I thought skimmers were the way to go if you wanted to steal account data from an ATM.
Irrelevant. Criminals are using electronic devices over the top of ATMs to grab your card keyboard/screen input. They can replicate your card, and know your PIN, plus a few other thousand victims.
ATMs often use some type of cheap flash memory, and it's easy with basic forensic tools to recover even deleted data from there. As to encryption..some ATMs are quite old, and I wouldn't be surprised if you found a lot of DES implementations out there you can easily crack.
Presumably these old machines wouldn't be the machines that are using this new VM technology.
I think proper use of encryption should protect the customer data on the local machine - store the decryption key on the server and only hand back to the ATM if it requests it over its private secure link. And if the intrusion sensor goes off on the ATM, delete the decryption key along with the public key that the ATM uses to authenticate itself -- make a technician visit the machine and look for tampering before reloading with the authentication key.
I doubt any of these data thieves are keeping the ATM powered until they can take it back to their shop and and use data probes to capture data from a running machine.
But is this really a problem? Do ATM's store easily recoverable data on a hard drive?
I thought skimmers were the way to go if you wanted to steal account data from an ATM.
Re:But what use would I have for it?
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FreeDOS 1.1 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
A) Sounds like you don't care that it's FreeDOS, it was just what you used because the vendor used it.
It's true that I didn't care that it was FreeDOS, but I didn't use it because the vendor used it, I used it because the vendor gave me an EXE and said "Here, run this in DOS". I don't have easy access to a Windows machine to create a DOS boot disk (I don't even know if it's possible to do that these days?), I used FreeDOS.
So even if I don't care that it's FreeDOS, I use it because it's Free and it's DOS compatible (thus runs the application I needed it for). Which seems a bit like telling a Mac fanatic "Sounds like you don't care that it's from Apple, you only use it because you like the GUI and applications that run on it."
B) I'd like a better system anyway, for the whole process, but I've been wanting that for 20+ years anyway.
And yes, I'd like a better system too, I have some newer hardware that has firmware updaters that actually run in Linux.
Re:But what use would I have for it?
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FreeDOS 1.1 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
I mean seriously, how am I going to use it?
Running old programs maybe?
I use it for installing BIOS and other hardware driver updates that need a DOS boot disk. The process goes something like this:
Why isn't it cheaper to park at 6 AM and more expensive to park at 9 AM or noon?
...it often *is* cheaper to park at 6am than at 9 or noon ("Early Bird Discount"), at least in Chicago.
That's a better question - why do garages offer cheaper all day early-bird pricing if I get there before 9am - even if they are a self-park facility and don't do tandem parking. Most of the time, the discount means that I'd pay less to park from 8am - 5pm than from noon - 5pm.
I can see why a place that does valet parking might give a cheaper early bird rate - they know the early bird customer is likely to stay all day, so they can block that car in with other cars of short-term parkers.
My company is still on XP because it works, and works well for the vast majority of people. Stability hasn't been a problem in a long time - and most people here shut down their computer every night, so that daily reboot cycle helps keep it stable too.
In our environment, Windows is increasingly being used only to run a web browser - many of our new business apps are a web service (running in house or hosted by the vendor). As long as Firefox and/or Chrome continue to run well on XP, it will be "good enough" for most people here. If only we could get rid of Office (Office365 doesn't seem any better than local copies of Office from a licensing standpoint) then we could be more OS independent.
There are the exceptions - like people that want more than 3.5GB of RAM (and who don't want to run WinXP 64bit, which has proven to be problematic, especially in drivers).
Don't be silly. It would be abused for trading media files and other copywritten content, eating up what limited bandwidth there is to use. In turn, the owners will start filtering it for more worthwhile causes. The the pirates will get all up in arms because "You're trying to filter free speech on a medium specifically built to be free!" Haven't you learned? That community does nothing but ruin things for the rest of us.
I think it would be relatively easy to block media files from being uploaded, even if it's ASCII (or unicode, or whatever) encoded.
File size limits, rate-limiting (only x posts from the same IP/user account per hour), algorithms to look for encoded binaries, etc can all combine to make it unattractive for media hosting. Bandwidth constraints alone would make it unattractive for large files. Or they could use a bit-coin type computational task required before a post is accepted can also help reduce binary traffic - you might be willing to spend a few CPU seconds to post a 1K document, but if it "costs" a million times more to post a 1GB media file, you'd likely find an alternative.
None of this helps with DoS attacks, which is the big flaw in this project, and it's how governments will shut it down. No need to send up a satellite killer, just jam its input channel(s) with a powerful transmitter.
> I posit that there is nothing inherently bad with any speech
Excellent. Let me know your credit card numbers. I'm sure you won't mind if broadcast them to the entire internet - it's just speech. Also, there's no such thing as "imaginary property". You suffer no loss from my telling them to everyone - you are still in possession of the numbers after I do, so this is not theft.
If a hacker has my credit card number, he doesn't need a privately run satellite network to share it.
And once he has that number, it doesn't really matter how many people he gives it to - once my credit card company discovers the suspicious activity and shuts down the card, it doesn't matter to me if one person or a million people have my card number.
since it will cost like eleventy billion $$$ or euros where can i donate? i'll gladly donate $50,000 for this just to be able to download free movies and music
I doubt it would have the bandwidth to handle movies and music and maybe not even pictures.
Think a 1980's era BBS and that's probably able all that an underfunded group of hackers could provide in a satellite they've built themselves (and paid launch costs for - their best bet would be to find a friendly commercial space launch company and get them to launch it on a test flight with the understanding that it may not actually make it).
But even something with such limited capabilities would actually be extremely useful and valuable with less potential for abuse than something that allows media files to be traded, which would quickly become an untraceable child-porn hub.
I suggest you look at your bill again, particularly the section marked: Verizon Wireless' Surcharges and Other Charges & Credits
Well, you caught me - I'm no longer a Verizon customer so I can't look at my bill.
I switched to a T-Mobile prepaid plan a couple months ago. I'm paying $60/month for 2 phones (100 voice minutes, unlimited text, 5GB data each), down from $170/month on a Verizon family share plan.
I'll bet that if you actually read the contract, it won't say how much you are going to pay, and that it is has clauses that allow changes to the contract with notice.
They wouldn't be breaching the contract (unless they wrote it very stupidly, and I bet their lawyers won't let them do that) any more than if you called up and said "I want to add this extra service, and I won't pay any more than the contractually agreed to price of $80."
I have read the contract, have you? I don't see anything in it that says they can make me pay for any non-governmental related surcharge:
What Charges Are Set by Verizon Wireless? You agree to pay all access, usage and other charges that you or the user of your wireless device incurred. For Postpay Service, our charges also include Federal Universal Service, Regulatory and Administrative Charges, and we may also include other charges related to our governmental costs. We set these charges; they aren't taxes, they aren't required by law, they are not necessarily related to anything the government does, they are kept by us in whole or in part, and the amounts and what they pay for may change.
And while they can change the terms of the contract and the prices I pay, if they do, I can cancel my contract without an ETF if it affects me an a material way, and a $1 surcharge on all payments sounds like a material effect:
Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service? We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no Early Termination Fee.
You're telling me that Verizon has no taxes and surcharges, and your bills are always precisely $80 a month?
You're telling me that Verizon has no taxes and surcharges, and your bills are always precisely $80 a month?
Yes, I'm telling you that there no additional Verizon-only surcharges added to my bill. Taxes and government imposed fees apply, but no mandatory surcharges from Verizon.
I think a lot of the credit should go to the neural net processors flying the planes.
There actually are neural net processors flying the planes (but of the natural biological form, not from Cyberdyne). But they play an increasingly smaller part in piloting planes. Is that a coincidence (because aircraft are safer in general) or one of the reasons behind increased air safety?
Maybe less people die, because less people fly, most notably those with dignity who refuse to endure the TSA's draconian tactics. I read a related article today about how 2012 looks to be even more abysmal for the airline industry, which also ignored the elephant in the room (the TSA)
Since they are comparing deaths per passenger, they've already taken into account the number of trips taken.
But they don't take into account deaths of travelers that choose other, less safe, forms of transportation because of TSA and poor airline service/policies.
It would be interesting to see that number - if that number of deaths is higher than the projected number of terrorism related deaths that TSA is supposedly preventing, we may be paying TSA large sums of money to kill people.
But it COULD have been far easier to fly, and you could have had more time at your destination. Quite honestly, being locked in a tin can, strapped in against potential impact, bombarded by the din of the engine(s) is not hat I call "vacation" or "quality time." It's even less so when I am in charge of the flight.
To each his own. I'm not sure if you were talking about a car or a plane when you said "locked in a tin can" - when we're driving, we have a lot of freedom - when we're hungry, we stop off at a real restaurant with freshly prepared food, not a $10 "meal" that's been sitting in a warmer for 3 hours where I have to choose between beef and chicken . And a full-size restroom. When we get tired of driving, we can pull into a rest area and let the kids run around and play in the grass. If we see a sign for "Worlds biggest ball of twine", we can go check it out if we want to. While we're driving, the kids can practice their reading, or we play 20 questions, or one of many other car games. Oh, and I enjoy driving, especially when I have no urgency to get somewhere - I go with the flow of traffic, take my time and stay relaxed.
Imagine a world without the TSA - you arrive 45 minutes before your flight, your checked backs go straight into the cargo hold, you hang around for 10 minutes at the gate before boarding, your flight lasts 1/10 the time as your car travel, and you often arrive at your destination before the next mealtime. Sure, it's cheaper to drive if you have a large group (you're only paying for gasoline and wear/tear once), but the main convenience of flying is - or should I say WAS - time in transit.
If air travel was still like that, it's likely that we would have flown - we could have brought the kids favorite foods/beverages on board, we wouldn't to wonder if putting children through an x-ray scanner is worth not having to explain why a complete stranger is touching them in inappropriate places, we would't have to stop and take off their shoes before they walk through a metal detector and then have to search for a seating area to put their shoes and belts back on. The safety factor alone makes air travel attractive, but not when it means inconveniencing or embarrassing my children when forced to go through invasive checkpoints.
It also sounds like your travel took you two days, vs about 1/2 a day for flying. For wage slaves, that's three extra days of limited "vacation" time, for the self-employed, it's three days of opportunity cost (about $3000 for me). BTW - I did a 900 mile trip via air recently - for three people it cost us the same as gas (+/-10%), but it was a discount carrier to a common destination.
The other drawback with airline travel is that it's on the airline's schedule, not mine. If we flew, we would have left on a 10am Wednesday morning flight (the 4pm Tuesday flight would have meant another half day off work, the 6am Wednesday flight would have meant waking up at 3:30am to get to the airport on time). It was a 12 hour drive (excluding stops)...we got on the road at 5pm Wednesday just after I got off work, and drove until midnight. I had planned on stopping around 10pm, but traffic was light, I wasn't tired, and the kids were sleeping, so we kept going to an upcoming larger town). The next day we got on the road at 9am after breakfast and got to our destination around 2pm - just in time for hotel check-in and maybe an hour after we would have gotten to the hotel if we had taken the flight. So while driving did cost more time, it didn't really eat into our vacation time. On the way back we left Tuesday afternoon instead of flying home on Wednesday morning, so we lost 1/2 day of "vacation", but only a few usable hours, most of the time we spend driving would have been spent in the hotel room.
The cost savings was not a major factor in choosing to drive, but it was significant savings - we paid around $300 in gas (round-trip), $80 each for two nights of hotels whil
...one of my siblings raised a family of 5 on no more than $40,000/year (combined income, many years it was lower - I know this because I helped them with taxes for years). They lived in a small town, originally in a mobile home, but through an FHA guaranteed loan they were able to purchase a small house (and now own it outright).
So this was at least 30 years ago? C'MON, SERIOUSLY? Have you HEARD of INFLATION?
Sorry, I should have been more clear -- that's adjusted for inflation. In the 80's, the husband was making around $8/hour without healthcare coverage - they used to use a family physician and paid for each doctor visit (back when you could visit a doctor for $20 - $40). But he's had healthcare coverage for years now. He's been with the same company and his pay has mostly stayed ahead of inflation. They had an interesting relationship with their family doctor - he traded childbirth expenses for some handiwork done by the husband. Neighborhood family doctors like that are hard to find these days - that doctor finally had to give up his family practice after liability insurance cost too much so he had to join a larger medical group to stay in business.
They had a 30 year mortgage, but paid it off in just under 25 years by making extra principal payments when they could, and made a final payment with a year-end bonus from work.
Obviously someone making $40K/year in the 1985 would have been doing pretty well and would be making around $80K now if their pay kept up with inflation.
I'd like to see the statistics on the number of extra fatalities due to extra car travel by people who are so fed up with TSA security and airline travel in general that they don't want to fly. I know that on a recent vacation, I drove the 1000 miles because I didn't feel like subjecting me and my family to airport security.
I know that statistically it was less safe, but realistically, it was more fun and less stress - no one got felt-up by airport security or had to stand in an x-ray machine, we didn't have to pair down our wardrobes to what would fit in a carryon (or risk having it lost on the way there), no one stopped us from bringing sunscreens, lotions, or our favorite beverages on the road. We even brought a couple bottles of our favorite wine to enjoy at our destination and didn't need to put it in gorilla-proof packaging that can survive checked baggage handling.
Oh, and it was cheaper, including 2 overnight hotel stays. It took more time, but to me, vacation starts when the family is together and on the way, not just when we get there.
not, it's another data point to look at an overall trend.
But does it really show a statistically valid trend? Can I look at this years crash statistics and feel that air travel is safer, or is it a feel-good number that really tells me nothing at all?
You people, sheesh
yeah, no kidding! If people would just believe what they read in the paper without questioning it, we'd all be much better off!
Hey look, you can't have it both ways. You can either get there quickly and safely... but have to be groped by some sweaty "government employee"; or you can ride in comfort grope free... but gamble with dying in a fiery inferno. The choice is up to you.
That would be true only if the groping or scanners were proven to be effective. Even if they were 100% effective at preventing someone from sneaking explosives onboard, there are many other ways to disrupt air travel and cause widespread panic (you only need to breach security at one airport anywhere in the country to breach security at all airports, you can hide explosives in lightly (if at all) inspected catering food, why take down a plane when you can blow up the security checkpoint with the same effect, if you sit at the end of the runway and hit a plane with an RPG, you'll shut down air travel even if it doesn't take down the plane, etc).
Can you really compare annual statistics from a low probability event like a plane crash to other years to say that one year is safer than another? If a single Airbus A380 crashed tomorrow, it could triple the number of fatalities for this year (from 400 to 1200), but does that really make this year 3 times more dangerous than it was yesterday? And since that accident was only a day away from 2012, if there are only 400 accidents in 2012 does that make 2012 safer than 2011 when the difference is based on a single accident?
If plane crashes happened every day, and this year there were 1000 crashes versus 2000 for last year, then that seems more meaningful. Likewise, combining years into decades seems like it would show safety trends, but if a single accident can skew the annual statistics so wildly, it doesn't seem reasonable to compare by year.
Why is he relying on such archaic equipment? There is far better equipment out there than what he is using. Even assuming he doesn't want to undergo some sort of implant, there is eye scanning tech, EEG devices, etc. They are even putting them in toys these days.
The man is 69 years old, he likes using what he's used to.
I can't even get my 70 year old dad to use an ATM machine (when he needs money he gets a check cashed at the bank, like he always has).
I'd cut him some slack, he's happy with the system he has and doesn't want to spend time learning something new, even if it's technically superior.
yea because shining lights and amplified audio is exactly
Not all AV departments are created equal. At my facility they maintain all public facing electronics - everything including light controllers, projectors (from an old film projector to a state of the art digital 4K theater), moving displays, animated water displays (with 1000 discrete valves, not built in-house, but the company that built it is no longer in business), custom LED displays, etc. Some of the technology dates back to the 70's. I have no doubt that any of the AV techs could handle an automated wheelchair.
the same as an undocumented custom built computer system that has its base in the 1980's and has had all sorts of "upgrades" patched on
you would be lucky to document one subsystem so you could just figure out what is wrong for a known grump all packed up on a rolling platform traveling the world, this aint a Pentium with a voodoo2 needing an OS upgrade
You say "has its base in 1980's" as if that's a bad thing.
The older it is, the easier it is to understand. Give me a logic analyzer (or even an oscilloscope) and I can watch the inputs and outputs of that SN7808 and follow them to the next chip in line. I can even figure out a alot about how it works just from tracing the circuit board. Watching the traffic between the EPROM and CPU would give me the source code. Give me something older, and I'll be able to look at the wiring to identify logic gates implemented with discrete transistors.
I spent one summer in college helping a guy reverse engineering his competitor's product that was largely based on discrete logic chips (so he could build a cheaper, inferior imitation). Not my most ethical job, but hey, it gave me plenty of beer money.
But put me in front of a more modern SoC system and even with a JTAG port, it's going to be a lot harder to figure out how it works.
Have any of you that are so excited to "work with/around Stephen Hawking" considered that aside from name-dropping value, you probably won't get anything out of it unless you are somewhere near his intellectual level and are up to speed on his current work? That's assuming he's willing to take time to share/discuss his work with you (he won't be) besides just saying "fix it and gtfo". For what this rather weighty, highly skilled/experienced, multi-talented, round-the-world on-call job actually entails the money is pathetic. If you have the former qualifications wouldn't you already be working with him or doing your own research? And with the latter qualifications I'd expect you to be making a ton of money maintaining some crazy important systems.
In a previous job (as a university AV tech), I've had the opportunity to talk a number of renown scientists in their field, and they were always happy to make small talk with me backstage while I was helping them prepare for a speaking engagement, including talking about their field of expertise in language I could understand. It seems that people who spend their lives devoted to a single subject take great pride and pleasure in talking about it, even to people who aren't experts in the field. I've come across some jerks too who treated me like the hired help I was, but overall, they were friendly.
I know a number of talented AV techs at my current job who can fix nearly anything electronic (projectors, remote control circuit boards, audio equipment, etc) and would be good candidates for this job (aside from living on the wrong side of the Atlantic), and they get paid just about the same as what Hawking is offering.
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I thought skimmers were the way to go if you wanted to steal account data from an ATM.
Irrelevant. Criminals are using electronic devices over the top of ATMs to grab your card keyboard/screen input. They can replicate your card, and know your PIN, plus a few other thousand victims.
Skimmer.
ATMs often use some type of cheap flash memory, and it's easy with basic forensic tools to recover even deleted data from there. As to encryption..some ATMs are quite old, and I wouldn't be surprised if you found a lot of DES implementations out there you can easily crack.
Presumably these old machines wouldn't be the machines that are using this new VM technology.
I think proper use of encryption should protect the customer data on the local machine - store the decryption key on the server and only hand back to the ATM if it requests it over its private secure link. And if the intrusion sensor goes off on the ATM, delete the decryption key along with the public key that the ATM uses to authenticate itself -- make a technician visit the machine and look for tampering before reloading with the authentication key.
I doubt any of these data thieves are keeping the ATM powered until they can take it back to their shop and and use data probes to capture data from a running machine.
But is this really a problem? Do ATM's store easily recoverable data on a hard drive?
I thought skimmers were the way to go if you wanted to steal account data from an ATM.
A) Sounds like you don't care that it's FreeDOS, it was just what you used because the vendor used it.
It's true that I didn't care that it was FreeDOS, but I didn't use it because the vendor used it, I used it because the vendor gave me an EXE and said "Here, run this in DOS". I don't have easy access to a Windows machine to create a DOS boot disk (I don't even know if it's possible to do that these days?), I used FreeDOS.
So even if I don't care that it's FreeDOS, I use it because it's Free and it's DOS compatible (thus runs the application I needed it for). Which seems a bit like telling a Mac fanatic "Sounds like you don't care that it's from Apple, you only use it because you like the GUI and applications that run on it."
B) I'd like a better system anyway, for the whole process, but I've been wanting that for 20+ years anyway.
And yes, I'd like a better system too, I have some newer hardware that has firmware updaters that actually run in Linux.
I mean seriously, how am I going to use it?
Running old programs maybe?
I use it for installing BIOS and other hardware driver updates that need a DOS boot disk. The process goes something like this:
http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_20080920_234755
Why isn't it cheaper to park at 6 AM and more expensive to park at 9 AM or noon?
...it often *is* cheaper to park at 6am than at 9 or noon ("Early Bird Discount"), at least in Chicago.
That's a better question - why do garages offer cheaper all day early-bird pricing if I get there before 9am - even if they are a self-park facility and don't do tandem parking. Most of the time, the discount means that I'd pay less to park from 8am - 5pm than from noon - 5pm.
I can see why a place that does valet parking might give a cheaper early bird rate - they know the early bird customer is likely to stay all day, so they can block that car in with other cars of short-term parkers.
My company is still on XP because it works, and works well for the vast majority of people. Stability hasn't been a problem in a long time - and most people here shut down their computer every night, so that daily reboot cycle helps keep it stable too.
In our environment, Windows is increasingly being used only to run a web browser - many of our new business apps are a web service (running in house or hosted by the vendor). As long as Firefox and/or Chrome continue to run well on XP, it will be "good enough" for most people here. If only we could get rid of Office (Office365 doesn't seem any better than local copies of Office from a licensing standpoint) then we could be more OS independent.
There are the exceptions - like people that want more than 3.5GB of RAM (and who don't want to run WinXP 64bit, which has proven to be problematic, especially in drivers).
Don't be silly. It would be abused for trading media files and other copywritten content, eating up what limited bandwidth there is to use. In turn, the owners will start filtering it for more worthwhile causes. The the pirates will get all up in arms because "You're trying to filter free speech on a medium specifically built to be free!" Haven't you learned? That community does nothing but ruin things for the rest of us.
I think it would be relatively easy to block media files from being uploaded, even if it's ASCII (or unicode, or whatever) encoded.
File size limits, rate-limiting (only x posts from the same IP/user account per hour), algorithms to look for encoded binaries, etc can all combine to make it unattractive for media hosting. Bandwidth constraints alone would make it unattractive for large files. Or they could use a bit-coin type computational task required before a post is accepted can also help reduce binary traffic - you might be willing to spend a few CPU seconds to post a 1K document, but if it "costs" a million times more to post a 1GB media file, you'd likely find an alternative.
None of this helps with DoS attacks, which is the big flaw in this project, and it's how governments will shut it down. No need to send up a satellite killer, just jam its input channel(s) with a powerful transmitter.
> I posit that there is nothing inherently bad with any speech
Excellent. Let me know your credit card numbers. I'm sure you won't mind if broadcast them to the entire internet - it's just speech. Also, there's no such thing as "imaginary property". You suffer no loss from my telling them to everyone - you are still in possession of the numbers after I do, so this is not theft.
If a hacker has my credit card number, he doesn't need a privately run satellite network to share it.
And once he has that number, it doesn't really matter how many people he gives it to - once my credit card company discovers the suspicious activity and shuts down the card, it doesn't matter to me if one person or a million people have my card number.
since it will cost like eleventy billion $$$ or euros where can i donate? i'll gladly donate $50,000 for this just to be able to download free movies and music
I doubt it would have the bandwidth to handle movies and music and maybe not even pictures.
Think a 1980's era BBS and that's probably able all that an underfunded group of hackers could provide in a satellite they've built themselves (and paid launch costs for - their best bet would be to find a friendly commercial space launch company and get them to launch it on a test flight with the understanding that it may not actually make it).
But even something with such limited capabilities would actually be extremely useful and valuable with less potential for abuse than something that allows media files to be traded, which would quickly become an untraceable child-porn hub.
I suggest you look at your bill again, particularly the section marked:
Verizon Wireless' Surcharges and Other Charges & Credits
Well, you caught me - I'm no longer a Verizon customer so I can't look at my bill.
I switched to a T-Mobile prepaid plan a couple months ago. I'm paying $60/month for 2 phones (100 voice minutes, unlimited text, 5GB data each), down from $170/month on a Verizon family share plan.
I'll bet that if you actually read the contract, it won't say how much you are going to pay, and that it is has clauses that allow changes to the contract with notice.
They wouldn't be breaching the contract (unless they wrote it very stupidly, and I bet their lawyers won't let them do that) any more than if you called up and said "I want to add this extra service, and I won't pay any more than the contractually agreed to price of $80."
I have read the contract, have you? I don't see anything in it that says they can make me pay for any non-governmental related surcharge:
What Charges Are Set by Verizon Wireless?
You agree to pay all access, usage and other charges that you or the user of your wireless device incurred. For Postpay Service, our charges also include Federal Universal Service, Regulatory and Administrative Charges, and we may also include other charges related to our governmental costs. We set these charges; they aren't taxes, they aren't required by law, they are not necessarily related to anything the government does, they are kept by us in whole or in part, and the amounts and what they pay for may change.
And while they can change the terms of the contract and the prices I pay, if they do, I can cancel my contract without an ETF if it affects me an a material way, and a $1 surcharge on all payments sounds like a material effect:
Can Verizon Wireless Change This Agreement or My Service?
We may change prices or any other term of your Service or this agreement at any time,but we'll provide notice first, including written notice if you have Postpay Service. If you use your Service after the change takes effect, that means you're accepting the change. If you're a Postpay customer and a change to your Plan or this agreement has a material adverse effect on you, you can cancel the line of Service that has been affected within 60 days of receiving the notice with no Early Termination Fee.
You're telling me that Verizon has no taxes and surcharges, and your bills are always precisely $80 a month?
You're telling me that Verizon has no taxes and surcharges, and your bills are always precisely $80 a month?
Yes, I'm telling you that there no additional Verizon-only surcharges added to my bill. Taxes and government imposed fees apply, but no mandatory surcharges from Verizon.
I bet no one would have cared if they had implemented a $1 processing fee to all payments, not just phone or online payment.
I bet you're wrong.
If my contract says I have to pay them $80/month for service, if they make it cost $81/month, they are breaching that contract.
I think a lot of the credit should go to the neural net processors flying the planes.
There actually are neural net processors flying the planes (but of the natural biological form, not from Cyberdyne). But they play an increasingly smaller part in piloting planes. Is that a coincidence (because aircraft are safer in general) or one of the reasons behind increased air safety?
Maybe less people die, because less people fly, most notably those with dignity who refuse to endure the TSA's draconian tactics. I read a related article today about how 2012 looks to be even more abysmal for the airline industry, which also ignored the elephant in the room (the TSA)
Since they are comparing deaths per passenger, they've already taken into account the number of trips taken.
But they don't take into account deaths of travelers that choose other, less safe, forms of transportation because of TSA and poor airline service/policies.
It would be interesting to see that number - if that number of deaths is higher than the projected number of terrorism related deaths that TSA is supposedly preventing, we may be paying TSA large sums of money to kill people.
But it COULD have been far easier to fly, and you could have had more time at your destination. Quite honestly, being locked in a tin can, strapped in against potential impact, bombarded by the din of the engine(s) is not hat I call "vacation" or "quality time." It's even less so when I am in charge of the flight.
To each his own. I'm not sure if you were talking about a car or a plane when you said "locked in a tin can" - when we're driving, we have a lot of freedom - when we're hungry, we stop off at a real restaurant with freshly prepared food, not a $10 "meal" that's been sitting in a warmer for 3 hours where I have to choose between beef and chicken . And a full-size restroom. When we get tired of driving, we can pull into a rest area and let the kids run around and play in the grass. If we see a sign for "Worlds biggest ball of twine", we can go check it out if we want to. While we're driving, the kids can practice their reading, or we play 20 questions, or one of many other car games. Oh, and I enjoy driving, especially when I have no urgency to get somewhere - I go with the flow of traffic, take my time and stay relaxed.
Imagine a world without the TSA - you arrive 45 minutes before your flight, your checked backs go straight into the cargo hold, you hang around for 10 minutes at the gate before boarding, your flight lasts 1/10 the time as your car travel, and you often arrive at your destination before the next mealtime. Sure, it's cheaper to drive if you have a large group (you're only paying for gasoline and wear/tear once), but the main convenience of flying is - or should I say WAS - time in transit.
If air travel was still like that, it's likely that we would have flown - we could have brought the kids favorite foods/beverages on board, we wouldn't to wonder if putting children through an x-ray scanner is worth not having to explain why a complete stranger is touching them in inappropriate places, we would't have to stop and take off their shoes before they walk through a metal detector and then have to search for a seating area to put their shoes and belts back on. The safety factor alone makes air travel attractive, but not when it means inconveniencing or embarrassing my children when forced to go through invasive checkpoints.
It also sounds like your travel took you two days, vs about 1/2 a day for flying. For wage slaves, that's three extra days of limited "vacation" time, for the self-employed, it's three days of opportunity cost (about $3000 for me). BTW - I did a 900 mile trip via air recently - for three people it cost us the same as gas (+/-10%), but it was a discount carrier to a common destination.
The other drawback with airline travel is that it's on the airline's schedule, not mine. If we flew, we would have left on a 10am Wednesday morning flight (the 4pm Tuesday flight would have meant another half day off work, the 6am Wednesday flight would have meant waking up at 3:30am to get to the airport on time). It was a 12 hour drive (excluding stops)...we got on the road at 5pm Wednesday just after I got off work, and drove until midnight. I had planned on stopping around 10pm, but traffic was light, I wasn't tired, and the kids were sleeping, so we kept going to an upcoming larger town). The next day we got on the road at 9am after breakfast and got to our destination around 2pm - just in time for hotel check-in and maybe an hour after we would have gotten to the hotel if we had taken the flight. So while driving did cost more time, it didn't really eat into our vacation time. On the way back we left Tuesday afternoon instead of flying home on Wednesday morning, so we lost 1/2 day of "vacation", but only a few usable hours, most of the time we spend driving would have been spent in the hotel room.
The cost savings was not a major factor in choosing to drive, but it was significant savings - we paid around $300 in gas (round-trip), $80 each for two nights of hotels whil
So this was at least 30 years ago? C'MON, SERIOUSLY? Have you HEARD of INFLATION?
Sorry, I should have been more clear -- that's adjusted for inflation. In the 80's, the husband was making around $8/hour without healthcare coverage - they used to use a family physician and paid for each doctor visit (back when you could visit a doctor for $20 - $40). But he's had healthcare coverage for years now. He's been with the same company and his pay has mostly stayed ahead of inflation. They had an interesting relationship with their family doctor - he traded childbirth expenses for some handiwork done by the husband. Neighborhood family doctors like that are hard to find these days - that doctor finally had to give up his family practice after liability insurance cost too much so he had to join a larger medical group to stay in business.
They had a 30 year mortgage, but paid it off in just under 25 years by making extra principal payments when they could, and made a final payment with a year-end bonus from work.
Obviously someone making $40K/year in the 1985 would have been doing pretty well and would be making around $80K now if their pay kept up with inflation.
I'd like to see the statistics on the number of extra fatalities due to extra car travel by people who are so fed up with TSA security and airline travel in general that they don't want to fly. I know that on a recent vacation, I drove the 1000 miles because I didn't feel like subjecting me and my family to airport security.
I know that statistically it was less safe, but realistically, it was more fun and less stress - no one got felt-up by airport security or had to stand in an x-ray machine, we didn't have to pair down our wardrobes to what would fit in a carryon (or risk having it lost on the way there), no one stopped us from bringing sunscreens, lotions, or our favorite beverages on the road. We even brought a couple bottles of our favorite wine to enjoy at our destination and didn't need to put it in gorilla-proof packaging that can survive checked baggage handling.
Oh, and it was cheaper, including 2 overnight hotel stays. It took more time, but to me, vacation starts when the family is together and on the way, not just when we get there.
not, it's another data point to look at an overall trend.
But does it really show a statistically valid trend? Can I look at this years crash statistics and feel that air travel is safer, or is it a feel-good number that really tells me nothing at all?
You people, sheesh
yeah, no kidding! If people would just believe what they read in the paper without questioning it, we'd all be much better off!
Hey look, you can't have it both ways. You can either get there quickly and safely... but have to be groped by some sweaty "government employee"; or you can ride in comfort grope free... but gamble with dying in a fiery inferno. The choice is up to you.
That would be true only if the groping or scanners were proven to be effective. Even if they were 100% effective at preventing someone from sneaking explosives onboard, there are many other ways to disrupt air travel and cause widespread panic (you only need to breach security at one airport anywhere in the country to breach security at all airports, you can hide explosives in lightly (if at all) inspected catering food, why take down a plane when you can blow up the security checkpoint with the same effect, if you sit at the end of the runway and hit a plane with an RPG, you'll shut down air travel even if it doesn't take down the plane, etc).
Can you really compare annual statistics from a low probability event like a plane crash to other years to say that one year is safer than another? If a single Airbus A380 crashed tomorrow, it could triple the number of fatalities for this year (from 400 to 1200), but does that really make this year 3 times more dangerous than it was yesterday? And since that accident was only a day away from 2012, if there are only 400 accidents in 2012 does that make 2012 safer than 2011 when the difference is based on a single accident?
If plane crashes happened every day, and this year there were 1000 crashes versus 2000 for last year, then that seems more meaningful. Likewise, combining years into decades seems like it would show safety trends, but if a single accident can skew the annual statistics so wildly, it doesn't seem reasonable to compare by year.
Why is he relying on such archaic equipment? There is far better equipment out there than what he is using. Even assuming he doesn't want to undergo some sort of implant, there is eye scanning tech, EEG devices, etc. They are even putting them in toys these days.
The man is 69 years old, he likes using what he's used to.
I can't even get my 70 year old dad to use an ATM machine (when he needs money he gets a check cashed at the bank, like he always has).
I'd cut him some slack, he's happy with the system he has and doesn't want to spend time learning something new, even if it's technically superior.
yea because shining lights and amplified audio is exactly
Not all AV departments are created equal. At my facility they maintain all public facing electronics - everything including light controllers, projectors (from an old film projector to a state of the art digital 4K theater), moving displays, animated water displays (with 1000 discrete valves, not built in-house, but the company that built it is no longer in business), custom LED displays, etc. Some of the technology dates back to the 70's. I have no doubt that any of the AV techs could handle an automated wheelchair.
the same as an undocumented custom built computer system that has its base in the 1980's and has had all sorts of "upgrades" patched on
you would be lucky to document one subsystem so you could just figure out what is wrong for a known grump all packed up on a rolling platform traveling the world, this aint a Pentium with a voodoo2 needing an OS upgrade
You say "has its base in 1980's" as if that's a bad thing.
The older it is, the easier it is to understand. Give me a logic analyzer (or even an oscilloscope) and I can watch the inputs and outputs of that SN7808 and follow them to the next chip in line. I can even figure out a alot about how it works just from tracing the circuit board. Watching the traffic between the EPROM and CPU would give me the source code. Give me something older, and I'll be able to look at the wiring to identify logic gates implemented with discrete transistors.
I spent one summer in college helping a guy reverse engineering his competitor's product that was largely based on discrete logic chips (so he could build a cheaper, inferior imitation). Not my most ethical job, but hey, it gave me plenty of beer money.
But put me in front of a more modern SoC system and even with a JTAG port, it's going to be a lot harder to figure out how it works.
Have any of you that are so excited to "work with/around Stephen Hawking" considered that aside from name-dropping value, you probably won't get anything out of it unless you are somewhere near his intellectual level and are up to speed on his current work? That's assuming he's willing to take time to share/discuss his work with you (he won't be) besides just saying "fix it and gtfo". For what this rather weighty, highly skilled/experienced, multi-talented, round-the-world on-call job actually entails the money is pathetic. If you have the former qualifications wouldn't you already be working with him or doing your own research? And with the latter qualifications I'd expect you to be making a ton of money maintaining some crazy important systems.
In a previous job (as a university AV tech), I've had the opportunity to talk a number of renown scientists in their field, and they were always happy to make small talk with me backstage while I was helping them prepare for a speaking engagement, including talking about their field of expertise in language I could understand. It seems that people who spend their lives devoted to a single subject take great pride and pleasure in talking about it, even to people who aren't experts in the field. I've come across some jerks too who treated me like the hired help I was, but overall, they were friendly.
I know a number of talented AV techs at my current job who can fix nearly anything electronic (projectors, remote control circuit boards, audio equipment, etc) and would be good candidates for this job (aside from living on the wrong side of the Atlantic), and they get paid just about the same as what Hawking is offering.