistics to be directly entered with the rest of the data since these are extreme cases. But if you can say that so many people that were terminally ill lasted well beyond their estimated time of death VS those that did not recieve treatment. That's just added data for the study isn't it? And you get to possibly help people or at least give them hope.
"*(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)"
That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests.
Seriously, people have been dealing with these issues forever. It's a hard one for people who actually understand the science process and the value of good studies.
First I really don't know what you mean by "That's very nmoce for certian tests, but not a good overall tests."
I'm not mocking or joking, I really don't get that sentence for the most part. But to the "not a good overall tests" If that's not good for overall testing then I didn't say it was, just that I didn't want to offend others that may think I was saying to perform more animal testing and get off topic. I didn't want to bring that into this.
Just because people have been dealing with these issues doesn't mean that they are doing it right and couldn't benifite from some outside perspective once in a while. There are some benifits in PR to be had from opening these up for earlier testing since the alternative is so grave.
Then there's the flip side of that coin. I'm sure someone will remember the movie but the point stands as a reasonable example.
The trials have to have a baseline or control group usually and that means a placebo or no treatement for those unlucky ones in the trial.
So you have a group that is suffering from an ailment and they get into a trial and then don't get treated anyway. So while the drug was being delevoped and during the testing and all the way up until it is released to market, the person doesn't get treatment. This can take decades for some companies although 12 years is common. During that time people will have died. If the drug is worth anything and would have saved lives, a percentage of that number are those that drug testing didn't save during the trials.
I'm not saying that the trials are completely heartless or wrong, but that there are multiple sides and perspectives that have to be addressed in this issue.
Read up on it:
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm143534.htm
Holy crap. Your post actually proved your point about waiting and testing, or in your case proof reading. :)
But your point is a small one if that in the perspective of medical testing. I think that people would get a fair shake if they were allowed to participate in the medical testing phases of these drug trials and were given the choice. There is quite a large number of people out there that are terminally ill and suffering. They are looking forward to death to get away from the pain and drug induced mental state that they are prescribed to try and combat that pain. The choices in front of them are:
1. Take enough pain medication to dull the pain to a tolerable level and miss out on life since it's a trip now.
2. Try and tolerate the pain to be able to remember and converse with those they love but in doing so have to watch the looks on their faces as they see such pain and suffering. (also the PAIN can cause blackouts depending on the conditions)
3. Get in a drug trial to possibly have an extended period of lucidity and responsiveness to pain medications/treatments that would possibly extend their life.
Given an educated choice when not even in that much pain I think that prohibiting those that would from entering into the testing phases is not an easy choice. You'll have the get rich crackpots that think Draino will cure cancer and want to do the trials but a basic first level test would weed out the vast majority of those so that the others could start testing on the human equivalent * sooner and then move to human testing before thousands die without a chance. The cost of the basic screening and the choice of those that would offer their last months or years for the possibility would be a good thing I would think.
*(Human analogs need not be live animals BTW, they can be lab grown organs or cells)
"Abnormal behavior"... You know, like disagreeing with the government about what the definition of that may be.
I just have one thing to say to that.
Patriot Act.
"...any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it's true."
Now that's good science, why can't everybody stand behind this simple phrase.
It would clear a whole lot of political mudslinging up and get a better discussion of so many areas going between different perspectives.
You actually think that they have no record of a serial number of the device that your account is linked to?
How would they send you the books you purchased? Your account is tied to the device so you can use it.
That's not any more "tracking" than your cell phone company does to give you the calls to your cell phone.
They have "activated" it to be tied to your account.
Just as Amazon should be able to have the accout owner log in online and enter in their username/password and validate a captcha to disable ther device.
They purchased it didn't they? It's tied to their credit card to be able to buy books with it right? So If you can make a binding purchase with the devices authentication and that is enough for them to charge your credit card, isn't it enough verification for them to disable the device?
It's worth as much as Symantec tells you it's worth!
Ha!
Not "Had", actually.
From the Health Services website linked to from the article:
http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/preparedness/pandemicflu/swineflu.aspx
"Do not seek medical care if you are not ill or have mild symptoms for which you would not ordinarily seek medical care. If you have more severe symptoms of fever, cough, sore throat, body aches or are feeling more seriously ill, call your health care provider to discuss your symptoms and if you need to be evaluated."
But that's not really the reason the numbers are different.
To compare them from CDC stats:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no01/05-0979.htm
An estimated one third of the world's population (or 500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to 0.1% in other influenza pandemics. Total deaths were estimated at 50 million (5-7) and were arguably as high as 100 million.
Compared to the recent stats cited in the news:
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-tops-h1n1-mortality-rate/509543/
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as on August 21, there have been 1,799 deaths in total 182,000 laboratory confirmed cases across the world, which makes 0.9 per cent the mortality rate across the world.
But the stats are not all that clear taken as a whole.
From the same article:
With 584 deaths, Brazil tops the list of countries reporting fatalities due to the H1N1 virus. The mortality rate in Brazil is 0.29 per cent. However, if one takes into consideration the 5,206 laboratory confirmed cases, the mortality rate is 10 per cent -- much higher than India's.
And the countdown to a DOS via spoofing a report to symantec of malware propogation..... Begins.
Confirmed:
It's 86 percent accuracy:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gD0oDWeDtMfAYl0C5bvx6Yyd78Yg
I think that the article is trying to say that "fewer than 83 percent" means that the remaining percentage is the "fewer", AKA the 17 percent.
I'm hopeful that it's just a case of poor wording, as it wouldn't be an effective test or really news worthy other than a study if it got 83% false positives.
Making the actual testing device seems to give credit to the idea that it is a mis-statement of the results.
They have policies for both advance notice and missed flights.
They also have policies for connections, customs, linked flights and late cancelations which are under 1hr for most.
From: http://www.airsafe.com/complain/bumping.htm
Overbooking and Involuntary Bumping on U.S. Airlines
U.S. airlines are allowed to overbook flights to allow for "no-show" passengers. However, if passengers are involuntarily bumped, airlines are required to do ask for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for compensation. Most involuntarily bumped passengers are subject to the following minimum compensation schedule:
-There is no compensation if alternative transportation gets the passenger to the destination within one hour of the original scheduled arrival.
-The equivalent of the passenger's one way fare up to a maximum of $400 for substitute domestic flights that arrive between one and two hours after the original scheduled arrival time or for substitute international flights that arrive between one and four hours after the original scheduled arrival time.
-If the substitute transportation is scheduled to get you to your destination more than two hours later (four hours internationally), or if the airline does not make any substitute travel arrangements for you, the compensation doubles to a maximum of $800.
So the most they would have to pay (in money not PR) would be $800. Even if your ticket was $2000 they are only required to refund you $800.
They also have sections for voluntary bumping but it's pretty much between you and the airline and not a regulation.
They would most likely try and go out of their way to keep you happy but allowing the situation to begin with is a bet against people using their services 100%
Sometimes I'm sure they lose out to keep some customers happy but it's not the same as honoring the purchase of a flight when it's advertised at a certain price for a certain time. Small print notwithstanding.
"I don't think that's accurate. For starters, your description of the airline's policy is wrong:"
I don't think so.
"They sold the tickets to those 1% and get the money whether they show up or not."
No. They get a portion of that money since almost every one of the major airlines have missed flight policies that charges the customer the difference between the ticket price they paid and the "ticket desk price" for the next flight if they want in addition to a standard change fee if the airline charges one. South West does not have a change fee so you only have to pay the difference in what you already paid and the new ticket. If you can fly out a day later the difference is pretty small. In the neighborhood of 20 bucks from PHX to SEA.
This is very similar to the ISP method of just delaying your data since you still get it, just a bit later due to their capping or limiting. Although not really the way they advertise, price or sell their plans.
"Second, overbooking doesn't make the top 10 list of things that airlines do to make people mad. Why? They ask for volunteers and offer incentives to be bumped. If no one jumps, they increase the incentive. Even on a small plane that's the last chance to get home before Christmas, someone will volunteer once their price is reached. I would be pissed if I were involuntarily bumped, but so far they've been smart enough to make that not happen."
Fair enough. They offer encentives to take the edge off. I personally think that it's not really voluntary, since if no one agreed to it, they would have to cancel the last purchased ticket (unless it was 1st class :)
Kinda like the old overbooking of flights.
I used to see the excuse:
We overbook our flights to save you money because some poeple don't show. So for that 1% that hurt our business we have to lie and sell you a service that we cannot possibly deliver on.
Just like the ISPs that overbook their network by selling a service that they could never deliver if all the poeple decided to show up at once and try and use their tier of 10/1.5 or whatever they pay for every month.
So the bet that not everybody will use the service doesn't pay off when some people regularly try and use what they have purchased. They get turned away at the gate or get 1/3rd of the service they paid for or even just get cut off. All for paying for a service and thinking that they have a right to use it.
Little faster than that:
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Solution
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Linus committed a patch correcting this issue on 13th August 2009.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=e694958388c50148389b0e9b9e9e8945cf0f1b98
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Credit
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This bug was discovered by Tavis Ormandy and Julien Tinnes of the Google
Security Team.
I think that all of those flash physics games are about as popular as educational games get before they require a long lead in. You can do the first few levels of fantastic contraption and get the basics, then have fun and compare solutions. The replayability is good too. Since you can set up your own rules for beating levels again. All water, no power, etc. There are a couple good ones out there that have a real following.
The next step is those that require an investment to get to know the environment. These have a higher payoff as the storyline plays out but they require a lot more attention and time in the beginning and have to be engaging. That's the hard part. To get the person to stay long enough to become invested in the characters or cause while teaching them how to manuver and build up a playing stratagy to advance into the real meat of the game.
And it doesn't even matter if his "...radio communications were never followed..."
He could have been talking over some important directions, or distracting from critical legitimate communications, or if someone thought that it was him and ignored a real direction it is the same thing. He's an idiot on their frequency, thereby endangering the passengers.
Kinda the point of your argument. You don't like my attitude but won't even admit my point of view exists as a rational response to the environment my position requires. You don't even allow for the experiences of the other posters to mean that what we are going through exists since you haven't been there at those jobs. Couldn't you at least think for a second that there are jobs out there that are designed to be unseen and that are at the same time, very important in an immediate sense. That others couldn't step in and do if needed within a company.
So let's take a look at where you are coming from:
"You think the Quality Assurance department gets congratulated when federal regulators don't decide to cite violations"
If they have a good year and meet their goals, yes I think they get congratulated. They should, I hate bad products as much as anybody. The QA department at my work does get the praise when they have no issues. They get an award that they had no problems with the quality control system and no systems had to be recalled or modified after production. It saved the company so much money that they got a freakin party.
"You think the equipment engineers get congratulated when their systems don't breakdown on high volume three shifts per day production lines?"
I think that it's not one person in charge of those machines and they have layers between the engineers and the actual production machines that are built by seperate manufacturing companies that may warranty their products. If a machine fails on the line multiple people are responsible for the maintenance, upkeep, usage and design. It's not all on one person's shoulders. I also think that if a company has a long run of uptime on a line then the employees see a reward. I haven't personally worked on a line but I do think that they occasionally get a pizza party if they do well for a year. I have worked near the line maintenance crew and the boss would take the guys out for a beer or get them gift certificates to the movies if they worked hard to get a machine back up quickly.
"You think the hospital systems engineer gets congratulated when their nurse alarm systems don't fail resulting in patient death?"
I do think that those systems are infinitely less complex and require much less daily weekly and monthly updates, patches, repairs and redesigns. I am not trying to minimize the importance of those systems and the necessity that they be kept working, or even the responsibilities that those people have, but I do think that they are a hell of a lot more static in their use than the servers you are trying to compare them to. They have a lot fewer security updates pushed out by the manufacturer and much less of a load on them from day to day users. Less change and less complexity lend to less problems and less downtime. I do agree though that if one failed it would look pretty bad but again it isn't about just the negative. I have heard of those systems saving lives and the staff, as well as the systems and their designers are in the paper or on the company newsletter that month if it was a heroic event. I have saved the companies millions of dollars and other sysadmins have probably saved lives by keeping systems running or getting them back on line in time for the hospitals and emergency rooms but it's all on the back end. There's a tenuous connection at best in the minds of the management. But that connection is as solid as any other piece of the puzzle and the recognition is missing since the understanding isn't important to the rest of the departments. It just has to work for them to do their jobs. We as system admins have to understand what all the departments want and give them the ability to do as close to that as physically possible but they don't try and understand the hurdles and complexities that are required to get them those services.
"Where is the manufacturing appreciation day?"
They have jobs where if one person doesn't show up to work the business keeps going if something goes wrong on the
No, the point is that the people who know how to make the integral parts of the system that glues all of the other positions together and lets it function, should be getting as much recognition on a company wide basis as say, the secratary. Who has an appreciation day.
To say that the people who spend years carefully crafting systems that have contradictory requirements and multiple departmental roles are just and only as important as every other department in a company is overly idealistic. Yes, everybody should be equally appreciated. But that's not the real world and you should be ashamed of using that fallacy of an argument on slashdot.
The point is that there are people that get blamed if something goes wrong but not congradulated if everything works perfectly for months on end. There are jobs out there that the sole purpose is to make it seem like the position is not needed by making the system have no problems on the user side. There are jobs where people work until the 7am hours of the morning monday so that everybody can come in and not notice that the entire server cluster has been moved to a new version since the old one had security holes and Microsoft released an updated OS.
Saying things like:
"IT is no more or less important than the functions of a company that produce, design, and sell their product."
Is like going to your boss and saying that their job is no more or less important than the custodial crew and why are they compensated so much more than them.
You really think you'll have a job if they don't think you're joking?
Are you that out of touch with the real world that you think that those idealistic arguments hold any water?
The stock holders know nothing about what OS service pack or Linux Kernel the servers are running. They see the reports of other departments sometimes blaming the IT department for downtime or cost overruns. Unforseen increases of budget, without the explination of what worm, patch, or user error caused the initial problem.
This is the problem with the industry. The whole job of the sysadmin is to make him/herself not seen. To make it look like the systems are fine and running smoothly. Any reports that there are problems are like any other department reporting that something they are doing broke and is going to cost the company money. Like the marketing department comming the the president and saying that the next few weeks are going to be problematic because the graphics department is not working on new designes since they all need to be replaced with designers with faster fingers so in the future they won't be too slow.
There's usually no middleground between the IT department having a problem and the boss/users seeing it immediatly. It doesn't get to go the the IT manager and get fixed at that level. Everybody sees or hears about the problem when it happens. Very publicly. But when was the last time you heard anybody say that the IT department at your work did a good job upgrading or migrating a server?
You are probably just as guilty of widening the devide between departmental appreciation.
Most businesses that are not completely computer centric are guilty of this. Since I know quite a few sysadmins and I haven't heard that any of their jobs were appreciative, I'd say that your statements and theirs help to prove that this day is not even given the lip service it was intended to create. Is it too hard for you people to admit that the ones who make everything easier should get a little nod, instead, we get the arguments and belittling that our jobs are just the same as everybody elses.
Walk a mile in our shoes.
That argument is a dead end. Not insightful.
Without all of the other reasons the professionals need the servers, there are others that also need them. Say if the google servers go down. Not only will google suffer but the dependent users and other third party positions that utilize those informational sources.
Now the other extreme, say your companies servers go down, you will be unable to log in to your computer if it is a domain. You will be unable to get into outlook since exchange is down. (assuming a windows environment here since it's easier for other non sys admins to fix)
We haven't even gotten into the backup proceedures and data management yet. Even database admins need the servers to have redundant power supplies, raid and offsite backups or the data they manipulate will be gone. Now do you think that they will manage these things and keep everything running smoothly if their SQL box goes down?
So saying that " without other professions to do the actual work of your company, there's not even a need for you and your servers."
It's kind of like saying that without people to need air, what's the purpose of air?
It's not just a direct link to the professional people inside a company, it's all the interwoven ties outside the company and all of the consumers and all of the people who use the data that relies or comes from those servers ten steps away that are effected.
You order a book from amazon: you went through your local ISP routing servers, the backbone of the internet, their local ISP, their servers, their credit card processing servers, your banks servers, the shipping company servers, etc...
come on. Someone keeps all these things talking together and the first time you can't access your online banking site you complain. When do you say thanks. Just a thanks, good job keeping these things up with more regularity than most people do in their jobs. We're on call all the time and expected to keep it all up with five nines since that's what gets advertised to the managers.