BTCs may have fewer risks than actual currencies, because while they are subject to competitive market forces; there is actually a cost to produce a BTC.
There is guaranteed to be a finite amount of BTC that can ever be produced, as long as the Bitcoin network continues to function, and has not been subverted technologically. You can be relatively sure BTC will be a viable exchange medium into the future, absent governments banning it entirely.
While I appreciate, that these are a couple of risks -- it could very well be that coins and cash currencies also have risks, even greater market risks than BTC -- resulting in BTC being a safer long-term storage, and currencies such as USD being a better idea for consumers for short-term exchange. They have a different set of risks: With USD, for example, the US treasury can print a large amount of money at any time; they can declare certain bills worthless; if money is in the bank, there is a chance that it could be seized without the knowledge of the account holder (until one day, when you really need that money and coincidentally some creditor or ID thief took it today...); there is a risk of identity theft (traditional currencies placed with a bank could be stolen -- because when you have physical dollars, they are easily stolen by physical thieves or fraudsters, and social engineering and insecure secrets such as SSN digits could be used against a bank to coerce them to make unauthorized transfers).
The government may devalue the currency, through poor management.
Your bank may change their policies, e.g. they may quietly start charging inactive account fees on your savings account.
With BTC, your wallet kind of is your bank account as well, and you are not so reliant on a specific third party providing you a service -- to maintain the account terms, deposit interest rates, no maintenance fees, etc.
Furthermore, your bank can make an accounting error, or an employeen can conduct a fraud in which the result is that money you did not spend is removed from your account. With BTC, you are assured this can't happen, without someone compromising cryptographic secrets that you can secure.
With BTC, while the possibility of theft through malware exists, you don't need a bank, and you have control over how you secure the cryptographic secrets required to transfer your Bitcoins, without requiring a specific third party to act -- if you are sufficiently paranoid, you can divide bitcoins into as many accounts as you like, and very effectively eliminate the possibility of large theft; even "legal" theft, without you're knowing about it until the check bounces -- when some creditor decided to levy your bank account.
Not even close. They are designed to be hard to make, to only be made at a pre-determined rate, and for new supplies to eventually run out. Bit-coins are designed to be limited in supply.
Indeed.. under the current design, the eventual amount of bitcoins available is guaranteed to be finite.
There are really only two forseeable long-term outcomes with regards to the value of bitcoins....
(1) They tend to become worth zero or less over time relative to their worth at previous times [either because of a flaw in the underlying crypto algorithms compromises the protocol, or, a significantly large number of people stop using the bitcoins, in sufficient number that Bitcoins become unusable as as an asset for trade/exchange, and therefore consumer demand for bitcoins eventually shrinks to a smaller amount at a given market clearing price] -- if there is a plentiful supply of people who have bitcoins (for example, through mining), and a very small amount of demanded product available for purchase that require Bitcoins to purchase, the demanded quantity for bitcoins will decrease, and they will eventually become worthless --- However, as long as there are demands for products that vendors will accept bitcoins for
(ESPECIALLY services in demand for which v
Show me a feminist actively petitioning for mandatory selective service registration for women, and I'll accept that there's the possibility of there being at least one feminist who's actually interested in "equality."
You're right of course... Where is the masculinist movement petitioning for equality regarding selective service registration?
I'm hoping she'll get a new job, but that it won't have anything to do with Python, or programming.
She seems like a repeat offender, so if she's allowed back into such a conference again, or to confer with developers again: I'm afraid the same behavior might be repeated.
Fired from life is too harsh. Exile from the community she doesn't understand is OK.
Then she got fired for rocking the boar. Case closed.
I think she didn't get fired for rocking the boat, she got fired for creating a hole in the boat by setting off hidden explosives, intended to send two sailors into the sea, because she was too cowardly to complain to them, and ask them to stop an annoying behavior.
The problem is that she handled it in an extremely immature fashion. I'm not necessarily saying that she should have let it go, but posting the pictures online without giving them a chance to explain, is rather poor form for an evangelist.
Definitely. She assumed they intended to offend (regardless of their actual intentions. She decided to respond in a sneaky underhanded aggressive way, by covertly taking a picture, and posting it all over the internet; in other words, she made a direct personal attack in public view of the world.
If she were not so cowardly and underhanded, she could have responded to their comments right then and there, or took her picture, but brought her report to the event organizers, instead of launching an unreasonable public personal attack.
Up until this point, they've had a competitive advantage over stores with an in state presence that do have to charge the sales tax, people self reporting makes no sense as it's entirely unfair to expect people to keep track of that many small purchases.
Often not... because goods in state could be purchased in person, without the additional cost of shipping added to the regular price of goods.
Strangely, the cost of shipping is often similar to or greater than the tax rate.
So if you had to pay both a tax and extra shipping cost; the in-state business would be at a great advantage.
So in some cases the out-of-state goods have a cost advantage, in others they do not.
However, as far as the cost to the state is concerned... the shippers pay taxes.
And there is very little state infrastructure used to conduct the marketing of out-of-state goods.
It's unfair that the buyer or outer-of-state retailer be taxed, as if they needed all the local infrastructure
required to support a retail store within the state.
So you want them to prepare for a thing that they may choose to simply never do.
Correct.
Have you ever been in a grocery store with the lights off? It's dark. Turn off the HVAC, and it gets mighty uncomfortable in a hurry.
Running compressors and keeping enough lights and climate control going to even make it safe for the public to enter is a huge proposition.
They don't have to plan to make it comfortable; they only have to make it safe.
If there's no way to make it safe for the public without electricity and without buying generators, then that's fair.
They can deny public entry; open the windows for ventilation, and do business at the door instead.
What good is a store's disaster planning if they can't get supplies trucked in?
If they can't get supplies trucked in, then it's not merely a power outage.
It's illegal to mark up prices during an emergency.
They must be able to pass on their additional costs, including the cost associated with increased risk of doing business without power, additional security costs, reduced efficiencies, and the government has no authority over whether a business refuses sale or demands a higher price, before completing a sale contract.
So when there are 500 people lined up outside and enough food/supplies inside for 100 of them, how do you expect the 5 employees inside to "adjust to this new equilibrium"
Unless you are a very large facility, with many employees on duty, the answer is you can't meet that demand.
So possibly you do your trade differently -- maybe by auctioning off pallets of essentials to the highest bidder; encouraging large buyers to come in, buy the pallet, and then solve the distribution problem through person-to-person trading.
In the event that a crowd is anticipated, you gate off the parking lot, and only allow the specified number of cars in.
You keep the doors locked, and only allow the number of people in, that your staff can effectively monitor and personally attend to.
Or you may start taking orders from customers outside; collect payment; then staff will bring out the items, without any customer being allowed in.
There is a sandwich shop downtown that closes for two weeks every summer, just to allow every person there to have some time off.
(1) A sandwich shop sells prepared food; they prepare food, then sell it, they are not selling an off-the-shelf product.
Preparing food requires cooking it generally, which generally requires electricity. Therefore, I would say, they don't need to be open without power.
Also; if they planned to close in advance, and that is their custom, of course, they can do that... it has nothing to do with any emergency that exists or might happen to coincide with their planned closing period.
(2) I am speaking of stores that sell essential commercial off-the-shelf products (groceries, pharmaceuticals, health products, gasoline, other essentials)--- I am not suggesting they be disallowed from closing.
Only that they are required to have staff trained, be prepared, safety preparations and planning in advance, and halve all planning in place to remain open during times when electricity is down, or communications are down, and be able to demonstrate their contingency plans and training they have implemented for managers and staff.
In other words, they have to be prepared and plan to remain open; they retain a right to close. They might close, because no customers are visiting them, during an electrical outage.
Not that I think any of these things should be mandated. If the power is out for any length of time the store will compensate. People are going to want to make money and sell things, believe it or no
The problem is... people don't generally stock up food in modern times, so if the store shuts down unexpectedly, people may starve to death, or there may be chaos on the streets, because 20% of people ran out of this week's supply and can't buy food they need to survive.
Stores provide convenient shopping, but without regulation to the contrary, they have no reason to prepare for extreme contingencies such as long-term power outages -- its cheaper to not be prepared for them; having employees available and trained to work without electricity is more expensive.
It makes sense that requirement that stores meet certain standards of preparedness should be part of a locality's disaster planning.
A certain standard of reliability: they're not just going to temporarily close up shop, whenever disruption of infrastructure makes it inconvenient to due business; even if they will operate under reduced profit, or have to mark up items to a higher price to properly cover their additional costs, or to adjust to the new equilibrium between supply and demand during the emergency, it's better than closing up shop, and they should be required to stay open, unless there is an evacuation, or there are not a sufficient number of employees able to report.
And how do you check that a store is staffed adequately BEFORE the disaster strikes? Do you require a certain number of employees to live within walking distance? Do you ensure that they live in houses that are outside of a flood zone
No. A flood is a different kind of emergency from a power outage or communications failure alone.
What is your solution to having too much cash on hand? Even corner supermarkets have problems with too much cash.
Are you suggesting that Bitcoin is as safe as the USD? One of those still works when the lights go out...
That raises an interesting question... what happens to the blockchain, when the internet goes down for a while?
How long do bitcoins continue to exist, when there is no bitcoin network? how does it ever get reinstated?
What if bitcoin is the only currency, and there's no way to pay workers to get it back up and running?
but they couldn't get their cash register system up and were unable to make any sales (not even cash sales) until the registers came back up. It took most of a day to get the registers working.
This is bothersome... I would favor a law, that in order to be a licensed retailer: one of the things you must do is show that you are prepared
to operate during an emergency where electricity or communication services are unavailable.
To be allowed the privilege of providing publicly accessible space and offering goods for sale on a regular basis, you must do this.
I recommend no upfront enforcement. But delayed enforcement mechanisms, where you seek to detect piracy rather than prevent it.
Detect it as covertly as possible -- arrange for the pirated version to stop working or fall into a degraded mode of operation suddenly, after a sufficient period of time elapsed, or at a new release, while you make as certain as possible that legitimate customers are not impacted. Don't tip your hand in regards to what all your defense mechanisms are; instead of seeking to block pirates, seek to make their use of your software unreliable or full of annoying surprises.
Normally when there's an upfront enforcement mechanism such as a serial number, the defense is easily detected and subverted.
On the other hand; if your defense is broader, and the code less identifiable, you may frustrate pirates into confessing and buying.
I see the goal is to convert pirates into customers, which might not always be possible --- but by frustrating them, and then offering them a "discount"
to come clean, you may profit from the pirates.
So, instead of serial number locks.... Just embed the customer's name and address information in non-trial executables "This software is licensed to: John Doe"; Display the last 4 digits of some personal detail; store in the executable a private encryption key (Client SSL certificate), for securing communications with a remote server, trusted remote public key, and installation ID. No big serial numbers entered by the customer. No activation codes; possibly just an order number pre-populated with a number unique to the order. Customer-specific media.
Display the customer's information, with a copyright warning, when they start the program.
Have the installation process, also involve downloading an encrypted data file that will be used by the client.
Digitally sign the production executables using authenticode; or other code signing technology for your chosen OS.
Implement your server, such that all communications from the client must be digitally signed, with the private key (or authenticated with client certificate); that is unique to the customer.
Have clients periodically check in with the server; and provide a mechanism where the server can lock out a specific installation of the product, eg by quietly updating the data file to indicate ["As of 90 days from the date this new data file revision is delivered, this product will cease to function, until the customer answers our calls and gets a new license for this installation, or a piracy unlock"].
Include features in the software that subtly integrate services from a remote server. ("Cloud-enabled features").
For bonus points, include freemium features available for no charge, and other cloud-enabled features requiring a monthly or annual fee.
If pirated software is detected, the free features are shut off at the remote server.
You detect "innocent" piracy; when you over an extended period of time see a few; two or three more than the ordered
number copies of software active under a customer.
If it continues for a sufficiently long amount of time; possibly you send the legit customer a polite e-mail, or you arrange
for all their installations to prompt for a username and password next time the program starts, to
confirm that it's an installation authorized by the customer.
Obvious abuse occurs when you detect 100 or 200 extra copies of the product... well, in that case, you might still
go through the same process; or you might push out deactivation in 180 days, for all that customer's software;
and requirement for compensation, before that specific person is allowed to purchase more units.
You agreed to provide the code, and they decided to replace you -- the rational thing to do is recapture as much profit you were going to lose as you can.
Negotiate a new rate for the training; under the justification, that your marginal costs are going up -- conducting a training session to professional standards
requires extra preparation (a few extra hours of preparation for every hour of training, and additional resources, and time+energy to answer followup questions).
So get a rate that is 2 to 3x the rate of an hour development work, per hour of training, plus a flat fee.
Then reach an agreement about duration of the agreement, followup support questions, and future development work --
required retainer, and hourly rate scaled up, when fewer hours of development work are performed.
OK, but if you go with a smart-lightbulb solution, it means you need to pay multiple times for all the bulbs in the same fixture, $60 x 47 lightbulbs = $2820 + $199 = $3,019
The 50 bulbs wouldn't be enough capacity for me, after considering the two candelbra style fixtures that hold 16 bulbs ea.... and realistically, the outdoor bulbs will cost more.
Furthermore, all these LEDs have a relatively limited lifetime; within 15 years or so, you will be replacing bulbs.
In fact, you may need more equipment, due to limited wireless range or interference from other sources.
So... would you rather be able to point and click all your lights, or would you rather use that $3 to $4000 to buy a big screen TV, Laptop, iPad, android tablet, or perhaps a new stereo.... which is more efficient at bringing significant benefit for all that it costs, if you don't have?:)
Remote off/on control of home lights and appliances just isn't that useful.
Yeah it is... it's extremely useful; when combined with programming capabilities, it can save electricity,
reduce human effort, and improve security.
However, while it's useful... it's usually not useful enough to justify the price that manufacturers charge for it,
and the total cost of refitting existing buildings and appliances with remote control features
The automation people need is available through alternative methods that don't require remote control;
timer on the coffee pot; outdoor lights with built-in day-night/motion sensor (instead of remote controller
using the system time).
When the technology is as cheap as the extra cost you pay for a coffee pot to get the timer feature;
when the technology is as cheap as the extra percentage cost you pay for your car to get the "cruise control" feature
or the "radio feature"....
when the technology is as easy to use as those, and is as inexpensive to get setup and up and running as those;
Then the technology will start to be adopted.
Get it down to $5 - $10 per lightbulb, and if it's reliable and easy to use, it will become ubiquitous.
It provides a benefit.... that benefit is just worth less than $200
for a bridge to run it plus the ~$300 or so in terms of cost for additional building surge protection
(to prevent all the components getting fried next time there's a power storm), plus $50 per
switched light, plus $50 per controller, plus probably ~$70 per circuit average, to get the
electrician installation of the required components,;
amounting to probably ~$4000+ for true whole-home remote control of just the lights
'Really? My gingerbread phone has a VPN section in the network settings page. I can connect to my work VPN easily. Is this not a default thing built into all Android phones.....
An even better fix..., the AC should upgrade then, if he finds zero VPN support on his Android phone.
Either way, my point is valid in that that it's not "Apple's way or the highway"
Apple is a major factor in the Enterprise.
And it's not just because of something like an alleged difference in VPN support
And the AC's other points against Apple aren't significant.
About the Xserve... they don't have to make servers.
Their product in the Enterprise doesn't have to be MacOS.
Just b/c some enterprises would like some product roadmaps,
does not mean they are critical -- due to the advent of BYOD -
sell yourselves to the users (beancounters especially), and the Enterprise will follow;
not because the vendor has to court the Enterprise, but because the IT
management of the Enterprise has to serve the organization, which ultimately
means listening to the employees, and making the choices to maximize productivity
and profit....
Not that it matters in my case, as I can't tunnel into my work network without dual identification on the device
See, there ought to be a way for you to install a X509 certificate on the device, and use the -physical device- itself as the physical part of that dual identification.
But "my IT department has unusual, strong and burdensome requirements that artificially prevent use of the VPN function" is different from "phone has zero VPN support":)
One of my biggest pet peeves with Mac OS X is it's non-conformance to Focus Follows Mouse. Why can't Apple fix that for fucks sake?
For Focus follows mouse to be reasonable, they'd have to offer a way to turn off the menu at the top of the screen, and place the menus at the top of the application windows... otherwise, choosing a menu item without maximizing the window could be very difficult.
2: It is Apple's way or the highway. You don't want a camera on the iMac in a sensitive environment? Fine, don't buy them.
There are 3rd party service providers who specialize in removing the cameras from PC and smart phones.
There is an extra cost that you will incur, and there will be no discount for not having a camera, but it's not Apple's way or the highway
If it were not for the fact that Android has zero VPN capabilities, it would easily grab the lion's share of the enterprise market.
Android has zero VPN capabilities... it seems like that could easily be fixed, if it were really that important.
because apple will ultimately rip support for snow leopard away from you, while at the same time breaking your applications.
Are you saying that Microsoft won't ultimately rip support for Windows 7 from you (in favor of Windows 8), while at the same time breaking your applications?
But the guy in the background who is clearly visible, perhaps in the same trade as said person, but not affiliated, may ask to be blurred or cut out.
OK... but i'm not sure if that helps much if the story already aired on TV.
It would make more sense if they had a law requiring that the media would air a follow up on the same channel and show, to make a clarification, if an unfair insinuation was made about a bystander who incidentally happened to be there, and some economic burden had to be met by the complaintant to deter frivolous complaints.
If the news media had to ask, then you have an unreasonable prior restraint against free speech.
At some point, it is actually necessary to sacrifice the privacy rights, to protect the public.
Slashdot Mirror
BTCs may have fewer risks than actual currencies, because while they are subject to competitive market forces; there is actually a cost to produce a BTC. There is guaranteed to be a finite amount of BTC that can ever be produced, as long as the Bitcoin network continues to function, and has not been subverted technologically. You can be relatively sure BTC will be a viable exchange medium into the future, absent governments banning it entirely.
While I appreciate, that these are a couple of risks -- it could very well be that coins and cash currencies also have risks, even greater market risks than BTC -- resulting in BTC being a safer long-term storage, and currencies such as USD being a better idea for consumers for short-term exchange. They have a different set of risks: With USD, for example, the US treasury can print a large amount of money at any time; they can declare certain bills worthless; if money is in the bank, there is a chance that it could be seized without the knowledge of the account holder (until one day, when you really need that money and coincidentally some creditor or ID thief took it today...); there is a risk of identity theft (traditional currencies placed with a bank could be stolen -- because when you have physical dollars, they are easily stolen by physical thieves or fraudsters, and social engineering and insecure secrets such as SSN digits could be used against a bank to coerce them to make unauthorized transfers).
The government may devalue the currency, through poor management. Your bank may change their policies, e.g. they may quietly start charging inactive account fees on your savings account.
With BTC, your wallet kind of is your bank account as well, and you are not so reliant on a specific third party providing you a service -- to maintain the account terms, deposit interest rates, no maintenance fees, etc.
Furthermore, your bank can make an accounting error, or an employeen can conduct a fraud in which the result is that money you did not spend is removed from your account. With BTC, you are assured this can't happen, without someone compromising cryptographic secrets that you can secure.
With BTC, while the possibility of theft through malware exists, you don't need a bank, and you have control over how you secure the cryptographic secrets required to transfer your Bitcoins, without requiring a specific third party to act -- if you are sufficiently paranoid, you can divide bitcoins into as many accounts as you like, and very effectively eliminate the possibility of large theft; even "legal" theft, without you're knowing about it until the check bounces -- when some creditor decided to levy your bank account.
Not even close. They are designed to be hard to make, to only be made at a pre-determined rate, and for new supplies to eventually run out. Bit-coins are designed to be limited in supply.
Indeed.. under the current design, the eventual amount of bitcoins available is guaranteed to be finite.
There are really only two forseeable long-term outcomes with regards to the value of bitcoins.... (1) They tend to become worth zero or less over time relative to their worth at previous times [either because of a flaw in the underlying crypto algorithms compromises the protocol, or, a significantly large number of people stop using the bitcoins, in sufficient number that Bitcoins become unusable as as an asset for trade/exchange, and therefore consumer demand for bitcoins eventually shrinks to a smaller amount at a given market clearing price] -- if there is a plentiful supply of people who have bitcoins (for example, through mining), and a very small amount of demanded product available for purchase that require Bitcoins to purchase, the demanded quantity for bitcoins will decrease, and they will eventually become worthless --- However, as long as there are demands for products that vendors will accept bitcoins for (ESPECIALLY services in demand for which v
I started with Slackware, back when Ubuntu didn't exist. If you're not happy with Ubuntu's stability, you don't have to start with it.
Show me a feminist actively petitioning for mandatory selective service registration for women, and I'll accept that there's the possibility of there being at least one feminist who's actually interested in "equality."
You're right of course... Where is the masculinist movement petitioning for equality regarding selective service registration?
I'm hoping she'll get a new job, but that it won't have anything to do with Python, or programming.
She seems like a repeat offender, so if she's allowed back into such a conference again, or to confer with developers again: I'm afraid the same behavior might be repeated.
Fired from life is too harsh. Exile from the community she doesn't understand is OK.
Then she got fired for rocking the boar. Case closed.
I think she didn't get fired for rocking the boat, she got fired for creating a hole in the boat by setting off hidden explosives, intended to send two sailors into the sea, because she was too cowardly to complain to them, and ask them to stop an annoying behavior.
An 8 year girl just gave up on becoming a programmer, because of you.
No, maybe she decided to give up on Python though, and learn a real programming language such as ADA, however.
The problem is that she handled it in an extremely immature fashion. I'm not necessarily saying that she should have let it go, but posting the pictures online without giving them a chance to explain, is rather poor form for an evangelist.
Definitely. She assumed they intended to offend (regardless of their actual intentions. She decided to respond in a sneaky underhanded aggressive way, by covertly taking a picture, and posting it all over the internet; in other words, she made a direct personal attack in public view of the world.
If she were not so cowardly and underhanded, she could have responded to their comments right then and there, or took her picture, but brought her report to the event organizers, instead of launching an unreasonable public personal attack.
Up until this point, they've had a competitive advantage over stores with an in state presence that do have to charge the sales tax, people self reporting makes no sense as it's entirely unfair to expect people to keep track of that many small purchases.
Often not... because goods in state could be purchased in person, without the additional cost of shipping added to the regular price of goods.
Strangely, the cost of shipping is often similar to or greater than the tax rate. So if you had to pay both a tax and extra shipping cost; the in-state business would be at a great advantage.
So in some cases the out-of-state goods have a cost advantage, in others they do not.
However, as far as the cost to the state is concerned... the shippers pay taxes. And there is very little state infrastructure used to conduct the marketing of out-of-state goods. It's unfair that the buyer or outer-of-state retailer be taxed, as if they needed all the local infrastructure required to support a retail store within the state.
So you want them to prepare for a thing that they may choose to simply never do.
Correct.
Have you ever been in a grocery store with the lights off? It's dark. Turn off the HVAC, and it gets mighty uncomfortable in a hurry.
Running compressors and keeping enough lights and climate control going to even make it safe for the public to enter is a huge proposition.
They don't have to plan to make it comfortable; they only have to make it safe.
If there's no way to make it safe for the public without electricity and without buying generators, then that's fair. They can deny public entry; open the windows for ventilation, and do business at the door instead.
What good is a store's disaster planning if they can't get supplies trucked in?
If they can't get supplies trucked in, then it's not merely a power outage.
It's illegal to mark up prices during an emergency.
They must be able to pass on their additional costs, including the cost associated with increased risk of doing business without power, additional security costs, reduced efficiencies, and the government has no authority over whether a business refuses sale or demands a higher price, before completing a sale contract.
So when there are 500 people lined up outside and enough food/supplies inside for 100 of them, how do you expect the 5 employees inside to "adjust to this new equilibrium"
Unless you are a very large facility, with many employees on duty, the answer is you can't meet that demand.
So possibly you do your trade differently -- maybe by auctioning off pallets of essentials to the highest bidder; encouraging large buyers to come in, buy the pallet, and then solve the distribution problem through person-to-person trading.
In the event that a crowd is anticipated, you gate off the parking lot, and only allow the specified number of cars in.
You keep the doors locked, and only allow the number of people in, that your staff can effectively monitor and personally attend to.
Or you may start taking orders from customers outside; collect payment; then staff will bring out the items, without any customer being allowed in.
It's not as if there are not options
There is a sandwich shop downtown that closes for two weeks every summer, just to allow every person there to have some time off.
(1) A sandwich shop sells prepared food; they prepare food, then sell it, they are not selling an off-the-shelf product. Preparing food requires cooking it generally, which generally requires electricity. Therefore, I would say, they don't need to be open without power. Also; if they planned to close in advance, and that is their custom, of course, they can do that... it has nothing to do with any emergency that exists or might happen to coincide with their planned closing period.
(2) I am speaking of stores that sell essential commercial off-the-shelf products (groceries, pharmaceuticals, health products, gasoline, other essentials)--- I am not suggesting they be disallowed from closing. Only that they are required to have staff trained, be prepared, safety preparations and planning in advance, and halve all planning in place to remain open during times when electricity is down, or communications are down, and be able to demonstrate their contingency plans and training they have implemented for managers and staff.
In other words, they have to be prepared and plan to remain open; they retain a right to close. They might close, because no customers are visiting them, during an electrical outage.
Not that I think any of these things should be mandated. If the power is out for any length of time the store will compensate. People are going to want to make money and sell things, believe it or no
The problem is... people don't generally stock up food in modern times, so if the store shuts down unexpectedly, people may starve to death, or there may be chaos on the streets, because 20% of people ran out of this week's supply and can't buy food they need to survive.
Stores provide convenient shopping, but without regulation to the contrary, they have no reason to prepare for extreme contingencies such as long-term power outages -- its cheaper to not be prepared for them; having employees available and trained to work without electricity is more expensive.
It makes sense that requirement that stores meet certain standards of preparedness should be part of a locality's disaster planning. A certain standard of reliability: they're not just going to temporarily close up shop, whenever disruption of infrastructure makes it inconvenient to due business; even if they will operate under reduced profit, or have to mark up items to a higher price to properly cover their additional costs, or to adjust to the new equilibrium between supply and demand during the emergency, it's better than closing up shop, and they should be required to stay open, unless there is an evacuation, or there are not a sufficient number of employees able to report.
And how do you check that a store is staffed adequately BEFORE the disaster strikes? Do you require a certain number of employees to live within walking distance? Do you ensure that they live in houses that are outside of a flood zone
No. A flood is a different kind of emergency from a power outage or communications failure alone.
What is your solution to having too much cash on hand? Even corner supermarkets have problems with too much cash.
On site vault. Armed security staff.
Are you suggesting that Bitcoin is as safe as the USD? One of those still works when the lights go out...
That raises an interesting question... what happens to the blockchain, when the internet goes down for a while? How long do bitcoins continue to exist, when there is no bitcoin network? how does it ever get reinstated?
What if bitcoin is the only currency, and there's no way to pay workers to get it back up and running?
but they couldn't get their cash register system up and were unable to make any sales (not even cash sales) until the registers came back up. It took most of a day to get the registers working.
This is bothersome... I would favor a law, that in order to be a licensed retailer: one of the things you must do is show that you are prepared to operate during an emergency where electricity or communication services are unavailable. To be allowed the privilege of providing publicly accessible space and offering goods for sale on a regular basis, you must do this.
I recommend no upfront enforcement. But delayed enforcement mechanisms, where you seek to detect piracy rather than prevent it. Detect it as covertly as possible -- arrange for the pirated version to stop working or fall into a degraded mode of operation suddenly, after a sufficient period of time elapsed, or at a new release, while you make as certain as possible that legitimate customers are not impacted. Don't tip your hand in regards to what all your defense mechanisms are; instead of seeking to block pirates, seek to make their use of your software unreliable or full of annoying surprises.
Normally when there's an upfront enforcement mechanism such as a serial number, the defense is easily detected and subverted.
On the other hand; if your defense is broader, and the code less identifiable, you may frustrate pirates into confessing and buying.
I see the goal is to convert pirates into customers, which might not always be possible --- but by frustrating them, and then offering them a "discount" to come clean, you may profit from the pirates.
So, instead of serial number locks.... Just embed the customer's name and address information in non-trial executables "This software is licensed to: John Doe"; Display the last 4 digits of some personal detail; store in the executable a private encryption key (Client SSL certificate), for securing communications with a remote server, trusted remote public key, and installation ID. No big serial numbers entered by the customer. No activation codes; possibly just an order number pre-populated with a number unique to the order. Customer-specific media.
Display the customer's information, with a copyright warning, when they start the program.
Have the installation process, also involve downloading an encrypted data file that will be used by the client.
Digitally sign the production executables using authenticode; or other code signing technology for your chosen OS.
Implement your server, such that all communications from the client must be digitally signed, with the private key (or authenticated with client certificate); that is unique to the customer.
Have clients periodically check in with the server; and provide a mechanism where the server can lock out a specific installation of the product, eg by quietly updating the data file to indicate ["As of 90 days from the date this new data file revision is delivered, this product will cease to function, until the customer answers our calls and gets a new license for this installation, or a piracy unlock"].
Include features in the software that subtly integrate services from a remote server. ("Cloud-enabled features").
For bonus points, include freemium features available for no charge, and other cloud-enabled features requiring a monthly or annual fee.
If pirated software is detected, the free features are shut off at the remote server.
You detect "innocent" piracy; when you over an extended period of time see a few; two or three more than the ordered number copies of software active under a customer.
If it continues for a sufficiently long amount of time; possibly you send the legit customer a polite e-mail, or you arrange for all their installations to prompt for a username and password next time the program starts, to confirm that it's an installation authorized by the customer.
Obvious abuse occurs when you detect 100 or 200 extra copies of the product... well, in that case, you might still go through the same process; or you might push out deactivation in 180 days, for all that customer's software; and requirement for compensation, before that specific person is allowed to purchase more units.
You agreed to provide the code, and they decided to replace you -- the rational thing to do is recapture as much profit you were going to lose as you can.
Negotiate a new rate for the training; under the justification, that your marginal costs are going up -- conducting a training session to professional standards requires extra preparation (a few extra hours of preparation for every hour of training, and additional resources, and time+energy to answer followup questions).
So get a rate that is 2 to 3x the rate of an hour development work, per hour of training, plus a flat fee.
Then reach an agreement about duration of the agreement, followup support questions, and future development work -- required retainer, and hourly rate scaled up, when fewer hours of development work are performed.
OK, but if you go with a smart-lightbulb solution, it means you need to pay multiple times for all the bulbs in the same fixture, $60 x 47 lightbulbs = $2820 + $199 = $3,019
The 50 bulbs wouldn't be enough capacity for me, after considering the two candelbra style fixtures that hold 16 bulbs ea.... and realistically, the outdoor bulbs will cost more.
Furthermore, all these LEDs have a relatively limited lifetime; within 15 years or so, you will be replacing bulbs.
In fact, you may need more equipment, due to limited wireless range or interference from other sources.
So... would you rather be able to point and click all your lights, or would you rather use that $3 to $4000 to buy a big screen TV, Laptop, iPad, android tablet, or perhaps a new stereo.... which is more efficient at bringing significant benefit for all that it costs, if you don't have? :)
Remote off/on control of home lights and appliances just isn't that useful.
Yeah it is... it's extremely useful; when combined with programming capabilities, it can save electricity, reduce human effort, and improve security.
However, while it's useful... it's usually not useful enough to justify the price that manufacturers charge for it, and the total cost of refitting existing buildings and appliances with remote control features
The automation people need is available through alternative methods that don't require remote control; timer on the coffee pot; outdoor lights with built-in day-night/motion sensor (instead of remote controller using the system time).
When the technology is as cheap as the extra cost you pay for a coffee pot to get the timer feature; when the technology is as cheap as the extra percentage cost you pay for your car to get the "cruise control" feature or the "radio feature".... when the technology is as easy to use as those, and is as inexpensive to get setup and up and running as those;
Then the technology will start to be adopted. Get it down to $5 - $10 per lightbulb, and if it's reliable and easy to use, it will become ubiquitous.
It provides a benefit.... that benefit is just worth less than $200 for a bridge to run it plus the ~$300 or so in terms of cost for additional building surge protection (to prevent all the components getting fried next time there's a power storm), plus $50 per switched light, plus $50 per controller, plus probably ~$70 per circuit average, to get the electrician installation of the required components,; amounting to probably ~$4000+ for true whole-home remote control of just the lights
'Really? My gingerbread phone has a VPN section in the network settings page. I can connect to my work VPN easily. Is this not a default thing built into all Android phones .....
An even better fix..., the AC should upgrade then, if he finds zero VPN support on his Android phone.
Either way, my point is valid in that that it's not "Apple's way or the highway"
Apple is a major factor in the Enterprise. And it's not just because of something like an alleged difference in VPN support
And the AC's other points against Apple aren't significant. About the Xserve... they don't have to make servers. Their product in the Enterprise doesn't have to be MacOS.
Just b/c some enterprises would like some product roadmaps, does not mean they are critical -- due to the advent of BYOD - sell yourselves to the users (beancounters especially), and the Enterprise will follow; not because the vendor has to court the Enterprise, but because the IT management of the Enterprise has to serve the organization, which ultimately means listening to the employees, and making the choices to maximize productivity and profit....
Not that it matters in my case, as I can't tunnel into my work network without dual identification on the device
See, there ought to be a way for you to install a X509 certificate on the device, and use the -physical device- itself as the physical part of that dual identification.
But "my IT department has unusual, strong and burdensome requirements that artificially prevent use of the VPN function" is different from "phone has zero VPN support" :)
One of my biggest pet peeves with Mac OS X is it's non-conformance to Focus Follows Mouse. Why can't Apple fix that for fucks sake?
For Focus follows mouse to be reasonable, they'd have to offer a way to turn off the menu at the top of the screen, and place the menus at the top of the application windows... otherwise, choosing a menu item without maximizing the window could be very difficult.
2: It is Apple's way or the highway. You don't want a camera on the iMac in a sensitive environment? Fine, don't buy them.
There are 3rd party service providers who specialize in removing the cameras from PC and smart phones. There is an extra cost that you will incur, and there will be no discount for not having a camera, but it's not Apple's way or the highway
If it were not for the fact that Android has zero VPN capabilities, it would easily grab the lion's share of the enterprise market.
Android has zero VPN capabilities... it seems like that could easily be fixed, if it were really that important.
Possibly by applications using HTTPS proxy.
because apple will ultimately rip support for snow leopard away from you, while at the same time breaking your applications.
Are you saying that Microsoft won't ultimately rip support for Windows 7 from you (in favor of Windows 8), while at the same time breaking your applications?
But the guy in the background who is clearly visible, perhaps in the same trade as said person, but not affiliated, may ask to be blurred or cut out.
OK... but i'm not sure if that helps much if the story already aired on TV. It would make more sense if they had a law requiring that the media would air a follow up on the same channel and show, to make a clarification, if an unfair insinuation was made about a bystander who incidentally happened to be there, and some economic burden had to be met by the complaintant to deter frivolous complaints.
If the news media had to ask, then you have an unreasonable prior restraint against free speech.
At some point, it is actually necessary to sacrifice the privacy rights, to protect the public.