Since these leaks did not make the public more informed, or critical, the interest in the public in knowing the information is basically zero. OTOH the interest of the government in keeping the two Zimbabwean Generals who were talking to it from being charged with treason was a hell of a lot more then zero.
Wow, how one sided and US-centric can somebodies views be? I'm sure the swedes found it informing that their politicians had secret agreements to give private information on citizens to US agencies even though it was against their law. Maybe they also found the covert support for US military actions while publicly seeming neutral to have some informative value. I'm sure people from NZ found it interesting and informative that their prime minister sent troops to Iraq to avoid losing Oil for Food contract. It could also be, that the people of Haiti found it interesting to find out just how strongly their politicians decisions where steered by pressure from the US.
There is not a lot of countries in the world who's citizens would not have found the cables to be interesting and informative... Now from a US point of view you probably already understand what influence you have towards other countries. We also understand that there is continuous political pressure, but when you find that your politicians elected to run the country and enhance the wellbeing of it's citizens are secretly breaking the law or placing the benefit of a foreign nation above that of it's own citizens, then the details sure as hell are informative.
Paypal probably will not get in trouble since technically they do not behave like a bank and move around other people's money, but instead take the money and promise to give it to someone else... but in that intermediate state they own it, which is why they keep getting away with confiscating it.
Are you sure about that? I would imagine that it actually differs from one country to another as financial and taxation law varies and book-keeping will generally be done in a way to minimize overhead. At least I have a recollection that Paypal will not accept bookkeeping in a way that it would consider Paypal to be offering the actual service that is being payed for, but from that point onwards it get's fairly grey. Also, it's not just about actual Paypal payments, they also own Zong which does quite a lot of SMS payment processing in Sweden and would also be affected if there was any block on operation. There the financial model can be quite a bit more complex as they are between the operators, service providers and customers.
Good selective quoting there. The bit you missed ("you agree to enforce everyone-else's rules in areas where they have sovereignty") makes clear that the blasphemy law thing is a straw man.
I can only give it a two out of five, tho. Way too transparent.
Well from a Europeans point of view I can't see how you could accept blocking all payments from an organization that has not had charges raised against it. I understand it follows the same path of locking up people without a trial and even ordering execution of citizens etc, but that sounds like something China or Russia would be doing (so not that far fetched).
So what you are saying is that if the US decides to go against all common sense and due procedure, we should abide to your laws even when no charges have been raised... Actually it seems that the whole case would be based on what is considered as "press", so I guess it would fit your whole current view on the law and freedom that you would retroactively make a definition that Wikileaks does not fill or require all press organizations to get a yearly governmental approval to be covered by the legal protection "press entities" are entitled to.
Espionage Act of 1917. Apparently the entire point of the organization is to violate this Act, because they have yet to post any significant leaks from any other country in the entire world.
Nobody's been charged, which means nobody's been extradited. However that doesn't mean they can't be inconvenienced by the investigation. It's not like a US Cop can't drag a suspect downtown for interrogation if he feels like it.
And if you're gonna argue the Visa/Mastercard policy is more then an inconvenience you're gonna have to explain why Wikileaks isn't fighting that in US Court. It wouldn't be hard to do, if they can keep Bradley Manning's fund topped up surely they can run their own, but they aren't doing it. This means they think they'd lose.
So where they charged? If not, what is the basis of the embargo? I understand that in the US you might actually have a system where you can block somebody from doing any financial transactions without any kind of law order, but in Europe the rules can be quite different.
A probable outcome will be, that the financial organizations will be ordered to forward all payments originated from Sweden to Wikileaks or face a possible ban from operating in Sweden, and if so they will all comply. It could also be, that they will do it before a ruling to lessen the chance that other EU countries will follow. However, from a Europeans point of view I don't see any reason why a non-US company should be blocked from receiving money from non-US people for being suspected of breaking a US crime when no charges have even been raised, and unless I remember incorrectly there is a general sentiment that non could even be raised...
You don't want to give any technical details or use any terms like "smtp" or "headers". You don't want to try to fet them to understand the technical reasons, just the concept of how the sender address is just whatever is configured in the email client and no more a guarantee then what's written as sender on a traditional email.
I found the fastest way to get somebody to understand was by walking through configuring their email to send from a bogus address, it opens up their eyes faster then an explanation.
- How he feels success in your field should be measured, what would be good indicators
- What he thinks are positive and negative aspects about outsourcing whatever you do
- Try to get a feeling if he will openly admit when he does not understand something, or rather act as if he understands
And other payment processors take 80% (mobile payments in south America). Sure it's the other extreme and quite out there, but no more then the 1-2% figure which really is a low comission.
No, it's not. And their tax laws have everything to do with it. Their tax laws are setup such that only local companies pay taxes. Companies like Google pay nothing. Any other brilliant arguments, dipshit?
The parent was correct. How are you going to counter such foreign tax laws? The answer is that you can't control what a sovereign country sets as their laws; only your own ones, and it is their country and their rules. If your local tax law allows your companies to channel profits to other countries then they will, the question is when are the laws being abused so badly that the damage is higher then the benefit you get from being able to be flexible?
But in this case Google, MS etc do want to eat in the store.
As in really run their operations from Bermuda, depend on their public infrastructure, health and education system? Subside development with Bermudan government perks instead of the ones offered in whatever country the products are developed and sold in?
My guess is that a lot of companies not abusing the system will end up suffering from the outcome of this. It really seems like a lot of countries are discussing this lately, even here in Finland. We have a lot of international private health care companies taking over the market lately. The system works in a way that the government often pays for all (or most) of the health care expenses even when it's a private company, and in a recent investigation hardly any of them pay any tax here... So it's not even only the profits that are moved out, it's even the tax payers money used to support the health system.
Of course it's no surprise. A company has to think of it's stock holders, not of the tax payers. I'm just guessing that we are close to the snapping point when very drastic measures will be taken, it's going to be interesting to see the outcome.
For the record, I believe that tax avoidance is at least morally wrong,...
So, I take it that you do not take any deductions when you file your taxes?
I do if I'm really due those deductions. I won't lie about my income to gain deductions though, and this is what's happening here. The companies will be claiming huge losses to tax authorities and record earnings to their investors. It's not about "following the law", it's pure lying and cheating and has nothing to do with normal tax deductions.
As mentioned, the reason they did not pay tax is that they told the tax authorities they had huge losses. This was a lie, as can be verified from what they told their investers, meaning they are actually due for the taxes. If the only reason you are not paying is a lie, then how can you talk about following the law? If you kill somebody, claim not to have done it and still describe the act to others you will be charged even if there is no physical evidence...
Any other law violation you either get searched/charged or let off the hook.
How about next time you are charged with (actual) theft, someone calls you first and offers to pay 600 euros to avoid the hassle? Why is this a valid option for copyright violation accusations?
Unfortunately, "any other law" doesn't apply here. This is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Its not theft, it's copyright violation. It's extortion to demand money not to turn someone in for a criminal violation, but in civil matters you are free to offer a deal in exchange for not pressing charges. In criminal cases, the D.A. is the one pressing the charges, and in civil cases it's the plaintiff's lawyer, which is why they have the option.
The plaintiffs aren't the problem here. The police aren't the problem either. The plaintiffs are simply taking advantage of the law as written for their own benefit, and the police are just playing along by the rules as required. It's the Bad Law that's to blame. You can't blame companies and greedy people for being greedy, it's what they DO. You can't blame the police for enforcing the law, it's also what they DO. The only one to blame is your legislator, who created the Bad Law, whom you voted in. That means blame yourself, and work to get the laws changed.
Well actually the police are partially to blame here. While a warrant is not required to confiscate computers from somebody's home in Finnish law, search is researved for cases that could produce 6 months in jail and cause "significant damage". The police has decided that downloading 1 cd caused significant damage and could result in 6 months of jail which required quite creative reasoning from them.
Is it possible we should think of something similar in representative democracies? What if there were a provision to allow the creation of agents with agendas?
It's called a political party.
Yes, I know the current party system is deeply flawed. But what you describe is the idea of political parties, plain and simple.
There is also a more modern system with a more fine-grained and fluid agency system like this, invented by the Pirate Party, called Liquid Democracy. GIYF.
Unfortunately most countries seem to be in the situation where the "old parties" are doing their best to make it hard for new parties to join the game.
So you are saying that if luck is involved in making a hit game it's the only thing that counts?
I'm not sure I'm following your logic... Sure, some great games have flopped, and some shitty games have made it big. Luck was surely a great factor here, but I find it hard to believe it's the only one. A good game with sloppy programming could fail. A well programmed game with a sloppy concept could fail. A well programmed game with a good concept but graphics that don't work could fail... And when you get everything right you could still fail! But even then it could be marketing or bad pricing.
I'm not a big angry birds fan despite having a lot of friends working there. It was fun for an hour, but I did'nt feel an urge to return to it... Still I bought it and bought the space version too. Why? My kids asked me to, and at 79c I can't think of a lot of reasons not to. And while it's not my favorite game, it's surely my favorite game out of the ones my 4 year old child enjoys.
They have the power to walk out. They don't. The older workers do walk out. Thus, the logical explanation is that the younger workers want it.
They often have a lot more in their life too.
I can notice that a lot of the time when we have a big surprising problem at the end of the day, it's the younger developers who stay and work all night. It's not just a question of the younger ones wanting it more, it's also a question of the younger ones not having to pick up their kids on the way home from work and take them to hobbies etc. Of course it's not only the companies fault, older developers will have a lot more to give in some areas, and they should of course try to pick a job where they get to use those acquired skills. If a younger guy can do the same thing an older one can then I don't see a special need to treat the older one differently (other then that everyone should be treated well and individually), everyone should find a position where they get to use their talents and live their own life on the side.
We pay the 6000$ (ok, less with a bulk discount), but a lot of the time have to null route anyway as attacks just get bigger and bigger (up to 10gbps) and end up saturating the providers links.
There's no winning in my opinion. The ddos shields do work, but they are prices for companies who really lose a lot of money with downtime. Your best chance would be trying to figure out who ordered it and get evidence if it happens multiple times.
As somebody who has often tried to get the FBI to investigate pretty clear hacking cases and only succeeded once, this does sound good.
Unfortunately it could also mean they will now be using even more of those scarse resourses to investigate something silly lowering my chances even further next time.
As soon as the major parties notice they are losing votes to third parties they will start changing their habits. Sure it could mean that "the other party" wins this election, but the losing party will most certainly be analyzing why it lost.
I don't see very many situations where people in power would vote to change a law in a way that it gives them less chance to reach their position, and even less when it means parties would do so. We have our own set of problems here in Finland even though our choice in parties is a lot bigger then yours. I see several parties having good candidates, but they rarely get through. This means I'm not really giving a vote to that person, rather to his party. Even if he does get through he will probably vote in line with the parties decisions which might not match all the personal opinions he gives during election interviews.
However voting for a third party is not a wasted vote if it makes a change. Both of your parties are similar enough that you are more likely to get a bigger long term difference by getting enough people to vote elsewhere, surprise a major party and get them to start thinking what went wrong.
I work in a multinational company with an IT department of about 120 people (about 5500 total employees). We have maybe 10 people that write code. Why on earth would anyone labeled as a system administrator have to write code? What am I doing maintaining multiple SANs, ESX farms, MS clusters, Cisco switches, routers, VPN, and firewalls that I should know how to code?
The 10 people have that write code do exactly that. Write code and build applications. I would not expect them to have a working knowledge of setup routing our WAN, they should not expect me to code an application.
Sounds like a multinational corporation:)
I've done everything you are doing, but still occasionally needed to write code. Maybe you have a database and instead of purchasing an expensive license to be able to get clean backups you write a script which puts it in a clean state, connects to the SAN, takes a snapshot of the LUN, mounts that snapshot so you have a clean backup. Maybe you are using SNMP to monitor servers and need to get information on some service (active dhcp leases for example). Maybe you need to periodically clean old files from somewhere that fill certain requirements etc...
Most of these examples can also be solved by throwing money at it, but if I was hiring somebody I'd rather take a person who also has the ability to solve problems with sense and in a hurry. It could be the difference between a team having 5 people to maintain 100 servers or 5 people to maintain 5000 servers.
I can see where you are coming from, but this is still some of the dumbest shit I've heard.
You must work in a zoo or a place full of recently graduated kids if you think having a sysadmin code is somehow related to mixing test and production systems...
I have worked in telco's where all problems where solved with money and bucket loads of resources. There people had very precisely defined work positions and responsibilities where never mixed. Sure if everybody is brain dead then thinking about what the recipient of the ticket will do with it could cause chaos, otherwise it can actually help everyone do their job better.
In smaller companies problems are occasionally solved with common sense rather then money. It does not mean the changes are uncontrolled, actually I've seen far better testing and quality control in small companies, especially when sysadmins have coded automation for time consuming frequent tasks that are easy to handle automatically. Before updating our product in production servers could take weeks, now with automation it takes less then a day (multiple countries and data centers). Add to this, that mistakes and problems have actually gone down as areas where humans often make mistakes have been automated. This is saving everybody a lot of work and leading to a better product.
You talk about a strict development and deployment lifecycle, why can't it include automation where possible?
Seems more and more jobs are being replaced by technology. What happens as the population grows but jobs dissapear?
During the last years jobs have been outsourced to other countries with cheaper labour and I think the question has been the same... Now the jobs are being automated but it's still a question on the same issue. What's the answer?
People could have objected to moving jobs abroad by supporting remaining local companies, thus sending a signal that the downside to moving manufacturing far east is a loss in sales from people who want to support the local economy. This never really happened as at the end of the day people do want to buy things cheaper, and end up choosing the product made abroad... Same thing will happen with items that are built by robots, people will buy them if they are cheaper, but as an issue it is a bit different.
Regarding moving manufacturing to Asia I always thought that there would be a tipping point when people would really start to take this seriously, and change their buying habits. I have no idea when that tipping point would come, but the later the more dramatic as at some point the effect of lost jobs will spread wider and wider in the economy. For automation it's different, as this is part of a progress that started with the industrial revolution and is just moving forward. It's always been inevitable that certain workers are replaced with robots, and the speed will probably increase as robots improve.
From one article here in Finland I remember a mention about horse charriot chauffeurs that used to bring all the merchandise from warehouses to shops. At some point they went on strike due to fear of being replaced by trucks that could move a lot more items and a lot faster. They are still on strike as far as I have understood...
I like mountainbikes, the higher quality ones. Most of them used to be hand made in the US, but one by one the manufacturers have moved production to taiwan. Most of them are also no longer hand made, rather welded by robots. Originally moving the production brought prices down, but apparently labour costs have been rising very quickly in Taiwan, and somebody claimed that all expenses included they will probably soon be close to the costs of manufacturing in the US (especially for smaller boutique brands that can't benefit from huge volumes). Manufacturing in the US also has the advantage of easier prototyping and more agility in getting a new product to shops. However having a very expensive US hand made frame (from Intense Cycles) I'm not 100% convinced hand made is a very big bonus. It actually seems that robots have much more even quality standard while hand made means it's a question of luck on who happens to be welding it and is it done on a Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon or Friday just before leaving to a bar. I expect my next bike to be made by a robot just because that will make it less likely to have to deal with warranty replacements... Everything has two sides and a lot of shades of grey.
Slashdot Mirror
Since these leaks did not make the public more informed, or critical, the interest in the public in knowing the information is basically zero. OTOH the interest of the government in keeping the two Zimbabwean Generals who were talking to it from being charged with treason was a hell of a lot more then zero.
Wow, how one sided and US-centric can somebodies views be? I'm sure the swedes found it informing that their politicians had secret agreements to give private information on citizens to US agencies even though it was against their law. Maybe they also found the covert support for US military actions while publicly seeming neutral to have some informative value. I'm sure people from NZ found it interesting and informative that their prime minister sent troops to Iraq to avoid losing Oil for Food contract. It could also be, that the people of Haiti found it interesting to find out just how strongly their politicians decisions where steered by pressure from the US.
There is not a lot of countries in the world who's citizens would not have found the cables to be interesting and informative... Now from a US point of view you probably already understand what influence you have towards other countries. We also understand that there is continuous political pressure, but when you find that your politicians elected to run the country and enhance the wellbeing of it's citizens are secretly breaking the law or placing the benefit of a foreign nation above that of it's own citizens, then the details sure as hell are informative.
I can see how that definition could appeal to some:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-new-york-times-admits-that-virtually-every-major-news-organization-allows-the-news-to-be-censored-by-government-officials
This is about Swedish law, not US law.
I would certainly hope they would follow the law in whatever path they choose to take... Does that sound absurd?
Paypal probably will not get in trouble since technically they do not behave like a bank and move around other people's money, but instead take the money and promise to give it to someone else... but in that intermediate state they own it, which is why they keep getting away with confiscating it.
Are you sure about that? I would imagine that it actually differs from one country to another as financial and taxation law varies and book-keeping will generally be done in a way to minimize overhead. At least I have a recollection that Paypal will not accept bookkeeping in a way that it would consider Paypal to be offering the actual service that is being payed for, but from that point onwards it get's fairly grey. Also, it's not just about actual Paypal payments, they also own Zong which does quite a lot of SMS payment processing in Sweden and would also be affected if there was any block on operation. There the financial model can be quite a bit more complex as they are between the operators, service providers and customers.
Good selective quoting there. The bit you missed ("you agree to enforce everyone-else's rules in areas where they have sovereignty") makes clear that the blasphemy law thing is a straw man.
I can only give it a two out of five, tho. Way too transparent.
Well from a Europeans point of view I can't see how you could accept blocking all payments from an organization that has not had charges raised against it. I understand it follows the same path of locking up people without a trial and even ordering execution of citizens etc, but that sounds like something China or Russia would be doing (so not that far fetched).
So what you are saying is that if the US decides to go against all common sense and due procedure, we should abide to your laws even when no charges have been raised... Actually it seems that the whole case would be based on what is considered as "press", so I guess it would fit your whole current view on the law and freedom that you would retroactively make a definition that Wikileaks does not fill or require all press organizations to get a yearly governmental approval to be covered by the legal protection "press entities" are entitled to.
Espionage Act of 1917. Apparently the entire point of the organization is to violate this Act, because they have yet to post any significant leaks from any other country in the entire world.
Nobody's been charged, which means nobody's been extradited. However that doesn't mean they can't be inconvenienced by the investigation. It's not like a US Cop can't drag a suspect downtown for interrogation if he feels like it.
And if you're gonna argue the Visa/Mastercard policy is more then an inconvenience you're gonna have to explain why Wikileaks isn't fighting that in US Court. It wouldn't be hard to do, if they can keep Bradley Manning's fund topped up surely they can run their own, but they aren't doing it. This means they think they'd lose.
So where they charged? If not, what is the basis of the embargo? I understand that in the US you might actually have a system where you can block somebody from doing any financial transactions without any kind of law order, but in Europe the rules can be quite different.
A probable outcome will be, that the financial organizations will be ordered to forward all payments originated from Sweden to Wikileaks or face a possible ban from operating in Sweden, and if so they will all comply. It could also be, that they will do it before a ruling to lessen the chance that other EU countries will follow. However, from a Europeans point of view I don't see any reason why a non-US company should be blocked from receiving money from non-US people for being suspected of breaking a US crime when no charges have even been raised, and unless I remember incorrectly there is a general sentiment that non could even be raised...
You don't want to give any technical details or use any terms like "smtp" or "headers". You don't want to try to fet them to understand the technical reasons, just the concept of how the sender address is just whatever is configured in the email client and no more a guarantee then what's written as sender on a traditional email.
I found the fastest way to get somebody to understand was by walking through configuring their email to send from a bogus address, it opens up their eyes faster then an explanation.
- How he feels success in your field should be measured, what would be good indicators - What he thinks are positive and negative aspects about outsourcing whatever you do - Try to get a feeling if he will openly admit when he does not understand something, or rather act as if he understands
And other payment processors take 80% (mobile payments in south America). Sure it's the other extreme and quite out there, but no more then the 1-2% figure which really is a low comission.
No, it's not. And their tax laws have everything to do with it. Their tax laws are setup such that only local companies pay taxes. Companies like Google pay nothing. Any other brilliant arguments, dipshit?
The parent was correct. How are you going to counter such foreign tax laws? The answer is that you can't control what a sovereign country sets as their laws; only your own ones, and it is their country and their rules. If your local tax law allows your companies to channel profits to other countries then they will, the question is when are the laws being abused so badly that the damage is higher then the benefit you get from being able to be flexible?
But in this case Google, MS etc do want to eat in the store.
As in really run their operations from Bermuda, depend on their public infrastructure, health and education system? Subside development with Bermudan government perks instead of the ones offered in whatever country the products are developed and sold in?
My guess is that a lot of companies not abusing the system will end up suffering from the outcome of this. It really seems like a lot of countries are discussing this lately, even here in Finland. We have a lot of international private health care companies taking over the market lately. The system works in a way that the government often pays for all (or most) of the health care expenses even when it's a private company, and in a recent investigation hardly any of them pay any tax here... So it's not even only the profits that are moved out, it's even the tax payers money used to support the health system.
Of course it's no surprise. A company has to think of it's stock holders, not of the tax payers. I'm just guessing that we are close to the snapping point when very drastic measures will be taken, it's going to be interesting to see the outcome.
For the record, I believe that tax avoidance is at least morally wrong,...
So, I take it that you do not take any deductions when you file your taxes?
I do if I'm really due those deductions. I won't lie about my income to gain deductions though, and this is what's happening here. The companies will be claiming huge losses to tax authorities and record earnings to their investors. It's not about "following the law", it's pure lying and cheating and has nothing to do with normal tax deductions.
As mentioned, the reason they did not pay tax is that they told the tax authorities they had huge losses. This was a lie, as can be verified from what they told their investers, meaning they are actually due for the taxes. If the only reason you are not paying is a lie, then how can you talk about following the law? If you kill somebody, claim not to have done it and still describe the act to others you will be charged even if there is no physical evidence...
Unfortunately, "any other law" doesn't apply here. This is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Its not theft, it's copyright violation. It's extortion to demand money not to turn someone in for a criminal violation, but in civil matters you are free to offer a deal in exchange for not pressing charges. In criminal cases, the D.A. is the one pressing the charges, and in civil cases it's the plaintiff's lawyer, which is why they have the option.
The plaintiffs aren't the problem here. The police aren't the problem either. The plaintiffs are simply taking advantage of the law as written for their own benefit, and the police are just playing along by the rules as required. It's the Bad Law that's to blame. You can't blame companies and greedy people for being greedy, it's what they DO. You can't blame the police for enforcing the law, it's also what they DO. The only one to blame is your legislator, who created the Bad Law, whom you voted in. That means blame yourself, and work to get the laws changed.
Well actually the police are partially to blame here. While a warrant is not required to confiscate computers from somebody's home in Finnish law, search is researved for cases that could produce 6 months in jail and cause "significant damage". The police has decided that downloading 1 cd caused significant damage and could result in 6 months of jail which required quite creative reasoning from them.
Is it possible we should think of something similar in representative democracies? What if there were a provision to allow the creation of agents with agendas?
It's called a political party.
Yes, I know the current party system is deeply flawed. But what you describe is the idea of political parties, plain and simple.
There is also a more modern system with a more fine-grained and fluid agency system like this, invented by the Pirate Party, called Liquid Democracy. GIYF.
Unfortunately most countries seem to be in the situation where the "old parties" are doing their best to make it hard for new parties to join the game.
I'm not sure I'm following your logic... Sure, some great games have flopped, and some shitty games have made it big. Luck was surely a great factor here, but I find it hard to believe it's the only one. A good game with sloppy programming could fail. A well programmed game with a sloppy concept could fail. A well programmed game with a good concept but graphics that don't work could fail... And when you get everything right you could still fail! But even then it could be marketing or bad pricing. I'm not a big angry birds fan despite having a lot of friends working there. It was fun for an hour, but I did'nt feel an urge to return to it... Still I bought it and bought the space version too. Why? My kids asked me to, and at 79c I can't think of a lot of reasons not to. And while it's not my favorite game, it's surely my favorite game out of the ones my 4 year old child enjoys.
They have the power to walk out. They don't. The older workers do walk out. Thus, the logical explanation is that the younger workers want it.
They often have a lot more in their life too.
I can notice that a lot of the time when we have a big surprising problem at the end of the day, it's the younger developers who stay and work all night. It's not just a question of the younger ones wanting it more, it's also a question of the younger ones not having to pick up their kids on the way home from work and take them to hobbies etc. Of course it's not only the companies fault, older developers will have a lot more to give in some areas, and they should of course try to pick a job where they get to use those acquired skills. If a younger guy can do the same thing an older one can then I don't see a special need to treat the older one differently (other then that everyone should be treated well and individually), everyone should find a position where they get to use their talents and live their own life on the side.
Null route the ip being attacked
So to protect against someone taking your website down, you effectively take your website down? I think I've missed some detail in your suggestion.
That way you disturb other services behind the link less.
There's no winning in my opinion. The ddos shields do work, but they are prices for companies who really lose a lot of money with downtime. Your best chance would be trying to figure out who ordered it and get evidence if it happens multiple times.
Unfortunately it could also mean they will now be using even more of those scarse resourses to investigate something silly lowering my chances even further next time.
As soon as the major parties notice they are losing votes to third parties they will start changing their habits. Sure it could mean that "the other party" wins this election, but the losing party will most certainly be analyzing why it lost.
I don't see very many situations where people in power would vote to change a law in a way that it gives them less chance to reach their position, and even less when it means parties would do so. We have our own set of problems here in Finland even though our choice in parties is a lot bigger then yours. I see several parties having good candidates, but they rarely get through. This means I'm not really giving a vote to that person, rather to his party. Even if he does get through he will probably vote in line with the parties decisions which might not match all the personal opinions he gives during election interviews.
However voting for a third party is not a wasted vote if it makes a change. Both of your parties are similar enough that you are more likely to get a bigger long term difference by getting enough people to vote elsewhere, surprise a major party and get them to start thinking what went wrong.
I work in a multinational company with an IT department of about 120 people (about 5500 total employees). We have maybe 10 people that write code. Why on earth would anyone labeled as a system administrator have to write code? What am I doing maintaining multiple SANs, ESX farms, MS clusters, Cisco switches, routers, VPN, and firewalls that I should know how to code?
The 10 people have that write code do exactly that. Write code and build applications. I would not expect them to have a working knowledge of setup routing our WAN, they should not expect me to code an application.
Sounds like a multinational corporation :)
I've done everything you are doing, but still occasionally needed to write code. Maybe you have a database and instead of purchasing an expensive license to be able to get clean backups you write a script which puts it in a clean state, connects to the SAN, takes a snapshot of the LUN, mounts that snapshot so you have a clean backup. Maybe you are using SNMP to monitor servers and need to get information on some service (active dhcp leases for example). Maybe you need to periodically clean old files from somewhere that fill certain requirements etc...
Most of these examples can also be solved by throwing money at it, but if I was hiring somebody I'd rather take a person who also has the ability to solve problems with sense and in a hurry. It could be the difference between a team having 5 people to maintain 100 servers or 5 people to maintain 5000 servers.
I can see where you are coming from, but this is still some of the dumbest shit I've heard.
You must work in a zoo or a place full of recently graduated kids if you think having a sysadmin code is somehow related to mixing test and production systems...
I have worked in telco's where all problems where solved with money and bucket loads of resources. There people had very precisely defined work positions and responsibilities where never mixed. Sure if everybody is brain dead then thinking about what the recipient of the ticket will do with it could cause chaos, otherwise it can actually help everyone do their job better.
In smaller companies problems are occasionally solved with common sense rather then money. It does not mean the changes are uncontrolled, actually I've seen far better testing and quality control in small companies, especially when sysadmins have coded automation for time consuming frequent tasks that are easy to handle automatically. Before updating our product in production servers could take weeks, now with automation it takes less then a day (multiple countries and data centers). Add to this, that mistakes and problems have actually gone down as areas where humans often make mistakes have been automated. This is saving everybody a lot of work and leading to a better product.
You talk about a strict development and deployment lifecycle, why can't it include automation where possible?
Seems more and more jobs are being replaced by technology. What happens as the population grows but jobs dissapear?
During the last years jobs have been outsourced to other countries with cheaper labour and I think the question has been the same... Now the jobs are being automated but it's still a question on the same issue. What's the answer?
People could have objected to moving jobs abroad by supporting remaining local companies, thus sending a signal that the downside to moving manufacturing far east is a loss in sales from people who want to support the local economy. This never really happened as at the end of the day people do want to buy things cheaper, and end up choosing the product made abroad... Same thing will happen with items that are built by robots, people will buy them if they are cheaper, but as an issue it is a bit different.
Regarding moving manufacturing to Asia I always thought that there would be a tipping point when people would really start to take this seriously, and change their buying habits. I have no idea when that tipping point would come, but the later the more dramatic as at some point the effect of lost jobs will spread wider and wider in the economy. For automation it's different, as this is part of a progress that started with the industrial revolution and is just moving forward. It's always been inevitable that certain workers are replaced with robots, and the speed will probably increase as robots improve.
From one article here in Finland I remember a mention about horse charriot chauffeurs that used to bring all the merchandise from warehouses to shops. At some point they went on strike due to fear of being replaced by trucks that could move a lot more items and a lot faster. They are still on strike as far as I have understood...
I like mountainbikes, the higher quality ones. Most of them used to be hand made in the US, but one by one the manufacturers have moved production to taiwan. Most of them are also no longer hand made, rather welded by robots. Originally moving the production brought prices down, but apparently labour costs have been rising very quickly in Taiwan, and somebody claimed that all expenses included they will probably soon be close to the costs of manufacturing in the US (especially for smaller boutique brands that can't benefit from huge volumes). Manufacturing in the US also has the advantage of easier prototyping and more agility in getting a new product to shops. However having a very expensive US hand made frame (from Intense Cycles) I'm not 100% convinced hand made is a very big bonus. It actually seems that robots have much more even quality standard while hand made means it's a question of luck on who happens to be welding it and is it done on a Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon or Friday just before leaving to a bar. I expect my next bike to be made by a robot just because that will make it less likely to have to deal with warranty replacements... Everything has two sides and a lot of shades of grey.