Healthcare enrollment website has massive problems, well yeah, I'm sure the President knew as much from press reports as the rest of us. But I'm guessing that his subordinates at several levels down the chain were minimizing the problem so what at the level of the people directly responsible for working on the problem looked like a total nightmare was regarded with decreasing severity at each level up the chain. Like this:
webmasters: Website is fucked. Needs basic redesign that will take months to fix.
direct managers: Website has major problems. Some elements will need to be overhauled.
middle managers: Website has significantly underperformed. Some changes will be needed before it performs as expected....
Deputy HHS Secretary in charge of project: Website is experiencing some customer difficulties. We are working on it but it might take a while.
HHS Secretary: There have been some troubles with the website rollout. We're working on it. Should be fixed soon.
President of the United States: ???
Who hasn't seen pretty much this same scenario play out in their own organizations?
The problem I have with this scenario is that this is the president's baby. I don't see why he wouldn't demand regular progress reports and/or demos to people he trusted.
I've been involved in a few website roll-outs. I've mostly done UAT testing and bug hunting. Why wasn't the site sufficiently stress-tested? Why were their multiple companies being dealt with, rather than the government simply picking a Web designer and saying, "Build this site"? And how did it happen that they picked a vendor so shady that they would hide major problems with the website rather than saying, "Look, we need more time"? It's not as if Web projects always run on schedule. The website being delayed would be the most ordinary thing in the world.
It just seems to me like the administration left it up to HHS, and HHS didn't exercise any diligence at all - let alone due diligence.
I can hardly believe that the President of the USofA will know all. Could be that it is in his line of command to know. But I would not be surprised if it was just a general 'we can spy on whomever we want' kind of thing.
I would hope that spying on another country's leader isn't something the U.S. would do as a matter of course - especially if that leader was an ally. How could something like that be done and the president not be told? It's an incredibly risky venture (as we can see now).
And spying on some Afghan village leader is just as bad in my book. Just because he is an Afghan does not mean he is a terrorist or has anything to do with terrorism.
Spying on an Afghan leader might be just as bad morally, but it has nothing like the same international diplomacy consequences.
I can buy that, but spying on a world leader - and an ally - sounds like something that could get you into a sh*tstorm of trouble. It's hard for me to believe they wouldn't have to run that kind of thing up the food chain. We're not talking about spying on some Afghani village leader here.
This isn't a surprise, right? I mean, what are the odds that the NSA would spy on a leader of another country and the president of the United States not even know it's going on? It sounds laughable to me.
I had Vista when it first came out. I never thought it was total crap, but it was more cumbersome than it should've been. They screwed up the user rights. Not every little thing you do should have required UAC. Plus, while I didn't have this problem, they should've done more with hardware compatibility.
The way Microsoft has positioned Windows 8 is just moronic, as far as I can tell. One version for the desktop, one version for tablets, and don't mess with the frigging Start Menu. Seriously, how hard would that have been? Now you've got millions of users for whom Windows 8 is a joke, because they don't have touchscreen monitors on their PCs, and worse, they put out two different versions of Windows 8 for tablets, one of which is just slightly less useful than a Cracker Jack toy.
Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes.
My math may be off, but I don't think it is higher for violent offenders, if I'm reading this sentence right.
Rate * normal for non-violent offenders = 4.3
Rate * normal for all offenders = 2.6
Rate * normal for violent offenders = X
Regardless of whether this is a bad idea or not, how is keeping someone who fails this test incarcerated "political"? It seems to me that if the test is the basis for parole or release, that's the opposite of political. That's based on science. Whether it's based on good science is another question, but it's certainly not based on, "Keeping you locked up will look good to my voters", or "Giving you early release will look good to my [other] voters".
The argument that someone is stupid for not believing we've been to the moon (and when I say "we", I should've said "astronauts") because someone else has said there are ways of proving it, is self-defeating.
No, not really.
If someone claims Neanderthals came here in spaceships from the planet Neptune, are you obliged to say, "That's plausible"? No, because the origin of Neanderthals has been thoroughly studied, and multiple people, all over the world, have verified it. You're not obligated to believe every bit of crazy horseshit someone says simply because you haven't independently verified the truth. Such arguments shouldn't be taken seriously. One should simply classify such people as paranoid schizophrenics and go on with one's day.
I'm not an expert in either, so I'll take your word for it.:)
FWIW, I installed this on my Galaxy S3. It works even with finger input, but elegant, it's not. Not sure if you could use it to install something like LibreOffice/OpenOffice. That might be fun.:)
When I said "you", I should've said "astronomers". This is an experiment that has been done at many observatories, all over the world. It's easily falsifiable by any sufficiently sophisticated nation, and I can think of at least one that would've loved to have called "Bullshit!" on a moon landing, if it never happened.
I have a friend who is only moderately stupid that firmly believes that the moon landings were faked.
I would submit to you that if your friend firmly believes that the moon landings were faked, he's far more than moderately stupid. With all the evidence, believing the moon landing was faked is right up there with believing that the moon is made of gouda cheese. There's a reflector on the moon. If you know the coordinates, you can actually bounce a laser off of it back to Earth.
Amazon gives you a good enough window into how someone rates items to know if they're pushovers or not. I know, because I've looked through several people's profiles when they rated things I had also rated. Odds are, you were right, and the person in question was too generous in giving out 4 or 5 star reviews. I understand it was difficult to find the one-star review, in the field of reviews she did, but then again, it wasn't really necessary. After the first page or so, you got the idea.
Rating is a very personal thing, and stars are subjective. I've read 4-star reviews that seemed overly-harsh for such a positive rating, and I've read 1-star reviews that praised items to high heaven, but came down on one point, and based the entire rating on that.
The subjectivity of reviews and the star system is why I think Amazon should do away with the stars altogether. I think a more useful system would be something like YouTube has: Thumbs up or down. You could then give the book an overall ranking on how many thumbs up vs. thumbs down it got. That would give buyers a quick view.
But the larger problem is, people shouldn't be looking for the quick view. The important part of an Amazon review is the text, not the stars. The stars are important because they allow some kind of overall measure of what people thought of the book, but the real meat is the text, without which you don't know what the rating means.
Most people are not professional reviewers, and are not reading a book at that level. They're reading to be entertained. So a professional review may be completely irrelevant for them. What they want to know is, "Did most people who read this book like it, and how much did they like it?" That's the kind of question that Amazon's star system is trying to answer.
And yes, criticism is a democratic principle. If 95% of people who read a book think the book sucks, then it sucks. It doesn't matter if the other 5% are credentialed critics. (For reference, look at the movie industry, and how many times critics disagree with a blockbuster movie's status.)
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Healthcare enrollment website has massive problems, well yeah, I'm sure the President knew as much from press reports as the rest of us. But I'm guessing that his subordinates at several levels down the chain were minimizing the problem so what at the level of the people directly responsible for working on the problem looked like a total nightmare was regarded with decreasing severity at each level up the chain. Like this:
webmasters: Website is fucked. Needs basic redesign that will take months to fix. direct managers: Website has major problems. Some elements will need to be overhauled. middle managers: Website has significantly underperformed. Some changes will be needed before it performs as expected. ...
Deputy HHS Secretary in charge of project: Website is experiencing some customer difficulties. We are working on it but it might take a while.
HHS Secretary: There have been some troubles with the website rollout. We're working on it. Should be fixed soon.
President of the United States: ???
Who hasn't seen pretty much this same scenario play out in their own organizations?
The problem I have with this scenario is that this is the president's baby. I don't see why he wouldn't demand regular progress reports and/or demos to people he trusted.
I've been involved in a few website roll-outs. I've mostly done UAT testing and bug hunting. Why wasn't the site sufficiently stress-tested? Why were their multiple companies being dealt with, rather than the government simply picking a Web designer and saying, "Build this site"? And how did it happen that they picked a vendor so shady that they would hide major problems with the website rather than saying, "Look, we need more time"? It's not as if Web projects always run on schedule. The website being delayed would be the most ordinary thing in the world.
It just seems to me like the administration left it up to HHS, and HHS didn't exercise any diligence at all - let alone due diligence.
Who the hell would want to spy on Obama? He isn't exactly hot grits...
I can't really imagine the NSA spying on him, but I could certainly imagine political enemies wanting to do it. :)
I can hardly believe that the President of the USofA will know all. Could be that it is in his line of command to know. But I would not be surprised if it was just a general 'we can spy on whomever we want' kind of thing.
I would hope that spying on another country's leader isn't something the U.S. would do as a matter of course - especially if that leader was an ally. How could something like that be done and the president not be told? It's an incredibly risky venture (as we can see now).
And spying on some Afghan village leader is just as bad in my book. Just because he is an Afghan does not mean he is a terrorist or has anything to do with terrorism.
Spying on an Afghan leader might be just as bad morally, but it has nothing like the same international diplomacy consequences.
I can buy that, but spying on a world leader - and an ally - sounds like something that could get you into a sh*tstorm of trouble. It's hard for me to believe they wouldn't have to run that kind of thing up the food chain. We're not talking about spying on some Afghani village leader here.
Well, yes. Obviously if they spy on Obama, they're not going to tell Obama. :)
This isn't a surprise, right? I mean, what are the odds that the NSA would spy on a leader of another country and the president of the United States not even know it's going on? It sounds laughable to me.
I had Vista when it first came out. I never thought it was total crap, but it was more cumbersome than it should've been. They screwed up the user rights. Not every little thing you do should have required UAC. Plus, while I didn't have this problem, they should've done more with hardware compatibility.
The way Microsoft has positioned Windows 8 is just moronic, as far as I can tell. One version for the desktop, one version for tablets, and don't mess with the frigging Start Menu. Seriously, how hard would that have been? Now you've got millions of users for whom Windows 8 is a joke, because they don't have touchscreen monitors on their PCs, and worse, they put out two different versions of Windows 8 for tablets, one of which is just slightly less useful than a Cracker Jack toy.
I think you're going to need a different example. That's Kansas you're thinking of, not Texas.
Perry has stated his disbelief in evolution (which is reason enough to want him gone) but Texas itself still teaches it.
Damn.
Okay. Thanks.
My math may be off, but I don't think it is higher for violent offenders, if I'm reading this sentence right.
Rate * normal for non-violent offenders = 4.3
Rate * normal for all offenders = 2.6
Rate * normal for violent offenders = X
(4.3 + X )/2 = 2.6
4.3 + X = 5.2
X = 5.2 - 4.3
X = 0.9
Regardless of whether this is a bad idea or not, how is keeping someone who fails this test incarcerated "political"? It seems to me that if the test is the basis for parole or release, that's the opposite of political. That's based on science. Whether it's based on good science is another question, but it's certainly not based on, "Keeping you locked up will look good to my voters", or "Giving you early release will look good to my [other] voters".
LOL. :)
The argument that someone is stupid for not believing we've been to the moon (and when I say "we", I should've said "astronauts") because someone else has said there are ways of proving it, is self-defeating.
No, not really.
If someone claims Neanderthals came here in spaceships from the planet Neptune, are you obliged to say, "That's plausible"? No, because the origin of Neanderthals has been thoroughly studied, and multiple people, all over the world, have verified it. You're not obligated to believe every bit of crazy horseshit someone says simply because you haven't independently verified the truth. Such arguments shouldn't be taken seriously. One should simply classify such people as paranoid schizophrenics and go on with one's day.
No, you don't. The answer should be obvious. It's not worth it.
Okay, so you have helicopters buzzing around and strafing highways with blanks in Die Hard-esque fashion, in highly populated areas.
Oh, yeah. Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right?
We didn't have the robotics to set that up remotely. It's harder to think of it not being there because we landed there.
I'm not an expert in either, so I'll take your word for it. :)
:)
FWIW, I installed this on my Galaxy S3. It works even with finger input, but elegant, it's not. Not sure if you could use it to install something like LibreOffice/OpenOffice. That might be fun.
According to this, anyway...
So I don't see the point of Windows 3.1 on an Android device.
When I said "you", I should've said "astronomers". This is an experiment that has been done at many observatories, all over the world. It's easily falsifiable by any sufficiently sophisticated nation, and I can think of at least one that would've loved to have called "Bullshit!" on a moon landing, if it never happened.
I have a friend who is only moderately stupid that firmly believes that the moon landings were faked.
I would submit to you that if your friend firmly believes that the moon landings were faked, he's far more than moderately stupid. With all the evidence, believing the moon landing was faked is right up there with believing that the moon is made of gouda cheese. There's a reflector on the moon. If you know the coordinates, you can actually bounce a laser off of it back to Earth.
Why would WordPerfect users be upset? ;)
I don't think "khama" is a thing (real or not).
Karma, on the other hand...
....we have yet to be visited by any other intelligent alien life?
Notice, I said if it's true. I don't know that this makes any sense. I'm not a scientist. But taken together:
You can't go faster than light.
Long-term exposure to radiation does doubleplusungood things to the brain.
seem to suggest that travelling long distances in space is just not a good idea.
I hope that this is wrong, but I do think it'd explain a lot.
Amazon gives you a good enough window into how someone rates items to know if they're pushovers or not. I know, because I've looked through several people's profiles when they rated things I had also rated. Odds are, you were right, and the person in question was too generous in giving out 4 or 5 star reviews. I understand it was difficult to find the one-star review, in the field of reviews she did, but then again, it wasn't really necessary. After the first page or so, you got the idea.
Rating is a very personal thing, and stars are subjective. I've read 4-star reviews that seemed overly-harsh for such a positive rating, and I've read 1-star reviews that praised items to high heaven, but came down on one point, and based the entire rating on that.
The subjectivity of reviews and the star system is why I think Amazon should do away with the stars altogether. I think a more useful system would be something like YouTube has: Thumbs up or down. You could then give the book an overall ranking on how many thumbs up vs. thumbs down it got. That would give buyers a quick view.
But the larger problem is, people shouldn't be looking for the quick view. The important part of an Amazon review is the text, not the stars. The stars are important because they allow some kind of overall measure of what people thought of the book, but the real meat is the text, without which you don't know what the rating means.
Most people are not professional reviewers, and are not reading a book at that level. They're reading to be entertained. So a professional review may be completely irrelevant for them. What they want to know is, "Did most people who read this book like it, and how much did they like it?" That's the kind of question that Amazon's star system is trying to answer.
And yes, criticism is a democratic principle. If 95% of people who read a book think the book sucks, then it sucks. It doesn't matter if the other 5% are credentialed critics. (For reference, look at the movie industry, and how many times critics disagree with a blockbuster movie's status.)