Ok, I don't use Chrome, but Firefox, which just closes all windows before going into Private Browsing....so it's all or nothing. I still occasionally use private Browsing, for example to login to a site from someone else's computer where you don't know if they remember passwords, etc (these are trusted computers).
I like that Chrome just has an incognito Window but keeps the normal ones in another window.
Exactly. Like Firefox Private Browsing. What I mean is having the ability to tell Crome to always enter Incognito mode for any Facebook domain one enters. The problem with Firefox is that it closes all tabs (and saves all sessions) and enters Private Browsing mode, only to return to normal when the session ends.
What I suggest is making this more fncitonal....having a list of sites, and when there's a match, to use Incognito/Private Browsing by default in that Tab and all Tabs spawned from that one, until you delete the domain from the list. Much like IE Tab works (I tell it to use IE whenever I access sites like my webmail).
Because it's about privacy, not against social media? You decide what level of privacy you want, and the can use safely Facebook (or whatever)? Facebook privacy concerns are not connected with the usefulness of the site.
>How hard is to set up a Firefox session exclusive for the use of this social media stuff?
I don't know, but that is a great idea: to have a list of sites that you always want to be used in private mode. This calls for not completely separating private mode from normal mode (w/Firefox, it closes all other normal Windows until you stop private mode).
I imagine this functionality like how IE works. A small icon will tell you if the tab is in "private mode" (or sandboxed), and you can create rules to match the sites you want in this mode.
I'd really use something like that. I've read about many that trying to avoid being tracked calls for more attention, so better not do it. That point of view is totally flawed. Privacy has nothing to do with hiding, but with others not allowed to spy on you unwarranted. Just like a robot.txt doesn't want indexing. Just like how you use clothes everywhere but your house (or the bath). Just like you don't always use the speakerphone while traveling. If you want privacy, and they find ways around, the analogy is to someone that is using IR cameras to "see behind clothes". It should be punished severely to spy on people.
I like your wording best. I believe thought experiments are a large part of science. Some think it's mostly about fitting models to experiments (that's the easiest part).
It's only mind-bending when you are too fixed on your theory or framework. To make an analogy, you assume that particles must travel forward in time. Hans blaster killed Greedo, and you saw the bullet come out of his chest, and travel safely into Hans blaster....but this only if you ask the bullet (neutrino's point of view).
Or...if the universe was a calculation, maybe C measures the ghz. You can track/calculate as much distance as C in an "instant". But maybe, there are certain operations that take a bit less; ones that doesn't check for errors, or misses one path or skips some logic (with some consequences).
Americans, don't be fooled. The USA got to grow past, do some degree, because you could copy books from England and pay no fees. You could copy machines and inventions, and not pay a dime. When a sufficient number of literature, books and inventions started to be done in the US, pressure built up to grant local monopolies. Today, the USA is built around the concept that they will enforce their patents everywhere. patents are about distribution, not creation. Before that, Europe managed gain power with an innovative use of powder, invented in the East. And math was advanced with the numeric systems borrowed from the middle east. Today, China doesn't offer great IP protection, because it's not convenient for them. Wealth is being created fast, owned largely by who they want to own it, so redistribution is not a great concern.
Patents are a game where capitalist societies do harakiri and grant mullions of fuzzy monopolies to protect the status quo and grant monopolies to those that represent the country's brand. Nations that are smart, and don't create much IP, are wise not to pay for it. The idea of owning exclusive rights to derived works based on an ideas someone else owns, as a universal, global phenomenon, is a new form of slavery. One where doing just about anything new or innovative can get you into big trouble. Just like each and every acre is now tied to a person, there's a vast territory of ideas that has a named attached to it. With the aggravation that there's no map saying what's not owned, until you build something valuable.
But as always, the problems is not the patent system, but the human nature. Unless we find a way to make the patent owners richer, while making everyone richer as well, in an easy to explain way, the system will prevail in charted economies, and progress will flow to those not limited by those restrictions.
Who to write to the house? Any solid research on how this stifles innovation? Any advice from the LITTLE PEOPLE that will be forced as lowly paid employees (if lucky to have a job)? How about writing to not so LITTLE people, those with influence over many other little people, like media and popular bloggers? Anything that can be done?
I was reading the article, and first to file means that only corporations with 3 patent lawyer as FTE can survive, if barely. All those small forms that need to sell their inventions and prove them to work to earn a living, with filing as a luxury, should just quit, or cross their fingers that nobody files and earns a monopoly on their innovations.
I am not American, but live here. And it's sad to see how hard it is to be successful without the best lawyers and accountants as your infantry.
It's going to hurt them in a much different way, at least to some degree. This trial convinced me that I don't want anything to do with these guys. previously, I was agnostic. I have an iPod Touch, and a G2 iPhone. I preferred the iPhone 4 to the phone I have now, but didn't plan to spend that much on plans, so I opted for an Android device. I also did not like how their restricted the devices to only AT&T, or Telmex in Mexico. I also didn't like the batteries running out. And that I didn't like to have to jailbreak/unlock for things like using a phone I owned with a different carrier in a different country. And I didn't like having to prevent iTunes from autoupdating. And I didn't like iTunes sitting by my computer. I didn't like that if I switched phone brands, all the apple stuff I bought would be gone, even if the code is 90% similar in android or blackberry for thing many games ad apps. Back to the carrier choice limitation, it's not only that I didn't like to have to spend more on a more expensive plan. I didn't like that it made the larger carriers more powerful, hurting the smaller ones through them becoming even smaller, exacerbating the quasi-monopoly the top telcos have. This happened in Mexico for instance. So I was left with almost no other choice (the two alternative companies are bankrupt/almost chapter 11). I also didn't like to chose my telecom carrier due to the handset I wanted to use. I want to switch carriers. That's the only way competition works. If you will not change because you have all your apps, data, etc. in one or two places (carriers), you are accepting a tax on vanity. I didn't want that either. I also didn't like that you cannot replace the battery, use mp3 that you could backup with some other tool, and many many other things. But I could live with that, ultimately
But when they claim a design patent like the one I read, and when I see they altered the aspect ratio, and when I listen that the competing product (with different ratio, extensive prior art, different size, OS, etc) is banned from a country, then at that point I know I don't want to be associated with that company anymore.
Why?
Because I don't entertain the idea of giving money to companies I no longer respect. I think there may be many other people that no longer respect Apple, and many more are realizing that they are genius as making thing simple to use. But the designs, they get from somewhere else. And rewrite history as they please along the way.
Apple is the "coolest" company to avoid starting today, for me and probably some others as well.
I totally agree. It's not just MBAs. Anyone tasked with "reducing costs" but not fully accountable for the productivity, tends to sacrifice the top line (and the bottom line as well, though indirectly). The hidden costs of "more savings" need very bright people actually understanding the impact of every stupid move, and these are scarce. I think that the biggest problem with today corporations is dividing the tasks in ways they shouldn't, and trying to bake a cake having 20 people optimize different aspects of each recipes and ingredients, instead of having specialists in baking specific types of cakes, working with experts in chemistry, ingredient sourcing, etc.
Today, we replaced divide and conquer with "divide and be conquered".
I still do. I upgraded in my other personal computer, and I didn't like the interface. It slows me down and didn't add anything I wanted. I am constantly thinking that I must upgrade and switch. Firefox has something that Chrome does not, my empathy. Forefox was the first browser good enough to enable me to switch from IE, and easy enough on corner cases to make me want to always use Firefox (Original IE Tab). So marginal improvement of other browsers that do not have the empathy I have for Firefox are just losers (until/if Firefox makes a big mistake).
Well, not sure what you can do as a contractor. You need to figure it out yourself. But if it's a real performance hit, it's holding your career down. If you are at 50% speed, and distracted by long waits, you'll not only lose time, but concentration, disposition and interest. That's a sure way to stall your career, just because of a stupid person in IT.
I've seen one model works well. You find the solution for them. You then raise some concerns about that issue and place it outside of it...like if it was totally normal an expected (the slowness) but show how it's holding everyone back. You let someone from their team "figure it out by itself" with some help. You start having other people praise and encourage IT for what they could eventually implement to ease the problem. And find ways to enable them to implement them. All their merit. And in the 30% of cases you will get it your way, and get back to work credit-less but more productive, and knowing it for yourself. It's frustrating until you get used to it, and know how to use it tactically (at a much higher level, saying you are going to slowly improve something that is causing A and B without upsetting anyone).
If you can do this well after a few failed attempts (with some tolerable consequences), you'll have added a very valuable skill to you persona.
You need to be able to use their own tools. if it takes 10 min to boot, and for every hour you are idly "waiting for PC to respond" say, 5 minutes, that's 50 min per day (more than 10% of a day). Now calculate the impact in terms of margins lost, productivity lost, revenue lost, and factor that in 10 years of operation. Eg.if it's a call center, then when PCs are idle 10% of the time, it's likely they are also idle 10% of the time, during calls also, and when doing anything. So you need 10% more people to compensate the cost. If agent salaries are 33% of revenue, that's about 3% more cost for each dollar earned only due to PC idleness. That's about 3% EBITDA lost. The CFO will understand this very easily.
Then explain how a policy change, and replacing the current incompetent with a knowledgeable one, would impact company performance, if PC could idle workers only 2 min an hour, and boot in 2 min. That's 18 min, or 64% less wasted time. So that's 1.1% of EBITDA, or an improvement (absolute) of almost 2%. As typical EBITDA may be 10% to 20% (if your shareholders are lucky), that's an improvement of EBITDA between 10% to 20%. Just by replacing a person in IT. Suppose that you want to be conservative (when you count corner cases), maybe it's just an improvement of 5% to 10%. I am sure the ROI of replacing the person is about 10,000% or more.
I have seen that people in IT infrastructure get measured as a cost-center. When that happens, and the "best they manage things", the more bonuses or praise someone gets. They will create a Six Sigma project to minimize the calls they get, they will find ways to buy cheaper hardware, to avoid doing anything that you require any spending whatsoever. Making you less productive will never be factored in. Since all the workers know nothing can be done, and seeing that nobody wants to get IT infra upset (as they depend on it to survive), nothing gets done. But it costs companies millions or even billions, every year.
I know it's not theoretical. I've been many times at the phone, with an agent telling me it's processing, or loading, or searching or you name it. I've also witnessed it in first person. I was losing an hour or two do to an about to fail disk. IT couldn't care less.
If you do a thorough analysis, you can estimate the impact. Will they listen? If you can come up with evidence and do so sounds numbers, I think someone will listen.
That sounds like a good idea (if you can trust tweeter). Maybe someone already did that. Not sure how much you can process this in real-time from twitter. I imagine there could be a bunch of typical signatures depending on what's happening. Say, for example, if there's a protest, it could grow slowly and move slowly (and at some point vanish). If it's a mayor event (blackout) it could reduce very fast, maybe with seconds variation from one place to another. If it's a tsunami, it could grow inland. Would be a interesting exercise in data processing/mining if the data could really be queried in meaningful ways (not sure how much is really possible, probably, there are a lot of limits and probably only tweeter could do this, I don't think you can access everything)....
I think that this is the right time to start mapping where and when mobile censorship happens. This can be done easily. Someone can make a mobile app to tell a server that it has connectivity every x time interval, and it's location (and/or tower used) and amount of signal (plus other useful data).
If enough people used it, the server could tell when a location suddenly went "dark". And it could have algorithms to map the "dark" areas, and to notify everyone of the dark areas. It'd need some refinements, to detect if you entered a place without signal, or to detect if you are underground (ie. no GPS there, but could tell which tower probably which might require mapping it in a different color, eg underground, and cases like that), and some processing to tell when an area is dark (eg. very few people with low signal and many or all without) vs something that was very bright, and suddenly very dark (many people just silenced).
It can also facilitate tracking and knowing immediately what's happening, as after an area is turned "dark", it could prompt the people just entering the "lit" perimeter (or leaving the dark area) if they saw anything unusual. So it would be very easy to automate reporting into suspicious areas.
This could be a great tool to track service disruptions and to quickly identify censorship abuse, natural disasters, power disruptions (long enough for UPS to exhaust), etc.
Hey, stop it. You have any rights at all because someone cared for a constitution and for generation centuries ago. That's why you can open your lousy mouth and say that nobody needs to care about you or others because you decided that. Everyone in the USA and in most countries where there is and degree of free speech, got it from someone else that not only cared for himself/herself but for all the people living there then, understood the importance of it, and found a way to pass it on to future generations regardless of their understanding or not of it. If you want to give the gift up, you can go to places many many places where there is none, and regardless of you not acknowledging it, you will miss your rights, and understand how they were gifted to you and for what reason.
1) If you change your email in a phone, you change everything in the phone because it's the Google Account. You can't disable access to Gmail and still use the Google account for buying apps, etc. Same with Calendar, etc.
2) I will try to do this. Thanks. Is it possible to have both a gmail account and one with my own domain during a year (for transition)?
It usually does work. Countries tend to specialize on something they can do better. The problem is that macroeconomic conditions can make it so that most goods that can be exported (things that can be shipped or delivered remotely) are always cheaper to do in one country vs another (like a highly devalued Yuan for several decades). So there was an economist that "proved" this wouldn't happen (David Ricardo) as all that mattered what not the absolute costs, but the relative costs. But the theory was obviously shortsighted, because there a large lag in between where a richer nation still has credit and higher overall costs (typically labor and taxes), so for almost all industries, and given a decision of where to manufacture driven at the company level, most companies will chose the lower cost alternative, regardless of the relative costs of production.
What I am trying to say, anyway, is something else, Countries have different endowments. And if each was a "company" (which they are not, but suppose they could) they are better suited to specializing in certain goods and services. They can produce more of what they are very efficient at producing, generating a surplus, and importing goods some other country is extremely efficient at producing. Probably, exporting Bananas from Alaska, and importing Ice from Colombia wouldn't make sense (in spite of the fact that they COULD if they wished so). This is better that having Alaska produce enough Bananas and Ice for internal consumption and having Colombia do the same, because each one will be very inefficient at some things. That is what Ricardo wanted to say. But the problem faced today is when macroeconomic and fiscal conditions (which have intertemporal preferences factored in, decisions such as let's do subsidies in my country until most other firms in this industry anywhere else collapse, and then, raise taxes when we are mostly alone) make it so to the analogy of Alaska being a cheaper alternative to producing Bananas than doing in Colombia (imagine the labor rates where 4 times cheaper in Alaska vs Colombia, there where subsidies, and that domes and structures for growing Bananas and heating was almost free for 50 years, etc). I this cases (and it's a bad example because Bananas trees don't need maintenance and do not become obsolete quickly), global firms would chose Ice from Alaska, and Bananas from Alaska. It wouldn't happen to all goods at the same time, and given that richer countries have more and better credit, you'd start to see in Colombia a similar thing that what happens with China and the USA. In the long run, it's unsustainable, and this has more to do with artificial conditions (exchange rates, excessive lending to the USA by buying treasury bonds for decades, etc) and lower standards of living in China, than with being what makes most sense. And Ricardo didn't predict this, but it's obvious. Companies decide what to produce individually, so in the short term, this situations create what we see today. But they shouldn't. Raising taxes on imports levels this off. Imagine people from Alaska wanted to export Bananas, which with all the subsidies, etc. costed 10% less than in Colombia. I Colombia had a 20% tax, they wouldn't be able to export anything at that price. And companies would prefer Colombia, for their domestic market, be served from Colombia.
I think the biggest burden with Gmail (besides nasty things like my wife not being able to use an app I bought for my kid through android, for example, without giving access to my email and all services to that other phone, just to name one quick example with the problems with Google) is the domain part. I have several things that use gmail for password recovery. If anything happens, if I lose the password, I have so many things depending on me having access that I have little to no way to get it back (there are some password recovery functions, but if those fail or a hacker deals with them , it's over). And if I want to switch, I have to deal with not using the gmail part, which means updating dozens and dozens of registry entries that will point to a gmail account.
So the most important thing I am realizing (and that I always knew) was having a domain that's mine that points to the server I want to, not a domain by someone else. If you can control that, then I see no reason not to depend on whoever you want to host you emails for the moment being. So if I where you, I'd first start with getting your own domain (if you aren't already doing so) and for the rest, think about who can handle you email safely and without problems, security issues, etc, for the time being. You can change in two days and hassle free if it's your domain.
Makes sense. Just the same reason sometimes we get shocked when we learn Chicken are raised and processed, and start buying organic products and fair treatment. Or fair coffee price. When there are too level of indirection. If people had to kills their own cattle or chicken, things would be different. Sometimes a documentary can alter the direction of an industry (even if slowly). Maybe it's a matter of having more awareness.
I also think that free trade and globalization negatively affected the USA. But that corporation would heavily resist some adjustments, because they want a fair pie of emerging economies. And if there's any protection in the USA, getting a pie of emerging economies will be harder still.
Corporation have little loyalty, but they still have owners. So ultimately, it could be that these owners do not care about countries. But is that a good premise? Have people like that been adapting to power shifts for centuries? Corporation will not care if owners do not care. But, who would those be, if they exist?
I do agree with all the post. Except that they will continue to manufacture in China. First, if Toys (just an example) imports tarifs made toys 4X more expensive, people would chose to buy less. And people would start to manufacture locally. But in any case, you still have all the tariffs.
I think that US corporations want to bargain with countries saying that they can export goods to the main buyer, the USA, if they pay for patents and all kind of intellectual property ideas (to create scarcity of "intangible goods" or monopoly power over ideas and concepts). But those ideas are typically ones that do not employ the larger population, and further, they can keep producing decades after work stopped. This is the reason why "services" economies will fail.
I think it's hard to base an economy just on intellectual property. And if you do, you need to be well into welfare and redistribution, Which is the opposite interest of the owners of the IP.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I don't use Chrome, but Firefox, which just closes all windows before going into Private Browsing....so it's all or nothing. I still occasionally use private Browsing, for example to login to a site from someone else's computer where you don't know if they remember passwords, etc (these are trusted computers).
I like that Chrome just has an incognito Window but keeps the normal ones in another window.
Exactly. Like Firefox Private Browsing. What I mean is having the ability to tell Crome to always enter Incognito mode for any Facebook domain one enters. The problem with Firefox is that it closes all tabs (and saves all sessions) and enters Private Browsing mode, only to return to normal when the session ends.
What I suggest is making this more fncitonal....having a list of sites, and when there's a match, to use Incognito/Private Browsing by default in that Tab and all Tabs spawned from that one, until you delete the domain from the list. Much like IE Tab works (I tell it to use IE whenever I access sites like my webmail).
Because it's about privacy, not against social media? You decide what level of privacy you want, and the can use safely Facebook (or whatever)? Facebook privacy concerns are not connected with the usefulness of the site.
> I imagine this functionality like how IE works.
Sorry, I meant "IE Tab" of course.
>How hard is to set up a Firefox session exclusive for the use of this social media stuff?
I don't know, but that is a great idea: to have a list of sites that you always want to be used in private mode. This calls for not completely separating private mode from normal mode (w/Firefox, it closes all other normal Windows until you stop private mode).
I imagine this functionality like how IE works. A small icon will tell you if the tab is in "private mode" (or sandboxed), and you can create rules to match the sites you want in this mode.
I'd really use something like that. I've read about many that trying to avoid being tracked calls for more attention, so better not do it. That point of view is totally flawed. Privacy has nothing to do with hiding, but with others not allowed to spy on you unwarranted. Just like a robot.txt doesn't want indexing. Just like how you use clothes everywhere but your house (or the bath). Just like you don't always use the speakerphone while traveling. If you want privacy, and they find ways around, the analogy is to someone that is using IR cameras to "see behind clothes". It should be punished severely to spy on people.
I like your wording best. I believe thought experiments are a large part of science. Some think it's mostly about fitting models to experiments (that's the easiest part).
Einstein discovered relativity by using educated gut feeling, not experiments.
It's only mind-bending when you are too fixed on your theory or framework. To make an analogy, you assume that particles must travel forward in time. Hans blaster killed Greedo, and you saw the bullet come out of his chest, and travel safely into Hans blaster....but this only if you ask the bullet (neutrino's point of view).
Or...if the universe was a calculation, maybe C measures the ghz. You can track/calculate as much distance as C in an "instant". But maybe, there are certain operations that take a bit less; ones that doesn't check for errors, or misses one path or skips some logic (with some consequences).
Americans, don't be fooled. The USA got to grow past, do some degree, because you could copy books from England and pay no fees. You could copy machines and inventions, and not pay a dime. When a sufficient number of literature, books and inventions started to be done in the US, pressure built up to grant local monopolies. Today, the USA is built around the concept that they will enforce their patents everywhere. patents are about distribution, not creation. Before that, Europe managed gain power with an innovative use of powder, invented in the East. And math was advanced with the numeric systems borrowed from the middle east. Today, China doesn't offer great IP protection, because it's not convenient for them. Wealth is being created fast, owned largely by who they want to own it, so redistribution is not a great concern.
Patents are a game where capitalist societies do harakiri and grant mullions of fuzzy monopolies to protect the status quo and grant monopolies to those that represent the country's brand. Nations that are smart, and don't create much IP, are wise not to pay for it. The idea of owning exclusive rights to derived works based on an ideas someone else owns, as a universal, global phenomenon, is a new form of slavery. One where doing just about anything new or innovative can get you into big trouble. Just like each and every acre is now tied to a person, there's a vast territory of ideas that has a named attached to it. With the aggravation that there's no map saying what's not owned, until you build something valuable.
But as always, the problems is not the patent system, but the human nature. Unless we find a way to make the patent owners richer, while making everyone richer as well, in an easy to explain way, the system will prevail in charted economies, and progress will flow to those not limited by those restrictions.
Who to write to the house? Any solid research on how this stifles innovation? Any advice from the LITTLE PEOPLE that will be forced as lowly paid employees (if lucky to have a job)? How about writing to not so LITTLE people, those with influence over many other little people, like media and popular bloggers? Anything that can be done?
I was reading the article, and first to file means that only corporations with 3 patent lawyer as FTE can survive, if barely. All those small forms that need to sell their inventions and prove them to work to earn a living, with filing as a luxury, should just quit, or cross their fingers that nobody files and earns a monopoly on their innovations.
I am not American, but live here. And it's sad to see how hard it is to be successful without the best lawyers and accountants as your infantry.
It's going to hurt them in a much different way, at least to some degree. This trial convinced me that I don't want anything to do with these guys. previously, I was agnostic. I have an iPod Touch, and a G2 iPhone. I preferred the iPhone 4 to the phone I have now, but didn't plan to spend that much on plans, so I opted for an Android device. I also did not like how their restricted the devices to only AT&T, or Telmex in Mexico. I also didn't like the batteries running out. And that I didn't like to have to jailbreak/unlock for things like using a phone I owned with a different carrier in a different country. And I didn't like having to prevent iTunes from autoupdating. And I didn't like iTunes sitting by my computer. I didn't like that if I switched phone brands, all the apple stuff I bought would be gone, even if the code is 90% similar in android or blackberry for thing many games ad apps. Back to the carrier choice limitation, it's not only that I didn't like to have to spend more on a more expensive plan. I didn't like that it made the larger carriers more powerful, hurting the smaller ones through them becoming even smaller, exacerbating the quasi-monopoly the top telcos have. This happened in Mexico for instance. So I was left with almost no other choice (the two alternative companies are bankrupt/almost chapter 11). I also didn't like to chose my telecom carrier due to the handset I wanted to use. I want to switch carriers. That's the only way competition works. If you will not change because you have all your apps, data, etc. in one or two places (carriers), you are accepting a tax on vanity. I didn't want that either. I also didn't like that you cannot replace the battery, use mp3 that you could backup with some other tool, and many many other things. But I could live with that, ultimately
But when they claim a design patent like the one I read, and when I see they altered the aspect ratio, and when I listen that the competing product (with different ratio, extensive prior art, different size, OS, etc) is banned from a country, then at that point I know I don't want to be associated with that company anymore.
Why?
Because I don't entertain the idea of giving money to companies I no longer respect. I think there may be many other people that no longer respect Apple, and many more are realizing that they are genius as making thing simple to use. But the designs, they get from somewhere else. And rewrite history as they please along the way.
Apple is the "coolest" company to avoid starting today, for me and probably some others as well.
I totally agree. It's not just MBAs. Anyone tasked with "reducing costs" but not fully accountable for the productivity, tends to sacrifice the top line (and the bottom line as well, though indirectly). The hidden costs of "more savings" need very bright people actually understanding the impact of every stupid move, and these are scarce. I think that the biggest problem with today corporations is dividing the tasks in ways they shouldn't, and trying to bake a cake having 20 people optimize different aspects of each recipes and ingredients, instead of having specialists in baking specific types of cakes, working with experts in chemistry, ingredient sourcing, etc.
Today, we replaced divide and conquer with "divide and be conquered".
I still do. I upgraded in my other personal computer, and I didn't like the interface. It slows me down and didn't add anything I wanted. I am constantly thinking that I must upgrade and switch. Firefox has something that Chrome does not, my empathy. Forefox was the first browser good enough to enable me to switch from IE, and easy enough on corner cases to make me want to always use Firefox (Original IE Tab). So marginal improvement of other browsers that do not have the empathy I have for Firefox are just losers (until/if Firefox makes a big mistake).
Well, not sure what you can do as a contractor. You need to figure it out yourself. But if it's a real performance hit, it's holding your career down. If you are at 50% speed, and distracted by long waits, you'll not only lose time, but concentration, disposition and interest. That's a sure way to stall your career, just because of a stupid person in IT.
I've seen one model works well. You find the solution for them. You then raise some concerns about that issue and place it outside of it...like if it was totally normal an expected (the slowness) but show how it's holding everyone back. You let someone from their team "figure it out by itself" with some help. You start having other people praise and encourage IT for what they could eventually implement to ease the problem. And find ways to enable them to implement them. All their merit. And in the 30% of cases you will get it your way, and get back to work credit-less but more productive, and knowing it for yourself. It's frustrating until you get used to it, and know how to use it tactically (at a much higher level, saying you are going to slowly improve something that is causing A and B without upsetting anyone).
If you can do this well after a few failed attempts (with some tolerable consequences), you'll have added a very valuable skill to you persona.
You need to be able to use their own tools. if it takes 10 min to boot, and for every hour you are idly "waiting for PC to respond" say, 5 minutes, that's 50 min per day (more than 10% of a day). Now calculate the impact in terms of margins lost, productivity lost, revenue lost, and factor that in 10 years of operation. Eg.if it's a call center, then when PCs are idle 10% of the time, it's likely they are also idle 10% of the time, during calls also, and when doing anything. So you need 10% more people to compensate the cost. If agent salaries are 33% of revenue, that's about 3% more cost for each dollar earned only due to PC idleness. That's about 3% EBITDA lost. The CFO will understand this very easily.
Then explain how a policy change, and replacing the current incompetent with a knowledgeable one, would impact company performance, if PC could idle workers only 2 min an hour, and boot in 2 min. That's 18 min, or 64% less wasted time. So that's 1.1% of EBITDA, or an improvement (absolute) of almost 2%. As typical EBITDA may be 10% to 20% (if your shareholders are lucky), that's an improvement of EBITDA between 10% to 20%. Just by replacing a person in IT. Suppose that you want to be conservative (when you count corner cases), maybe it's just an improvement of 5% to 10%. I am sure the ROI of replacing the person is about 10,000% or more.
I have seen that people in IT infrastructure get measured as a cost-center. When that happens, and the "best they manage things", the more bonuses or praise someone gets. They will create a Six Sigma project to minimize the calls they get, they will find ways to buy cheaper hardware, to avoid doing anything that you require any spending whatsoever. Making you less productive will never be factored in. Since all the workers know nothing can be done, and seeing that nobody wants to get IT infra upset (as they depend on it to survive), nothing gets done. But it costs companies millions or even billions, every year.
I know it's not theoretical. I've been many times at the phone, with an agent telling me it's processing, or loading, or searching or you name it. I've also witnessed it in first person. I was losing an hour or two do to an about to fail disk. IT couldn't care less.
If you do a thorough analysis, you can estimate the impact. Will they listen? If you can come up with evidence and do so sounds numbers, I think someone will listen.
That sounds like a good idea (if you can trust tweeter). Maybe someone already did that. Not sure how much you can process this in real-time from twitter. I imagine there could be a bunch of typical signatures depending on what's happening. Say, for example, if there's a protest, it could grow slowly and move slowly (and at some point vanish). If it's a mayor event (blackout) it could reduce very fast, maybe with seconds variation from one place to another. If it's a tsunami, it could grow inland. Would be a interesting exercise in data processing/mining if the data could really be queried in meaningful ways (not sure how much is really possible, probably, there are a lot of limits and probably only tweeter could do this, I don't think you can access everything)....
I think that this is the right time to start mapping where and when mobile censorship happens. This can be done easily. Someone can make a mobile app to tell a server that it has connectivity every x time interval, and it's location (and/or tower used) and amount of signal (plus other useful data).
If enough people used it, the server could tell when a location suddenly went "dark". And it could have algorithms to map the "dark" areas, and to notify everyone of the dark areas. It'd need some refinements, to detect if you entered a place without signal, or to detect if you are underground (ie. no GPS there, but could tell which tower probably which might require mapping it in a different color, eg underground, and cases like that), and some processing to tell when an area is dark (eg. very few people with low signal and many or all without) vs something that was very bright, and suddenly very dark (many people just silenced).
It can also facilitate tracking and knowing immediately what's happening, as after an area is turned "dark", it could prompt the people just entering the "lit" perimeter (or leaving the dark area) if they saw anything unusual. So it would be very easy to automate reporting into suspicious areas.
This could be a great tool to track service disruptions and to quickly identify censorship abuse, natural disasters, power disruptions (long enough for UPS to exhaust), etc.
Except that you are wrong, and a first-mover advantage can last decades or even centuries.
Hey, stop it. You have any rights at all because someone cared for a constitution and for generation centuries ago. That's why you can open your lousy mouth and say that nobody needs to care about you or others because you decided that. Everyone in the USA and in most countries where there is and degree of free speech, got it from someone else that not only cared for himself/herself but for all the people living there then, understood the importance of it, and found a way to pass it on to future generations regardless of their understanding or not of it. If you want to give the gift up, you can go to places many many places where there is none, and regardless of you not acknowledging it, you will miss your rights, and understand how they were gifted to you and for what reason.
1) If you change your email in a phone, you change everything in the phone because it's the Google Account. You can't disable access to Gmail and still use the Google account for buying apps, etc. Same with Calendar, etc.
2) I will try to do this. Thanks. Is it possible to have both a gmail account and one with my own domain during a year (for transition)?
It usually does work. Countries tend to specialize on something they can do better. The problem is that macroeconomic conditions can make it so that most goods that can be exported (things that can be shipped or delivered remotely) are always cheaper to do in one country vs another (like a highly devalued Yuan for several decades). So there was an economist that "proved" this wouldn't happen (David Ricardo) as all that mattered what not the absolute costs, but the relative costs. But the theory was obviously shortsighted, because there a large lag in between where a richer nation still has credit and higher overall costs (typically labor and taxes), so for almost all industries, and given a decision of where to manufacture driven at the company level, most companies will chose the lower cost alternative, regardless of the relative costs of production.
What I am trying to say, anyway, is something else, Countries have different endowments. And if each was a "company" (which they are not, but suppose they could) they are better suited to specializing in certain goods and services. They can produce more of what they are very efficient at producing, generating a surplus, and importing goods some other country is extremely efficient at producing. Probably, exporting Bananas from Alaska, and importing Ice from Colombia wouldn't make sense (in spite of the fact that they COULD if they wished so). This is better that having Alaska produce enough Bananas and Ice for internal consumption and having Colombia do the same, because each one will be very inefficient at some things. That is what Ricardo wanted to say. But the problem faced today is when macroeconomic and fiscal conditions (which have intertemporal preferences factored in, decisions such as let's do subsidies in my country until most other firms in this industry anywhere else collapse, and then, raise taxes when we are mostly alone) make it so to the analogy of Alaska being a cheaper alternative to producing Bananas than doing in Colombia (imagine the labor rates where 4 times cheaper in Alaska vs Colombia, there where subsidies, and that domes and structures for growing Bananas and heating was almost free for 50 years, etc). I this cases (and it's a bad example because Bananas trees don't need maintenance and do not become obsolete quickly), global firms would chose Ice from Alaska, and Bananas from Alaska. It wouldn't happen to all goods at the same time, and given that richer countries have more and better credit, you'd start to see in Colombia a similar thing that what happens with China and the USA. In the long run, it's unsustainable, and this has more to do with artificial conditions (exchange rates, excessive lending to the USA by buying treasury bonds for decades, etc) and lower standards of living in China, than with being what makes most sense. And Ricardo didn't predict this, but it's obvious. Companies decide what to produce individually, so in the short term, this situations create what we see today. But they shouldn't. Raising taxes on imports levels this off. Imagine people from Alaska wanted to export Bananas, which with all the subsidies, etc. costed 10% less than in Colombia. I Colombia had a 20% tax, they wouldn't be able to export anything at that price. And companies would prefer Colombia, for their domestic market, be served from Colombia.
This is why I brought import duties.
I think the biggest burden with Gmail (besides nasty things like my wife not being able to use an app I bought for my kid through android, for example, without giving access to my email and all services to that other phone, just to name one quick example with the problems with Google) is the domain part. I have several things that use gmail for password recovery. If anything happens, if I lose the password, I have so many things depending on me having access that I have little to no way to get it back (there are some password recovery functions, but if those fail or a hacker deals with them , it's over). And if I want to switch, I have to deal with not using the gmail part, which means updating dozens and dozens of registry entries that will point to a gmail account.
So the most important thing I am realizing (and that I always knew) was having a domain that's mine that points to the server I want to, not a domain by someone else. If you can control that, then I see no reason not to depend on whoever you want to host you emails for the moment being. So if I where you, I'd first start with getting your own domain (if you aren't already doing so) and for the rest, think about who can handle you email safely and without problems, security issues, etc, for the time being. You can change in two days and hassle free if it's your domain.
Federico
Makes sense. Just the same reason sometimes we get shocked when we learn Chicken are raised and processed, and start buying organic products and fair treatment. Or fair coffee price. When there are too level of indirection. If people had to kills their own cattle or chicken, things would be different. Sometimes a documentary can alter the direction of an industry (even if slowly). Maybe it's a matter of having more awareness.
I also think that free trade and globalization negatively affected the USA. But that corporation would heavily resist some adjustments, because they want a fair pie of emerging economies. And if there's any protection in the USA, getting a pie of emerging economies will be harder still.
Corporation have little loyalty, but they still have owners. So ultimately, it could be that these owners do not care about countries. But is that a good premise? Have people like that been adapting to power shifts for centuries? Corporation will not care if owners do not care. But, who would those be, if they exist?
I do agree with all the post. Except that they will continue to manufacture in China. First, if Toys (just an example) imports tarifs made toys 4X more expensive, people would chose to buy less. And people would start to manufacture locally. But in any case, you still have all the tariffs.
I think that US corporations want to bargain with countries saying that they can export goods to the main buyer, the USA, if they pay for patents and all kind of intellectual property ideas (to create scarcity of "intangible goods" or monopoly power over ideas and concepts). But those ideas are typically ones that do not employ the larger population, and further, they can keep producing decades after work stopped. This is the reason why "services" economies will fail.
I think it's hard to base an economy just on intellectual property. And if you do, you need to be well into welfare and redistribution, Which is the opposite interest of the owners of the IP.