Steven's Myth of Verizon AMPS coverage in the San Francisco BayArea

Notan wrote:

> I would think that 7-11's coffee would be pretty consistent from place
> to place,
> as it's prepackaged and all comes from the same manufacturer/distributor.
>
> Maybe not!

I think that they grind it in the store now. 7-11's are franchises, so
maybe if the store owner wants to sell good coffee he is allowed to do
so. I see teachers and employees of the school my son goes to drinking
7-11 coffee in the morning. Maybe it's actually okay.

The prepaid phones sold at 7-11 do not support AMPS. They are on the
Cingular GSM network.

---

› See More: Steven's Myth of Verizon AMPS coverage in the San Francisco BayArea

Don Udel (ETC) wrote:
> "John Navas" <[email protected]> wrote in message > On the
> contrary -- Consumer Reports suffers from a self-selected sample
>> of a non-representative universe. It also suffers from serious
>> screwups, like the recent car seat debacle. And it just rated McDonalds
>> coffee as better than Starbucks -- LOL!
>
> And once again CR is right.

Coffee is pretty subjective though, more than even some other food items
such as ice cream, where the poorer ice creams pump a lot of air in, and
use artificial flavors and thickeners, and may use corn syrup rather
than sugar.

That said, according to one article I read, McDonalds started using 100%
Arabica beans about a year ago. If that's the case, they may really be
better than Starbucks for regular coffee, since McDonald's sells a lot
of regular coffee and makes it fresh every few minutes, while at
Starbucks it can often sit around for an hour while customers buy
lattes, and frappacinos (sp?). There's nothing special about the beans
that Starbucks uses versus the coffee that McDonald's uses.

Where CR is most useful is in their surveys of various sorts, such as
vehicle reliability, and wireless coverage. They aren't asking people
what they like best, they're asking people for their own experiences, so
any bias is eliminated. They also use extremely large sample sizes which
gives their surveys a very small margin of error.

Some people complain that Consumer Reports subscribers aren't
representative of the population at large, but in reality this cancels
out when they do their surveys. I don't think that anyone claims that
with such a huge sample size that the results would be much different if
they surveyed non-subscribers, though as I pointed out, there might be a
small difference based on the socio-economic differences between CR
subscribers and the general population. For many of the metro areas in
the last survey, including the San Francisco Bay Area, the differences
between the carriers were quite large. In some areas they were not very
large.

Oh, and In 'N Out has good iced tea!

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SMS wrote:
> clifto wrote:
>> SMS wrote:
>>> Notan wrote:
>>>
>>>> It *does* taste burnt!
>>> Definitely does taste burnt.
>>
>> I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought so.
>>
>> They do have a good coffeemaker descaler product, though.
>
> What's in it? I use vinegar, but it takes like eight runs of fresh water
> through the machine afterward to get rid of the vinegar smell.

They don't seem to say. It's made by Urnex and it's three packets for $4.
Someone in alt.coffee recommended it to me with the caveat that I should
NOT use vinegar. (I'm convinced vinegar ruined my last coffeemaker by
etching a pinhole in the aluminum tubing surrounding the heater.)

--
"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day,
they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."
-- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

John Navas wrote:
> On the other hand, both Peet's and Starbucks make full strength coffee,
> rather than the weak stuff made by many coffee places, which some
> undiscriminating people think is "burnt".

One of the nice things about working the Hispanofest in Melrose Park IL
was that on break time there was a nice privately owned coffee shop
just a couple of blocks off the beaten path. They pulled a mean espresso
and made delicious coffee. And Starbucks tastes burnt to discriminating
people who frequent places that make good coffee.

--
"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day,
they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."
-- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

SMS wrote:
> From "What is American Culture"
>
> "Burnt coffee at exorbitant prices. The most popular cafe chain, whose
> name decent people do not pronounce, burns its coffee beans to produce
> what Americans mistakenly believe is an authentic European taste. Proper
> coffee, by which of course I mean Italian coffee, is bittersweet, not
> burned.

There might be something to that. The great little coffee shop I mentioned
in a very recent article was Italian owned and operated.

--
"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day,
they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."
-- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

clifto wrote:

> One of the nice things about working the Hispanofest in Melrose Park IL
> was that on break time there was a nice privately owned coffee shop
> just a couple of blocks off the beaten path. They pulled a mean espresso
> and made delicious coffee. And Starbucks tastes burnt to discriminating
> people who frequent places that make good coffee.

The problem is that non-coffee people often equate burnt with strong.
Apparently they have never had a cup of strong, medium roast coffee,
which is understandable since you can't get such a thing at Starbucks,
unless a store happens to do a medium roast as the "coffee of the day,"
and that's pretty rare, in my experience.

There are smaller, specialty coffee houses that do medium roast brewed
coffee, but you have to search them out. Or you can buy medium roast
coffee and do it yourself. The advantage is you can drink such coffee
black without drowning it with milk and sugar. It's like drinking good
whiskey straight, rather than mixing it with something sweet like soda
or orange juice to hide the taste. Plain coffee is much less profitable
than $3-4 espresso drinks, so understandably Starbucks doesn't want to
push plain coffee.

You often stumble across good coffee in places that you don't expect. If
it's a cafe or store owned by Pakistani's or Indian's, often the coffee
is good, Chinese, usually not so good, though judging from the number of
coffee houses in Taiwan, it should be better than it is.

See "http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EK18Aa01.html"

What is American Culture

"2. Burnt coffee at exorbitant prices. The most popular cafe chain,
whose name decent people do not pronounce, burns its coffee beans to
produce what Americans mistakenly believe is an authentic European
taste. Proper coffee, by which of course I mean Italian coffee, is
bittersweet, not burned. Americans evidently hate the wretched stuff
because they drown its flavor in a flood of milk, in the so-called
"latte", something I never have observed an Italian request during many
years of travel in that country. By contrast, Italians drink cappuccino,
mixing a small amount of milk into the coffee and leaving a cap of foam.
If Americans do not like it, why do they buy it at exorbitant prices?
They do so precisely because the high price makes it a luxury, but an
affordable one for secretaries and shopgirls."



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John Navas wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:31:32 -0600, clifto <[email protected]> wrote in
> <[email protected]>:
>>One of the nice things about working the Hispanofest in Melrose Park IL
>>was that on break time there was a nice privately owned coffee shop
>>just a couple of blocks off the beaten path. They pulled a mean espresso
>>and made delicious coffee. And Starbucks tastes burnt to discriminating
>>people who frequent places that make good coffee.
>
> In your opinion. Opinions vary. And your insults only serve to
> diminish the persuasiveness of your argument.

I didn't think that was much of an insult, if one at all. I would if I
believed you could have tried this little coffee shop's product, but
that's unlikely.

In any event, it's no more insulting than your remark about how "some
undiscriminating people" think the coffee is burnt.

--
"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day,
they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."
-- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

Notan wrote:
> John Navas wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> A panel of "trained testers" took their brew black -- no cream, milk
>> or sugar -- and visited two locations of each company.
>>
>> Two locations! Not just one? Wow!
>> For "trained testers" read CR staffers.
>> LOL!
>
> And, once again, you come across as snob, who think that people value
> his opinion(s) above all others.

Actually for Starbucks, where all the U.S. stores are company owned and
operated, two stores should be sufficient because there isn't a lot of
variability. For McDonald's, where there a lot of franchises, as well as
a lot of company owned stores, you'd expect more variability on some
menu items.

The burnt taste that they complained about is not some huge secret, it's
how Starbucks roasts and brews their regular coffee.




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At 12 Feb 2007 16:00:32 +0000 John Navas wrote:

> No matter how many times you make this claim, it still isn't true. CR
> surveys suffer from self-selected samples of a non-representative
> population, making the data interesting, but not truly applicable to the
> universe of cellular subscribers.

How does the "non-representative" group skew the results when the
respondents' class (CR subscribers) has nothing to do with the product
reviewed (cellphones) and are aswering objective questions (i.e. saying
one had a dropped call isn't an "opinion") at least in a real-world
scenario?

For example, if the survey was a question like "do you get your news from
TV, radio, internet or magazines?" asking a group comprised entirely of
magazine subscribers would obviously skew the results.

But asking "cable TV subscribers," "Ford automobile owners," or
"bricklayers" objective questions about cellular service should tend to
get the same results if the sample sizes are large enough. (Unless, for
example, cell companies discriminate against bricklayers...)

> In addition, the sample size is
> actually small when broken down by area, further increasing the amount
> of error.

Perhaps, but that old "standard deviation" equation tends to insure work
things out. ;-)

Todd Allcock wrote:

> For example, if the survey was a question like "do you get your news from
> TV, radio, internet or magazines?" asking a group comprised entirely of
> magazine subscribers would obviously skew the results.

I guess that John is trying to convince people that if somehow you could
get a sample size of 50,000 respondents, and it was all random, that the
results would be different. Of course this is ridiculous, the sample of
CR subscribers that are Verizon subscribers, are not going to be biased
for or against Verizon, any more than the Sprint, Cingular or T-Mobile
subscribers are going to be biased against their own carriers. I think
what he doesn't understand, is that the survey isn't asking 50,000
people "which carrier is best in your city?," it's asking for an
evaluation of your own carrier.

Now if you surveyed only long distance truck drivers, and trucking
firms, of course Verizon is going to have a huge advantage, because they
have much wider coverage than Cingular in non-urban areas due to AMPS.
The commercial carriers still use AMPS in areas where there is no CDMA
coverage (see "http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=51944").

> But asking "cable TV subscribers," "Ford automobile owners," or
> "bricklayers" objective questions about cellular service should tend to
> get the same results if the sample sizes are large enough. (Unless, for
> example, cell companies discriminate against bricklayers...)

Yes, that's the whole point.

Of course Navas is just extremely upset that for yet another year,
Cingular fared extremely poorly in the Consumer Reports survey AND the
J.D. Power surveys. That's why he feels compelled to make up ridiculous
stories to try and defend them, part of which is trying to attack the
companies doing the surveys.

> Perhaps, but that old "standard deviation" equation tends to insure work
> things out. ;-)

The margin of error is still extremely small, even when broken down by
region and then by carrier. Additionally, in some regions, such as the
San Francisco Bay Area, there is such a large difference, that even with
the maximum amount of error applied, Cingular still does extremely
poorly, and Verizon does extremely well.


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Scott wrote:
> John Navas <[email protected]> wrote in
> news:[email protected]:
>
>
>> I consider myself a discriminating person;
>
>
> And based on the many opinions you have posted over the years, you would be
> alone in that view.

He discriminates against the truth and the facts on a daily basis.

At 13 Feb 2007 00:21:41 +0000 John Navas wrote:

> Statistics 101: because it's non-representative of the universe. To
> conduct meaningful sampling, you must take a _random_ sample of the
> universe.

Right. In theory. Which is why I followed it with "real-world."

> CR fails on two counts:
> 1. CR subscribers are not drawn randomly from the universe, and have not
> been shown representative of any universe other than CR subscribers.
> 2. Survey respondents are self-selected, and thus inevitably have an
> unknown bias that's not accounted for in survey results.
A bias that would most likely be even distributed among all carriers- for
example, if self-selection is, say, 20% more likely to generate replies
from people unhappy with their service, then all carriers will be skewed
negatively by presumably the same amount.


> You're making assumptions, and "assumptions are the mother of all
> screwups". (c) Jeff Liebermann
>
> To truly understand the issue, you need to study up on sampling.

I'm familiar with the theory, and often a true representative sample is
diffrent to obtain in the real world. For example, drug/medical testing
must be peformed on wiling participants- inherently a "non-
representative" sample, but one that doesn't necessarily skew results,
because the internal biological chemistry of humans isn't demonstrably
different between those willing and those unwilling.


> >Perhaps, but that old "standard deviation" equation tends to insure
work
> >things out. ;-)
>
> That's not how it works. Again, study up on sampling.

Given the lack of a completely "blind" random survey, the CR one holds up
pretty well. In the real world, the ideal sample population is difficult
to find, so you do the best you can with as unbiased a sampling as you can.


Put another way, other than Cingular's "secret" least-dropped-calls
study, has any consumer group or independent research firm (i.e. J.D.
Powers) ever rated Cingular with the best network?

My experience over the last few years tends to support the CR study-
whenever, in my travels, I find myself in an area where some people can't
get service and some can, the ones who can have more often than not been
Verizon users. (Because I always ask, out of curiosity.)

Certainly that's not scientific, and certainly is not a "representative
sample" but it is generally the case in my experience.

Having said that, I still wouldn't use Verizon's service- between the
crippled phones, and high prices, I'm just not interested, but that
doesn't mean they haven't got the network right.

John Navas <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:53:01 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>
>>Scott wrote:
>>> John Navas <[email protected]> wrote in
>>> news:[email protected]:
>>>
>>>> I consider myself a discriminating person;
>>>
>>> And based on the many opinions you have posted over the years, you
>>> would be alone in that view.
>>
>>He discriminates against the truth and the facts on a daily basis.
>
> 'Those who have evidence will present their evidence,
> whereas those who do not have evidence will attack the man.'
>

And those that don't have a clue use Google as their bible and post under
the name John Navas.

In article <[email protected]>,
John Navas <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> That's not how it works. Again, study up on sampling.

i hope this doesn't wound you too deeply john, but i suspect that
most sane readers would accept consumer reports statistics over your
biased commentary.

If you're interested in Kona coffee and other goodies from Hawaii you can go
to my web page and click on the Hilo Hattie link. Or just follow this link:

http://www.hilohattie.com/category-index.cfm?catid=20

I order coffee and macadamia nuts as gifts for the family. Good delivery
times and reasonable prices.

--
Gary
Visit Lucy & Gary at
www.under-1-roof.com

"Larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Dean" <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
>
>> Best coffee I ever had was Kona, in Hawaii about 25 years ago. They
>> served rice as a starch with breakfast there too, in lieu of
>> (expensive imported) potatoes. Interesting. Wonder if they still do...
>>
>>
>
> A friend of mine in Honolulu sends me care packages of Kona from Lion
> Coffee Company (800-338-8353 or fax 800-972-0777) www.lioncoffee.com. I'm
> in love with a Kona blend coffee from Chef Mavro's in Honolulu
> http://www.chefmavro.com/
> Lion makes it for Chef Mavro. (Check out Chef Mavro's video cooking on
> Wakiki Beach....(c;
>
> My friend in Atlanta calls Starbucks Fivebucks. We both agree it sucks.
>
> Larry
> --
> VIRUS ALERT! VISTA has been released!
> NOONE will be spared!