The MTA is a cash cow for highly placed embezzlers, a patronage engine for local politicians, a make-work jobs program, and a public transport system... in that order of priority.
QFT.
The MTA, between bridge tolls, and bus/train/subway fares already makes sufficient money to sustain itself. They also get a metric fuck-ton of $ provided by taxes on top of that. Where all the $ goes is exactly as you said...it's cash cow for the rich and a trickle-down for those in the patronage game. They're horribly inefficient by design. How else can you justify 25 people getting overtime + weekend differential so two people can do actual, hands-on work on a track switch? This isn't the exception, this is the norm. Having literal dozens of people standing around doing nothing while earning ridiculous overtime happens nonstop 365 days a year...and that's just the tip of the iceberg obvious/visible example.
Pushing people back to using the MTA by making the alternatives more expensive is... well fucking stupid as all hell. Ridership is down because the MTA is increasingly unreliable, late, broken, or they simply are doing so much (extremely slow, expensive) construction that commuting by subway is literally impossible.
The MTA has several core issues (mainly, the amount of money the waste/embezzle) which need to be resolved before the rider experience can be 'fixed'. While some of the problems vs. ridership seem like chicken and egg issues, it's all riding on top of the fundamental problem of the MTA's complete fiscal irresponsibility and lack of any real oversight.
Bridges and tunnels are already expensive for commuters and cash-cows for the MTA.
And I think that's what AMD is missing here. Cramming 24 or more cores into a CPU has already long passed diminishing returns for anything but very highly optimized parallel-thread applications.... and those same applications typically cost FAR more per core to license than the CPUs themselves. For the average consumer and even the performance kiddies I don't see how they're really winning much in real-world terms.
Macs are cheaper if you: - Don't count the user's time to self-provision/install/configure - Don't buy licenses for things commonly needed in enterprise (AV, HIDS, anti-malware, inventory, etc. - Actually get residual value from your equipment - Don't include the back end time spent keeping infra updated around apples quirky behaviors - Don't count training time and lost productivity if you force people to ove over - Don't count cost spent upgrading legacy infra/apps that 'just work' on a PC or IE - Ignore several common security practices that most enterprise consider requirements (though I agree most of them are pretty stupid actually)
In the right environment, sure. In real enterprise where 5 different groups get to impose their will on any effort like this? Not so much.
With that said, Jamf is pretty awesome but needs to be customized. What IBM turned over is immensely helpful to medium and large enterprise for managing their Macs. I'm not a huge fan of several companies managing to advertise together in one post tho.
TBH anyone who manages Mac either has this kind of propaganda success story or reality. Yeah, your support costs are 'lower' because 1) you spent a lot of time and effort to build self-service infra from the ground up in an actual user-friendly way and 2) most of the support cost is pushed back on the end user.
Oh, your Mac crashed? Ok, check the knowledge base wiki that's maintained largely by other users. Ok, looks like you need to do an internet recovery, re-provision, restore your apps, restore your data, etc. It might be somewhat streamlined but the effort still exists. They're just having "not IT" people do it, typically with far less efficiency.
Apple isn't quite actively hostile to enterprise, but they certainly do not operate the same way enterprise expects from every other vendor ever.
If that were true how would you explain that they found that sea salt consistently had a higher concentration vs rock salt and lake salt?
We don't know that. We know the number of particles was different, but that is nothing about the concentration. What was the mass of the plastic? Would you rather eat 100 particles each of 100 ug size, or 10 particles each of 1 gram size? The number of particles is irrelevant; the dosage/mass matters - and that is not given.
Uhm, if you read tfs of the actual study it does talk about ng/kg. NatGeo utterly fails on their article though.
Not that I expect the study is THAT much better...given who it's from.
But currently it's a buzz word with no known (good, bad or ugly) health implications. Also, what's the dosage from fish? Beef? Tap water?
For plastics that don't dissolve in the stomach, particle size could matter greatly. For those that do, the bigger concern is what they break down into and if that's toxic.
The article is horrible...i thought NatGeo was better than this kind of fear-mongering faux-science crap. The study I'm even less interested in given who it's authored by. Greenpeace is among the top-tier nonsense media out there.
Any 'continuous' noise you hear still varies a LOT and the whole point of active noise cancellation is to adapt to that and block it. For perspective, they have active noise cancellation for job sites that specifically include individual, loud noises.
Now, if you aren't distracted by music and can add that to the mix, you can pretty much drown out everything without even needing much volume.
That really depends on your office culture. In some offices people get annoyed at you for wearing headphones because they can't yell at you from across the room.
Yep. And they bother the whole office yelling to get your attention...and then often bother someone ELSE to tap your shoulder.
Or, you know, just come over and interrupt you regardless. Plenty of offices have the 'don't interrupt me' flag of headphones or similar and equally have everyone who thinks THEIR issue is important enough to justify the interruption.
Because for any company, real estate is usually a substantial cost and a FIXED, LONG-TERM cost at that. Those things sit on your books like dead weights and you can do very little to lower your costs. However, what you CAN do is cram more people into the same space (assuming your have a growing company) and show *relative* savings by reducing your fixed costs per employee.
So, of course design companies have jumped all over it! The would build igloos if they were trendy and profitable.
On the other hand I think Panasonic has it wrong. They should have opted for full on VR headsets where you can map in all your work spaces plus any background that you like.
Or just letting people work from home. Though I expect that will change too eventually when someone sues their company over the real estate cost of their home/apartment they're required to dedicate to work.
You're reading some interesting studies but they don't agree with reality and the space planning that larger companies actually are doing.
Open seating does have more space dedicated to conference rooms but the space per employee is still less. To the point that many open seating plans are capacity limited by fire or health codes (such as population vs bathroom or vs fire escape/evacuation capacity).
If not for those limitations, there would be even more people crammed in.
It's certainly a fad, but it's embraced by senior management because real estate is an expensive, largely fixed cost for companies so the only way they can show savings is by making more efficient use of it. It's spoken about under the guise of better collaboration, and all that jazz but, excluding the few teams or departments that actually NEED constant collaboration, it's really a cost saver first and foremost.
1. I don't think you know much about telcos... since my still-limited knowledge tells me that preventing 'spoofing' is not nearly as easy as you claim. Also, is it spoofing if my company assigns an arbitrary number to my outbound call? What if it's an arbitrary number from within our DID pool? Etc. etc. etc. There are MANY legitimate uses for many different aspects of this. It's just annoying when people mis-use it.
2. Plenty of call filtering services. Pretty sure you could find one on google in less time than to write this point.
3. Your phone does this already with DnD + exceptions. Well, unless you somehow don't have a phone with Android or iOS. And the wonky pin-mode you suggested is just silly and no one remembers phone numbers, much less PINs these days...but IIRC DnD can be set to allow a call through if they call multiple times back-to-back such as that lost-phone-emergency situation.
Doesn't google voice have an option for something like this?
Or... i'm 99% sure they did at one point. It had an option which required callers to announce themselves then would ring you with 'XYZ is calling, do you want to accept'. If they didn't answer the prompt though I don't think it would pass the call to you at all.
It's good for a rigid, and basic enterprise environment. However most medium and large enterprise have custom and/or legacy apps. This isn't going to work well in most enterprise.
It is almost exactly windows rt all over again and idk why they didn't learn the lesson the first time. Get an atom CPU, clean up the trash in Win10, and there's no reason you can't get workable performance.
Using a voltmeter and tracing logic to see which chip (or generally capacitor/diode) burned out in a C64 was pretty cutting edge skills for a consumer back then.
Equally cutting edge today would be replacing SMT components or reflowing solder (RROD anyone?). Granted, the equipment to do so and the general ability/desire to get that far into it is much less common but it still presents a fair analogy.
With tightly integrated components and highly complex systems, this isn't feasible (or reasonable) for most. Even manufacturers rarely do board-level repairs on anything but very expensive equipment. We get it though - replacing the battery and screen/headphones/USB jack in a smartphone is 'repair' enough for most. This still should not void warranties. Legally, it does not but companies skate that law by using DRM and other restrictions.
Take it a lot larger - John Deere and their tractor repair scam^^^^policy. You can DEFINITELY replace a simple sensor or other wear-prone part on a tractor without a lot of expertise but they use DRM and system lock-outs to force purchase of mfg-sold parts. Legally you can use your own part and maintain warranty, but the computer simply won't talk to it and the mfg will argue that it's not actually an OEM equivalent part. Hence the ongoing legal action by farmers...
Did YOU even read it? That article has nothing to do with preventing 3rd party repair and warranty status that this thread talks about. It DOES talk about people buying phone, removing parts, and returning them for replacement as 'defective'...and then using the parts they stole to fix other phones for profit.
The only vaguely relatable bit is they allowed whole-unit returns as defective.
The problem with 'normal' court is it's expensive - it's very much process-oriented to basically ensure lawyers get paid. You can go in without, but more likely you'll get your suit dismissed on one of many technical or procedural reasons before you ever get before a judge.
IF you manage to cross the proper T's and dot the specific I's requiring it...then you have a good chance of forcing a settlement because paying lawyers to go to court over peanuts is not economical for companies. Even for larger companies with a staff of lawyers, the paperwork, man-hours, and process involved in investigating/responding/logging a basic suit costs them more than paying out a grand or two.
That site is definitely not indicative of the small claims experience in New York, even in New York City.
New York sets a limit of $5k for small claims. Filing fee is $15-$20. They send notice via certified letter for you - it's only if this is undeliverable that you need to serve notice which can be done by literally anyone 18+ and not a party to the lawsuit. Your buddy can do it, no need to pay a process server.
After that, you go to court. The large majority of cases are solved by arbitrators (not to be confused with TOS-enforced, 3rd party binding arbitration) which is an informal, private, and reasonably quick procedure. No court records other than the final decision and no appeals. Anyone who wants to go before a judge usually has to come back a few times before their case is called. Still more informal than civil or criminal court but on record.
Some people do bring lawyers, but generally it's companies being represented. Since the amount you can sue for is capped at $5k it doesn't make much practical sense to pay a lawyer a few grand. Many companies settle out because the cost of fighting a suit is greater than the settlement.
So if you can afford the time to go, the costs are generally negligible.
Wings and wheels also add a whole lot of extra mass which directly takes away from payload while providing negligible benefit.
The space shuttle was more a vision of american prowess (and a means to spread government spending) than an effective space launch platform. There's a good reason no one else has or is doing it except for very small craft where the rocket equation balances differently with very different purposes.
With all the data from the... two other launch aborts ever? One from the 80s and the other from the 70s. I don't think that's sufficient evidence to talk about injuries happening 'frequently' since only 4 (well, now 6) people have ever experienced it.
Bonuses don't work better for salaried employees - they work better for employees already making enough and can then treat it as an actual BONUS. Ya know, instead of something they need to pay for food or rent
In the age of righteous indignation, you don't actually hear any people clamoring for the the removal of net neutrality. In fact, plenty of people want it back but the government doesn't listen (shocker).
The fact that no *actual human beings* (which excludes politicians ofc) are opposed to the law in cali should tell you something. Add in how much corporations hate it and you have a winner here. Keep in mind these are the same corporations that did things like charge for SMS messages which used to be a free and rarely-used messaging subsystem built into cell phones. It literally cost them nothing and one day they decided to charge people enormous amounts of money (measured in $/MB) for basic data that didn't even take up bandwidth streams in their service.
Or companies trying to impose data caps on broadband because they'd rather 'invest' their profits in dividends than upgrading their network to support their customers.
Or...the list goes on.
If telecom hates it and people like it, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a good law.
Plenty of time flying or on trains (and elsewhere) that service is spotty or not available. Also, there's lots of people with data caps (phone or broadband) who simply don't want to use the artificially high-priced data for streaming video when they can just download it once.
Plus I can take a USB drive full of movies and watch them on basically anything.
Slashdot Mirror
The MTA is a cash cow for highly placed embezzlers, a patronage engine for local politicians, a make-work jobs program, and a public transport system... in that order of priority.
QFT.
The MTA, between bridge tolls, and bus/train/subway fares already makes sufficient money to sustain itself. They also get a metric fuck-ton of $ provided by taxes on top of that. Where all the $ goes is exactly as you said...it's cash cow for the rich and a trickle-down for those in the patronage game. They're horribly inefficient by design. How else can you justify 25 people getting overtime + weekend differential so two people can do actual, hands-on work on a track switch? This isn't the exception, this is the norm. Having literal dozens of people standing around doing nothing while earning ridiculous overtime happens nonstop 365 days a year...and that's just the tip of the iceberg obvious/visible example.
Pushing people back to using the MTA by making the alternatives more expensive is ... well fucking stupid as all hell. Ridership is down because the MTA is increasingly unreliable, late, broken, or they simply are doing so much (extremely slow, expensive) construction that commuting by subway is literally impossible.
The MTA has several core issues (mainly, the amount of money the waste/embezzle) which need to be resolved before the rider experience can be 'fixed'. While some of the problems vs. ridership seem like chicken and egg issues, it's all riding on top of the fundamental problem of the MTA's complete fiscal irresponsibility and lack of any real oversight.
Bridges and tunnels are already expensive for commuters and cash-cows for the MTA.
And I think that's what AMD is missing here. Cramming 24 or more cores into a CPU has already long passed diminishing returns for anything but very highly optimized parallel-thread applications. ... and those same applications typically cost FAR more per core to license than the CPUs themselves. For the average consumer and even the performance kiddies I don't see how they're really winning much in real-world terms.
Macs are cheaper if you:
- Don't count the user's time to self-provision/install/configure
- Don't buy licenses for things commonly needed in enterprise (AV, HIDS, anti-malware, inventory, etc.
- Actually get residual value from your equipment
- Don't include the back end time spent keeping infra updated around apples quirky behaviors
- Don't count training time and lost productivity if you force people to ove over
- Don't count cost spent upgrading legacy infra/apps that 'just work' on a PC or IE
- Ignore several common security practices that most enterprise consider requirements (though I agree most of them are pretty stupid actually)
In the right environment, sure. In real enterprise where 5 different groups get to impose their will on any effort like this? Not so much.
Very thinly veiled indeed.
With that said, Jamf is pretty awesome but needs to be customized. What IBM turned over is immensely helpful to medium and large enterprise for managing their Macs. I'm not a huge fan of several companies managing to advertise together in one post tho.
TBH anyone who manages Mac either has this kind of propaganda success story or reality. Yeah, your support costs are 'lower' because 1) you spent a lot of time and effort to build self-service infra from the ground up in an actual user-friendly way and 2) most of the support cost is pushed back on the end user.
Oh, your Mac crashed? Ok, check the knowledge base wiki that's maintained largely by other users. Ok, looks like you need to do an internet recovery, re-provision, restore your apps, restore your data, etc. It might be somewhat streamlined but the effort still exists. They're just having "not IT" people do it, typically with far less efficiency.
Apple isn't quite actively hostile to enterprise, but they certainly do not operate the same way enterprise expects from every other vendor ever.
If that were true how would you explain that they found that sea salt consistently had a higher concentration vs rock salt and lake salt?
We don't know that. We know the number of particles was different, but that is nothing about the concentration. What was the mass of the plastic? Would you rather eat 100 particles each of 100 ug size, or 10 particles each of 1 gram size? The number of particles is irrelevant; the dosage/mass matters - and that is not given.
Uhm, if you read tfs of the actual study it does talk about ng/kg. NatGeo utterly fails on their article though.
Not that I expect the study is THAT much better...given who it's from.
If if and if.
But currently it's a buzz word with no known (good, bad or ugly) health implications. Also, what's the dosage from fish? Beef? Tap water?
For plastics that don't dissolve in the stomach, particle size could matter greatly. For those that do, the bigger concern is what they break down into and if that's toxic.
The article is horrible...i thought NatGeo was better than this kind of fear-mongering faux-science crap. The study I'm even less interested in given who it's authored by. Greenpeace is among the top-tier nonsense media out there.
You're just ... simply wrong.
Any 'continuous' noise you hear still varies a LOT and the whole point of active noise cancellation is to adapt to that and block it. For perspective, they have active noise cancellation for job sites that specifically include individual, loud noises.
Now, if you aren't distracted by music and can add that to the mix, you can pretty much drown out everything without even needing much volume.
That really depends on your office culture. In some offices people get annoyed at you for wearing headphones because they can't yell at you from across the room.
Yep. And they bother the whole office yelling to get your attention...and then often bother someone ELSE to tap your shoulder.
Or, you know, just come over and interrupt you regardless. Plenty of offices have the 'don't interrupt me' flag of headphones or similar and equally have everyone who thinks THEIR issue is important enough to justify the interruption.
Its the darling of the board room mostly. Why?
Because for any company, real estate is usually a substantial cost and a FIXED, LONG-TERM cost at that. Those things sit on your books like dead weights and you can do very little to lower your costs. However, what you CAN do is cram more people into the same space (assuming your have a growing company) and show *relative* savings by reducing your fixed costs per employee.
So, of course design companies have jumped all over it! The would build igloos if they were trendy and profitable.
On the other hand I think Panasonic has it wrong. They should have opted for full on VR headsets where you can map in all your work spaces plus any background that you like.
Or just letting people work from home. Though I expect that will change too eventually when someone sues their company over the real estate cost of their home/apartment they're required to dedicate to work.
You're reading some interesting studies but they don't agree with reality and the space planning that larger companies actually are doing.
Open seating does have more space dedicated to conference rooms but the space per employee is still less. To the point that many open seating plans are capacity limited by fire or health codes (such as population vs bathroom or vs fire escape/evacuation capacity).
If not for those limitations, there would be even more people crammed in.
It's certainly a fad, but it's embraced by senior management because real estate is an expensive, largely fixed cost for companies so the only way they can show savings is by making more efficient use of it. It's spoken about under the guise of better collaboration, and all that jazz but, excluding the few teams or departments that actually NEED constant collaboration, it's really a cost saver first and foremost.
1. I don't think you know much about telcos ... since my still-limited knowledge tells me that preventing 'spoofing' is not nearly as easy as you claim. Also, is it spoofing if my company assigns an arbitrary number to my outbound call? What if it's an arbitrary number from within our DID pool? Etc. etc. etc. There are MANY legitimate uses for many different aspects of this. It's just annoying when people mis-use it.
2. Plenty of call filtering services. Pretty sure you could find one on google in less time than to write this point.
3. Your phone does this already with DnD + exceptions. Well, unless you somehow don't have a phone with Android or iOS. And the wonky pin-mode you suggested is just silly and no one remembers phone numbers, much less PINs these days...but IIRC DnD can be set to allow a call through if they call multiple times back-to-back such as that lost-phone-emergency situation.
So there you go. Early Christmas for you.
Doesn't google voice have an option for something like this?
Or ... i'm 99% sure they did at one point. It had an option which required callers to announce themselves then would ring you with 'XYZ is calling, do you want to accept'. If they didn't answer the prompt though I don't think it would pass the call to you at all.
It's good for a rigid, and basic enterprise environment. However most medium and large enterprise have custom and/or legacy apps. This isn't going to work well in most enterprise.
It is almost exactly windows rt all over again and idk why they didn't learn the lesson the first time. Get an atom CPU, clean up the trash in Win10, and there's no reason you can't get workable performance.
It's different and it's not...
Using a voltmeter and tracing logic to see which chip (or generally capacitor/diode) burned out in a C64 was pretty cutting edge skills for a consumer back then.
Equally cutting edge today would be replacing SMT components or reflowing solder (RROD anyone?). Granted, the equipment to do so and the general ability/desire to get that far into it is much less common but it still presents a fair analogy.
With tightly integrated components and highly complex systems, this isn't feasible (or reasonable) for most. Even manufacturers rarely do board-level repairs on anything but very expensive equipment. We get it though - replacing the battery and screen/headphones/USB jack in a smartphone is 'repair' enough for most. This still should not void warranties. Legally, it does not but companies skate that law by using DRM and other restrictions.
Take it a lot larger - John Deere and their tractor repair scam^^^^policy. You can DEFINITELY replace a simple sensor or other wear-prone part on a tractor without a lot of expertise but they use DRM and system lock-outs to force purchase of mfg-sold parts. Legally you can use your own part and maintain warranty, but the computer simply won't talk to it and the mfg will argue that it's not actually an OEM equivalent part. Hence the ongoing legal action by farmers...
Didn't you read this /. post a few days ago:
Apple Said To Have 'Dramatically Reduced' Multi-Billion-Dollar iPhone Repair Fraud in China
How is a company to protect itself from fraud and still honor a warranty when the product's guts have been swapped out by a 3rd party chop shop?
Did YOU even read it? That article has nothing to do with preventing 3rd party repair and warranty status that this thread talks about. It DOES talk about people buying phone, removing parts, and returning them for replacement as 'defective'...and then using the parts they stole to fix other phones for profit.
The only vaguely relatable bit is they allowed whole-unit returns as defective.
The problem with 'normal' court is it's expensive - it's very much process-oriented to basically ensure lawyers get paid. You can go in without, but more likely you'll get your suit dismissed on one of many technical or procedural reasons before you ever get before a judge.
IF you manage to cross the proper T's and dot the specific I's requiring it...then you have a good chance of forcing a settlement because paying lawyers to go to court over peanuts is not economical for companies. Even for larger companies with a staff of lawyers, the paperwork, man-hours, and process involved in investigating/responding/logging a basic suit costs them more than paying out a grand or two.
That site is definitely not indicative of the small claims experience in New York, even in New York City.
New York sets a limit of $5k for small claims. Filing fee is $15-$20. They send notice via certified letter for you - it's only if this is undeliverable that you need to serve notice which can be done by literally anyone 18+ and not a party to the lawsuit. Your buddy can do it, no need to pay a process server.
After that, you go to court. The large majority of cases are solved by arbitrators (not to be confused with TOS-enforced, 3rd party binding arbitration) which is an informal, private, and reasonably quick procedure. No court records other than the final decision and no appeals. Anyone who wants to go before a judge usually has to come back a few times before their case is called. Still more informal than civil or criminal court but on record.
Some people do bring lawyers, but generally it's companies being represented. Since the amount you can sue for is capped at $5k it doesn't make much practical sense to pay a lawyer a few grand. Many companies settle out because the cost of fighting a suit is greater than the settlement.
So if you can afford the time to go, the costs are generally negligible.
Wings and wheels also add a whole lot of extra mass which directly takes away from payload while providing negligible benefit.
The space shuttle was more a vision of american prowess (and a means to spread government spending) than an effective space launch platform. There's a good reason no one else has or is doing it except for very small craft where the rocket equation balances differently with very different purposes.
With all the data from the ... two other launch aborts ever? One from the 80s and the other from the 70s. I don't think that's sufficient evidence to talk about injuries happening 'frequently' since only 4 (well, now 6) people have ever experienced it.
I do hope they're in good health of course.
Bonuses don't work better for salaried employees - they work better for employees already making enough and can then treat it as an actual BONUS. Ya know, instead of something they need to pay for food or rent
In the age of righteous indignation, you don't actually hear any people clamoring for the the removal of net neutrality. In fact, plenty of people want it back but the government doesn't listen (shocker).
The fact that no *actual human beings* (which excludes politicians ofc) are opposed to the law in cali should tell you something. Add in how much corporations hate it and you have a winner here. Keep in mind these are the same corporations that did things like charge for SMS messages which used to be a free and rarely-used messaging subsystem built into cell phones. It literally cost them nothing and one day they decided to charge people enormous amounts of money (measured in $/MB) for basic data that didn't even take up bandwidth streams in their service.
Or companies trying to impose data caps on broadband because they'd rather 'invest' their profits in dividends than upgrading their network to support their customers.
Or...the list goes on.
If telecom hates it and people like it, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a good law.
Same.
Plenty of time flying or on trains (and elsewhere) that service is spotty or not available. Also, there's lots of people with data caps (phone or broadband) who simply don't want to use the artificially high-priced data for streaming video when they can just download it once.
Plus I can take a USB drive full of movies and watch them on basically anything.
Well, that and the idiocy of copyright/DMCA