I've been looking at phones specs for the last couple of months, after my first android phone died, (Okay, It was my fault, I forgot I had it in my pocket, back off OK?), I've been researching this so I can get the most bang for my buck.
But phone specs don't make any sense!, and most "normal" users have never really understood them, and they're not advertised either. You can get a cheap phone with a quad core processor at 1.3 Ghz with a gig of ram for like a 100 bucks, but nowhere on the box does it say that the quad core processor is an A7, which is relevant when gauging performance, and just try to find out the GPU on that thing, sure its a Mali400 but that means nothing if there are no specs for it since a lot of phones have that same gpu but at different speeds and even with single or multiple cores! It doesn't matter if its a cheap chines phone or the latest Samsung "flagship" phone, specs are hype, I've actually found it more useful to look up videos on youtube of people doing demos and running apps on their phones.
Point is, hopefully, people will stop being impressed with the marketing hype of "specs" and can worry about screen size, resolution and battery life.
Hey, just don't forget that they were one of the bigger backers for DRM in HTML5. Sure, I'd want to ditch Silverlight too, but not at the expense of the Internet.
During the Cold War era, the United States feared the spread of communism and, in some cases, overthrew democratically elected governments perceived at the time as becoming left-wing or unfriendly to U.S. interests.[1] Examples include the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and the support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
And of course, Cuba.
This started, for lack of a better word, a policy to attempt to control the political life of Latin America, where some places they used force, others it was easier to coerce them through other means, including bribery. this served both political and economic interests of the US.
This is pretty well documented history, as a quick Google search will show.
Relatively peaceful? I get your point but they were never peaceful, even relatively. I lived in Tijuana and while you would not expect to be caught in the middle of gang violence, (And this was true even in the middle of the worse part of the conflict), you knew that should you get involved with these people, they were going to be ruthless if you crossed them.
Anyway, I agree with drinkypoo. Because of the US policies in the 70's to destabilize latin america, corruption and fraud are a direct result of that.
Even more important, this is one study, with 50 people. You can't take it seriously just yet, can these results be duplicated? We don't know. Would the sample size make a difference in the result? Very likely.
" Everybody in other countries with an ounce of brains in their heads could reasonable assumed that this is going on"
Two things:
People in other countries are outraged, so your opinion on what people in other countries think does not hold. (You might as well say that, since (you assume) they already know and don't say anything,then they probably love it (In either case you ignore the fact that they are powerless to do anything about it))
Saying that this is not news does not make it right. If you use the ounce of brains you allow other people and use it to think of something other than yourself, you'll soon come to realize that people in other countries might very well view the secret spying of the united states government in pursuit of its own interests as one thing, and the brazen F U that is the pervasive surveillance state, that we now KNOW to be the built around the world, as something else entirely.
Wow since autism is not always crippling do you really think this is close to a good or moral idea?
It would be a far worse and immoral idea for me to presume that I, or anyone else, has the right to make this decision for other people. It would also be immoral to willfully deprive parents of information about their own child. It should be up to the parents to have the test done or not done, and it should be up to the parents to decide what to do with the results. The bottom line is that if it is not your kid, it is not your decision to make.
The reasoning you use is correct, the flaw is that you can't assert that its not somebody else's decision to make and at the same time propose a solution for other people to take. I'll argue that making a specific course of action available to others needs to be debated as more than personal choice, otherwise, you would just develop this test yourself and apply it yourself as well, but asking others to create something for you is not about personal choice, that's the thing about living in a society, you cannot leverage the benefits of a society purely for personal gain and ask everyone else to back off. Once available, then its definitely a personal choice. In this case, your answer is smarmy in the sense that it objects to the morality of deciding for somebody else while not addressing the morality point raised by the other person. (Its a mind trip, I know)
It doesn't work, when I get to the comments, they won't load, I have to reload a couple of times before anything comes up! that is of course the most obvious failure I can think of but there's just so much to dislike!!!
Think about it, someone who does have good communication skills, is telling you, you need to get better communication skills, and you're telling us, you don't need to pull your punches. Sounds like you misunderstood, because he/she was not communicating as you do.
This is hard, you need to stop being a jerk but you probably do not realize what makes you a jerk in the first place. you probably judge people too hard. so you should probably look into learning how to make value neutral statements. That is, learn to be direct about what you mean. Most people I've met with communication problems are either very direct about how they feel or repress what they feel as if it had no value. But neither of these talks about the work at hand, they tend to conflate their feelings with their talking points and tend to say things like, "you suck" and stop there, when they should say, "that doesn't work and here's why and here's how to fix it"
While you learn these skills don't second guess yourself either, just watch if what you are saying gets you anywhere.
Sure, some people are not shocked, but nobody cares about their outrage either so... shouldn't they still be asking if this spying was performed thanks to the extended powers they got so they can catch Terrorists? Because then this would be a misuse of these powers right?
They didn't fire him because he made inappropriate comments, if anything he was fired for telling the truth. Are we really expecting these companies to screw us over as long as they lie to us? And then we complain when those companies employees say the truth by saying they are evil? Just because Orth left, that wont change the fact that Microsoft will still go ahead and do what he said and do it with the same attitude, "You don't like it? deal with it!"
There's a real sense in which Orth failed at his post, and he may yet deserve being fired, but it also means that we want to be lied to, and we expect company employees to hide the truth from us. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Most "suits" are already familiar with some form of version control involved in quality assurance processes commonly something like ISO 9001, just explain that this is the computer version of this.
The groups you are describing here are imaginary, think of it more like "States". You will be in different states throughout you life, young then old, sometimes healthy and sometimes sick. So if you deny treatment for old people you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you deny treatment for sick people well then you are clearly just trolling.
But don't you think that these are separate issues? Universal coverage Quality of care Cost
It seems to me that right now that most discussions on this topic are about cost, perceived quality of care and note letting just anybody have health care.
Going from no coverage to crappy coverage is by all measures an improvement.
The problem is you believe that conditions are the same, in Mexico you don't have "Insurance" in the sense that you have an insurance company which mediates between you and your health provider. You pay your part as a sort of tax (You don't have to go pay anywhere, it gets deducted from your paycheck so your employer takes care of this), and the hospitals take all of that and budget it towards trying to take care of everybody. Since this is a goverment dependency, its non profit so hopefully (this is the problem in Mexico) all your money goes to pay doctors and medicine.
Example: My son fell head first while trying to jump in a stairwell, since I was a rights holder, my wife and son are automatically covered. The good news is that he was fine, no bleeding just a bump on his head, we went to the emergency room the doctor ordered some xrays, found nothing, got some medicine for the pain and some topical antiseptics and a small bandage for his hand. We were in and out in about an hour, didn't pay a cent.
At one point I hurt my hand, went to the doctor and the doctor said i needed to take two weeks off, gave me the necesary paperwork to take to my workplace, gave it to them, told them I'd be back in two weeks, after two weeks the doctor told me to take another week for rest, took the paperwork to my workplace again, no questions asked. At the end of the month got back to work then went back to the hospital, got a check for 60% of missed wages and cashed it at the bank.
One of my employees broke both of his ankles, took about a year and a half off of work while he recovered and was in physical therapy (Again, at no cost to him) and received 60% of his paycheck. Once he was able, he got back to work.
So yes, its better because there is no question about being covered, you pay for insurance which acts as a sort of membership fee, and once you are in the door, you'll get the best treatment a third world country can give (by real doctors, not Dr Nick Riviera). Your job and financial security are protected by our most effective laws, (Employers FEAR social security sanctions for not complying).
I guess I really want to press the fact that your objections are misdirected. Its not just about getting care, its about a system that considers how to best keep you healthy with limited resources instead of having a system that has a vast amount of resources but gets to make decisions for you about healthcare based on being profitable. under your system, the insurance companies are your rich stingy uncle that is burdened with having to take care of you and doctors are contractors called in to perform whatever the insurance company is willing to pay for.
Well, you should probably think about who you're dressing for:
If you wear the same clothes you're saying to the world that this job won't change you, you are trying to tell your old peers, who are now your subordinates, that you are still one of them. You probably made fun of management and the way they dress and since you ARE management now, you don't want to look ridiculous. Stop it, you took the job already, nobody expects you to keep dressing the same, not even your friends. And you are their boss now, so you cant be that friendly either.
If you dress up, business casual, most everybody will expect you to do that anyway, so nobody's going to think less of you, and if they do, I bet they're not the sort of people that get promoted to positions like yours, so you shouldn't care about what they think, at least not as far as fashion goes.
This is true, but there is also a "minimum acceptable bitrate" which is basically the minimum speed they guarantee. Its the technological limit at which service is declared to be working perfectly or not at all. Of course, you need to ask what this minimum is and thats about as much as you can hold them accountable.
Actually you do find cases where the quality of the lines vary radically by the time of day, in some cases, it gets really cold at night and humidity affects the line performance, in other cases, it gets too hot. I once heard of a customer (from the person who handled the case) that lived near a drawbridge, every night the drawbridge would open and the customer would lose connectivity, of course this is a very rare case, but there are many types of interference that vary by the time of day. Really, not kidding.
Before you do anything: Call up your ISP and ask what is the minimum acceptable bitrate for your account, the rep might not have the answer handy, tell him to ask, someone there knows. Ask if they have a speed test site of their own, use it. (And please remember, that test sites do not take into account overhead in communications like encapsulation, so its a very rough estimate) the speed should still be above the minimum acceptable bitrate for your ISP. Ask for the loop length, this is the distance in copper wire form your home to the DSLAM. (it really depends on the set up with your ISP but a good rule of thumb is you need it to be under 10k ft for 3mbps, maybe less, ask the rep, again, if he doesnt know, tell him to ask) This is important because if you are at the edge of the acceptable loop length for your provisioned speed package, you might actually benefit from lowering your speed package. (lets say you downgrade to 2mbps, you might actually get a steady speed al the time) Yes this is your last resource, just so you know.
Now that you have some info, if your speed test drops below the minimum acceptable bitrate, then its on them to fix it, but you need to make sure you note when the problem is happening, if its only at certain times of the day, then the rep needs to note that its an intermittent issue, I can't tell you how many customers get screwed because the rep forgets to write this down! Even if your issue gets escalated to the right team, theyll run a test and if they see the speed is fine, theyll close your case, no questions asked. They need to run tests on your line at the time your connection has trouble and if they know its an intermittent issue, they'll run more tests for longer periods of time till they find an issue, or not.
If your speed is above the minimum acceptable bitrate, your options are limited, Tell the rep you want to switch, or flat out that your going to disconnect your service, don't threaten to cancel if youre service doesn't get fixed! Just say that if you cant get reliable service, youll disconnect the service and actually follow through! One of two things will happen, the rep might get creative and try to figure out some loophole to get your case taken care of, (You cant ask for this I'm sorry, the rep might actually need to call in a favor for this, I've seen it happen, and not everyone can do it) or when you call to cancel, they'll try to retain you and actually do something about this issue.
Oh yeah, your ISP might have the ability to change the sync profile for your modem, if they can, tell them to change it, if the rep doesnt know what youre talking about, tell him to ask, this isnt common knowledge even when it is possible. (you might need to talk to a higher level tech for this, do not ask for a supervisor, they mean well, but theyre not a higher level tech!)
If you are at the end of the loop for your speed package, please accept that the solution might be to downgrade service, really, not kidding.
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I've been looking at phones specs for the last couple of months, after my first android phone died, (Okay, It was my fault, I forgot I had it in my pocket, back off OK?), I've been researching this so I can get the most bang for my buck.
But phone specs don't make any sense!, and most "normal" users have never really understood them, and they're not advertised either. You can get a cheap phone with a quad core processor at 1.3 Ghz with a gig of ram for like a 100 bucks, but nowhere on the box does it say that the quad core processor is an A7, which is relevant when gauging performance, and just try to find out the GPU on that thing, sure its a Mali400 but that means nothing if there are no specs for it since a lot of phones have that same gpu but at different speeds and even with single or multiple cores! It doesn't matter if its a cheap chines phone or the latest Samsung "flagship" phone, specs are hype, I've actually found it more useful to look up videos on youtube of people doing demos and running apps on their phones.
Point is, hopefully, people will stop being impressed with the marketing hype of "specs" and can worry about screen size, resolution and battery life.
Hey, just don't forget that they were one of the bigger backers for DRM in HTML5. Sure, I'd want to ditch Silverlight too, but not at the expense of the Internet.
Well, forget the 70's for now and lets go back a little bit, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
During the Cold War era, the United States feared the spread of communism and, in some cases, overthrew democratically elected governments perceived at the time as becoming left-wing or unfriendly to U.S. interests.[1] Examples include the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and the support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
And of course, Cuba.
This started, for lack of a better word, a policy to attempt to control the political life of Latin America, where some places they used force, others it was easier to coerce them through other means, including bribery. this served both political and economic interests of the US.
This is pretty well documented history, as a quick Google search will show.
Relatively peaceful?
I get your point but they were never peaceful, even relatively.
I lived in Tijuana and while you would not expect to be caught in the middle of gang violence, (And this was true even in the middle of the worse part of the conflict), you knew that should you get involved with these people, they were going to be ruthless if you crossed them.
Anyway, I agree with drinkypoo. Because of the US policies in the 70's to destabilize latin america, corruption and fraud are a direct result of that.
Even more important, this is one study, with 50 people.
You can't take it seriously just yet, can these results be duplicated? We don't know.
Would the sample size make a difference in the result? Very likely.
Did someone call MC front A Lot?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3w1_E1V46M
" Everybody in other countries with an ounce of brains in their heads could reasonable assumed that this is going on"
Two things:
People in other countries are outraged, so your opinion on what people in other countries think does not hold. (You might as well say that, since (you assume) they already know and don't say anything,then they probably love it (In either case you ignore the fact that they are powerless to do anything about it))
Saying that this is not news does not make it right.
If you use the ounce of brains you allow other people and use it to think of something other than yourself, you'll soon come to realize that people in other countries might very well view the secret spying of the united states government in pursuit of its own interests as one thing, and the brazen F U that is the pervasive surveillance state, that we now KNOW to be the built around the world, as something else entirely.
Interesting, this could work.
Wow since autism is not always crippling do you really think this is close to a good or moral idea?
It would be a far worse and immoral idea for me to presume that I, or anyone else, has the right to make this decision for other people. It would also be immoral to willfully deprive parents of information about their own child. It should be up to the parents to have the test done or not done, and it should be up to the parents to decide what to do with the results. The bottom line is that if it is not your kid, it is not your decision to make.
The reasoning you use is correct, the flaw is that you can't assert that its not somebody else's decision to make and at the same time propose a solution for other people to take.
I'll argue that making a specific course of action available to others needs to be debated as more than personal choice, otherwise, you would just develop this test yourself and apply it yourself as well, but asking others to create something for you is not about personal choice, that's the thing about living in a society, you cannot leverage the benefits of a society purely for personal gain and ask everyone else to back off. Once available, then its definitely a personal choice.
In this case, your answer is smarmy in the sense that it objects to the morality of deciding for somebody else while not addressing the morality point raised by the other person.
(Its a mind trip, I know)
It doesn't work, when I get to the comments, they won't load, I have to reload a couple of times before anything comes up!
that is of course the most obvious failure I can think of but there's just so much to dislike!!!
Think about it, someone who does have good communication skills, is telling you, you need to get better communication skills, and you're telling us, you don't need to pull your punches.
Sounds like you misunderstood, because he/she was not communicating as you do.
This is hard, you need to stop being a jerk but you probably do not realize what makes you a jerk in the first place.
you probably judge people too hard. so you should probably look into learning how to make value neutral statements. That is, learn to be direct about what you mean.
Most people I've met with communication problems are either very direct about how they feel or repress what they feel as if it had no value. But neither of these talks about the work at hand, they tend to conflate their feelings with their talking points and tend to say things like, "you suck" and stop there, when they should say, "that doesn't work and here's why and here's how to fix it"
While you learn these skills don't second guess yourself either, just watch if what you are saying gets you anywhere.
Sure, some people are not shocked, but nobody cares about their outrage either so... shouldn't they still be asking if this spying was performed thanks to the extended powers they got so they can catch Terrorists?
Because then this would be a misuse of these powers right?
A company that works in recruitment claims to know how to select personnel...
This is spurious on its face.
They didn't fire him because he made inappropriate comments, if anything he was fired for telling the truth. Are we really expecting these companies to screw us over as long as they lie to us?
And then we complain when those companies employees say the truth by saying they are evil?
Just because Orth left, that wont change the fact that Microsoft will still go ahead and do what he said and do it with the same attitude, "You don't like it? deal with it!"
There's a real sense in which Orth failed at his post, and he may yet deserve being fired, but it also means that we want to be lied to, and we expect company employees to hide the truth from us.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Most "suits" are already familiar with some form of version control involved in quality assurance processes commonly something like ISO 9001, just explain that this is the computer version of this.
Only if healthcare is a luxury item. It really needs to become a commodity.
The groups you are describing here are imaginary, think of it more like "States". You will be in different states throughout you life, young then old, sometimes healthy and sometimes sick. So if you deny treatment for old people you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. If you deny treatment for sick people well then you are clearly just trolling.
But don't you think that these are separate issues?
Universal coverage
Quality of care
Cost
It seems to me that right now that most discussions on this topic are about cost, perceived quality of care and note letting just anybody have health care.
So healthcare and insurance are two different things then?
Going from no coverage to crappy coverage is by all measures an improvement.
The problem is you believe that conditions are the same, in Mexico you don't have "Insurance" in the sense that you have an insurance company which mediates between you and your health provider. You pay your part as a sort of tax (You don't have to go pay anywhere, it gets deducted from your paycheck so your employer takes care of this), and the hospitals take all of that and budget it towards trying to take care of everybody. Since this is a goverment dependency, its non profit so hopefully (this is the problem in Mexico) all your money goes to pay doctors and medicine.
Example: My son fell head first while trying to jump in a stairwell, since I was a rights holder, my wife and son are automatically covered. The good news is that he was fine, no bleeding just a bump on his head, we went to the emergency room the doctor ordered some xrays, found nothing, got some medicine for the pain and some topical antiseptics and a small bandage for his hand. We were in and out in about an hour, didn't pay a cent.
At one point I hurt my hand, went to the doctor and the doctor said i needed to take two weeks off, gave me the necesary paperwork to take to my workplace, gave it to them, told them I'd be back in two weeks, after two weeks the doctor told me to take another week for rest, took the paperwork to my workplace again, no questions asked. At the end of the month got back to work then went back to the hospital, got a check for 60% of missed wages and cashed it at the bank.
One of my employees broke both of his ankles, took about a year and a half off of work while he recovered and was in physical therapy (Again, at no cost to him) and received 60% of his paycheck. Once he was able, he got back to work.
So yes, its better because there is no question about being covered, you pay for insurance which acts as a sort of membership fee, and once you are in the door, you'll get the best treatment a third world country can give (by real doctors, not Dr Nick Riviera). Your job and financial security are protected by our most effective laws, (Employers FEAR social security sanctions for not complying).
I guess I really want to press the fact that your objections are misdirected. Its not just about getting care, its about a system that considers how to best keep you healthy with limited resources instead of having a system that has a vast amount of resources but gets to make decisions for you about healthcare based on being profitable. under your system, the insurance companies are your rich stingy uncle that is burdened with having to take care of you and doctors are contractors called in to perform whatever the insurance company is willing to pay for.
Well, you should probably think about who you're dressing for:
If you wear the same clothes you're saying to the world that this job won't change you, you are trying to tell your old peers, who are now your subordinates, that you are still one of them. You probably made fun of management and the way they dress and since you ARE management now, you don't want to look ridiculous.
Stop it, you took the job already, nobody expects you to keep dressing the same, not even your friends. And you are their boss now, so you cant be that friendly either.
If you dress up, business casual, most everybody will expect you to do that anyway, so nobody's going to think less of you, and if they do, I bet they're not the sort of people that get promoted to positions like yours, so you shouldn't care about what they think, at least not as far as fashion goes.
"Real people know that performance - not appearance - counts"
Not in my experience sorry to say.
This is true, but there is also a "minimum acceptable bitrate" which is basically the minimum speed they guarantee. Its the technological limit at which service is declared to be working perfectly or not at all. Of course, you need to ask what this minimum is and thats about as much as you can hold them accountable.
Actually you do find cases where the quality of the lines vary radically by the time of day, in some cases, it gets really cold at night and humidity affects the line performance, in other cases, it gets too hot. I once heard of a customer (from the person who handled the case) that lived near a drawbridge, every night the drawbridge would open and the customer would lose connectivity, of course this is a very rare case, but there are many types of interference that vary by the time of day. Really, not kidding.
Before you do anything:
Call up your ISP and ask what is the minimum acceptable bitrate for your account, the rep might not have the answer handy, tell him to ask, someone there knows.
Ask if they have a speed test site of their own, use it. (And please remember, that test sites do not take into account overhead in communications like encapsulation, so its a very rough estimate) the speed should still be above the minimum acceptable bitrate for your ISP.
Ask for the loop length, this is the distance in copper wire form your home to the DSLAM. (it really depends on the set up with your ISP but a good rule of thumb is you need it to be under 10k ft for 3mbps, maybe less, ask the rep, again, if he doesnt know, tell him to ask) This is important because if you are at the edge of the acceptable loop length for your provisioned speed package, you might actually benefit from lowering your speed package. (lets say you downgrade to 2mbps, you might actually get a steady speed al the time) Yes this is your last resource, just so you know.
Now that you have some info, if your speed test drops below the minimum acceptable bitrate, then its on them to fix it, but you need to make sure you note when the problem is happening, if its only at certain times of the day, then the rep needs to note that its an intermittent issue, I can't tell you how many customers get screwed because the rep forgets to write this down! Even if your issue gets escalated to the right team, theyll run a test and if they see the speed is fine, theyll close your case, no questions asked. They need to run tests on your line at the time your connection has trouble and if they know its an intermittent issue, they'll run more tests for longer periods of time till they find an issue, or not.
If your speed is above the minimum acceptable bitrate, your options are limited, Tell the rep you want to switch, or flat out that your going to disconnect your service, don't threaten to cancel if youre service doesn't get fixed! Just say that if you cant get reliable service, youll disconnect the service and actually follow through! One of two things will happen, the rep might get creative and try to figure out some loophole to get your case taken care of, (You cant ask for this I'm sorry, the rep might actually need to call in a favor for this, I've seen it happen, and not everyone can do it) or when you call to cancel, they'll try to retain you and actually do something about this issue.
Oh yeah, your ISP might have the ability to change the sync profile for your modem, if they can, tell them to change it, if the rep doesnt know what youre talking about, tell him to ask, this isnt common knowledge even when it is possible. (you might need to talk to a higher level tech for this, do not ask for a supervisor, they mean well, but theyre not a higher level tech!)
If you are at the end of the loop for your speed package, please accept that the solution might be to downgrade service, really, not kidding.