"There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver"
I don't just call BS. I propose that we consider IT as an example. How many 'different service lines' are there in just Windows server management? If by 'service lines' you mean 'functional tasks', well I still think 13,600 is an awful lot.
Consider Orthopedics. Is setting a left femur a seperate line of service from setting a right femur? How about setting an ulnar? Tibia? I suspect the number of 'service lines' in Orthopedics could be as many as a hundred, if you're creative.
As a general practitioner? Is the 'service line' of diagnosis of a common cold significantly different and worthy of differentiation from diagnosing, say, influenza? Bronchitis or pneumonia? Different findings, but very similar effort and knowledge. In fact, differential diagnosis relies on this step-by-step process, of which many steps are common.
The whole concept that medicine in the U.S. is more expensive than it need be because of the complexity of so many 'service lines' ignores the reality that, for the industrialized world, diagnoses are largely identical. Most of these nations find and treat the same illnesses, though perhaps in different proportions or severities.
All this time I thought American healthcare was expensive because we were obese, sedentary, and dependent on drugs. Now I find out we just know too much.
No, that's BS. We pay more for our healthcare first because it is unnecessarily complex - doctors perform tests intended to protect them from lawsuits far too often. And patients demand treatments and medications that are either marginally effective or just more expensive than necessary.
I lowered my overall cholsterol level from 238 to 197 in a year by diet modification alone. I am 56, and take no prescribed drugs. Oh, wait, I'm using my asthma meds PRN to deal with an allergic reaction, first time in 3 years. I could be taking arthritis drugs, any of several meds for asthma prevention (I have attacks every few years), meds for sinusitis/allergic rhinitis, etc. I exercise, so my blood pressure is not an issue, and I haven't have the expensive cardiac work done to see if my heart has anything previously undetected going wrong. And I could still keel over from a heart attack despite all the diangostics available. You cannot tell everything after all.
Admittedly, my wife has not been so fortunate. Four years ago, total knee replacement. Who knew a new knee joint costs $20,000? How much of that for insurance for the manufacturer? How much for R&D? How much R&D to avoid lawsuits? Three years ago, microfracture surgery on the other knee (auto accident 25 yrs ago made both pretty mangled) which has been completely successful. Less expensive than a replacement. Last year, removed a cancerous kidney. Not cheap. Found that 'accidentally' when diagnosing what was thought to be a gall bladder problem, pain in the abdmominal area usually associated with gallstones. Lucky. Expensive. Follow-up has been almost 50% of the cost of the surgery, but we're fairly confident there is no other cancer. So my wife has cost $86,000 is healthcare the past four years. I look this up. That's more than I've cost my entire life. I've spend 9 days in the hospital my entire life outside of the nursery after birth, and most of that was simple overnight+ for a viral thing and two surgeries - appendectomy in 1959 and cyst removal in 1966. I'm relatively cheap, including the fractured fibula in 1979.
I'm a little disappointed at the costs associated with ER visits, but here in AZ we have so many people without insurance and private physicians can't get reimbursed for charity care like hospitals do (yes, they do), so people are driven to the ER. It could be more cost-effective for the indigent and uninsured to get subsidies and stay out of the ER.
Let's not get into the illegal aliens that crowd the ER. They need care, and we must care for them. Then we need to send them w
All such good advice. But when you live in the Phoenix area:
- Geothermal will need to go deeper than five feet. Burying duct to exchange heat down there will be more expensive than you think.
- What mechanism will cool your house passively when it is >100 degrees for 2 months? Elaborate on how you exchange the heat with outside air that has actually been heated to 100+ by radiational heating from streets.
- Trading in my poorly designed slump-block home makes great sense, unless you consider the ROI for a $100k loss and the $100K+ premium for the best-effort construction. Multiply this by 150,000 to refit much of the Valley.
Perhaps you meant to recommend that we abandon the Valley, and give it over to solar projects like sodium or lithium heat driven generators, or photovoltaic, or concentrated thermoelectric, or even underground compressed fluid storage? Sounds good. All you have to be mindful of are the impact of shading a few thousand (or is it million?) acres, and the problems of fabricating PV cells or the rare sodium or lithium spill. The spills are largely self-cleaning, admittedly, but you then get to rebuild fairly good chunks of the plant.
And don't forget the hidden cost of fraud and incompetence. PV cells are not yet effieicnet enough to be profitable, even break-even. Liquid transport needs to be proven. Only the mirrors seem to work.
Probably not. No root or su for you on all Android stock ROMs (except for the G1 RC29/RC8), so you can't chmod a lot of folders. Though you might be able to slip the SD card (it MUST be the SDC that is getting these images) into another machine and do it there, but then I bet it interferes with something else, and you're hosed.
When root is cracked for this, then I suspect custom ROMs will solve the problem, if they even support Sense.
At least in the U.S., it's not like buyers don't know what's going on. Since locked phones are the NORM here, and AT&T doesn't bother to obfuscate or lie about the terms, iPhone buyers know or should know what they are getting into.
No exuses. If you're not smart enough to figure out what you're buying with an iPhone, you might want to reconsider buying one. The pariah attitude is, as noted, just wrong. Enjoy your iPhone and accept the terms and conditions you have accepted.
And if you truly don't like Apple/Jobs/et al exercising such control over your experience, get a different phone and leave us out of it. I'm not whining about the dead-end my G1 is at, it was inevitable and I knew it when I bought it in 2008.
If violations are so common with GPS-tagged parolees and convicts, maybe they should reconsider releasing them, eh? Certainly if it's too expensive to *actually* track them down and deal with the violations.
I would have thought that one reason for the program was to save money by releasing low-risk, compliant convicts. If they're NOT low-risk or compliant, then back to prison they can go.
You didn't read my posts, so let's get you caught up, even if you are an AC...
"The only reason that you had problems re-imaging devices is that you clearly refused to use the appropriate tools for the job."
We were contractually required to use the imaging tools provided by the MLTI. In 2002-2004, they first provided a USB CD drive with a CD-ROM holding the image. This we did NOT have to use, as we came on to the program after that was replaced with USB hard drives. The MLTI was a joint venture with the State of Maine, Apple, and the University of Maine. By contract, we had to deliver repaired machines with their image. This was not a significant problem, just the time to reimage and lack of alternatives to allow us to image several machines at once. This got fixed when they allowed us an exception to mount the image on a network in 2004. We were also contractually prohibited from duplicating the image. At the time, we actually did adhere to the contract. Apple corporate shops did not.
If youj fast-forward to 2009, there are great imaging tools, and the MLTI now provides an 'imAger' to schools and shops, one for every 30 notebooks to schools, and as many as shops will *buy*.
We were primarily a Windows shop, and after our Windows guru gave up on getting AFP working on Server 2K, I got the chance to get it up on an NetWare 5.x machine. Worked fine. In 2005 they got an OS X server, but I wasn't there to enjoy that.
Our speed problem was mostly the serial imaging constraint. Once we got network images up, we could slam out dozens of machines and get them shipped back without delay. Otherwise, it was long nights doing one at a time. I felt for school admins that had to do that until about 2004 or 2005.
The price concern still exists. Current MacBooks are still in the high price range, but parents are not required to buy them. That's the whole point of the program. Insurance so students can take them home is getting a bit more reasonable.
And this was 2002-2004 I worked with these. MacBooks were polycarb back then, and didn't take being sat on, dropped on tile floors, having car doors slammed on them, and any number of insults and and just plain bad luck. Screens were cracked at an unfortunate rate. In 2004 we started sourcing the displays directly, and it is a pain to rebuild displays let me tell you. If we had had aluminum cases, it would have been less, but they still crack screens. Students do learn, however, and the rate is much less now.
That was probably what got Apple all wee-wee'd out, that we sourced the panels and they lost the out of warranty business. But there were other reasons the company lost the Apple authorization, including an overzealous employee who tried to game the exchange program. It wasn't necessary.
"I am sure that by this point I am labeled a fanboy. While I do like many of the features macs offer, I do see value in other systems as well. I run and administer both linux and mac os x. I also use Windows for personal use."
Well, I use Windows at work, cut my teeth on NetWare and Token-Ring, made most of my money with Windows servers, and am still begging my wife to let me buy her a MacBook. My tablet I multiboot into Ubuntu or Windows depending on the tasks, and I still maintain my email and web server now on Fedora something recent (it's virtual now, I stay out of the kernel). I am familiar with the flaws of most platforms, and can't really endorse one as a clear choice for all users. You're not a fanboy, just convinced you have all the answers to everything. You might be young, or just a Mac guru. As evidence to support my assertion: You dive right into an exploration of the OS market and software comparisons.
This is not just your right, but encouraged. At least you have an opinion. Most people just hang on ot the last article they read.
In a lot of places, the only check at all on electronic systems is the volunteer checking names off. Kinda sad.
I've thought too much about this. If I were to design a system:
- Electronic device with keys and paper inserts printed to display ballot choices. - Printed receipt for the voter, with either of two options:
1. Barcoded receipt with a passcode to go to a website and verify your vote was actually included in the tally, and how often. Yes, how often. Ability for voters to log in after a contested vote to see what selections were actually registered. This is open to problems with 'buyer's remorse', poor memory of the voter's actual selections, etc, but a widespread response from voters of irregularities would be helpful. Avoids ballot printing costs, just the slips for the devices, and adds complexity with a printer.
2. Actual OCR reciept showing your selections for verification. Scanned into a fairly conventional paper scanner, no receipt give to you. Totals compared between scanner and voting device, recounts done by re-scanning receipts. This assumes a voter looks at the receipt to verify it, generates a standardized paper ballot the scanners get, and allows for recounts and arguments. You could just count the devices, require a count and comparison of devices and scanners if the results were 'too close' (or a candidate protested and maybe offered a deposit to cover costs), and then recount the paper if the issue was not resolved. Saved ballot printing coats, adds complexity to device with a printer.
Surprisingly, Brazil has cute little devices, no paper.
'"In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast," Ludwig said.'
Ludwig is Rawl's campaign manager, but I'm willing to accept that he is not fabricating these facts.
If that's the case, the voting machines need to be scrapped. How could a machine EVER be permitted to contain more individual votes than the total? Sounds like a design flaw. I crossfoot my spreadsheets regularly to detect errors, and this sort of error would drive me insane, but would certainly prevent me from going further or offering the sheet as useful until I corrected it.
And it doesn't really matter if the total is wrong or the individual votes. If the machines can't do addition and sums, time to get rid of them.
Now the question should be, can South Carolina invalidate this election and hold a new one? Interesting question.
Another question. Should the state reconsider being involved in party primary elections? After all, it's not an election for the seat... Think about this.
Well, that's the choice. Do you want to live in a nation that offers you opportunity and individual freedoms,or do you want to live in a nation that offers you substantial care and benefits, in exchange for substantial taxes?
We may well be on the way to making that choice in the U.S. We've been a nation that values individual freedoms, and also pretty much left individuals to their own devices for things such as healthcare, retirement, and employment. Some European nations took a different path, choosing to provide nationalized healthcare etc. and paying for it with substantial taxes.
It's a choice. Claiming the choice is more about whether the U.S. will make provision for its citizens or leave them to fend for themselves. Healthcare is changing, as companies shift more costs onto employees, and insurers find every way to minimize payments and increase revenue. So we are facing the choice of nationalizing healthcare or leaving citizens to the vagaries of the market. Or worse.
I'm not advocating any choices, here, just trying to point out what is happening.
So you're driving down the highway, and you're plainly directing yoru vehicle in the precise direction you wish. You are in control.
Sadly, someone in a hurry lurches their vehicle into your lane, so abrutly and so close to your vehicle that you are forced to maneuver to avoid striking them. They are, of course, travelling slower than you are.
You yank the wheel, and being in a top-heavy SUV ( like the one I drive, thank you), you not only miss their vehicle but also tip yours over, starting the classic rollover.
At some point, you lost control of your vehicle. On/off. Unless you would argue that you caused the rollover, and therefore are actually in control, just not in a desireable state. Which is sort of pointless, but nonetheless you could argue that.
Control of our freedoms is a sliding scale until we lose control of them, and then it's out of control. Unless you feel that one of your freedoms is indeed lost, in which case you might not have control of that anymore, eh?
And while you voted for your representative, if they changed lanes on you, well you weren't in control of them, and if they've deprived you of some freedom you wanted to keep, you are out control of them.
It is the illusion of control that is a sliding scale. Ask a Formula One driver.
Ah, but they are reasonably stable, which is certainly one of their goals.
Now if the Royal Family would invest in a bit more healthcare for their subjects, and perhaps diversify their economy beyond providing for the excess of the Royals, then we would have far fewer complaints, no?
Not that I'm advocating for the Royal Saud family, but they could do better and give us good reason to shut up about it. As it is, they are no pargaon of virtue in the eyes of the West. Which doesn't concern them much if at all.
Well, Socialism has claimed to push for more worker rights. Ask the Russian worker how that treated them during Communism, the self-proclaimed expression of Socialism that created the Soviet Empire. I doubt many would think of their government as pushing for their rights any more than it was failing their economy.
My current personal debt is approximately 220% if my gross yearly income. About 70% of it is secured by tangible assets.
Our government does have a debt near 90% of GDP, but if it started selling off assets, even less tangible assets such mineral rights, they might be able to secure as much as 30% of that.
So by the numbers, I am way worse off than my government. Except that I have income, and I can direct my income to pay off my debt. My government shows little inclination to pay down the debt, and in fact is increasing it at an alarming rate.
I was looking for replacement temple pads for a pair of glasses. Now I get sidebar ads about eyeglasses, sunglasses, precriptions, Lasix, you name it. I'm not a candidate for Lasix, but the ads keep coming. I found the pads, but the ads keep coming. I even have new glasses coming, but the ads also keep coming.
I was looking for a new electric shaver. Guess what ads are coming up now? No, not shavers for the blind, but close.
It is apparent that anything you search for more than once seems to come up as an ad for you sooner rather than later. And it's not just creepy. For me, it hurts the advertiser.
Not just the Google ads that offer to find you the best price on root.apk (funny), but the ads that clearly knew you were searching for something. It makes my wife wonder how they know that. When I try to explain, she rejects such a notion as just plain 'wrong'. Then she gets it. And it is even more 'wrong' to her. I pointed out to her that I was seeing ads for a women's clothing chain pretty regularly a couple of months ago. Since I don't crossdress, she gave me a pass. And realized she had been looking at both their site and a competitor's looking for a particular piece of clothing. She's creeped out.
I get entirely turned off by these, and the retailers that sponsor them I avoid if possible. I can tell you that their return rate on me is less than.01% over the years, since this is not really a new phenomenon. That's a tenth of what they hope for. And good riddance.
We may have to have this fight in the courts. At some point, we may want to tell advertisers that they can collect a lot of data on us, but sharing or selling it without our permission is unacceptable. We may even want to tell them how long they can keep it. But Congress may not do this for us. After all, they get paid by the corporations.
So we may see that corporate campaign finance reform is the first step. As in NO corporate campaign financing.
Apple fanbois don't tolerate even imagined criticism.
I was just wondering if the poster was comparing MacBooks to entry-level crap like HP/Compaq. Not a fair comparison. If you go up into like-priced PC stuff, especially ThinkPad T-series, that's not unfair.
We are thinking hardware here. It's virtually impossible to develop an XP-based notebook that is as stable and trouble-free as MacBooks. Windows 7 has much more potential here, but even then there are issues. Just the continuing problems of IE7/8, Flash, and Java exploits make Windows a lot more trouble.
The MLTI provided the image. We did make our own testing image for burnins and diagnostics, but we had to deliver finished machines with the stock MLTI image. I was never a real Mac guru, though I knew my way around System 7 and could straighten out Appletalk networks if they would let me fix the cabling problems. OS9 I never got into much, and OS X I'm impressed with, but not enough to work with unless my wife relents and lets me buy her a MacBook. She would like it once she got over the one-button pad and got used to Finder.
ps- Some of the school admins had one foot in each world, with Windows and Mac in their house. I was usually the Windows/NetWare/Server guy called in to make the two coexist. I spend NO time deploring the state of Apple networking, but focused on making the NetWare side hospitable to the Apple machines. In Nw4x, this was a nuisance, but Nw5 solved that and we had good systems. Very few schools bothered to buy Apple servers, which were fine if you paid attention. I was not allowed to touch them, no problem.
The MLTI project was carefully structured. It was my impression that the original program (2002-2005) was very dependent on Apple for images, management, etc. It looks like they are somewhat more independent now, but still structured.
Actually, I led a sheltered life with the conventional schools using NetWare. Using ZenWorks, we could command a reimage remotely, stack applications at login by user ID, and use Volatile Accounts. The lab machines ended the year with two local accounts - administrator and ZenAdmin, and ZenAdmin was just a scaredy-cat failsafe I used when I didn't know better. Worst case scenario was a network boot disk floppy or USB stick to do a complete wipe/image. Typical XP image took about 15 minutes over the network, and student logins took 2 minutes, when they got their apps and environment.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to teach the kids Turbo Pascal was truly warped. They included the networking libraries, of course. My second semester I spend expunging keyloggers and password stealers. One kid even wrote a great gina. He's working for the military, I hope...
The fix back then WAS ASR. It was slow when you had one source for a dozen machines. In 2003, this was the standard for MLTI. Today, they have much better tools.
The MLTI was cooked up by Governor Angus King of Maine, Apple Corp, and the University of Maine. no competitive bidding. I didn't really mind too much that it was Apple, which at least gave them homegenity and decent tools.
The MLTI started in 2003 if I recall, and a lot of tools we have now didn't exist or were pretty marginal. I don't remember it before 2003. Two of the schools I was working with back then had NetWare and ZenWorks, and we gave that a go, but there were issues. Today, there are LOTS of ways to do what is needed, from afp images to some dedicated management solutions. Much easier now.
1. MLTI specified the image,and the method. We did move it to Firewire.
2. We ordered direct from Apple. When they cut us off, it didn't take long for the boss to figure out that was a money-losing proposition, the beginning of the end. Warranty exchanges were the crux of the business, and we lost out to authorized dealers. It was an interesting time. I hear conflicting reports from shops still trying to be independent authorized servicers.
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"There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver"
I don't just call BS. I propose that we consider IT as an example. How many 'different service lines' are there in just Windows server management? If by 'service lines' you mean 'functional tasks', well I still think 13,600 is an awful lot.
Consider Orthopedics. Is setting a left femur a seperate line of service from setting a right femur? How about setting an ulnar? Tibia? I suspect the number of 'service lines' in Orthopedics could be as many as a hundred, if you're creative.
As a general practitioner? Is the 'service line' of diagnosis of a common cold significantly different and worthy of differentiation from diagnosing, say, influenza? Bronchitis or pneumonia? Different findings, but very similar effort and knowledge. In fact, differential diagnosis relies on this step-by-step process, of which many steps are common.
The whole concept that medicine in the U.S. is more expensive than it need be because of the complexity of so many 'service lines' ignores the reality that, for the industrialized world, diagnoses are largely identical. Most of these nations find and treat the same illnesses, though perhaps in different proportions or severities.
All this time I thought American healthcare was expensive because we were obese, sedentary, and dependent on drugs. Now I find out we just know too much.
No, that's BS. We pay more for our healthcare first because it is unnecessarily complex - doctors perform tests intended to protect them from lawsuits far too often. And patients demand treatments and medications that are either marginally effective or just more expensive than necessary.
I lowered my overall cholsterol level from 238 to 197 in a year by diet modification alone. I am 56, and take no prescribed drugs. Oh, wait, I'm using my asthma meds PRN to deal with an allergic reaction, first time in 3 years. I could be taking arthritis drugs, any of several meds for asthma prevention (I have attacks every few years), meds for sinusitis/allergic rhinitis, etc. I exercise, so my blood pressure is not an issue, and I haven't have the expensive cardiac work done to see if my heart has anything previously undetected going wrong. And I could still keel over from a heart attack despite all the diangostics available. You cannot tell everything after all.
Admittedly, my wife has not been so fortunate. Four years ago, total knee replacement. Who knew a new knee joint costs $20,000? How much of that for insurance for the manufacturer? How much for R&D? How much R&D to avoid lawsuits? Three years ago, microfracture surgery on the other knee (auto accident 25 yrs ago made both pretty mangled) which has been completely successful. Less expensive than a replacement. Last year, removed a cancerous kidney. Not cheap. Found that 'accidentally' when diagnosing what was thought to be a gall bladder problem, pain in the abdmominal area usually associated with gallstones. Lucky. Expensive. Follow-up has been almost 50% of the cost of the surgery, but we're fairly confident there is no other cancer. So my wife has cost $86,000 is healthcare the past four years. I look this up. That's more than I've cost my entire life. I've spend 9 days in the hospital my entire life outside of the nursery after birth, and most of that was simple overnight+ for a viral thing and two surgeries - appendectomy in 1959 and cyst removal in 1966. I'm relatively cheap, including the fractured fibula in 1979.
I'm a little disappointed at the costs associated with ER visits, but here in AZ we have so many people without insurance and private physicians can't get reimbursed for charity care like hospitals do (yes, they do), so people are driven to the ER. It could be more cost-effective for the indigent and uninsured to get subsidies and stay out of the ER.
Let's not get into the illegal aliens that crowd the ER. They need care, and we must care for them. Then we need to send them w
All such good advice. But when you live in the Phoenix area:
- Geothermal will need to go deeper than five feet. Burying duct to exchange heat down there will be more expensive than you think.
- What mechanism will cool your house passively when it is >100 degrees for 2 months? Elaborate on how you exchange the heat with outside air that has actually been heated to 100+ by radiational heating from streets.
- Trading in my poorly designed slump-block home makes great sense, unless you consider the ROI for a $100k loss and the $100K+ premium for the best-effort construction. Multiply this by 150,000 to refit much of the Valley.
Perhaps you meant to recommend that we abandon the Valley, and give it over to solar projects like sodium or lithium heat driven generators, or photovoltaic, or concentrated thermoelectric, or even underground compressed fluid storage? Sounds good. All you have to be mindful of are the impact of shading a few thousand (or is it million?) acres, and the problems of fabricating PV cells or the rare sodium or lithium spill. The spills are largely self-cleaning, admittedly, but you then get to rebuild fairly good chunks of the plant.
And don't forget the hidden cost of fraud and incompetence. PV cells are not yet effieicnet enough to be profitable, even break-even. Liquid transport needs to be proven. Only the mirrors seem to work.
Probably not. No root or su for you on all Android stock ROMs (except for the G1 RC29/RC8), so you can't chmod a lot of folders. Though you might be able to slip the SD card (it MUST be the SDC that is getting these images) into another machine and do it there, but then I bet it interferes with something else, and you're hosed.
When root is cracked for this, then I suspect custom ROMs will solve the problem, if they even support Sense.
At least in the U.S., it's not like buyers don't know what's going on. Since locked phones are the NORM here, and AT&T doesn't bother to obfuscate or lie about the terms, iPhone buyers know or should know what they are getting into.
No exuses. If you're not smart enough to figure out what you're buying with an iPhone, you might want to reconsider buying one. The pariah attitude is, as noted, just wrong. Enjoy your iPhone and accept the terms and conditions you have accepted.
And if you truly don't like Apple/Jobs/et al exercising such control over your experience, get a different phone and leave us out of it. I'm not whining about the dead-end my G1 is at, it was inevitable and I knew it when I bought it in 2008.
No, they are trying to avoid having users wake up to virtually dead batteries.
Me? I have an Android G1. I know to plug it in overnight. And I have a Motorola P790 for those moments when I don't have an outlet handy.
If violations are so common with GPS-tagged parolees and convicts, maybe they should reconsider releasing them, eh? Certainly if it's too expensive to *actually* track them down and deal with the violations.
I would have thought that one reason for the program was to save money by releasing low-risk, compliant convicts. If they're NOT low-risk or compliant, then back to prison they can go.
You didn't read my posts, so let's get you caught up, even if you are an AC...
"The only reason that you had problems re-imaging devices is that you clearly refused to use the appropriate tools for the job."
We were contractually required to use the imaging tools provided by the MLTI. In 2002-2004, they first provided a USB CD drive with a CD-ROM holding the image. This we did NOT have to use, as we came on to the program after that was replaced with USB hard drives. The MLTI was a joint venture with the State of Maine, Apple, and the University of Maine. By contract, we had to deliver repaired machines with their image. This was not a significant problem, just the time to reimage and lack of alternatives to allow us to image several machines at once. This got fixed when they allowed us an exception to mount the image on a network in 2004. We were also contractually prohibited from duplicating the image. At the time, we actually did adhere to the contract. Apple corporate shops did not.
If youj fast-forward to 2009, there are great imaging tools, and the MLTI now provides an 'imAger' to schools and shops, one for every 30 notebooks to schools, and as many as shops will *buy*.
We were primarily a Windows shop, and after our Windows guru gave up on getting AFP working on Server 2K, I got the chance to get it up on an NetWare 5.x machine. Worked fine. In 2005 they got an OS X server, but I wasn't there to enjoy that.
Our speed problem was mostly the serial imaging constraint. Once we got network images up, we could slam out dozens of machines and get them shipped back without delay. Otherwise, it was long nights doing one at a time. I felt for school admins that had to do that until about 2004 or 2005.
The price concern still exists. Current MacBooks are still in the high price range, but parents are not required to buy them. That's the whole point of the program. Insurance so students can take them home is getting a bit more reasonable.
And this was 2002-2004 I worked with these. MacBooks were polycarb back then, and didn't take being sat on, dropped on tile floors, having car doors slammed on them, and any number of insults and and just plain bad luck. Screens were cracked at an unfortunate rate. In 2004 we started sourcing the displays directly, and it is a pain to rebuild displays let me tell you. If we had had aluminum cases, it would have been less, but they still crack screens. Students do learn, however, and the rate is much less now.
That was probably what got Apple all wee-wee'd out, that we sourced the panels and they lost the out of warranty business. But there were other reasons the company lost the Apple authorization, including an overzealous employee who tried to game the exchange program. It wasn't necessary.
"I am sure that by this point I am labeled a fanboy. While I do like many of the features macs offer, I do see value in other systems as well. I run and administer both linux and mac os x. I also use Windows for personal use."
Well, I use Windows at work, cut my teeth on NetWare and Token-Ring, made most of my money with Windows servers, and am still begging my wife to let me buy her a MacBook. My tablet I multiboot into Ubuntu or Windows depending on the tasks, and I still maintain my email and web server now on Fedora something recent (it's virtual now, I stay out of the kernel). I am familiar with the flaws of most platforms, and can't really endorse one as a clear choice for all users. You're not a fanboy, just convinced you have all the answers to everything. You might be young, or just a Mac guru.
As evidence to support my assertion: You dive right into an exploration of the OS market and software comparisons.
This is not just your right, but encouraged. At least you have an opinion. Most people just hang on ot the last article they read.
Then I can put you down for option 2. That's the one I like best anyways, but the wonks like all the glitz and gimmickry of option 1.
In a lot of places, the only check at all on electronic systems is the volunteer checking names off. Kinda sad.
I've thought too much about this. If I were to design a system:
- Electronic device with keys and paper inserts printed to display ballot choices.
- Printed receipt for the voter, with either of two options:
1. Barcoded receipt with a passcode to go to a website and verify your vote was actually included in the tally, and how often. Yes, how often. Ability for voters to log in after a contested vote to see what selections were actually registered. This is open to problems with 'buyer's remorse', poor memory of the voter's actual selections, etc, but a widespread response from voters of irregularities would be helpful. Avoids ballot printing costs, just the slips for the devices, and adds complexity with a printer.
2. Actual OCR reciept showing your selections for verification. Scanned into a fairly conventional paper scanner, no receipt give to you. Totals compared between scanner and voting device, recounts done by re-scanning receipts. This assumes a voter looks at the receipt to verify it, generates a standardized paper ballot the scanners get, and allows for recounts and arguments. You could just count the devices, require a count and comparison of devices and scanners if the results were 'too close' (or a candidate protested and maybe offered a deposit to cover costs), and then recount the paper if the issue was not resolved. Saved ballot printing coats, adds complexity to device with a printer.
Surprisingly, Brazil has cute little devices, no paper.
From the Politico Article:
'"In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast," Ludwig said.'
Ludwig is Rawl's campaign manager, but I'm willing to accept that he is not fabricating these facts.
If that's the case, the voting machines need to be scrapped. How could a machine EVER be permitted to contain more individual votes than the total? Sounds like a design flaw. I crossfoot my spreadsheets regularly to detect errors, and this sort of error would drive me insane, but would certainly prevent me from going further or offering the sheet as useful until I corrected it.
And it doesn't really matter if the total is wrong or the individual votes. If the machines can't do addition and sums, time to get rid of them.
Now the question should be, can South Carolina invalidate this election and hold a new one? Interesting question.
Another question. Should the state reconsider being involved in party primary elections? After all, it's not an election for the seat... Think about this.
And I have to have lunch with people who claim that percentages of the GDP and debt are fucking meaningless.
Trained economists, they are. WTF, does anyone care to make any sense of this?
Well, that's the choice. Do you want to live in a nation that offers you opportunity and individual freedoms,or do you want to live in a nation that offers you substantial care and benefits, in exchange for substantial taxes?
We may well be on the way to making that choice in the U.S. We've been a nation that values individual freedoms, and also pretty much left individuals to their own devices for things such as healthcare, retirement, and employment. Some European nations took a different path, choosing to provide nationalized healthcare etc. and paying for it with substantial taxes.
It's a choice. Claiming the choice is more about whether the U.S. will make provision for its citizens or leave them to fend for themselves. Healthcare is changing, as companies shift more costs onto employees, and insurers find every way to minimize payments and increase revenue. So we are facing the choice of nationalizing healthcare or leaving citizens to the vagaries of the market. Or worse.
I'm not advocating any choices, here, just trying to point out what is happening.
Um, ok.
So you're driving down the highway, and you're plainly directing yoru vehicle in the precise direction you wish. You are in control.
Sadly, someone in a hurry lurches their vehicle into your lane, so abrutly and so close to your vehicle that you are forced to maneuver to avoid striking them. They are, of course, travelling slower than you are.
You yank the wheel, and being in a top-heavy SUV ( like the one I drive, thank you), you not only miss their vehicle but also tip yours over, starting the classic rollover.
At some point, you lost control of your vehicle. On/off. Unless you would argue that you caused the rollover, and therefore are actually in control, just not in a desireable state. Which is sort of pointless, but nonetheless you could argue that.
Control of our freedoms is a sliding scale until we lose control of them, and then it's out of control. Unless you feel that one of your freedoms is indeed lost, in which case you might not have control of that anymore, eh?
And while you voted for your representative, if they changed lanes on you, well you weren't in control of them, and if they've deprived you of some freedom you wanted to keep, you are out control of them.
It is the illusion of control that is a sliding scale. Ask a Formula One driver.
Ah, but they are reasonably stable, which is certainly one of their goals.
Now if the Royal Family would invest in a bit more healthcare for their subjects, and perhaps diversify their economy beyond providing for the excess of the Royals, then we would have far fewer complaints, no?
Not that I'm advocating for the Royal Saud family, but they could do better and give us good reason to shut up about it. As it is, they are no pargaon of virtue in the eyes of the West. Which doesn't concern them much if at all.
"we have a large crowd clamoring for theocracy of one kind or another"
Yes, indeed. Be it secular or non-secluar, we have many clamoring for some sort of theocracy.
All legislation is someone's morality.
Well, Socialism has claimed to push for more worker rights. Ask the Russian worker how that treated them during Communism, the self-proclaimed expression of Socialism that created the Soviet Empire. I doubt many would think of their government as pushing for their rights any more than it was failing their economy.
There is no such thing as 'some control'. Either you have control over what freedoms you give up, or you don't.
And we Americans have been giving control over to corporations and corporatists much too easily and much too frequently lately.
We need to exercise our control, IMHO, or we will lose what control we think we have now.
"National debt stands at almost 90% of GDP."
My current personal debt is approximately 220% if my gross yearly income. About 70% of it is secured by tangible assets.
Our government does have a debt near 90% of GDP, but if it started selling off assets, even less tangible assets such mineral rights, they might be able to secure as much as 30% of that.
So by the numbers, I am way worse off than my government. Except that I have income, and I can direct my income to pay off my debt. My government shows little inclination to pay down the debt, and in fact is increasing it at an alarming rate.
This is the problem.
I was looking for replacement temple pads for a pair of glasses. Now I get sidebar ads about eyeglasses, sunglasses, precriptions, Lasix, you name it. I'm not a candidate for Lasix, but the ads keep coming. I found the pads, but the ads keep coming. I even have new glasses coming, but the ads also keep coming.
I was looking for a new electric shaver. Guess what ads are coming up now? No, not shavers for the blind, but close.
It is apparent that anything you search for more than once seems to come up as an ad for you sooner rather than later. And it's not just creepy. For me, it hurts the advertiser.
Not just the Google ads that offer to find you the best price on root.apk (funny), but the ads that clearly knew you were searching for something. It makes my wife wonder how they know that. When I try to explain, she rejects such a notion as just plain 'wrong'. Then she gets it. And it is even more 'wrong' to her. I pointed out to her that I was seeing ads for a women's clothing chain pretty regularly a couple of months ago. Since I don't crossdress, she gave me a pass. And realized she had been looking at both their site and a competitor's looking for a particular piece of clothing. She's creeped out.
I get entirely turned off by these, and the retailers that sponsor them I avoid if possible. I can tell you that their return rate on me is less than .01% over the years, since this is not really a new phenomenon. That's a tenth of what they hope for. And good riddance.
We may have to have this fight in the courts. At some point, we may want to tell advertisers that they can collect a lot of data on us, but sharing or selling it without our permission is unacceptable. We may even want to tell them how long they can keep it. But Congress may not do this for us. After all, they get paid by the corporations.
So we may see that corporate campaign finance reform is the first step. As in NO corporate campaign financing.
Apple fanbois don't tolerate even imagined criticism.
I was just wondering if the poster was comparing MacBooks to entry-level crap like HP/Compaq. Not a fair comparison. If you go up into like-priced PC stuff, especially ThinkPad T-series, that's not unfair.
We are thinking hardware here. It's virtually impossible to develop an XP-based notebook that is as stable and trouble-free as MacBooks. Windows 7 has much more potential here, but even then there are issues. Just the continuing problems of IE7/8, Flash, and Java exploits make Windows a lot more trouble.
Just so we're clear here, again...
The MLTI provided the image. We did make our own testing image for burnins and diagnostics, but we had to deliver finished machines with the stock MLTI image. I was never a real Mac guru, though I knew my way around System 7 and could straighten out Appletalk networks if they would let me fix the cabling problems. OS9 I never got into much, and OS X I'm impressed with, but not enough to work with unless my wife relents and lets me buy her a MacBook. She would like it once she got over the one-button pad and got used to Finder.
ps- Some of the school admins had one foot in each world, with Windows and Mac in their house. I was usually the Windows/NetWare/Server guy called in to make the two coexist. I spend NO time deploring the state of Apple networking, but focused on making the NetWare side hospitable to the Apple machines. In Nw4x, this was a nuisance, but Nw5 solved that and we had good systems. Very few schools bothered to buy Apple servers, which were fine if you paid attention. I was not allowed to touch them, no problem.
The MLTI project was carefully structured. It was my impression that the original program (2002-2005) was very dependent on Apple for images, management, etc. It looks like they are somewhat more independent now, but still structured.
Actually, I led a sheltered life with the conventional schools using NetWare. Using ZenWorks, we could command a reimage remotely, stack applications at login by user ID, and use Volatile Accounts. The lab machines ended the year with two local accounts - administrator and ZenAdmin, and ZenAdmin was just a scaredy-cat failsafe I used when I didn't know better. Worst case scenario was a network boot disk floppy or USB stick to do a complete wipe/image. Typical XP image took about 15 minutes over the network, and student logins took 2 minutes, when they got their apps and environment.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to teach the kids Turbo Pascal was truly warped. They included the networking libraries, of course. My second semester I spend expunging keyloggers and password stealers. One kid even wrote a great gina. He's working for the military, I hope...
The fix back then WAS ASR. It was slow when you had one source for a dozen machines. In 2003, this was the standard for MLTI. Today, they have much better tools.
Just so we're clear on some things:
The MLTI was cooked up by Governor Angus King of Maine, Apple Corp, and the University of Maine. no competitive bidding. I didn't really mind too much that it was Apple, which at least gave them homegenity and decent tools.
The MLTI started in 2003 if I recall, and a lot of tools we have now didn't exist or were pretty marginal. I don't remember it before 2003. Two of the schools I was working with back then had NetWare and ZenWorks, and we gave that a go, but there were issues. Today, there are LOTS of ways to do what is needed, from afp images to some dedicated management solutions. Much easier now.
1. MLTI specified the image,and the method. We did move it to Firewire.
2. We ordered direct from Apple. When they cut us off, it didn't take long for the boss to figure out that was a money-losing proposition, the beginning of the end. Warranty exchanges were the crux of the business, and we lost out to authorized dealers. It was an interesting time. I hear conflicting reports from shops still trying to be independent authorized servicers.