LINKEDIN: How many identities are “empty rotting shells”?

Thursday, February 15, 2007

>What email do you use on LinkedIn?
>Posted by: “Ed Callahan”
>Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:19 am (PST)

>You can and should have as many emails in your profile as possible.

Understood. I have lots.

>then brokers communication with you via your primary email.

That’s part of the problem. People think of their employer’s email as “theirs”. It’s not.

>you should use an email you own as your primary email – I’m with you on that.

Glad we agree to agree agreeably. As opposed to agree to disagree either agreeably or disagreeably. (Whaaa, like the Aflac duck commercial!)

>I like the other suggestions you make, but in some sense they are moot.

Not so sure, that I agree with the LinkedIn design of primary email. If I was king, I’d insist that each LinkedIn-ite have TWO working emails. Primary and secondary. And, I’d double LinkedIn’s email load (notice how free I am with other people’s resources), so as to ensure it works. (It would ensure that you don’t miss messages.)

I have at least two correspondents who have lost their access to their primary email account AND forgotten their passwords. Interesting? (One bozo kept it on the computer she had to turn back in.) So she has no way of recovering her profile.

If I was the “King of LinkedIn” (hey that rhymes), I’d decree that LinkedIn would test for “life at the end of the wire”. Hasn’t happened to me on linkedin, but it has on my ezine, where are readers email goes bouncing due to death. Awkward, but one should know these things.

I wonder how many of LinkedIn’s millions are dead (user died), disabled (user’s email innoperative), lost (user not interacting), zombies (shells constructed by other), abandons (user walks away), or in one way or another “empty rotting shells” (are there other types of strawmen). Someone might crassly say that its to LinkedIn’s benefit to inflate the numbers with these empty rotting shells and they have no incentive to bulldoze inactivity.

So, imnsho, LinkedIn’s email architecture is flawed. And, it doesn’t have robust process and procedures to ensure “liveliness”.

Am I the only one who measures “days since last contact” in my network? The empty rotting shells play havoc with your score. (See like some players of the Linkedin “game”, score on how many scalps they collect, I’m much more sophisticated. I score by days since last significant contact. Pinging you with a plaxo or cardscan email address update doesn’t count. That’s a better “game”.)

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Socialized medicine kills old people

Thursday, February 15, 2007

http://reinkefj.newsvine.com/_news/2007/02/15/
569762-bbc-news-health-doctors-deny-elderly-treatments
?threadId=76838&cmt=533262

http://tinyurl.com/2xm4sg

BBC NEWS | Health | Doctors ‘deny elderly treatments’
News Type: Event — Seeded on Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:18 AM EST
Read ArticleArticle Source: BBC News
health, money, health-care, libertarians, socialized-medicine
Seeded by reinkefj

Doctors deny older people treatments they would offer younger patients, according to a study.

In the “health care” debate, with the socialists in both major parties advocating mandatory insurance, “single payer”, and all sorts of gooferment involvement, we need to keep focusing on the “working laboratories” of results reported from Canada and England. Personally, I think we started down a dangerous path to socialism when “benefits”, medical insurance, and Medicare / Medicaid were introduced. Maybe I’ll blog about the details (http://www.reinkefaceslife.com), but when you remove the dynamic of the “individual paying for their own healthcare” then all sorts of bad “unintended consequences” sneak in. Here’s one of them socialized medicine kills old people. Not necessarily unproductive old people, not demented suffering old people, and not necessarily those at the end of their lives. If fact, the way I read the article, it’s all about hustling the old of life.

Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:25 AM EST

===

England and Canada offer us a “laboratory” on socialized medicine. Not that I think the USA system is great. I’m just not sure that what the politicians propose is any better. In fact, if I know gooferment, it will make it worse. The “laboratories” are useful in the debate because we can see the impact of socialized medicine on people over there and extended it to what will happen here. Our politicians are no better than theirs. Our doctors are no less or no more than theirs. Socialized medicine sets up perverse incentives. And, we need to the “laboratory” lessons to heart. There’s a reason that Canadians come to the USA for MRIs. There’s a reason that elderly English dialysis patients migrate to other countries. There’s a reason why Californians are getting hips replaced in India. And, we have to hold our politicians accountable for those answers BEFORE we let them do anything.

The wage price controls of WW2 started the current “benefits” fiasco. Business seeking to retain their good people, faced with a wage cap, came up with paid medical insurance as a way around the limitation. From whence, we got wage slaves who had to keep their job to keep their benefits. Having purchased medical insurance on my own as a consultant, it not cheap but not impossible. We need to take it out of the company’s benefit package and put it back in people’s hands. At the very least, if I buy medical insurance it should be tax deductible to me. We need to jigger the scales. Remove the business from the “benefits” business by removing the tax deductibility. Let people be in total control of their own money.

Where stuff gets tricky is when it ceases to be catastrophic insurance and a prepayment plan for routine stuff. I like to use the car metaphor to understand it. Car insurance is for accidents; not oil changes or fender benders. Why send money to a third party, with all the shipping and handling, to pay for routine or small stuff. What’s next insurance for gasoline consumption. No medical care is more like the car than anything else. Medical Savings Accounts with high deductible catastrophic coverage is the way to go. Change people’s economic behavior and you’ll solve the problem.

Medicare / Medicaid and all gooferment regulation of medicine must end. Period. It has totally screwed up the marketplace.

Argh!

(ain’t insomnia productive?)

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Posted by reinkefj

ALUMNI: Is doing these obits a “positive” thing?

Thursday, February 15, 2007

>From: A fellow alum
>Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 10:33 PM
>To: Reinke’s Jasper (mc68alum) Persona
>Subject: Re: [ManhattanCollegeAlumni] JASPER ACTIONABLE OBIT:
>I click onto these things hoping to read good news and 95% of the time they are generated because of someone’s demise.

Oh, I see, someone returning to their “eternal reward”, isn’t good news? That’s the trick question that I have no answer for.

I do these obit broadcasts with mixed emotions. On one hand, I think it’s joyful in the sense that some of these fellow, even as communicated in a brief obit, have made a unique substantive contribution. Even badly described, it fills me with awe at some of those accomplishments. I enjoy seeing how someone reports how they lived. On the other hand, I find it depressing for several reasons: (1) They’ve left without doing a brain drain. Maybe they had “the answer”. (2) For the most part they were “good people” and the world is a “poorer” place without them. (3) I wonder if we are replacing them with the same caliber of Jaspers, since they leave so big shoes to fill.

From time to time, I hear from our fellow alums, or one of the departed’s family members, with appreciation for getting the word “out” and I get some story or other that makes me feel that the few minutes I spend each morning has made a meaningful “contribution” to the common good. Sometimes, it means that old friends get to pay respects, close the loop on an old friendship, or just know that someone cared about the deceased.

I’ve drifted into this self-appointed “ghoulish” duty with mixed feelings. Because of my “technology”, I’m probably uniquely able to do it. I keep questioning if it’s a “good” or a “bad”, positive/negative, or just a rut.

For you, I’d give the advice that if the title says “obit”, it’s probably not be the good news that you’re looking for.

On the other hand, perhaps it might help you: (1) focus on the truly important; (2) put all “problems” in perspective (it does for me); and (3) inspire you to “sing your song”, write your “brain drain”, or just do something you’ve always wanted to do. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

So I ask you, should I continue? I struggle with that question regularly.

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Posted by reinkefj