How people handle their affairs is up to them, been covered by the help of an union or by insurance is a decision that each individual must make, and others not involved should really mind their own business.
In a free country there is freedom of association for most legal purposes. So you don't like unions, being the brightest star in the sky, then just don't join one and allow other people that do not share your insight and talents to mend themselves any way they deem appropriate.
If there is a place atypical of Mexico as a whole is Mexico City.
The government there is socialist (gay marriage, liberal abortion laws, legalization of prostitution, cheap public transport, benefits for pensioners, etc) with a strong middle class that actively pursues things like theater, world cinema, performance art, classical music and some others more rooted in humbler origins (wrestling, football) but that now are so expensive that only a middle class of good proportions can explain their commercial success.
This has not changed since there were elections there for the first time around 10 years ago, and if anything, only accentuated traits that had already been there.
The Federal government in contrast is in the hands of people with connections with far right organizations like the Opus Dei and MURO (google it, you will be amused). Most misery in Mexico is found in the countryside, not in Mexico City, which is why most people migrating to the US do so from small localities in central Mexican states and not from Mexico City itself.
People that deride Mexico City is because they don't really know it. Mexico City, in spite of many serious pressing problems, is one of the great towns in the world, up there with London, Paris, NY and some other in that league.
- The record industry is suing its costumers, has been caught red handed in price fixing tactics, has put malware in our computers (thanks Sony), have managed to enact anti consumer legislation in order to protect their revenue, have demonized every single technical advancement only to realize that embracing it actually makes more money for them, is famous for wasting money (check what EMI used to spend in what euphemistically was recorded in the accounting books as "flowers"), has pampered to the stupidest whims of talentless starlets (honestly, check what some of them request to have available on their hotel room or during performances. Nothing is too much or too stupid). I could go on and on, so allow me to say that I fail to see what exactly is positive about these parasites.
- The movie industry has many of the same vices, add to that the presumption that anybody watching must feel morally obliged to become a law enforcement informant on their behalf, stupid insistence in DRM that everybody knows will be broken.
-The software industry. Well, the simple fact that it hasn't lobbied to abolish software patents from the face of Earth tells me the bunch of scumbags many of them are. They know this kills small upstarts unless they come with an idea so revolutionary that are unstoppable (Google) or they are so immoral that even patent trolling can't sink them (MS).
So allow me to say there is little to like about this lot.
You could use gestures (3 or 4 virtual keys thell the machine if you are typing numbers, upper or lower case letters, symbols) then you draw them.
Or with multitouch you need 5 fingers to represent pretty much any letter, combine with autocompletion and you could be "typing" without looking and without needing major tactile points of reference.
And of course there is hand writing recognition, that is getting better. In 7 years time in may be a solved problem.
We are not talking about functional modularity achieved by good programming practices. We are talking about a finished product that is later on "modularized" under the auspices of the marketing department.
They would not be selling you a service, they would be acting as rackets extracting protection money.
Check the historic share price of the company. That tells you the confidence of people investing their money have in the company, which is diminishing and completely stationary as off recently (i.e: company is losing value in real terms).
The amount of cash reserves is a published figure: it is dwindling.
Retailers are staying with XP for as long as practically possible, some PC manufacturers offer "upgrades downwards" to XP. Oh yeah, and you can't get a Eee PC (Linux based) for love or money, this means people are playing with Linux now.
Add to this that the only money coming to MS is Office+Windows (i.e.: MS is innovating zilch) and I find very difficult to understand how anybody could be optimistic about this company.
If they buy Yahoo ( a dubious business choice to say the least) their once famous cash reserves (or their equivalent in shares) would be gone.
A technical company that is tinkering with business models instead of adding or improving features to their core products surely will not improve into its recent history.
Do you also shrug shoulders when a builder makes a mess of your house?
Or a plumber does not repair a sewage pipe properly?
You know what is the worst part? That in MS they planned and keep planning in creative ways to screw consumers.
And here you are, advocating that we ignore it. What is next? Learn to enjoy it?
What you call group think is based in the experiences of many IT professionals that have plenty of reasons (with anecdotes and all) about situations in which MS products or actions made their life misery. This is not a poetic construct: I have seen people not sleeping, wasting their time (and affecting the bottom line of their employers) due to MS products not being up to scratch or due to specific hurdles that MS puts in your way to make your work more difficult .
You can call that group think. I call it life scars. So allow me to sneer at your nonsense frankly.
Oh no, wait, I am working from home from my house in one of London's suburbs (did I mention that London is the most expensive city tolive in the world? Nah, but I hope you get the picture). Darn! I hate not to meet stupid stereotypes.
I have been in meetings (not in basements of anybody's mom, but in technical meetings in big companies and the occasional boardroom of smaller ones), and you could not be more off the mark.
Business people are asking if solutions must be based in an MS environment, and in many situations are dropping MS based solutions for very sound technical reasons. The feeling is not hate, but resignation: the realization that they have been screwed and that they can't do much about it (lack of courage is a contributing factor also).
What keeps the MS juggernaut alive is inertia and lack of regulatory zeal from the part of US authorities. The hate and mistrust is there, but this did not materialize in a legally mandated suitable punishment.
MS was caught with their pants down and they got away with murder based on technicalities about the judge that judged their case and by the providential arrival of an unconditionally business friendly US administration.
To think that hate for MS is a geeky delusion is to completely misunderstand the situation.
People hate so much MS that they have driven its share price down for the last 5 years. There, where it most matters, is where the hate (distrust, disappointment, chose your word) is being manifested.
I thought that "I was just following orders" stopped to be a dilemma some time ago.
I you allow greedy, immoral shareholders to dictate dubious business practices, you, as a CEO or any other higher official in a company, will be held responsible also for the consequences (either in the marketplace or the court of law).
A shareholder that does not understand that the only way to make money honestly is by offering a good service or product is a scumbag, no self respectable CEO should accept to work for them.
You have a duty of care for your company's property. In many cases this will be in your contract.
There are multitude of people visiting a building that may try something silly based on opportunity, not necessarily because they do thievery for a living.
Any decent company has policies about how to secure the company stuff and your personal stuff and which liabilities exist for both sides in case something goes missing.
If the company says there is no problem living company stuff in full view, then you have no problems, but in many industries leaving company stuff unattended could be even a sackable offense backed by a comapny policy part of your employment contract.
So your cavalier attitude does not apply everywhere (and I wonder if it applies anywhere at all)...
There are people that can draw very rational conclusions in one field while being completely irrational in the greater scheme of things.
That would apply to all Christian Scientists in my opinion (it is unfair to bag Copernicus and other older thinkers there, back in those times you could be punished if you did not adhere to your local religious orthodoxy, so it is not like thay had any choice).
Look, first of all I am a foreigner working in a country that is not mine, so there is one of my biases for you.
But unlike other people I came here and applied for jobs as a local, given the vaguearies of EU and British Law.
And now I lost my job.
So, you know who is doing the stuff I was doing? Three chaps in India, connecting remotely to computers in the EU, earning far less than I do, being obviously exploited (12 hour shifts are not uncommon), and shitting their pants when faced with the task at hand (honestly, I pity them). My expertise in the industry is more than all of theirs added up together...
The people that actually emigrate are doing so because there is a real shortage of skills (I am sure I will find a job as soon as I apply for one, and in my now gone job I interviewed people to fill technical positions, and believe me, the shortage is there), and the people emigrating actually pay taxes locally, spend their money locally and in general make a contribution to the local economy while they are in their host country (sometimes for ever, which is also important, the host country did not invest a single penny on the education of the immigrants and are reaping all the rewards).
Remote workers in the other hand contribute nothing to the local economy (bar making it more efficient, I have noticed salaries are not as high as they used to be, but this is all anecdotal). No taxes, no direct spending, putting downwards pressure in local salaries (which may be a a good thing to be frank, the conspicuous consumerism in the West just can't continue unabated) and sometimes benefiting from infrastructure that at some point was meant to benefit the local populace. This is the real problem for IT worker in the West.
I am not whining mind you. I enjoyed the times of plenty, if now come the difficult years so be it, but if people out there are looking at the causes for the current situation at the very least they should have clear what is affecting their situation without going for the obvious target.
The chap connecting to machines in your locality bypassing all controls (with the complacency of your local government) is who is undermining your position (rightly or wrongly, you decide). Some governments actually are doing something about this, but the US and UK seem oblivious to this, maybe because foolishly IT workers in these countries really believed that class struggle was dead and believed that by contracting at high rates they really were businessmen, when in reality continued to be salaried people by another name. By drinking that Kool-Aid we have failed to organize to apply political pressure to defend our interests.
Yes, there should be more remote workers because they are cheaper, but Western governments should ensure there is no exploitation so competition is fairer and perhaps tax companies doing this (if they threaten to leave the country governments should ask themselves if they are not doing this anyway by locating jobs elsewhere).
Lack of class conscience in the IT workers everywhere has given an enormous advantage to other people: how many CEOs or senior management positions you have seen been moved in a similar way? No chappies, wealthy people protect each other, they are very conscious about the class struggle, and their greatest achievement has been to convince salaried people that such a thing does not exist (while relocating many jobs using technology without paying the economic penalties that they would pay in any other situation).
This is correct, but it is no good enough if your home is going to be repossessed.
2) Self defense is not war mongering. Even if you think Iraq was no threat, they've gone from 50,000 killed per year under Saddam to 50,000 killed in the time since. It may be the lesser of two evils, but this evil is a LOT less. Don't forget that all the Democrats WANTED the war in Iraq. They just don't want to stick around and WIN it.
What did ever Iraq do to the US?
You know, to defend yourself first you have to be attacked or threatened.
Then you bring as part of your "self defense" strategy the plight of the Iraqi people.
Look, that is great, now we know you are truly generous and we will send you a medal for that. But the plight of the Iraqi people was not the reason for the Iraq invasion. You were lied to but here you are, matching the unintended consequences (that would need checking, mind you, I don't know where you are pulling those numbers of Iraqis killed by Hussein from) to cover thsi sameful invasion failures.
3) Wanting free trade with other nations is not a sign of xenophobia or racism nor is appointing the first two black Sec's of State.
4) 3 Documented cases of waterboarding in the GWT is not a pattern of Communist style torture. Overall, enemy combatants have been given better treatment than domestic felons.
Sorry, any shreds of credibility you had as an interlocutor were burned in the above paragraph.
All serious human rights organizations have found the shambles of Guantanamo as one of the most egregious violations of human rights by a liberal democracy (of course if you compare this with other countries, like your allies Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, then you are doing fine).
The Bush administration has broken pretty much any moral and legal precedence by setting up this concentration camp (honestly, I can't think of a better description) and as an aside, has created precedence that even US citizens can be denied funddamental rights if the terrorism word is involved in there somewhere.
Although Bush did not achieve this alone (to the eternal shame od Democratic and genuine Conservative politicians) he was the engine pushing for this quasi fascist situations. How somebody can still excuse this, is beyond any logical comprehension.
5) People have more stuff than they ever have. The NY Times, which is NOT GOP friendly, ran an op-ed explaining that consumption by the top fifth of the population by income is only twice that of the bottom fifth. How many other countries can come close to that?? Yes, there's a big mortgage problem out there, but before lending homes to poor people was "predatory lending" the Dems were pushing the banks to give those loans.
6) We've even cut greenhouse gas emissions for hippies who still believe in that crap.
Yes, the GOP should cut government spending and get rid of dumb-ass shit like Social Security and Medicare but they don't have the votes to make it happen. Uncle Sam collects about $17,000 per worker, most of which goes to social programs that no one would ever need if their taxes were less. It won't stop no matter who is in power until the public realizes the true cost.
The most we know is that they are a Federation of planets of some sort (i.e. some degree of free association exists). There is precious little about the economic system in the series.
Sitting here in Europe,an US libertarian sounds like yet another type of right wing nut job that should not be in any position of power.
Of course most folks in the US think Europe is some kind of Socialist paradise, in spite that market economy has been alive and well for the best part of 200 years, bar the wastelands of the Soviet Empire, that are just now recovering from the onslaught.
Slashdot Mirror
How people handle their affairs is up to them, been covered by the help of an union or by insurance is a decision that each individual must make, and others not involved should really mind their own business.
In a free country there is freedom of association for most legal purposes. So you don't like unions, being the brightest star in the sky, then just don't join one and allow other people that do not share your insight and talents to mend themselves any way they deem appropriate.
What a lame example.
If there is a place atypical of Mexico as a whole is Mexico City.
The government there is socialist (gay marriage, liberal abortion laws, legalization of prostitution, cheap public transport, benefits for pensioners, etc) with a strong middle class that actively pursues things like theater, world cinema, performance art, classical music and some others more rooted in humbler origins (wrestling, football) but that now are so expensive that only a middle class of good proportions can explain their commercial success.
This has not changed since there were elections there for the first time around 10 years ago, and if anything, only accentuated traits that had already been there.
The Federal government in contrast is in the hands of people with connections with far right organizations like the Opus Dei and MURO (google it, you will be amused). Most misery in Mexico is found in the countryside, not in Mexico City, which is why most people migrating to the US do so from small localities in central Mexican states and not from Mexico City itself.
People that deride Mexico City is because they don't really know it. Mexico City, in spite of many serious pressing problems, is one of the great towns in the world, up there with London, Paris, NY and some other in that league.
Lets check for a second:
- The record industry is suing its costumers, has been caught red handed in price fixing tactics, has put malware in our computers (thanks Sony), have managed to enact anti consumer legislation in order to protect their revenue, have demonized every single technical advancement only to realize that embracing it actually makes more money for them, is famous for wasting money (check what EMI used to spend in what euphemistically was recorded in the accounting books as "flowers"), has pampered to the stupidest whims of talentless starlets (honestly, check what some of them request to have available on their hotel room or during performances. Nothing is too much or too stupid). I could go on and on, so allow me to say that I fail to see what exactly is positive about these parasites.
- The movie industry has many of the same vices, add to that the presumption that anybody watching must feel morally obliged to become a law enforcement informant on their behalf, stupid insistence in DRM that everybody knows will be broken.
-The software industry. Well, the simple fact that it hasn't lobbied to abolish software patents from the face of Earth tells me the bunch of scumbags many of them are. They know this kills small upstarts unless they come with an idea so revolutionary that are unstoppable (Google) or they are so immoral that even patent trolling can't sink them (MS).
So allow me to say there is little to like about this lot.
Why should we type?
You could use gestures (3 or 4 virtual keys thell the machine if you are typing numbers, upper or lower case letters, symbols) then you draw them.
Or with multitouch you need 5 fingers to represent pretty much any letter, combine with autocompletion and you could be "typing" without looking and without needing major tactile points of reference.
And of course there is hand writing recognition, that is getting better. In 7 years time in may be a solved problem.
Opera is finding its way into mobile devices, where it is a major player.
...
It you are not catering to mobile users, you may be missing the next gravy train
.... somebody telling me he does not fancy serving 25% of our potential costumers.
:-P
Wish that when I find a new job is not as your boss
Honestly. I am curious.
We are not talking about functional modularity achieved by good programming practices. We are talking about a finished product that is later on "modularized" under the auspices of the marketing department.
They would not be selling you a service, they would be acting as rackets extracting protection money.
Check the historic share price of the company. That tells you the confidence of people investing their money have in the company, which is diminishing and completely stationary as off recently (i.e: company is losing value in real terms).
The amount of cash reserves is a published figure: it is dwindling.
Retailers are staying with XP for as long as practically possible, some PC manufacturers offer "upgrades downwards" to XP. Oh yeah, and you can't get a Eee PC (Linux based) for love or money, this means people are playing with Linux now.
Add to this that the only money coming to MS is Office+Windows (i.e.: MS is innovating zilch) and I find very difficult to understand how anybody could be optimistic about this company.
MS share price is down the drain.
If they buy Yahoo ( a dubious business choice to say the least) their once famous cash reserves (or their equivalent in shares) would be gone.
A technical company that is tinkering with business models instead of adding or improving features to their core products surely will not improve into its recent history.
Do you also shrug shoulders when a builder makes a mess of your house?
Or a plumber does not repair a sewage pipe properly?
You know what is the worst part? That in MS they planned and keep planning in creative ways to screw consumers.
And here you are, advocating that we ignore it. What is next? Learn to enjoy it?
What you call group think is based in the experiences of many IT professionals that have plenty of reasons (with anecdotes and all) about situations in which MS products or actions made their life misery. This is not a poetic construct: I have seen people not sleeping, wasting their time (and affecting the bottom line of their employers) due to MS products not being up to scratch or due to specific hurdles that MS puts in your way to make your work more difficult .
You can call that group think. I call it life scars. So allow me to sneer at your nonsense frankly.
Oh no, wait, I am working from home from my house in one of London's suburbs (did I mention that London is the most expensive city tolive in the world? Nah, but I hope you get the picture). Darn! I hate not to meet stupid stereotypes.
I have been in meetings (not in basements of anybody's mom, but in technical meetings in big companies and the occasional boardroom of smaller ones), and you could not be more off the mark.
Business people are asking if solutions must be based in an MS environment, and in many situations are dropping MS based solutions for very sound technical reasons. The feeling is not hate, but resignation: the realization that they have been screwed and that they can't do much about it (lack of courage is a contributing factor also).
What keeps the MS juggernaut alive is inertia and lack of regulatory zeal from the part of US authorities. The hate and mistrust is there, but this did not materialize in a legally mandated suitable punishment.
MS was caught with their pants down and they got away with murder based on technicalities about the judge that judged their case and by the providential arrival of an unconditionally business friendly US administration.
To think that hate for MS is a geeky delusion is to completely misunderstand the situation.
People hate so much MS that they have driven its share price down for the last 5 years. There, where it most matters, is where the hate (distrust, disappointment, chose your word) is being manifested.
I thought that "I was just following orders" stopped to be a dilemma some time ago.
I you allow greedy, immoral shareholders to dictate dubious business practices, you, as a CEO or any other higher official in a company, will be held responsible also for the consequences (either in the marketplace or the court of law).
A shareholder that does not understand that the only way to make money honestly is by offering a good service or product is a scumbag, no self respectable CEO should accept to work for them.
Businessman that brakes the law and gets away with it?
I think some gangsters would not be insulted if this or a similar definition was applied to them.
I do not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates.
And I am not trying to be facetious or ironic.
You have a duty of care for your company's property. In many cases this will be in your contract.
There are multitude of people visiting a building that may try something silly based on opportunity, not necessarily because they do thievery for a living.
Any decent company has policies about how to secure the company stuff and your personal stuff and which liabilities exist for both sides in case something goes missing.
If the company says there is no problem living company stuff in full view, then you have no problems, but in many industries leaving company stuff unattended could be even a sackable offense backed by a comapny policy part of your employment contract.
So your cavalier attitude does not apply everywhere (and I wonder if it applies anywhere at all)...
I think that is the expression.
There are people that can draw very rational conclusions in one field while being completely irrational in the greater scheme of things.
That would apply to all Christian Scientists in my opinion (it is unfair to bag Copernicus and other older thinkers there, back in those times you could be punished if you did not adhere to your local religious orthodoxy, so it is not like thay had any choice).
Or would you have expected a treaty about the greatness of Jewish heritage from a certain moustached little Austrian?
So is that worse than spending in killing people in a foreign country that did nothing to you?
Well, sure as hell I would support a government looking after their own people than one killing other people based on blatant lies.
Look, first of all I am a foreigner working in a country that is not mine, so there is one of my biases for you.
But unlike other people I came here and applied for jobs as a local, given the vaguearies of EU and British Law.
And now I lost my job.
So, you know who is doing the stuff I was doing? Three chaps in India, connecting remotely to computers in the EU, earning far less than I do, being obviously exploited (12 hour shifts are not uncommon), and shitting their pants when faced with the task at hand (honestly, I pity them). My expertise in the industry is more than all of theirs added up together...
The people that actually emigrate are doing so because there is a real shortage of skills (I am sure I will find a job as soon as I apply for one, and in my now gone job I interviewed people to fill technical positions, and believe me, the shortage is there), and the people emigrating actually pay taxes locally, spend their money locally and in general make a contribution to the local economy while they are in their host country (sometimes for ever, which is also important, the host country did not invest a single penny on the education of the immigrants and are reaping all the rewards).
Remote workers in the other hand contribute nothing to the local economy (bar making it more efficient, I have noticed salaries are not as high as they used to be, but this is all anecdotal). No taxes, no direct spending, putting downwards pressure in local salaries (which may be a a good thing to be frank, the conspicuous consumerism in the West just can't continue unabated) and sometimes benefiting from infrastructure that at some point was meant to benefit the local populace. This is the real problem for IT worker in the West.
I am not whining mind you. I enjoyed the times of plenty, if now come the difficult years so be it, but if people out there are looking at the causes for the current situation at the very least they should have clear what is affecting their situation without going for the obvious target.
The chap connecting to machines in your locality bypassing all controls (with the complacency of your local government) is who is undermining your position (rightly or wrongly, you decide). Some governments actually are doing something about this, but the US and UK seem oblivious to this, maybe because foolishly IT workers in these countries really believed that class struggle was dead and believed that by contracting at high rates they really were businessmen, when in reality continued to be salaried people by another name. By drinking that Kool-Aid we have failed to organize to apply political pressure to defend our interests.
Yes, there should be more remote workers because they are cheaper, but Western governments should ensure there is no exploitation so competition is fairer and perhaps tax companies doing this (if they threaten to leave the country governments should ask themselves if they are not doing this anyway by locating jobs elsewhere).
Lack of class conscience in the IT workers everywhere has given an enormous advantage to other people: how many CEOs or senior management positions you have seen been moved in a similar way? No chappies, wealthy people protect each other, they are very conscious about the class struggle, and their greatest achievement has been to convince salaried people that such a thing does not exist (while relocating many jobs using technology without paying the economic penalties that they would pay in any other situation).
1) Unemployment is historically low.
This is correct, but it is no good enough if your home is going to be repossessed.
2) Self defense is not war mongering. Even if you think Iraq was no threat, they've
gone from 50,000 killed per year under Saddam to 50,000 killed in the time since.
It may be the lesser of two evils, but this evil is a LOT less. Don't forget that all
the Democrats WANTED the war in Iraq. They just don't want to stick around and WIN it.
What did ever Iraq do to the US?
You know, to defend yourself first you have to be attacked or threatened.
Then you bring as part of your "self defense" strategy the plight of the Iraqi people.
Look, that is great, now we know you are truly generous and we will send you a medal for that. But the plight of the Iraqi people was not the reason for the Iraq invasion. You were lied to but here you are, matching the unintended consequences (that would need checking, mind you, I don't know where you are pulling those numbers of Iraqis killed by Hussein from) to cover thsi sameful invasion failures.
3) Wanting free trade with other nations is not a sign of xenophobia or racism nor
is appointing the first two black Sec's of State.
4) 3 Documented cases of waterboarding in the GWT is not a pattern of Communist style torture. Overall, enemy combatants have been given better treatment than domestic felons.
Sorry, any shreds of credibility you had as an interlocutor were burned in the above paragraph.
All serious human rights organizations have found the shambles of Guantanamo as one of the most egregious violations of human rights by a liberal democracy (of course if you compare this with other countries, like your allies Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, then you are doing fine).
The Bush administration has broken pretty much any moral and legal precedence by setting up this concentration camp (honestly, I can't think of a better description) and as an aside, has created precedence that even US citizens can be denied funddamental rights if the terrorism word is involved in there somewhere.
Although Bush did not achieve this alone (to the eternal shame od Democratic and genuine Conservative politicians) he was the engine pushing for this quasi fascist situations. How somebody can still excuse this, is beyond any logical comprehension.
5) People have more stuff than they ever have. The NY Times, which is NOT GOP
friendly, ran an op-ed explaining that consumption by the top fifth of the
population by income is only twice that of the bottom fifth. How many other
countries can come close to that?? Yes, there's a big mortgage problem out there, but before lending homes to poor people was "predatory lending" the Dems were pushing the banks to give those loans.
6) We've even cut greenhouse gas emissions for hippies who still believe in that crap.
Yes, the GOP should cut government spending and get rid of dumb-ass shit like
Social Security and Medicare but they don't have the votes to make it happen.
Uncle Sam collects about $17,000 per worker, most of which goes to social
programs that no one would ever need if their taxes were less. It won't stop
no matter who is in power until the public realizes the true cost.
... stop the war on drugs.
You may find some money there to attend to the needs of US citizens.
Star Trek does not worry itself with such issues.
The most we know is that they are a Federation of planets of some sort (i.e. some degree of free association exists). There is precious little about the economic system in the series.
Sitting here in Europe,an US libertarian sounds like yet another type of right wing nut job that should not be in any position of power.
Of course most folks in the US think Europe is some kind of Socialist paradise, in spite that market economy has been alive and well for the best part of 200 years, bar the wastelands of the Soviet Empire, that are just now recovering from the onslaught.