Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Or Commercial

The Or Commercial

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*** Correction ***

 OK, I heard it again a day or so ago. I had gotten the details wrong between the time I first heard it and the time I wrote.

The two "things" were towing capacity and hauling capacity if I am now recalling correctly.

The principle remains the same as first described though.

This great truck with these great abilities is being advertised!

*** However *** you can't actually buy a truck with the abilities being advertised. You can buy a truck and get some of the abilities or another truck and get some other abilities but no truck you can buy will give you all the advertised abilities...

Still looking for older examples of this game. (Surely they exist and I have missed them or are not remembering them at this time.)

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Well, this is a new one for me.

So I was listening to AM radio out of South Florida just a short while ago when an ad came on for a major US auto maker's pick up trucks. (The name will be held back to protect the possibly not so innocent.)

I was not really paying attention as they went down a list of features / benefits to having the truck including touting the gas mileage and towing capacity, two things pick up truck ads seem to love to brag about.

OK, so the ad is pretty much over and slip in to the audio version of fine print. And that's when the pull the slick move. It turns out that the mileage they just touted applies when you get the truck with one available engine and the towing capacity is available when you get the truck with a *different* available engine.

So, let's get this straight, I can get a truck from them that has the advertised mileage (but presumably a lesser towing capacity) or I can get a truck from them that has the advertised towing capacity (but presumably worse gas mileage) ***BUT*** I *cannot* buy a truck from them with the advertised gas mileage *AND* towing capacity!

Go figure!

Has this game been going on for a while and I have simply missed it or is this a new trick?

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Thought On Voting Reform 001

Thought On Voting Reform 001

July 12/2015

Recorded July 12, thought of long before.

I am going to use the Bahamas as an example here. We have a Westminster system. There are X number of seats representing X number of constituencies in the country. People will run to be elected to the seat for a constituency and the one getting the most votes gets the seat. (pretty much - there may be some technicalities missing)

You win a seat and you are a member of the house. The party with the most seats forms the government.

What if instead, everyone who ran for a seat got into the house so long as they got more than Y% of the votes? (Let's say as a first cut that Y is 5 or 10 percent) Let's further say that the votes are cast in an instant runoff fashion so that any votes cast for a person getting less than Y% of the votes go to the voter's next choice and so on. (How many levels deep is reasonable?)

Let's say when you get in and you vote on an issue in the house, your vote counts not as a whole vote but as a part of a vote equal to the percentage of the votes you got. So, if you got 60% of the vote, your vote in the house counts as 6 tenths of a vote. If you got 10% of the votes in your constituency, your vote in the house counts as 1 tenth of a vote when you cast it.

What problems does this solve? What problems does it create? Is it,on the whole, a better system for the people of a country?

An Idea For facebook

An Idea For facebook

It happened to me again this morning. I went to log out and it asked me if I was sure I wanted to leave as some of my input was not yet posted and would be lost. I scanned through looking for the unposted material and count not find it. ***TWICE!***

I gave up and left the page anyway and lost whatever it was.

Here is a hint for facebook and all designers. (Windows, I am looking at you in particular! facebook are not the only ones to pull this sort of thing.)

Put a button on the alert that if I click it will ***take me to the unposted entry!*** Don't make me search for it. Take me there. The application knows exactly where it is already. Don't make me search for it. Don't waste my time.

I am looking at windows because I was plagued for years by a message along the lines that a file was missing or corrupt but it refused to name the missing or corrupt file for me when it knew very well which one was a problem for it but it thought it was a good idea to make me guess instead of telling me!