Ironic and amusing on so many levels. Thanks.

Interesting points. It could very well be that Ahmadinejad won along the lines of the election results.

But I think the point is that it is too hard to tell for sure... lack of press, scientific polling, observers from the various parties, etc.

But considering we are all buddy buddy with absolute monarchs and dictators around the world, I don't think it matters either way whether this was a free and fair election. Demonizing their election process is the wrong thing for outsiders to be doing, especially in the US when our own is also full of potential fraud and abuse and is certainly no less manipulated by the two-parties that are in power. How the Iranians sort out their government is their own business, as far as I am concerned whomever ends up on top should simply be dealt with regardless of how they got there.

Political stability might effect what deals and agreements can be relied upon in the longer term, but that is a decision that we have to make based on how much support we think their government has among their own people.

In the end it is and has been counter productive for the US to criticize and threaten Iran and regardless of the outcome we need to stop doing that as much, both as individual citizens and as a government.

The analysis relies on one glaringly suspect assumption.. that the 2005 election was free and fair and can be used as a baseline. That election was also suspect from what I heard on the radio today. So what does a trend analysis from one fraudulent election to the next really show? All it would show is that the fraud was committed with some consistency with the previous fraud.

For all we know it could very well be the case that both elections went through honestly, but the people that voted are talking to one another and unless everyone is lying to one another then they have figured out that more people voted for the other guy than is being reflected in the counts. It isn't about statistical analysis, it is about what you are going to believe. Are you going to believe the people on the street who voted or are you going to believe the guy that was supposed to win.

Ah, well by definition you can't solve a problem until it is a problem. But I get your point.

The metric for measuring introduction of new problems is a bit harder to get at, since there is always a value proposition between number of problems versus value created with any new product or service.

That is simple: fewer number of calls or calls about a particular problem is the success rate of solving a problem proactively. Strictly speaking the IT Service desk shouldn't be solving problems, just getting customers back to the point where they can use the service again or work around some problem. Management and the level 2 engineers should be the ones solving the problems.

We have a problematic metric with password resets, they don't take very long but are the biggest amount of calls our help desk gets.

But password resets should be self service and at some point they are going to be. At which point our Service Desk metrics are going to get screwed up because suddenly we will have far fewer calls but the average time spent per call will go up. Depending on which metrics management has been caring about, this will either be understood as an overall improvement or will be misunderstood as some negative change in the quality of service.

It takes some management understanding to make sense of metrics, otherwise if you have management which is out of touch with operations then you are going to have problems.

Or if you just want them to stop saying no, then given them no budget at all. No people, no problem.

That's not it at all. At least not in the part you quote or from what I have seen so far. The author is talking about the shorter term variations of the field not the totality of the magnetic field.

If the oceans can explain those variations, then the models for the earth's interior need to be updated to discount for that effect.

It is believed that during the big bang areas of space expanded faster than the speed of light, so does this disprove the big bang theory also?

I don't think there is enough information to know whether this is a payroll error after the fact or an error made as part of the severance contract. If the amount was specified in the severance contract, then it is legally binding and Microsoft could be held to it. If there was an amount in the severance contract that was lower than what the former employees got, then the employees would likely be legally obligated to pay the excess back. If the amount or how the amount would be calculated wasn't specified, then there is a gray area which depends on the circumstances. If there was an actual check presented with the severance contract, then the error probably doesn't matter (within reason) because the employee agreed to the severance contract as part of the package. When you execute a contract and make payment based on a contract neither party has a right to unilaterally change the terms after the fact. So, I think there are some facts missing and I hope the facts can be clarified, because without this crucial detail it is hard to make sense of this story.

I agree somewhat. The free market is only applicable when there isn't a natural monopoly. Wired telecommunications is limited by physical space on telephone poles and under ground.

You wouldn't call for competition on how many different road providers can pave up to your house. Or how many water utilities you can hook your house up to. Natural monopolies are where government does best and is completely necessary. Instead of seeking more companies to string their own lines along the public right of way, local governments should own the lines and be bidding out the contracts to provide the maintenance and the Internet Service to connect to.

Just because the company used social engineering instead of technical exploits to put unwanted software on people's computers doesn't make it ethical. They were piggybacking their adware software on screensaver software or little widgets and then hiding that extra unwanted software on your system so it wasn't clear where it was coming from. Putting something in the EULA that you click through shouldn't cover this.

That isn't like any uninstaller I have ever heard of, basically that means that they hid software on your machine and only the people that somehow realized what precisely was causing ads to pop up randomly on your screen could then follow some really obscure and tedious process to remove the software. That isn't an ethical practice.

Your point is taken, but as a practical matter we do in fact run out of wind quite often