This is something that many of my colleagues don't understand. I have access to most of the security systems, but sometimes I need access to, say, a domain controller. I request temporary access, and I am almost always offered much further access (forest admin, for example) on a permanent basis. I always decline, and always for the same reason: I don't need it, so I don't want it. The fewer things I'm capable of unnecessarily breaking, the happier I am.
Make sure that it's not already in use by someone else. I have two GMail accounts, one for normal mail and one for mailing lists. The only difference between the two is that the second ends in ".ml" which would normally go to the main account, but since I registered the second one, it goes to that completely separate account.
I have two financial institutions -- in the US -- that use voice passwords to verify me upon calling, both of them nationally recognizable. As I call in maybe twice a year, I end up having to go through the alternate verification methods as either I can not remember the password I set, or I'm not by my computer to be able to open up KeePass to look it up.
There are archival-quality writable media available. Taiyo-Yuden, for example, makes high-quality discs that, kept cool and out of the light (like these will be) should last decades.
The 5.25" optical disc format seems to be the most likely to survive, given that the CD doesn't seem to be getting replaced in a physical format anytime soon, and the follow-on products (DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) all use the same basic format and are backward-compatible due to the low cost of the lasers involved for the previous format(s). Given the preference in the mainstream to keep backward compatibility and the fact that even the fun new terabyte media are in a similar format, this is the best overall bet.
Opposing parties in control of different branches seems to be a good thing. When it's a choice of either a little being done through compromise or nothing being done through vitriol, politicians will generally choose the former, if only to claim that they are the ones that can cross the aisle to get things done.
I've said for a long time that I value the role that those on the far right and far left play. They are the anchors for their respective realms that keep the country generally on the right path. We do veer off on occasion, and sometimes badly so, but generally, the US does the right thing, especially when the requirement is that a given party compromise with the other to get a portion of its agenda past.
I don't believe that the Republican platform is the best for the United States, but I agree with some parts of it. Likewise, I don't believe that the Democratic platform is the best for the United States, but I agree with some parts of it. There are members of Congress that I approve of and respect on both sides of the aisle, and sometimes they are in the far corners but they actually believe that they're doing the right thing, and not just being shrill naysayers of those not in their party.
It seems to me that we get the least good done when it's all one party or when the process degenerates to "We're not them!", and the most good done when we are forced to work together. Someone always feels left out in the latter case because their preferred position got cut out of the final deal, but that's how our system -- with or without parties -- was always intended to work.
California has addressed this, at least for public buildings, by requiring that smokers be at least 20 feet from the door. It doesn't remove the smokers, but disperses the smoke a little. It also makes for some very amusing images as smokers huddle under umbrellas during storms.
I think my current group gets called something along the lines of Team No, but that's usually because the sysadmins build the system and then come and tell us (not ask us) to open some set of ports, usually on the day that the customer is expecting to get access. This has changed somewhat, but we still get far too much of it. A few of the sysadmins have gotten the idea, and talked with us about their design to get something streamlined in process. The guy that runs the backups now just has to shoot us an e-mail with a server name, IP address, and backup server, and it takes only a minute or two to get the backups working. Others routinely come to us, demanding fully-open any/any access, knowing that they're not going to get it, and then get huffy when we ask them for a port list.
I've provided them with some recommendations -- tested, verified, and in production for one sysadmin in another group -- on how to limit RPC to a small range of 250 ports and so have us stop asking a bunch of questions on why they need all high ports open. We've told them that there will be almost no questions if they do this. However, they are, as yet, unwilling to test it on any server, and continue getting bent out of shape when we slow the process by asking why they need all high ports open to secured networks.
California being hardest hit on the foreclosure rate is the very point that I was making. No, we're not alone in this, and we're not the worst-hit by unemployment. The point is that the economy here is souring, too, and harder than some people may think. I'm relatively insulated from it, being in Orange County, which hasn't been hit nearly as hard by foreclosures and has relatively low unemployment, but I have no illusions that we're on stable ground; it wouldn't take much to push us over.
On the judicial point, Supreme Court justices routinely break expectations, especially after they have been on the Court for a few years. The length of their terms -- often in decades -- provides something of a braking force on society. We need that, too, just as we need the people anchoring the very far left and far right of the political spectrum. Without those anchors, society drifts too far to one side; without a strong human link to the past, the judicial system may be too keen on moving with current trends, which, while not necessarily bad, are not necessarily good, either.
Having judges elected makes them too beholden to public opinion. Judges have lost re-election because they declined to allow the death penalty in widely-publicized cases, or because they exercised judicial discretion on non-violent criminals. While still acting within the law, they were perceived to not be tough enough, and so lost their office.
The bridge thing isn't a bad idea. Some bridges in the US not only have fencing and cameras, but also phones that link to a suicide prevention hotline upon being picked up. I'm not sure how many people it's stopped, but it does get used at least some of the time.
I would probably vote for a proposition that had labeling like this, especially if EC6 ended just like that.:) But it's informative, and therefore will be argued over until it is not, and yet more signs will have to be posted.
Maybe there's a hidden conspiracy among sign makers. Someone should look into that.
California is liberal only in that it is less conservative than other states. Our politics are all over the map. We want legalized marijuana, but three strikes. We want compassion for first offenders, but we demand the death penalty. We demand impartiality in the judiciary, and yet we require that judges be elected and stand for re-election every four years.
As for the economics, we have a government whose spending has grown 40% in the last five years, and yet has had a combined population and price index growth rate of only 29%. We have no budget, spending expectations having outstripped revenue expectations by more than $15 billion out of $140 billion, nor do we have any signs of getting a budget soon, and the politics of the budget this year are even more brutal than past years. One Democrat who refused to cast a vote (she was protesting the refusal of the majority to bring up legislation she wanted heard) found that her office was moved across the street that afternoon on orders of the Democratic Majority Leader. (Not that her vote would have changed anything -- it still several votes short of passing.)
Unemployment in California is at 7.3% as of August, up from 6.2% in May. It ranges from a low of 5.0% in Marin County to 23.3% in Imperial County (admittedly a smaller county). Los Angeles County is at 8.1%. The foreclosure rates for the state have tripled in the last year.
There are states in worse shape than California (though I don't know if anyone has a budget mess as bad). Still, it's not exactly all peaches and cream in California.
And that's just the start of it. No one pays attention to them anymore, and even if we did, we wouldn't know just what the problem was, because the law only requires that the sign be posted, not explain what led to it being posted.
All of those suggestions were contained in the report, and echoed suggestions made in the original report over the main tower collapses. The manner by which WTC7 collapsed was similar to, but had differences from, the main tower collapses.
The north tower collapsed at 10:28am, flaming debris entering WTC7 and starting multiple fires. WTC7 collapsed at 5:20pm. That's nearly seven hours of uncontrolled fire. There were no serious efforts to fight any of the fires that were found, as there was virtually no water pressure.
The First Interstate fire occurred around 10:25pm, and firefighters were on-scene by 10:40pm, with the fire being declared knocked down at 2:19am. While sprinkler contractors had depressurized and drained the top several floors to connect the new sprinkler system, the rest of the system had plenty of water, and the building's pumps were supplemented by the LAFD's own equipment.
For a little less than four hours, the LAFD firefighters actively battled the flames with adequate water pressure, a far cry from FDNY crews only battling spot fires with little more than fire extinguishers and low-pressure water, with most of it being left to burn out. There's really no comparison here, and that doesn't even get into structural comparisons. Was the First Interstate constructed with a central concrete core, or did it use the steel frame construction used in WTC7?
The claims about it being controlled demolition misses some points that are important. No controlled demolition has ever been done for a building even the size of WTC7, let alone the main towers. The tallest ever was done by CDI in 1998, when the 439-foot-tall JL Hudson Department Store was brought down. The original WTC7 was 610 feet tall, and of course the main towers were more than twice that. Trying to map that out without being fairly obvious would be difficult at best.
It seems to me, in a bit of a thought experiment, that it makes sense that a skyscraper should come straight down, more or less. They are built around structures that are designed to withstand significant loads due to wind, bending slightly but not that much overall. If structural member breaks, even if it breaks outward, there will likely still be some connectivity to the core, preventing it from moving outward. The additional stress added to local joints would cause them to fail, but in a less outward direction, as some of that energy has already been redirected downward. This continues around the building as the collapse continues. Some of the materials in other parts of the building will tend towards their own outward motion, but be pulled back in by the remaining connection to the core, canceling out some of the momentum in the other direction. Ultimately, everything comes straight down.
Your explanation works for the Twin Towers, but not for WTC7, which is what vertinox was asking about. The jet fuel was probably burned off by the time the north tower collapsed, but debris ignited by it (directly or indirectly) did hit WTC7, starting the fires there.
The fire in the North Tower was still burning and spreading when the tower collapsed. While it was obscured somewhat by dust and smoke during the fall, flaming debris did spread out over considerable distances, some of it striking WTC7, breaking through the windows and setting aflame material in the lower floors, which spread rapidly as the collapse of the Twin Towers had done considerable damage to the water systems in the area, and water pressure for the firefighting systems was very low.
The immediate evacuation of WTC7 (among others) as soon as the evacuation of the main towers was ordered saved a great many lives.
No one ever expected a fire to burn out of control for several hours. There was always an anticipation that fire units would be dispatched and undertake steps to control the fire.
Civilian structures are designed based on the expectation that emergency services will be available. They are not constructed as bunkers, for the most part, as the expenses are simply too high to do that. Nevertheless, NIST made a recommendation to evaluate those buildings that use similar construction methods and suggests several possible cost-effective ways of mitigating the risk of collapse under similar circumstances.
Perhaps it's only been in more recent times that large percentages of the men haven't had lengthy stints in the military that may have left the ratio of men and women at home lopsided, leading to current societies (most especially Western) being less willing to tolerate polygamy. It's been my understanding that the average number of wives even in polygamist societies has been declining, though this may also have something to do with an increased cost of living.
We still get paid for OT when we work it. The employer isn't that dumb. But if we don't get approval for it, we can get written up for it as the customer doesn't have unlimited funds. It's almost never blocked, and to be honest, I don't know how well things would stand up if anyone ever were disciplined for working OT, as they don't enforce things especially well. But I've always been told that I needed permission to work OT, going back to my first job 16 years ago.
I wish I didn't have to deal with time sheets. Even when we were exempt, we had to fill them out for billing purposes (large contractor at a local government). I often long for the days when I don't have to fill one out, not so much because of the tracking but because our time sheet application works about as well as one would expect from Microsoft web application development principles of 1998.
In retrospect, our reaction when HR notified us that we were (mostly) being changed from exempt to hourly was not what one might expect. There was much indignation because for many, reaching exempt status in IT is a sort of badge of honor, a sign that one has made it out of the trenches. We felt like we were being downgraded.
Up until that point, we'd worked whatever was required to get the job done, and if that meant an hour or two (or sometimes three or more) over, then we usually did it. It generally wasn't from any pressure from management. It was just easier for us to get it done that night than to have to pick up again in the morning, when it would compete with whatever else was going on.
When we were changed to hourly, though, we got ominous warnings about overtime and how it was going to be strictly limited and subject to pre-approval and unauthorized overtime was grounds for disciplinary measures up to and including termination. Suddenly, the ability to go home with a clean checklist was in serious danger. However, reality hit management soon after, OT was regularly approved (and almost never actually required pre-approval), and our paychecks...
Well, let's just say that no matter how disappointed we were, the difference between a 60-hour paycheck and a 40-hour paycheck, especially under California overtime laws, was more than enough to chase away our depression.:)
Thank you for the explanation. That's certainly more than I'm willing to go through to get rid of what is only an occasional minor annoyance.
The floaters that I have haven't changed noticeably since I first detected them in junior high, about 20 years ago. I won't stress if they stay the same.
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This is something that many of my colleagues don't understand. I have access to most of the security systems, but sometimes I need access to, say, a domain controller. I request temporary access, and I am almost always offered much further access (forest admin, for example) on a permanent basis. I always decline, and always for the same reason: I don't need it, so I don't want it. The fewer things I'm capable of unnecessarily breaking, the happier I am.
Make sure that it's not already in use by someone else. I have two GMail accounts, one for normal mail and one for mailing lists. The only difference between the two is that the second ends in ".ml" which would normally go to the main account, but since I registered the second one, it goes to that completely separate account.
I have two financial institutions -- in the US -- that use voice passwords to verify me upon calling, both of them nationally recognizable. As I call in maybe twice a year, I end up having to go through the alternate verification methods as either I can not remember the password I set, or I'm not by my computer to be able to open up KeePass to look it up.
There are archival-quality writable media available. Taiyo-Yuden, for example, makes high-quality discs that, kept cool and out of the light (like these will be) should last decades.
The 5.25" optical disc format seems to be the most likely to survive, given that the CD doesn't seem to be getting replaced in a physical format anytime soon, and the follow-on products (DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) all use the same basic format and are backward-compatible due to the low cost of the lasers involved for the previous format(s). Given the preference in the mainstream to keep backward compatibility and the fact that even the fun new terabyte media are in a similar format, this is the best overall bet.
Opposing parties in control of different branches seems to be a good thing. When it's a choice of either a little being done through compromise or nothing being done through vitriol, politicians will generally choose the former, if only to claim that they are the ones that can cross the aisle to get things done.
I've said for a long time that I value the role that those on the far right and far left play. They are the anchors for their respective realms that keep the country generally on the right path. We do veer off on occasion, and sometimes badly so, but generally, the US does the right thing, especially when the requirement is that a given party compromise with the other to get a portion of its agenda past.
I don't believe that the Republican platform is the best for the United States, but I agree with some parts of it. Likewise, I don't believe that the Democratic platform is the best for the United States, but I agree with some parts of it. There are members of Congress that I approve of and respect on both sides of the aisle, and sometimes they are in the far corners but they actually believe that they're doing the right thing, and not just being shrill naysayers of those not in their party.
It seems to me that we get the least good done when it's all one party or when the process degenerates to "We're not them!", and the most good done when we are forced to work together. Someone always feels left out in the latter case because their preferred position got cut out of the final deal, but that's how our system -- with or without parties -- was always intended to work.
Individual products generally don't have to be labeled. However, the store carrying it may well have a sign posted on it.
California has addressed this, at least for public buildings, by requiring that smokers be at least 20 feet from the door. It doesn't remove the smokers, but disperses the smoke a little. It also makes for some very amusing images as smokers huddle under umbrellas during storms.
I think my current group gets called something along the lines of Team No, but that's usually because the sysadmins build the system and then come and tell us (not ask us) to open some set of ports, usually on the day that the customer is expecting to get access. This has changed somewhat, but we still get far too much of it. A few of the sysadmins have gotten the idea, and talked with us about their design to get something streamlined in process. The guy that runs the backups now just has to shoot us an e-mail with a server name, IP address, and backup server, and it takes only a minute or two to get the backups working. Others routinely come to us, demanding fully-open any/any access, knowing that they're not going to get it, and then get huffy when we ask them for a port list.
I've provided them with some recommendations -- tested, verified, and in production for one sysadmin in another group -- on how to limit RPC to a small range of 250 ports and so have us stop asking a bunch of questions on why they need all high ports open. We've told them that there will be almost no questions if they do this. However, they are, as yet, unwilling to test it on any server, and continue getting bent out of shape when we slow the process by asking why they need all high ports open to secured networks.
California being hardest hit on the foreclosure rate is the very point that I was making. No, we're not alone in this, and we're not the worst-hit by unemployment. The point is that the economy here is souring, too, and harder than some people may think. I'm relatively insulated from it, being in Orange County, which hasn't been hit nearly as hard by foreclosures and has relatively low unemployment, but I have no illusions that we're on stable ground; it wouldn't take much to push us over.
On the judicial point, Supreme Court justices routinely break expectations, especially after they have been on the Court for a few years. The length of their terms -- often in decades -- provides something of a braking force on society. We need that, too, just as we need the people anchoring the very far left and far right of the political spectrum. Without those anchors, society drifts too far to one side; without a strong human link to the past, the judicial system may be too keen on moving with current trends, which, while not necessarily bad, are not necessarily good, either.
Having judges elected makes them too beholden to public opinion. Judges have lost re-election because they declined to allow the death penalty in widely-publicized cases, or because they exercised judicial discretion on non-violent criminals. While still acting within the law, they were perceived to not be tough enough, and so lost their office.
The bridge thing isn't a bad idea. Some bridges in the US not only have fencing and cameras, but also phones that link to a suicide prevention hotline upon being picked up. I'm not sure how many people it's stopped, but it does get used at least some of the time.
I would probably vote for a proposition that had labeling like this, especially if EC6 ended just like that. :) But it's informative, and therefore will be argued over until it is not, and yet more signs will have to be posted.
Maybe there's a hidden conspiracy among sign makers. Someone should look into that.
California is liberal only in that it is less conservative than other states. Our politics are all over the map. We want legalized marijuana, but three strikes. We want compassion for first offenders, but we demand the death penalty. We demand impartiality in the judiciary, and yet we require that judges be elected and stand for re-election every four years.
As for the economics, we have a government whose spending has grown 40% in the last five years, and yet has had a combined population and price index growth rate of only 29%. We have no budget, spending expectations having outstripped revenue expectations by more than $15 billion out of $140 billion, nor do we have any signs of getting a budget soon, and the politics of the budget this year are even more brutal than past years. One Democrat who refused to cast a vote (she was protesting the refusal of the majority to bring up legislation she wanted heard) found that her office was moved across the street that afternoon on orders of the Democratic Majority Leader. (Not that her vote would have changed anything -- it still several votes short of passing.)
Unemployment in California is at 7.3% as of August, up from 6.2% in May. It ranges from a low of 5.0% in Marin County to 23.3% in Imperial County (admittedly a smaller county). Los Angeles County is at 8.1%. The foreclosure rates for the state have tripled in the last year.
There are states in worse shape than California (though I don't know if anyone has a budget mess as bad). Still, it's not exactly all peaches and cream in California.
Examples of buildings that have the signs posted:
- Junk yards
- Gas stations
- Vehicle maintenance yards
- Recycling stations
- Apartment complexes
- Malls
- Grocery stores
- Hospitals
- Vacant lots
And that's just the start of it. No one pays attention to them anymore, and even if we did, we wouldn't know just what the problem was, because the law only requires that the sign be posted, not explain what led to it being posted.
All of those suggestions were contained in the report, and echoed suggestions made in the original report over the main tower collapses. The manner by which WTC7 collapsed was similar to, but had differences from, the main tower collapses.
The north tower collapsed at 10:28am, flaming debris entering WTC7 and starting multiple fires. WTC7 collapsed at 5:20pm. That's nearly seven hours of uncontrolled fire. There were no serious efforts to fight any of the fires that were found, as there was virtually no water pressure.
The First Interstate fire occurred around 10:25pm, and firefighters were on-scene by 10:40pm, with the fire being declared knocked down at 2:19am. While sprinkler contractors had depressurized and drained the top several floors to connect the new sprinkler system, the rest of the system had plenty of water, and the building's pumps were supplemented by the LAFD's own equipment.
For a little less than four hours, the LAFD firefighters actively battled the flames with adequate water pressure, a far cry from FDNY crews only battling spot fires with little more than fire extinguishers and low-pressure water, with most of it being left to burn out. There's really no comparison here, and that doesn't even get into structural comparisons. Was the First Interstate constructed with a central concrete core, or did it use the steel frame construction used in WTC7?
The claims about it being controlled demolition misses some points that are important. No controlled demolition has ever been done for a building even the size of WTC7, let alone the main towers. The tallest ever was done by CDI in 1998, when the 439-foot-tall JL Hudson Department Store was brought down. The original WTC7 was 610 feet tall, and of course the main towers were more than twice that. Trying to map that out without being fairly obvious would be difficult at best.
It seems to me, in a bit of a thought experiment, that it makes sense that a skyscraper should come straight down, more or less. They are built around structures that are designed to withstand significant loads due to wind, bending slightly but not that much overall. If structural member breaks, even if it breaks outward, there will likely still be some connectivity to the core, preventing it from moving outward. The additional stress added to local joints would cause them to fail, but in a less outward direction, as some of that energy has already been redirected downward. This continues around the building as the collapse continues. Some of the materials in other parts of the building will tend towards their own outward motion, but be pulled back in by the remaining connection to the core, canceling out some of the momentum in the other direction. Ultimately, everything comes straight down.
I think that makes some sense.
Your explanation works for the Twin Towers, but not for WTC7, which is what vertinox was asking about. The jet fuel was probably burned off by the time the north tower collapsed, but debris ignited by it (directly or indirectly) did hit WTC7, starting the fires there.
The fire in the North Tower was still burning and spreading when the tower collapsed. While it was obscured somewhat by dust and smoke during the fall, flaming debris did spread out over considerable distances, some of it striking WTC7, breaking through the windows and setting aflame material in the lower floors, which spread rapidly as the collapse of the Twin Towers had done considerable damage to the water systems in the area, and water pressure for the firefighting systems was very low.
The immediate evacuation of WTC7 (among others) as soon as the evacuation of the main towers was ordered saved a great many lives.
No one ever expected a fire to burn out of control for several hours. There was always an anticipation that fire units would be dispatched and undertake steps to control the fire.
Civilian structures are designed based on the expectation that emergency services will be available. They are not constructed as bunkers, for the most part, as the expenses are simply too high to do that. Nevertheless, NIST made a recommendation to evaluate those buildings that use similar construction methods and suggests several possible cost-effective ways of mitigating the risk of collapse under similar circumstances.
Except that particular Orion works and is pretty easily modified. :\
Perhaps it's only been in more recent times that large percentages of the men haven't had lengthy stints in the military that may have left the ratio of men and women at home lopsided, leading to current societies (most especially Western) being less willing to tolerate polygamy. It's been my understanding that the average number of wives even in polygamist societies has been declining, though this may also have something to do with an increased cost of living.
We still get paid for OT when we work it. The employer isn't that dumb. But if we don't get approval for it, we can get written up for it as the customer doesn't have unlimited funds. It's almost never blocked, and to be honest, I don't know how well things would stand up if anyone ever were disciplined for working OT, as they don't enforce things especially well. But I've always been told that I needed permission to work OT, going back to my first job 16 years ago.
I wish I didn't have to deal with time sheets. Even when we were exempt, we had to fill them out for billing purposes (large contractor at a local government). I often long for the days when I don't have to fill one out, not so much because of the tracking but because our time sheet application works about as well as one would expect from Microsoft web application development principles of 1998.
In retrospect, our reaction when HR notified us that we were (mostly) being changed from exempt to hourly was not what one might expect. There was much indignation because for many, reaching exempt status in IT is a sort of badge of honor, a sign that one has made it out of the trenches. We felt like we were being downgraded.
Up until that point, we'd worked whatever was required to get the job done, and if that meant an hour or two (or sometimes three or more) over, then we usually did it. It generally wasn't from any pressure from management. It was just easier for us to get it done that night than to have to pick up again in the morning, when it would compete with whatever else was going on.
When we were changed to hourly, though, we got ominous warnings about overtime and how it was going to be strictly limited and subject to pre-approval and unauthorized overtime was grounds for disciplinary measures up to and including termination. Suddenly, the ability to go home with a clean checklist was in serious danger. However, reality hit management soon after, OT was regularly approved (and almost never actually required pre-approval), and our paychecks...
Well, let's just say that no matter how disappointed we were, the difference between a 60-hour paycheck and a 40-hour paycheck, especially under California overtime laws, was more than enough to chase away our depression. :)
Thank you for the explanation. That's certainly more than I'm willing to go through to get rid of what is only an occasional minor annoyance.
The floaters that I have haven't changed noticeably since I first detected them in junior high, about 20 years ago. I won't stress if they stay the same.