It's cheaper to dig up streets on a neighborhood than in a city so I don't blame them. It's the same reason the Comcast doesn't offer service to their entire monopoly area on Seattle.
Is it really cheaper?
Adding infrastructure to one block of a city street can access to hundreds of customers - adding infrastructure to the same distance in a suburban neighborhood may only give access to 10 customers.
How do you buy a plane ticket via internet banking? As far as I know, airlines don't accept EFT's or Paypal for ticket purchases. I have a credit card on file with the airlines I fly regularly, but that's a "Card Not Present" transaction, which this bank apparently does not allow.
You should blame the magstripe for that. As soon as it's phased out any only chips are available you will be required to plug your card into an inexpensive chip reader connected to USB on your computer and still pay easily. Like the have it Netherlands and Korea. Holding on to magstripe compatibility is the problem. My European bank already does not allow any "card not present" transactions
How would you make an urgent purchase by phone? More than once, I've purchased an airline ticket over the phone while I was literally in a cab on my way to the airport, I'd be pretty pissed if my bank would not allow that. Since I don't have a chip reader in my phone, I don't see how I'd be able to make a mobile web purchase either.
Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier. I'm sure they all knew about it since VW had such good emissions and fuel economy that the other manufacturers must have done tests and tear downs of their own to figure out how VW did it. But no one wanted to rock the boat and invite more scrutiny from regulators.
Depends on the scope... and all it takes is for one key group of people (*nix sysadmins, say) to refuse and stand firm on that refusal.
If your refusal to do knowledge transfer prevents someone from operating a system you maintain, then you are very bad at your job. If a bus hit me tomorrow, any of my coworkers could pick up the systems I maintain using the documentation. Worse case, if a bus took out the entire operations team, someone from outside of the company would be able to use the docs to come up to speed.
If you've left such sparse documentation that no one can figure out how to maintain your systems, the company is better off without you.
And who controls the documentation? If the entire IT department simply locked away the documentation, they'd be SOL.
You can't legally lock up resources owned by the company. You have to divulge passwords when asked by someone in authority. Otherwise, you could end up in jail.
Depends on the scope... and all it takes is for one key group of people (*nix sysadmins, say) to refuse and stand firm on that refusal.
If your refusal to do knowledge transfer prevents someone from operating a system you maintain, then you are very bad at your job. If a bus hit me tomorrow, any of my coworkers could pick up the systems I maintain using the documentation. Worse case, if a bus took out the entire operations team, someone from outside of the company would be able to use the docs to come up to speed.
If you've left such sparse documentation that no one can figure out how to maintain your systems, the company is better off without you.
At least it's water from some freshly-washed hands, unlike whatever is on the door handle.
Your coworkers must be a lot more diligent than mine, I don't think I've every see anyone scrub their hands for a full 20 seconds before rinsing. And I've seen some just do a rinse without any soap at all.
I don't think that water is as clean as you think it is.
Sounds like this was just a PR stunt to remind people that movie theaters still exist. I think I've only seen 2 movies in a theater (and one of those was a work event) since I got my 55" 1080p TV + Bluray + surround sound, there's not much reason to see a movie in a theater anymore, I prefer the experience I get at home (where there's an open bar and the movie will pause for bathroom breaks and if anyone talks over the movie, I can rewind). And the blu-ray costs about the same as a pair of movie tickets. When 4K content is more readily available (the TV's are already available and relatively affordable), that will mean even less reason to go to a theater.
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Why doesn't Google just release the source code and/or the protocols needed to make it work? They can keep proprietary bits that they don't own the source for (radio drivers, etc) as closed source blobs and open the rest of the code that they own.
maybe he found the pennies on the ground, meaning they would come at 0 cost to himself as that isn't a gain or a loss, had he just left them on the ground and really a penny is worthless today, which is why a few countries got rid of the thing to begin with.. And he could just ship a single penny to each TSA agent instead of a whole jar, which would bring the cost down so much that he'd make a healthy profit out of that $5 per agent.
Everything has a cost, even "found" pennies -- you still have to pick it up, look at it to make sure it's really a penny, clean the dirt off it, store it somewhere, inventory it, pack it for shipping, etc.
If you were really going to sell these pennies to TSA as a business, you'd likely be better off getting rolls of pennies from the bank.
whole idea that every passenger can be checked enough to detect any item that can be used in terrorist attack is stupid, impracticable, and as this story shows unmanageable.
if the aim is to deter terrorists from going through a check point, best solution is to subject random passengers ( and this has to be completely random, with all passengers having equal chance of being checked, with no possibility of knowing who will be checked) to fullest possible checks available. that way checks can be reduced in number to be manageable, checkers will be alert and multiple, and all the while there would continue to be doubt in terrorist's mind about his chances of passing through.
There are miles of lightly secured perimeters around airports, tons of materials and hundreds of vehicles drive into the secure area every day. There's no amount of passenger screening that will stop a terrorist from getting contraband on an airplane.
The millimeter wave scanners don't cause cancer like backscatter XRAY do but damage the electric field that's over the skin.
There's no evidence that the backscatter X-Ray machines are a cancer risk to passengers (they are probably more of a risk to TSA employees that are exposed long term).
I've never even heard about this electric field disturbance, but I'll guess that there's no evidence for that either.
I fly a lot, and routinely notice that the body scanners take about 5x as long as the metal detectors (and probably cause cancer). I regularly watch the TSA agents clear their backed-up lines by opening the metal detector for 30 seconds, sending 10 people through, and then closing it again (making the value of the scanner clearly questionable).
If the scanners worked reliably (and there's evidence that they don't), there'd still be value in sending only 10% of people through the scanners.
If a criminal were facing a 1 in 10 chance that his scheme to sneak contraband past security would be thwarted and he'd be arrested in the attempt, that would still be a good deterrent.
My 2004 Prius, 2012 Leaf and 2105 BMW i3 all have keyless entry and ignition, as long as the key is in my pocket or my wife's purse the doors unlock when touched and the engine starts when the button is pressed. I don't need to touch a key other than move it when I move my wallet from pants to pants. I would expect the Bluetooth app to work the same way, no need to get the phone out and press a button.
Touchless keys (BMW calls it Comfort,not sure what Toyota or Nissan called it) is a requirement on any car I buy now that I've had it for over a decade.
Convinient, sure, but this convenience comes at a security cost since it's proven to be vulnerable to RF amplification attacks - You park your car in the parking lot and walk into walmart, not realizing that the mom behind you with the box in a shopping cart is sending your keyfob's signal back to your car where her accomplice is waiting next to the car to hop in and drive away.
So more like the existing Onstart one from GM then?
Not sure if you're talking about Onstar owners smug sense of superiority (is there such a thing?) or the fact Onstar already has remote access, but I believe that all of the Onstar functionality happens over the cellular network, even the phone app uses the cellular network to send a signal to your car. So if you're out of cell phone range, you're out of luck.
The Volvo system uses bluetooth, no cellular network required.
Nowadays there are amplifiers for using hands-free fobs inside the house from the driveway while the owner is asleep, unless the system has interferometry to prevent that. I wonder if it's technically possible to do actual interferometry on a BT signal from a 3rd party device, or whether Volvo is just throwing their users to the wolves.
They don't have to make it a hands-free system -- it could require that users press a button on the device to do anything with the car, and it can use public key cryptography to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Right, but without these things already in place and without the budget to put them in place... I don't think I need to say any more.
They don't have any budget in place to pay for their deferred maintenance either, yet BART will not fall apart and just stop running some day -- the region can't afford it. So lack of budget doesn't mean that a project won't get done -- lack of political will does. There's no way BART would do anything to upset its powerful labor unions.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
They don't have enough money for good maintenance; where are they getting the money for self-driving trains and installation of sliding doors? Just because the technology exists somewhere doesn't mean there's money to buy it. "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
Capital funds and operating funds are different, and trains excel and turning capital costs into low (per passenger) operating costs. BART is already working on a $3B bond measure to pay for their deferred maintenance and they'll very likely get it, so they can come up with the money if they want to.
I'd be very surprised if full automatic didn't save them money -- I don't know how many operators they have, but the operators+station agent union has 500 employees. They have enough cars to run around 70 full trainsets/day (around 550 cars are in daily operation normally, many trains are shorter than 10 cars). So figure 150 operators to cover 2 shifts/day for 365days/year.
At an average of $100K, that's $15M/year in operator salaries. And that figure is only going to go up when BART's new car purchase is complete and they have even more trains.
Figure $5M for sliding doors (20 doors/station, so that's $250K per door (in contrast, an entire elevator door mechanism costs $20 - $40K) per station (47 stations, so say $25M total), and another $50M to outfit BART''s 250 control cars with automation, they'd make that up in 5 years of salary reductions - this ignores the extra maintenance costs of maintaining the doors, so it might take a couple more years.
Plus, the automatic doors would eliminate the all-too-frequent delays (not to mention injury loss of life) from people being pushed or jumping on the tracks.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Such systems exist; the question is whether they exist within the closed-loop that is the BART system. They do not.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
And, again, the question is whether or not these exist within the ART system. And, again, they do not.
Few people think that BART just needs to fire the operators and go full automatic overnight, they need to build the infrastructure to do so, but BART's labor costs are so high already that very likely going to save money in the long-term.
I suspect BART is also the victim of failing to plan for the future. Entropy always wins. No system exists that will not need maintenance or repair in the future. It is foolish to defer maintenance and upgrades and shows a lack of stewardship by the managers of that system.
To the surprise of no one - the $70 million bond request by the school district was voted down by a 3 to 1 measure.
Worse, they've been spending billions on expanding the system while deferring maintenance to make their finances look better, and now they need (well want) to pass a $3B bond measure to pay for all of the maintenance they haven't been paying.
It will be interesting to see what the voters decide.
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It's cheaper to dig up streets on a neighborhood than in a city so I don't blame them. It's the same reason the Comcast doesn't offer service to their entire monopoly area on Seattle.
Is it really cheaper?
Adding infrastructure to one block of a city street can access to hundreds of customers - adding infrastructure to the same distance in a suburban neighborhood may only give access to 10 customers.
Internet banking. How else?
How do you buy a plane ticket via internet banking? As far as I know, airlines don't accept EFT's or Paypal for ticket purchases. I have a credit card on file with the airlines I fly regularly, but that's a "Card Not Present" transaction, which this bank apparently does not allow.
You should blame the magstripe for that. As soon as it's phased out any only chips are available you will be required to plug your card into an inexpensive chip reader connected to USB on your computer and still pay easily. Like the have it Netherlands and Korea. Holding on to magstripe compatibility is the problem. My European bank already does not allow any "card not present" transactions
How would you make an urgent purchase by phone? More than once, I've purchased an airline ticket over the phone while I was literally in a cab on my way to the airport, I'd be pretty pissed if my bank would not allow that. Since I don't have a chip reader in my phone, I don't see how I'd be able to make a mobile web purchase either.
Clearly all of the manufacturers used similar tricks, that's why they didn't point the finger at VW earlier. I'm sure they all knew about it since VW had such good emissions and fuel economy that the other manufacturers must have done tests and tear downs of their own to figure out how VW did it. But no one wanted to rock the boat and invite more scrutiny from regulators.
Depends on the scope... and all it takes is for one key group of people (*nix sysadmins, say) to refuse and stand firm on that refusal.
If your refusal to do knowledge transfer prevents someone from operating a system you maintain, then you are very bad at your job. If a bus hit me tomorrow, any of my coworkers could pick up the systems I maintain using the documentation. Worse case, if a bus took out the entire operations team, someone from outside of the company would be able to use the docs to come up to speed.
If you've left such sparse documentation that no one can figure out how to maintain your systems, the company is better off without you.
And who controls the documentation? If the entire IT department simply locked away the documentation, they'd be SOL.
You can't legally lock up resources owned by the company. You have to divulge passwords when asked by someone in authority. Otherwise, you could end up in jail.
Depends on the scope... and all it takes is for one key group of people (*nix sysadmins, say) to refuse and stand firm on that refusal.
If your refusal to do knowledge transfer prevents someone from operating a system you maintain, then you are very bad at your job. If a bus hit me tomorrow, any of my coworkers could pick up the systems I maintain using the documentation. Worse case, if a bus took out the entire operations team, someone from outside of the company would be able to use the docs to come up to speed.
If you've left such sparse documentation that no one can figure out how to maintain your systems, the company is better off without you.
At least it's water from some freshly-washed hands, unlike whatever is on the door handle.
Your coworkers must be a lot more diligent than mine, I don't think I've every see anyone scrub their hands for a full 20 seconds before rinsing. And I've seen some just do a rinse without any soap at all.
I don't think that water is as clean as you think it is.
Sounds like this was just a PR stunt to remind people that movie theaters still exist. I think I've only seen 2 movies in a theater (and one of those was a work event) since I got my 55" 1080p TV + Bluray + surround sound, there's not much reason to see a movie in a theater anymore, I prefer the experience I get at home (where there's an open bar and the movie will pause for bathroom breaks and if anyone talks over the movie, I can rewind). And the blu-ray costs about the same as a pair of movie tickets. When 4K content is more readily available (the TV's are already available and relatively affordable), that will mean even less reason to go to a theater.
Typically when the dryer starts up, I can feel a fine spray of water hit me in the face. I avoid these dryers now, even if it means using my pant legs to dry my hands.
At least the old fashioned blow dryers that take forever to dry your hands don't direct a spray of water into your face.
Why doesn't Google just release the source code and/or the protocols needed to make it work? They can keep proprietary bits that they don't own the source for (radio drivers, etc) as closed source blobs and open the rest of the code that they own.
maybe he found the pennies on the ground, meaning they would come at 0 cost to himself as that isn't a gain or a loss, had he just left them on the ground and really a penny is worthless today, which is why a few countries got rid of the thing to begin with.. And he could just ship a single penny to each TSA agent instead of a whole jar, which would bring the cost down so much that he'd make a healthy profit out of that $5 per agent.
Everything has a cost, even "found" pennies -- you still have to pick it up, look at it to make sure it's really a penny, clean the dirt off it, store it somewhere, inventory it, pack it for shipping, etc.
If you were really going to sell these pennies to TSA as a business, you'd likely be better off getting rolls of pennies from the bank.
I don't know how I got on this thread, but please remove me too.
whole idea that every passenger can be checked enough to detect any item that can be used in terrorist attack is stupid, impracticable, and as this story shows unmanageable.
if the aim is to deter terrorists from going through a check point, best solution is to subject random passengers ( and this has to be completely random, with all passengers having equal chance of being checked, with no possibility of knowing who will be checked) to fullest possible checks available. that way checks can be reduced in number to be manageable, checkers will be alert and multiple, and all the while there would continue to be doubt in terrorist's mind about his chances of passing through.
There are miles of lightly secured perimeters around airports, tons of materials and hundreds of vehicles drive into the secure area every day. There's no amount of passenger screening that will stop a terrorist from getting contraband on an airplane.
The millimeter wave scanners don't cause cancer like backscatter XRAY do but damage the electric field that's over the skin.
There's no evidence that the backscatter X-Ray machines are a cancer risk to passengers (they are probably more of a risk to TSA employees that are exposed long term).
I've never even heard about this electric field disturbance, but I'll guess that there's no evidence for that either.
I fly a lot, and routinely notice that the body scanners take about 5x as long as the metal detectors (and probably cause cancer). I regularly watch the TSA agents clear their backed-up lines by opening the metal detector for 30 seconds, sending 10 people through, and then closing it again (making the value of the scanner clearly questionable).
If the scanners worked reliably (and there's evidence that they don't), there'd still be value in sending only 10% of people through the scanners.
If a criminal were facing a 1 in 10 chance that his scheme to sneak contraband past security would be thwarted and he'd be arrested in the attempt, that would still be a good deterrent.
> Onstar owners smug sense of superiority (is there such a thing?)
Nah, most of us Onstars don't even think about the plebeian poser fucks who don't have it.
That's just a surprising attitude from someone that drives a GM car -- "elitist" doesn't come to mind.
My 2004 Prius, 2012 Leaf and 2105 BMW i3 all have keyless entry and ignition, as long as the key is in my pocket or my wife's purse the doors unlock when touched and the engine starts when the button is pressed. I don't need to touch a key other than move it when I move my wallet from pants to pants. I would expect the Bluetooth app to work the same way, no need to get the phone out and press a button.
Touchless keys (BMW calls it Comfort,not sure what Toyota or Nissan called it) is a requirement on any car I buy now that I've had it for over a decade.
Convinient, sure, but this convenience comes at a security cost since it's proven to be vulnerable to RF amplification attacks - You park your car in the parking lot and walk into walmart, not realizing that the mom behind you with the box in a shopping cart is sending your keyfob's signal back to your car where her accomplice is waiting next to the car to hop in and drive away.
This is great news, particularly since Bluetooth is so secure. And nothing could ever go wrong here.
it's a well published and examined protocol, and there's nothing keeping Volvo from putting their own security layer on top of it.
Do you think the proprietary opaque keyfob implementations are safer than bluetooth?
So more like the existing Onstart one from GM then?
Not sure if you're talking about Onstar owners smug sense of superiority (is there such a thing?) or the fact Onstar already has remote access, but I believe that all of the Onstar functionality happens over the cellular network, even the phone app uses the cellular network to send a signal to your car. So if you're out of cell phone range, you're out of luck.
The Volvo system uses bluetooth, no cellular network required.
Not exactly. It lacks the smug sense of superiority that Tesla owners crave.
Because Volvo owners have no smug sense of superiority?
Nowadays there are amplifiers for using hands-free fobs inside the house from the driveway while the owner is asleep, unless the system has interferometry to prevent that. I wonder if it's technically possible to do actual interferometry on a BT signal from a 3rd party device, or whether Volvo is just throwing their users to the wolves.
They don't have to make it a hands-free system -- it could require that users press a button on the device to do anything with the car, and it can use public key cryptography to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Right, but without these things already in place and without the budget to put them in place... I don't think I need to say any more.
They don't have any budget in place to pay for their deferred maintenance either, yet BART will not fall apart and just stop running some day -- the region can't afford it. So lack of budget doesn't mean that a project won't get done -- lack of political will does. There's no way BART would do anything to upset its powerful labor unions.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
They don't have enough money for good maintenance; where are they getting the money for self-driving trains and installation of sliding doors? Just because the technology exists somewhere doesn't mean there's money to buy it. "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."
Capital funds and operating funds are different, and trains excel and turning capital costs into low (per passenger) operating costs. BART is already working on a $3B bond measure to pay for their deferred maintenance and they'll very likely get it, so they can come up with the money if they want to.
I'd be very surprised if full automatic didn't save them money -- I don't know how many operators they have, but the operators+station agent union has 500 employees. They have enough cars to run around 70 full trainsets/day (around 550 cars are in daily operation normally, many trains are shorter than 10 cars). So figure 150 operators to cover 2 shifts/day for 365days/year.
At an average of $100K, that's $15M/year in operator salaries. And that figure is only going to go up when BART's new car purchase is complete and they have even more trains.
Figure $5M for sliding doors (20 doors/station, so that's $250K per door (in contrast, an entire elevator door mechanism costs $20 - $40K) per station (47 stations, so say $25M total), and another $50M to outfit BART''s 250 control cars with automation, they'd make that up in 5 years of salary reductions - this ignores the extra maintenance costs of maintaining the doors, so it might take a couple more years.
Plus, the automatic doors would eliminate the all-too-frequent delays (not to mention injury loss of life) from people being pushed or jumping on the tracks.
If there's no system that lets a train detect foreign objects on the track ahead, then there is no hope at all for self-driving cars.
Such systems exist; the question is whether they exist within the closed-loop that is the BART system. They do not.
Likewise, passengers too close to the edge of theboarding platform can be solved by the same sliding doors that other automated train systems use.
And, again, the question is whether or not these exist within the ART system. And, again, they do not.
Few people think that BART just needs to fire the operators and go full automatic overnight, they need to build the infrastructure to do so, but BART's labor costs are so high already that very likely going to save money in the long-term.
I suspect BART is also the victim of failing to plan for the future. Entropy always wins. No system exists that will not need maintenance or repair in the future. It is foolish to defer maintenance and upgrades and shows a lack of stewardship by the managers of that system.
To the surprise of no one - the $70 million bond request by the school district was voted down by a 3 to 1 measure.
Worse, they've been spending billions on expanding the system while deferring maintenance to make their finances look better, and now they need (well want) to pass a $3B bond measure to pay for all of the maintenance they haven't been paying.
It will be interesting to see what the voters decide.