Gov't , economics and technology (was Re: METROCAST BLOCKS RESIDENTIAL E-MAIL)
--- Jeff Kinz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since when has the government been interested in delivering service to us at the lowest cost? At the level of abstract goals government is interested at being efficient. The real obstacle to creating an efficient government service is that there are few, if any, rewards for efficiency to the individuals who actually supervise/do the work. For example, in the business sector, a person who is productive keeps their job and gets a raise occasionally. The general public perceives that people in civil service don't have to be efficient or productive to keep theirs jobs and get an occasional raise. (I can't speak either way on this perception as I have no data). People in business have clear incentives to change: money and jobs. Gov't employees (at least at the uncivil servant level) are all union members. In general, you don't get merit pay, you only get raises based on years served. The longer you are an employee, the more you make. Promotions are another way to make more money, but those are based on someone above you retiring. As such, they have 0 incentive to be move efficient, unless there is a pending promotion. Being human beings, they have a built in incentive to make their life easier so they do things to customers to lighten their day, show their power, and otherwise make THEIR day better. My wife worked for the DOT for a while. She was actually reprimanded for being TOO efficient and thus making the rest of the slackers look bad. I would love to hear counterpoints to this observed and annecdoted theorum. And yes, I understand that the plural of annecdote is not data :) Policy makers do make noises about lowest cost providers and budget consrtaints, but no gov't beaurocracy is more efficient than the dreaded Private Sector. There you can get fired for poor performance. Individuals have to be dragged into change unless they see a clear benefit to themselves in the change. This is a basic human trait. Change is uncomfortable, people avoid discomfort unless they perceive an advantage on the other side of the change. Exactly. One example - still not much known today, the great crime rate drop of the 80' and 90's was caused not by burgeoning economic times or great social programs. They were caused by the women suddenly being able to freely obtain an abortion. (Freakonomics, Levitt Dubner, 2005.) Um. That is not the sum total. Freakonomics is hardly real science, let alone good data. Yes, I have read it. I have also read what real economists thing about it. That is a whole other thread and I will not bring it in here. The rise of technology is definitely a factor, especially in the 90's. There, we are at least back on a tangental thread. During the 90's most companies were putting computers on the desks of their administrators, and that helped efficiency a great deal. Although is it anathema to mention it here, add to it the fact that most of said computers were pretty monocultured, and all had the same interface. People could now move from job to job or even company to company and not have to relearn a lot of the tools used in their jobs. As such, they significantly reduced the amount of time it took them to spin-up to speed at their new job and thus were more efficient. The biggest road block I have seen to the acceptance of Open Office is the fact that they do not have the same menues as the products they are trying to supplant. That is not the way to get your product accepted. I don't care it is is a more logical or better way to do menues. That is not the point. Note that Word had a Wordperfect compatible menu mode for precisely this reason. (Look on-topic bits!) There were a lot of economic incentives as well. Reducing the tax rates meant people had more to spend; people had to work to produce those new products; Since those folks were now employed they thus had more money to spend, etc. Snear and slap a label on this if you want, but this is pretty basic economics. Unless you think Kensey is the end-all-be-all of economics. This is however, not a thread for this list. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: The Dismal Science's Freaky Side?
On Sat, Mar 11, 2006 at 09:40:50AM -0800, Kuni Tetsu wrote: Um. That is not the sum total. Freakonomics is hardly real science, let alone good data. Yes, I have read it. I have also read what real economists thing about it. That is a whole other thread and I will not bring it in here. Here is something you will not see much on the Internet... I spoke out of turn on Freakonomics. It is data, and certainly entertainingly presented. It is not always complete but certainly puts new spins on some subjects. There are factors that were not taken into account on many of the conclusions made, which was the point I was trying to make and bungled badly. A number of economists have pointed out flaws in the Abortion related conclusions you used. Mr. Foote, 40, taught in Harvard's economics department between 1996 and 2002; served stints as an economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in 1994, 1995, 2002 and 2003; and served as an economic adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003 and 2004. Economists John Lott and John Whitley questioned Levittâs data and his conclusions. Steve Sailer, following their lead, argued that legalized abortion actually raised the number of unwanted conceptions (thus canceling Roeâs impact on unwanted live births)... But this is all for another list. Cheers! __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: January MerriLUG meeting [1/19/2006] (Tomorrow!)
Ken, Count me in! I may be bringing some friends as well. I will try to let you know if I can get this coordinated in a reasonable period of time. Regards, Bob King __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Fwd: [Fwd: Re: Verizon (FiOS) (Off Topic?)]
Let's try actually sending this to the list this time! What corner would that be? I have seen the area crawling with Verizon trucks (some of which certainly looked like fiber-splicing rigs) and have been anticipating such an announcement here in Nashua. My brother lives in Natick, MA and was offered Verizon. He did a comparative analysis between them and Comcast and Verizon came out the clear winner. The customer service was better, they were much more responsive to his inquiries and much more flexible in their response to his installation needs. The installer was beyond helpful, even tracing down a short in his house to help resolve the installation issue. The icing on the cake was the upload speed, which is far greater (at least for now) than Comcast. I have had a bad experience with Verizon, at least their DSL offering, but that was about 10 years ago, so perhaps they have finally learned their lesson. Hope that is helpful. Regards, Bob King --- Sean [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just received a letter from Verizon stating that their FiOS service is available in my corner of NH. Does anyone here use this service and if so, how is your experience with it and their service? __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: Speaking of scp (was: set default file permissions for a directory)
--- Numberwhun [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have to agree with Jason on both counts. I use scp on the Unix system at work and when you ar specifying where you want to transfer to you need to spefify the following: user@ip or machine name:/directory/on/other/machine Speaking of scp, I have run into a situation and I am wondering if anyone else has seen it or knows a solution. At the very least it might serve as a warning to someone. I am getting an odd behavior when I scp a file from a RHEL 3.0AS system through an automounted NFS drive (Client is RHEL 2.1AS, NFS server is Tru64 Unix). If the user on the RHEL 2.1 system has not been logged on for a while (long enough for the automount to expire), the first scp command I issue will create files that have the right byte count, but no content - that is to say the file is filled with 0's. This is not a critical issue, since I can issue a ssh command to perform an ls on the directory first which forces the directory to be automounted before issuing the command. However, I thought to bring it up in case someone (a) ever tries the scp through an automount, or (b) had run into this themselves and might have some insight. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Anyone have a driver for Realtek RTL8185 11g Wireless card?
CompUSA was having a sale - 11g wireless card under their brand for $2.99, so I grabbed one for my new Linux laptop. From the docs on the Windoze CD, it seems to be a RTL8185. But I cannot find any Linux drivers! There is one sourceforge project that is coming soon and another that claims to work except there is nothing but the home page - no CVS tree or anything. Any chance someone might have a driver lying around? Anyone have any recommendations? __ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
