On the other hand Apple has done what, "invent" round corners?
The iPhone basically defined and popularized what we consider the modern smartphone. The iPad did the same for tablets. They defined and popularized the graphical user interface on desktop PCs as well as quite a few other technologies. Any claim that Apple hasn't invented anything or done any R&D that has improved the industry is simply willful ignorance or foolish spite.
Scoff if you want but someone has to turn those technologies that companies like Qualcomm develop into products that people actually buy. It's hard to argue anybody does a better job of that than Apple. There is a tremendous amount of invention in creating functional integrated products. Not bashing Qualcomm but without Apple they don't have nearly as big a market to sell into. Qualcomm and Apple have different strengths and are sell to different customers bases. Qualcomm sells to other companies and develops technology they can use to make products. Apple sells to individuals and integrates and adapts technology into a coherent product.
His friend is not just a sample size of one. His friend is a sample size of one where exposure cross-section is drastically different than the general population.
Correct but that still does not provide sufficient evidence to indicate a causal link between his exposure and cancer most likely. You have no way to really know if the cancer came from the chemicals or if he had some other exposure or genetic disposition that was the proximal cause of the disease. It's no different than taking a homeopathic "cure" and then declaring yourself to be better when you recover. You can't tell if the cure worked of it it was just a placebo all by yourself. Unless you can find additional individuals afflicted similarly you can never really know.
Before population studies on smoking, we had 'samples of one'. Many, many samples. For many centuries.
We have many many samples of one on homeopathy too. Samples of one mean precisely dick unless they are very carefully compiled. Those are called anecdotes and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Now, of course we 'know' smoking causes some cancer. Did it cause Joe Sixpack's individual case of lung cancer? Joe may say so. No one can prove it with absolute certainty. It's an educated guess. But it's probable.
My wife is a pathologist and I've spoken to her about this exact topic. According to her, in a lot of cases we do know with near absolute certainty or as close as we will ever get. There are some forms of lung cancer that we know enough about the pathology and have enough population studies that it if the person smoked it is unreasonable to presume any other cause as likely. I have an uncle that had (and died from) one of these and yes he had smoked for a long time which is how the topic came up.
And so it is with this guy's friend. Like Joe, the farmer is probably right that his cancer was triggered by farm chemicals. The research is there. It may not yet have the same amount of community acceptance Joe's assertions do. Just give it time.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if you are entirely correct. I'm just cautioning about taking anecdotes too seriously even if they are seemingly logical. There is a strong tendency to inappropriately apply a sort of transitive property to phenomena. Chemical A affects Process B and Process B is critical to Pathway C. Therefore Chemical A affects Pathway C. Except it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the effect is more complicated or it has a negligible effect. Or it's a spurious correlation. This problem can be quite frustrating.
The post I was referring to claimed that micro-exposure wasn't a problem. "Taking small amounts of most types of poison won't poison you a little bit. Usually it does nothing." I disagree.
Gotcha. Yes you are correct. Small doses of certain toxins may not have easily observable effects but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Lead is a great example. It's not easy to observe the effects of small doses of lead spread widely in the population because it's not acutely toxic in small quantities and the negative effects can be difficult to tie to specific individuals.
What has always alarmed me is how casual we are as a society about putting all sorts of toxic crap into production and daily use without even the vaguest idea whether or how it might be harmful. If it doesn't immediately result in people bursting into flame upon exposure we shrug and decide it must be "safe". We're really good at finding solutions to problems right in front of our face (pesticides kill pests) but bad at understanding or caring about the wider implications of those solutions (pesticides also kill bees) if they aren't immediately obvious. And of course for some of us a profit motive results in all other factors being studiously ignored.
Maybe they should try picking apples from the tree instead of collecting the ones that already fell to the ground, if that is the goal.
You haven't actually been to an apple orchard have you? Here's a few little tips. Apples ARE picked from the trees. The ones on the ground aren't the ones you buy in the store. Also, soil comes in the form of dust which doesn't just stay on the ground. Also, there are small creatures (worms, flies, etc) that can track soil onto fruit still on the tree as well as from the hands of the person picking the fruit. There also are other microbes, fungus, and other concerning pathogens that exist even on fruit that has never touched the ground.
"Even at relatively low levels, organophosphates may be hazardous to human health.
This is an unsupported an meaningless statement even if it ultimately is actually true. There are lots of things that MAY be hazardous to our health. That doesn't equal evidence that they ARE actually hazardous. The entire reason we do scientific studies is to figure out if there is a causal relationship. We know cigarettes are hazardous to your health because we've done the work to figure it out. While there is nothing wrong with avoiding a possible hazard (like pesticides) out of an abundance of caution, it's important to understand what constitutes solid evidence. You have to demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between exposure and negative health outcomes while controlling for other factors.
The pesticides act on acetylcholinesterase,[14] an enzyme found in the brain chemicals closely related to those involved in ADHD, thus fetuses and young children, where brain development depends on a strict sequence of biological events, may be most at risk.
Several problems here. First off, Wikipedia is NOT a good place to cite "evidence" relating to scientific health studies. Second, that statement implies a relationship but doesn't actually show one. The fact that one group of chemicals can in principle affect another group of chemicals does not equal a causal chain in vivo. That sentence is carefully constructed to imply a negative relationship without actually going to the bother of actually needing to demonstrate one. Its a statement of fear, not of evidence and it certainly doesn't demonstrate even a correlation much less a causation between pesticides and ADHD. Third, ADHD is a disorder whose causes are NOT well understood nor is it easily diagnosed. You really couldn't have picked a worse example to support your case.
A friend who was a fruit farmer blamed pesticides on his cancer, and years ago started what we now shop as "organic"
Problem with your friend's logic is that he (she?) has a sample size of one. While it's not unreasonable that pesticides could have played a role, it's impossible to determine the likelihood of pesticides as a cause without some form of population study. We know that smoking causes cancer because we have population studies so that we can confidently say what the increased risk is and that there is a clear causal (and correlated) link. While it wouldn't be surprising at all if pesticides resulted in cancer, if there aren't properly scientific population studies then it is little more than an educated guess which should be frustrating to all of us.
The whole organic movement is based on this misapprehension. The idea of organics is logical. Less exposure to toxic stuff logically should in principle correlate with improved health. Good idea. Problem has been that it has turned out to be really hard to pin down any actual measurable health benefit from organic foods. All evidence seems to indicate there is no nutrition advantage and so far it's unclear if there are any meaningful secondary health benefits. Some companies have realized economic benefits but it's not (yet) clear if organic foods really result in better health for consumers. As logical as the idea of organics is, sometimes what seems logical doesn't actually result in the expected outcome. I'm not arguing that eating organic foods is a bad idea (I think it's very reasonable if you can afford it) as long as you understand that there isn't (yet) any clear evidence that it results in better outcomes.
This is an old and well understood mystery in physics. We've known about baryon asymmetry since shortly after we understood E=mc^2 (more properly E^2 = m^2*c^4 + p^2*c^2). We just don't have a model or data that fully explains why we see lots of matter but not much anti-matter. We have some ideas about how it might have happened but nothing that really answers the question adequately.
Explain why is it so 'dangerously stupid'. DNS is no part of any security model, if yours is, then I would fire you in a heartbeat.
It's about preventing easy opportunities for scams and reducing the attack surface. You are very incorrect that DNS isn't a part of the threat model. Misleading domain names are routinely used in various forms of cyber attacks, particularly phishing attacks.
It's dangerously stupid because if you don't go through the primary domain that is well understood to be the company in question (Dell in this case) then it becomes ridiculously easy for people with less than honorable intentions mislead customers. If I register the domain mydellupdates.com, how do you know if it is or is not actually owned and operated by Dell Corporation? Sounds vaguely official so there would be some percentage of people that probably would be fooled. Sure you can do a research into who owns the domain but you ought to know that won't happen in most cases. Lots of people don't know how and more simply cannot be bothered or it doesn't occur to them to try.
The big reason a company wouldn't want to allow contractors and other miscellaneous sites under a subdomain of the main domain is how browsers treat domains. Cookie access, cross-site scripting, etc. could all be problems, unless you change the main website to also act under a subdomain, and make sure everything is restricted properly.
So your argument is that one of the largest tech companies in the world can't handle cookies properly? Ummm, if that is actually true then nobody should ever buy their products again. Dell is a huge company and they have more than enough heft to force vendors to conform to reasonable security standards and work with their network properly. Vendors who can't handle this probably shouldn't be utilized.
In large corporations itâ(TM)s often easier to register a new domain than go through the hoops of getting a subdomain approved.
So what? That doesn't make registering a new domain a good idea. I could register a new domain with your company name in it. So could anyone else. It's FAR more difficult for anyone to spoof the subdomain of dell, especially for something as important as system updates and tech support. Seriously, doing what you suggest in a large company is a really really bad idea.
Where I work, it takes me $8 and a half hour work to get a domain but it can easily take me 6 work hours across 2-4 weeks to get a subdomain.
Again, so what? I'm sure there are all kinds of idiotic things you can do that are less hassle than going through official channels. While nobody is a fan of bureaucracy it often exists for EXACTLY the reason of keeping people from doing stupid things like your suggestion. If you worked for me and you did that I'd fire you in a heartbeat for doing something so dangerously stupid. You're potentially exposing the company to huge financial risk because you're too lazy to go through proper channels for something that actually matters.
The issue is that the tech makes is easier to affect more people's lives. It's a double-edged sword and will get sharper.
That is better than the converse which is an inability to affect lives. Seriously, you do NOT want to go back to the days of the Pony Express if you catch my meaning.
Yes there will be new issues to resolve but that's no different than it has ever been. Every new non-trivial technology has new issues to deal with and it takes society some time to come to grips with them. The industrial revolution has been one long series of new technologies affecting people's lives in ways they need to come to grips with. The so called information age will be no different in that regard.
I've got to wonder if the Internet has caused a *lot* more problems than it's solved.
Let me put your mind at ease. The internet has caused new problems to be sure but it has resolved even more old ones. I'm old enough that I pre-date the internet in anything remotely resembling its current form and I pre-date the world wide web by multiple decades. I can assure you that the Good Old Days weren't all that good and that the the internet has solved substantially more problems than it has caused. Nothing is perfect and people are still just as incompetent as they ever were but that doesn't mean the technology is a bad thing.
Kids before that technology were just beaten if they were too much of a problem... So having a kid, watch a movie on a tablet in terms of perspective is a good thing.
Are you seriously arguing that access to tablets (or other electronic gadgets) is the reason children aren't being physically beaten? You have a very twisted view of the world my friend.
Families with young children are now more likely to have a subscription video service such as Netflix or Hulu (72%) than they are to have cable TV (65%).
That's because cable TV is shit value for the money. It's (generally) tied to a physical location, requires special hardware to record and view at a time convenient to you (which they charge extra for), has a huge amount of really crappy programming, they refuse to make ala-carte channel selection an option, their streaming options (generally) suck, and it's very expensive. $40/month gets you a very basic selection of channels with not a lot of interesting programming and no archive of content to watch.
In short: Hard to time shift Hard to location shift Expensive Crappy assortment of programming Wall to wall advertisements No archive of content to watch
Is it really any wonder people are dropping cable?
You never signed up for an account with them. That doesn't mean that there isn't a nice fat DB entry with your name and all the information they can gather. Did you sign up for Equifax?
Oh I'm well aware they are trying to gather data on everyone. I also cannot stop my idiot friends and family from posting information and pictures about me. Nevertheless I'm not going to cooperate with them and I make pretty heavy use of software to block advertisers and others who want to track my actions on the net. I'm sure information leaks through but they don't have nearly as much on me as they could if I took no measures and they don't have information voluntarily from me.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some college campuses have better security than some defense contractors.
I cannot speak for every defense contractor but I've worked at one in the past and with a few as a vendor and I can assure you that their security (physical and IT) was CONSIDERABLY tighter than any college campus I've ever seen, at least where I was working.
Well, considering their 1.2 billion people DB hasn't leaked..
If it's run that sloppy then it might have already happened and they/we just don't know it yet. My suspicion is that it is merely a matter of time before Facebook has some form of catastrophic data breach.
Honestly I'm not even a tiny bit surprised that Facebook is sloppy. They have a looooong pattern of not giving a shit about the people who use their service and being alarmingly relaxed (for lack of a better word) with privacy and the rights of their users. This is just another example of why I don't trust Facebook and do not have an account with them.
I guess they're doing OK job, compared to let's say yahoo... who have been hacked like 3 times in 5 years ? Or linkedin. Or equifax.. or..
In most cases, the first person that gives a number is the one that loses....
I don't think that's necessarily true.
There is a huge amount of research showing that as a general proposition it is true. Not in every case but quite often. Negotiation is something that is studied quite carefully and it's a proven fact that in many cases for salary negotiation the party that quotes a number first is often at a disadvantage because they give away an information asymmetry. The party that doesn't go first knows more information about the expectations of the party that did go first and that can be very useful. Any time you know more about what the other party wants than they know about you it makes it easier to craft a deal that is relatively favorable to you.
I'll give an example from my own life. My first job out of college I was asked what I hoped to make. I quoted $SALARY based on what I had been told was the average starting pay for someone with my major from my college and when I got the job offer it was for exactly $SALARY to the penny. I found out later that had I quoted $SALARY+$5000 I could have gotten that amount or maybe more. I didn't know enough to simply ask what the pay range was. Big companies always have a range and what they wanted to know was my salary expectations would fall within it. Had I forced them to go first I probably could have made $5-10K more than I actually got.
And you can't outlaw the latter question. After all, your employer needs to know what you expect to get in return for your work. So be prepared for the negotiation game.
It's fine to ask how much an applicant hopes to make. That's a reasonable question based on future expectations. What they made at a previous job has precisely zero relevance and pretty much never benefits the prospective employee.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Yes many places ask for that information. I almost never provide any salary information (not usually relevant) as there is no upside to me in providing that information. Where I worked and when is fair game to ask but what I made at my last job really has no relevance in almost every case and providing that data really can only hurt me in most cases.
I agree, except at the point where you are willing to trust Microsoft... Windows 10 shows us that Microsoft does not hold our privacy sacrosanct in the least.
No I don't trust Microsoft either but there is an important difference. You have to deal with Microsoft if you are running Windows. Any privacy or security issues with them are going to exist whether or not you involve a third party AV vendor. AV vendors are as much a threat vector as they are a security blanket in my opinion even if you ignore the performance hit you take from using their (usually shit) products.
At the very least, use Linux.
Not really an option in many cases. Nothing against linux but many users have to use Windows for one reason or another. Once you are on the platform you have to deal with Microsoft but I'd be reluctant to involve additional security vendors if I don't absolutely have to.
Your virus software has to have root level access to every file on your system. If you want to access all the files on a computer clandestinely, providing AV software is a fine way to do it. Your AV software provider better be a friend.
This is exactly why I'm dubious of any third party AV product. I might not like Microsoft but at least their interests somewhat align with my own as malware is nothing but a cost to them. I have no reason to trust any third party AV vendor. They have no fundamental incentive to actually solve the problem because if there is no malware then they have no product to sell. In my experience all of them have a long track record of making products that cost a lot of money and don't work very well even under the best circumstances.
To my way of thinking the OS vendor should be the primary party responsible for protecting their own product if they sell it for money. I think that OS vendors also should be liable for security failures in their products that they are able to control with appropriate safe harbor provisions for OS vendors that make good faith efforts to do the Right Thing.
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On the other hand Apple has done what, "invent" round corners?
The iPhone basically defined and popularized what we consider the modern smartphone. The iPad did the same for tablets. They defined and popularized the graphical user interface on desktop PCs as well as quite a few other technologies. Any claim that Apple hasn't invented anything or done any R&D that has improved the industry is simply willful ignorance or foolish spite.
Scoff if you want but someone has to turn those technologies that companies like Qualcomm develop into products that people actually buy. It's hard to argue anybody does a better job of that than Apple. There is a tremendous amount of invention in creating functional integrated products. Not bashing Qualcomm but without Apple they don't have nearly as big a market to sell into. Qualcomm and Apple have different strengths and are sell to different customers bases. Qualcomm sells to other companies and develops technology they can use to make products. Apple sells to individuals and integrates and adapts technology into a coherent product.
Wow, the country with the second largest population is the second largest market. Who could believe it?
His friend is not just a sample size of one. His friend is a sample size of one where exposure cross-section is drastically different than the general population.
Correct but that still does not provide sufficient evidence to indicate a causal link between his exposure and cancer most likely. You have no way to really know if the cancer came from the chemicals or if he had some other exposure or genetic disposition that was the proximal cause of the disease. It's no different than taking a homeopathic "cure" and then declaring yourself to be better when you recover. You can't tell if the cure worked of it it was just a placebo all by yourself. Unless you can find additional individuals afflicted similarly you can never really know.
Before population studies on smoking, we had 'samples of one'. Many, many samples. For many centuries.
We have many many samples of one on homeopathy too. Samples of one mean precisely dick unless they are very carefully compiled. Those are called anecdotes and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Now, of course we 'know' smoking causes some cancer. Did it cause Joe Sixpack's individual case of lung cancer? Joe may say so. No one can prove it with absolute certainty. It's an educated guess. But it's probable.
My wife is a pathologist and I've spoken to her about this exact topic. According to her, in a lot of cases we do know with near absolute certainty or as close as we will ever get. There are some forms of lung cancer that we know enough about the pathology and have enough population studies that it if the person smoked it is unreasonable to presume any other cause as likely. I have an uncle that had (and died from) one of these and yes he had smoked for a long time which is how the topic came up.
And so it is with this guy's friend. Like Joe, the farmer is probably right that his cancer was triggered by farm chemicals. The research is there. It may not yet have the same amount of community acceptance Joe's assertions do. Just give it time.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if you are entirely correct. I'm just cautioning about taking anecdotes too seriously even if they are seemingly logical. There is a strong tendency to inappropriately apply a sort of transitive property to phenomena. Chemical A affects Process B and Process B is critical to Pathway C. Therefore Chemical A affects Pathway C. Except it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the effect is more complicated or it has a negligible effect. Or it's a spurious correlation. This problem can be quite frustrating.
The post I was referring to claimed that micro-exposure wasn't a problem. "Taking small amounts of most types of poison won't poison you a little bit. Usually it does nothing." I disagree.
Gotcha. Yes you are correct. Small doses of certain toxins may not have easily observable effects but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Lead is a great example. It's not easy to observe the effects of small doses of lead spread widely in the population because it's not acutely toxic in small quantities and the negative effects can be difficult to tie to specific individuals.
What has always alarmed me is how casual we are as a society about putting all sorts of toxic crap into production and daily use without even the vaguest idea whether or how it might be harmful. If it doesn't immediately result in people bursting into flame upon exposure we shrug and decide it must be "safe". We're really good at finding solutions to problems right in front of our face (pesticides kill pests) but bad at understanding or caring about the wider implications of those solutions (pesticides also kill bees) if they aren't immediately obvious. And of course for some of us a profit motive results in all other factors being studiously ignored.
Maybe they should try picking apples from the tree instead of collecting the ones that already fell to the ground, if that is the goal.
You haven't actually been to an apple orchard have you? Here's a few little tips. Apples ARE picked from the trees. The ones on the ground aren't the ones you buy in the store. Also, soil comes in the form of dust which doesn't just stay on the ground. Also, there are small creatures (worms, flies, etc) that can track soil onto fruit still on the tree as well as from the hands of the person picking the fruit. There also are other microbes, fungus, and other concerning pathogens that exist even on fruit that has never touched the ground.
"Even at relatively low levels, organophosphates may be hazardous to human health.
This is an unsupported an meaningless statement even if it ultimately is actually true. There are lots of things that MAY be hazardous to our health. That doesn't equal evidence that they ARE actually hazardous. The entire reason we do scientific studies is to figure out if there is a causal relationship. We know cigarettes are hazardous to your health because we've done the work to figure it out. While there is nothing wrong with avoiding a possible hazard (like pesticides) out of an abundance of caution, it's important to understand what constitutes solid evidence. You have to demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between exposure and negative health outcomes while controlling for other factors.
The pesticides act on acetylcholinesterase,[14] an enzyme found in the brain chemicals closely related to those involved in ADHD, thus fetuses and young children, where brain development depends on a strict sequence of biological events, may be most at risk.
Several problems here. First off, Wikipedia is NOT a good place to cite "evidence" relating to scientific health studies. Second, that statement implies a relationship but doesn't actually show one. The fact that one group of chemicals can in principle affect another group of chemicals does not equal a causal chain in vivo. That sentence is carefully constructed to imply a negative relationship without actually going to the bother of actually needing to demonstrate one. Its a statement of fear, not of evidence and it certainly doesn't demonstrate even a correlation much less a causation between pesticides and ADHD. Third, ADHD is a disorder whose causes are NOT well understood nor is it easily diagnosed. You really couldn't have picked a worse example to support your case.
A friend who was a fruit farmer blamed pesticides on his cancer, and years ago started what we now shop as "organic"
Problem with your friend's logic is that he (she?) has a sample size of one. While it's not unreasonable that pesticides could have played a role, it's impossible to determine the likelihood of pesticides as a cause without some form of population study. We know that smoking causes cancer because we have population studies so that we can confidently say what the increased risk is and that there is a clear causal (and correlated) link. While it wouldn't be surprising at all if pesticides resulted in cancer, if there aren't properly scientific population studies then it is little more than an educated guess which should be frustrating to all of us.
The whole organic movement is based on this misapprehension. The idea of organics is logical. Less exposure to toxic stuff logically should in principle correlate with improved health. Good idea. Problem has been that it has turned out to be really hard to pin down any actual measurable health benefit from organic foods. All evidence seems to indicate there is no nutrition advantage and so far it's unclear if there are any meaningful secondary health benefits. Some companies have realized economic benefits but it's not (yet) clear if organic foods really result in better health for consumers. As logical as the idea of organics is, sometimes what seems logical doesn't actually result in the expected outcome. I'm not arguing that eating organic foods is a bad idea (I think it's very reasonable if you can afford it) as long as you understand that there isn't (yet) any clear evidence that it results in better outcomes.
that's what we voted for. so get over it.
"We"? Speak for yourself. I didn't vote for Trump and I'm certainly not about to "get over it" until he is removed from office.
This is an old and well understood mystery in physics. We've known about baryon asymmetry since shortly after we understood E=mc^2 (more properly E^2 = m^2*c^4 + p^2*c^2). We just don't have a model or data that fully explains why we see lots of matter but not much anti-matter. We have some ideas about how it might have happened but nothing that really answers the question adequately.
Explain why is it so 'dangerously stupid'. DNS is no part of any security model, if yours is, then I would fire you in a heartbeat.
It's about preventing easy opportunities for scams and reducing the attack surface. You are very incorrect that DNS isn't a part of the threat model. Misleading domain names are routinely used in various forms of cyber attacks, particularly phishing attacks.
It's dangerously stupid because if you don't go through the primary domain that is well understood to be the company in question (Dell in this case) then it becomes ridiculously easy for people with less than honorable intentions mislead customers. If I register the domain mydellupdates.com, how do you know if it is or is not actually owned and operated by Dell Corporation? Sounds vaguely official so there would be some percentage of people that probably would be fooled. Sure you can do a research into who owns the domain but you ought to know that won't happen in most cases. Lots of people don't know how and more simply cannot be bothered or it doesn't occur to them to try.
The big reason a company wouldn't want to allow contractors and other miscellaneous sites under a subdomain of the main domain is how browsers treat domains. Cookie access, cross-site scripting, etc. could all be problems, unless you change the main website to also act under a subdomain, and make sure everything is restricted properly.
So your argument is that one of the largest tech companies in the world can't handle cookies properly? Ummm, if that is actually true then nobody should ever buy their products again. Dell is a huge company and they have more than enough heft to force vendors to conform to reasonable security standards and work with their network properly. Vendors who can't handle this probably shouldn't be utilized.
In large corporations itâ(TM)s often easier to register a new domain than go through the hoops of getting a subdomain approved.
So what? That doesn't make registering a new domain a good idea. I could register a new domain with your company name in it. So could anyone else. It's FAR more difficult for anyone to spoof the subdomain of dell, especially for something as important as system updates and tech support. Seriously, doing what you suggest in a large company is a really really bad idea.
Where I work, it takes me $8 and a half hour work to get a domain but it can easily take me 6 work hours across 2-4 weeks to get a subdomain.
Again, so what? I'm sure there are all kinds of idiotic things you can do that are less hassle than going through official channels. While nobody is a fan of bureaucracy it often exists for EXACTLY the reason of keeping people from doing stupid things like your suggestion. If you worked for me and you did that I'd fire you in a heartbeat for doing something so dangerously stupid. You're potentially exposing the company to huge financial risk because you're too lazy to go through proper channels for something that actually matters.
The issue is that the tech makes is easier to affect more people's lives. It's a double-edged sword and will get sharper.
That is better than the converse which is an inability to affect lives. Seriously, you do NOT want to go back to the days of the Pony Express if you catch my meaning.
Yes there will be new issues to resolve but that's no different than it has ever been. Every new non-trivial technology has new issues to deal with and it takes society some time to come to grips with them. The industrial revolution has been one long series of new technologies affecting people's lives in ways they need to come to grips with. The so called information age will be no different in that regard.
I've got to wonder if the Internet has caused a *lot* more problems than it's solved.
Let me put your mind at ease. The internet has caused new problems to be sure but it has resolved even more old ones. I'm old enough that I pre-date the internet in anything remotely resembling its current form and I pre-date the world wide web by multiple decades. I can assure you that the Good Old Days weren't all that good and that the the internet has solved substantially more problems than it has caused. Nothing is perfect and people are still just as incompetent as they ever were but that doesn't mean the technology is a bad thing.
Kids before that technology were just beaten if they were too much of a problem... So having a kid, watch a movie on a tablet in terms of perspective is a good thing.
Are you seriously arguing that access to tablets (or other electronic gadgets) is the reason children aren't being physically beaten? You have a very twisted view of the world my friend.
Families with young children are now more likely to have a subscription video service such as Netflix or Hulu (72%) than they are to have cable TV (65%).
That's because cable TV is shit value for the money. It's (generally) tied to a physical location, requires special hardware to record and view at a time convenient to you (which they charge extra for), has a huge amount of really crappy programming, they refuse to make ala-carte channel selection an option, their streaming options (generally) suck, and it's very expensive. $40/month gets you a very basic selection of channels with not a lot of interesting programming and no archive of content to watch.
In short:
Hard to time shift
Hard to location shift
Expensive
Crappy assortment of programming
Wall to wall advertisements
No archive of content to watch
Is it really any wonder people are dropping cable?
You never signed up for an account with them. That doesn't mean that there isn't a nice fat DB entry with your name and all the information they can gather. Did you sign up for Equifax?
Oh I'm well aware they are trying to gather data on everyone. I also cannot stop my idiot friends and family from posting information and pictures about me. Nevertheless I'm not going to cooperate with them and I make pretty heavy use of software to block advertisers and others who want to track my actions on the net. I'm sure information leaks through but they don't have nearly as much on me as they could if I took no measures and they don't have information voluntarily from me.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some college campuses have better security than some defense contractors.
I cannot speak for every defense contractor but I've worked at one in the past and with a few as a vendor and I can assure you that their security (physical and IT) was CONSIDERABLY tighter than any college campus I've ever seen, at least where I was working.
Well, considering their 1.2 billion people DB hasn't leaked ..
If it's run that sloppy then it might have already happened and they/we just don't know it yet. My suspicion is that it is merely a matter of time before Facebook has some form of catastrophic data breach.
Honestly I'm not even a tiny bit surprised that Facebook is sloppy. They have a looooong pattern of not giving a shit about the people who use their service and being alarmingly relaxed (for lack of a better word) with privacy and the rights of their users. This is just another example of why I don't trust Facebook and do not have an account with them.
I guess they're doing OK job, compared to let's say yahoo... who have been hacked like 3 times in 5 years ? Or linkedin. Or equifax.. or ..
Talk about damning with faint praise...
In most cases, the first person that gives a number is the one that loses....
I don't think that's necessarily true.
There is a huge amount of research showing that as a general proposition it is true. Not in every case but quite often. Negotiation is something that is studied quite carefully and it's a proven fact that in many cases for salary negotiation the party that quotes a number first is often at a disadvantage because they give away an information asymmetry. The party that doesn't go first knows more information about the expectations of the party that did go first and that can be very useful. Any time you know more about what the other party wants than they know about you it makes it easier to craft a deal that is relatively favorable to you.
I'll give an example from my own life. My first job out of college I was asked what I hoped to make. I quoted $SALARY based on what I had been told was the average starting pay for someone with my major from my college and when I got the job offer it was for exactly $SALARY to the penny. I found out later that had I quoted $SALARY+$5000 I could have gotten that amount or maybe more. I didn't know enough to simply ask what the pay range was. Big companies always have a range and what they wanted to know was my salary expectations would fall within it. Had I forced them to go first I probably could have made $5-10K more than I actually got.
And you can't outlaw the latter question. After all, your employer needs to know what you expect to get in return for your work. So be prepared for the negotiation game.
It's fine to ask how much an applicant hopes to make. That's a reasonable question based on future expectations. What they made at a previous job has precisely zero relevance and pretty much never benefits the prospective employee.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Yes many places ask for that information. I almost never provide any salary information (not usually relevant) as there is no upside to me in providing that information. Where I worked and when is fair game to ask but what I made at my last job really has no relevance in almost every case and providing that data really can only hurt me in most cases.
I agree, except at the point where you are willing to trust Microsoft... Windows 10 shows us that Microsoft does not hold our privacy sacrosanct in the least.
No I don't trust Microsoft either but there is an important difference. You have to deal with Microsoft if you are running Windows. Any privacy or security issues with them are going to exist whether or not you involve a third party AV vendor. AV vendors are as much a threat vector as they are a security blanket in my opinion even if you ignore the performance hit you take from using their (usually shit) products.
At the very least, use Linux.
Not really an option in many cases. Nothing against linux but many users have to use Windows for one reason or another. Once you are on the platform you have to deal with Microsoft but I'd be reluctant to involve additional security vendors if I don't absolutely have to.
Your virus software has to have root level access to every file on your system. If you want to access all the files on a computer clandestinely, providing AV software is a fine way to do it. Your AV software provider better be a friend.
This is exactly why I'm dubious of any third party AV product. I might not like Microsoft but at least their interests somewhat align with my own as malware is nothing but a cost to them. I have no reason to trust any third party AV vendor. They have no fundamental incentive to actually solve the problem because if there is no malware then they have no product to sell. In my experience all of them have a long track record of making products that cost a lot of money and don't work very well even under the best circumstances.
To my way of thinking the OS vendor should be the primary party responsible for protecting their own product if they sell it for money. I think that OS vendors also should be liable for security failures in their products that they are able to control with appropriate safe harbor provisions for OS vendors that make good faith efforts to do the Right Thing.