at night after you close up shop, roll down a fake shop front that makes the joint look like a dive that nobody would bother taking a second look at let alone going to the trouble of breaking into
i bought a really nice bike years ago when i started university and it was stolen (locked up in an open public place within the university grounds)... talking to campus security revealed that it was commonplace and that the solution was to use a cheap shitty looking bike because they aren't targeted
in other words... make your store appear less of a target; if you have massive steel bars on the windows and security cameras everywhere, crims will think you are protecting something of value. i dunno what the store sells, but you may want to look at what measures are used by other similar stores in the area.
there are a bunch of possible reasons why your store could have been targeted: - what sort of neighborhood is it in? (maybe shift to somewhere with lower crime) - do you have any enemies? (think outside the box here a bit, such as does your wife have nasty spats on facebook? women can be as vindictive as men) - how do you get on with your competitors? (you're not competing with the mafia are you?) - are the police offering any advice? if so, maybe consider following it
at the end of the day, you need to analyze how it is affecting your business overall. i'm guessing you're not in the security business so having bars on the windows and alarms and cameras probably is costing a lot and not contributing to increased sales. the decisions you make should be sound business decisions, as well as consideration of your personal or family situation if you think there is any risk (what happens if someone comes in while you are in the store?). for the business, add it to your threats column and see how it all stacks up. if you are spending more on security to the point where you're not making enough to pay your bills then the viability of your business in on the line. continuing an unviable business out of spite for the criminals is stupid obviously (that's how government's think, not small busininesses).
trying to shape the problem to suit a solution that an IT specialist can help with is putting the cart before the horse; more security may not be the right solution.
there isn't really enough info provided to give much more of a story but its a fairly common problem with shop fronts so there should be a lot of folks out there with ideas.
call homeland security and tell them that terrorists broke in
they will be all over it like flies on shit
just don't expect to do much business... everyone that walks into the store will have to be anally probed and interrogated, and there is a good chance every 3rd one will be sent to guantanamo bay on suspicion without charge... especially kids cos they are a real security risk (just ask the TSA)
i dunno whether the whole 'mad-made' (or 'anthropomorphic' or whatever other names there are) issue is even relevant... it's an issue regardless of the cause and there is a need to address is before it addresses humanity in a rather unfavorable manner (like permanent flooding of all the heavily populated coastlines of the world).
it's like the whole 'spending crisis' in the us government... why the hell do they keep bickering about whose fault it is? if they don't get over themselves and do something about it there may well be no economy left to bicker over (well certainly none that the government has any level of control over). yeah i know those keynesians think they know everything, but history shows they are full of shit and businessmen in the real world like peter schiff were right no matter how they spin it.
rtfa? this is slashdot... why the hell would i do that? most of the articles i have read on slashdot are full of stupidness... my interest is in the comments
"year of the linux desktop" has been an inside joke for years, but a decent chunk of the modern world depends on linux already (often without even realising it), which is why i would argue that "year of the linux desktop" doesn't even really matter because linux has already made its mark and is increasing its domination
microsoft and apple may win their little battles, but linux has the war beat with one hand tied behind its back
policy of cloud usage is a problem, but i think the problems can be solved. i also think that problems are much worse in the united states than they are elsewhere because of privacy and security concerns from laws like patriot and the ndaa. i also think as the technical issues of cloud migration are settled, we will probably see a lot more smaller hosting startups because of access, trust and liability requirements for businesses. the availability offered by industrial data centers obviously has advantages, but there are a lot of supposed "five nines" availability providers that rarely actually live up to that but customers still pay a premium.
Of course i do, which is why i wonder why you would present me with an 'unequivalent proposition', you claim you can get a different laptop with the same specs for 1/2 the cost and cannot understand why somebody wouldn't do that. The obvious answer would be that they are unequivalent, as such that should tell you immediately there must be a reason for it and if you present me with a concrete example i will tell you what it is.
there are laptops made by companies other than apple that have equivalent performance specs to apple laptops but are much cheaper (exact fraction being irrelevant; original figures were illustrative only). maybe if take apple out of the picture to help remove any subjectivity; if you had the choice of two hamburgers... both had the same ingredients, both were the same size and weight, but one was cheaper, which would you buy? most would obviously buy the cheaper one unless there was some aspect of the other that you perceived to make the extra expense worth it (maybe you saw the guy making the cheaper one looked like a druggo or something). i guess where i'm coming from in the whole apple thing is that i can't identify with that aspect that makes the extra expense of an apple product worth while when just about everything in cheaper products is the same. the only thing i can think of that's obvious is appearance, and aesthetics is important, but surely its worth in a laptop can only be so much, and i just can't see how it could be worth all of the difference.
How can i give you a valid reason for choosing one item over another when you don't tell me what those items are?
but i did... "q: why spend $2000 on a laptop when you can get a different laptop with the same specs for $1000?"
one is a laptop made by apple, the other is a laptop with the same specs made by any other company (such as toshiba)
if you want to get specific, there are some slight differences (flash hdd for mac over sata for satellite, 256 gb storage for mac vs 750 gb for satellite, different os, 1gb gddr for mac vs 2gb gddr for satellite) but generally they appear to be similar in spec.
so tell me what about the mac justifies the extra $1200? - i personally think retina is a big wank (what's the point of having smaller pixels if you can't take advantage of them with a higher resolution?) - flash hdd may be better, but smaller capacity makes it less of an 'upgrade' (likely requiring an additional removable hdd; pain in the ass) - didn't go into depth with the graphics comparison, but the mac would have to be super fucking crazy awesome to make it worth it
i look forward to your response, but i won't hold my breath:)
not sensible for a thing that needs to receive regular security updates to have most of the (vulnerable) code in read-only storage
i dunno... i reckon making vulnerable code read-only seems like a pretty good way to prevent any vulnerabilities being taken advantage of... perhaps not while in resident memory, but certainly in case of file infections
security updates are useful, but not always absolutely essential... many modem/routers never get updated (even though most can be) and set-top boxes etc (the 'embedded systems' you refer to). regarding general computing devices, if you're not doing anything that requires root access (like installing system apps) then a linux system will generally be secure. a simple example of this is the use of stable releases for reliability of servers in data centers. stable distros are often months behind the latest release, but are preferred for their lower maintenance requirements. there are ways to automatically install just security updates (in debian anyways) but even that can pose an unjustifyable stability risk.
the android application layer (dalvik) is a different kettle of fish, and i'm not sure how much of dalvik is stored in rom on the particular device in question (i don't have one) but by far the biggest security risk to android is conventional apps downloaded from google play, which obviously aren't stored in rom and can/should be updated. regardless of how many holes there are in dalvik and the apps running on it, as long as dalvik isn't running as root (which i assume in most cases and in line with how linux generally works that it would run as a separate user just like mysql and apache etc) there is little risk to the underlying linux kernel.
complaining that a 1GHz phone with 512MB of RAM is underpowered is ridiculous
many nas servers are run on 1ghz/512mb or less so i agree
the problem isn't the os itself, its the apps (read: games) that the user wants to install on top of the os
all programs end up being "functionless" if you look at the compiled opcodes
functional programming is the basis of code reuse, and you could think of oop as being functional to some extent (classes have methods that are like functions that operate on objects) but oop has the overheads associated with rtti and keeping track of inheritance and polymorphism. this isn't to say that classes are useless... for things like database engines where you are dealing with multiple types of data for fields etc, abstraction is definitely useful, but i think a lot of programmers use classes because they are either lazy or they are lacking in functional programming skills (most programmers know how to write a function, but proper functional programming requires thinking a little differently to manage data, which requires a bit of 'old school' thinking like explicit pointers rather than implicitly passing objects by reference that is taken for granted in modern oop languages).
won't be long... microsoft knew long ago that w8 was a looming disaster so they'll be frantically trying to make up some new icons for w7 so they can rebrand it as w9.
maybe it'll have some kind of new bastardized desktop icons resulting from a traditional icon having sex with a desktop widget to spawn something like those rediculous tiles in w8... maybe to at least attempt to avoid appearing like a complete backflip
not that i know but i've heard that being gay or living in your mom's basement is apparently a good way to prevent infection by the female program. i assume apple users most likely use these kind of defenses.
i think maybe we're sort of talking across each other
compilers are much smarter than they used to be, but software is still extremely unstable (just have a look at your windows update history and see all the hotfixes and security patches that nowadays often get installed in the background without the user even knowing; an illusion of stability and freedom of bugs).
c is probably the most efficient (whether it is compiled by a c compiler or c++ compiler is irrelevant; i'm talking about the langauge used in the program and avoiding oo). most low level hardware interfaces are still written in c.
debugging is and has always been the hardest and longest part of developing software and patterns or not this will remain the case, but use of design patterns while being efficient for the programmer are wasteful for a program because it tries to fit every problem into a given set of solutions, with less allowance for creativity and skill (the art of programming). software companies will always favor patterns because they make developing software cheaper, but that is often at the expense of the user experience. companies need to make a profit and without patterns software would probably be much more expensive for the user, but they don't make programs more efficient to run.
compilers are dumb machines. they can optimise small parts of the code that fit known patterns, but they can't optimize at the architectural level. algorithms (in the sense that standard patterns can be used) aren't really that bigger part of an application unless you're talking about a small tool like a linux cli tool.
i think a lot of the waste is in use of patterns that are overly generic, such as a class with loads of interfaces/methods/properties etc that are useful for a bunch of different scenarios, which again makes programming much more efficient, but makes more more bloated executables and less efficient running time. compilers are good at stripping out a lot of useless stuff (such as unused variables and procedures), but they can't strip everything, and all those clock cycles spent on conditions determining that a generic class isn't trying to perform a host of other functions that it could but doesn't need to in a specific program could be saved with development of algorithms that are specifically designed for the required task.
anyway, enjoyable and thought provoking discussion. i use objects a lot in delphi, but i tend to avoid them in php in favor of functional programs and each has their strengths and weaknesses. i just think that functional code "can" be made to run faster than oo, but i guess it depends on the programmer.
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a simple sign on the door at night will do the trick: "WARNING: ANTI-PERSONNEL MINE TESTING FACILITY"
at night after you close up shop, roll down a fake shop front that makes the joint look like a dive that nobody would bother taking a second look at let alone going to the trouble of breaking into
nukes... adopt the tried and true MAD principle :)
just put a sign on the door "this business is owned by the mob"
i bought a really nice bike years ago when i started university and it was stolen (locked up in an open public place within the university grounds)... talking to campus security revealed that it was commonplace and that the solution was to use a cheap shitty looking bike because they aren't targeted
in other words... make your store appear less of a target; if you have massive steel bars on the windows and security cameras everywhere, crims will think you are protecting something of value. i dunno what the store sells, but you may want to look at what measures are used by other similar stores in the area.
there are a bunch of possible reasons why your store could have been targeted:
- what sort of neighborhood is it in? (maybe shift to somewhere with lower crime)
- do you have any enemies? (think outside the box here a bit, such as does your wife have nasty spats on facebook? women can be as vindictive as men)
- how do you get on with your competitors? (you're not competing with the mafia are you?)
- are the police offering any advice? if so, maybe consider following it
at the end of the day, you need to analyze how it is affecting your business overall. i'm guessing you're not in the security business so having bars on the windows and alarms and cameras probably is costing a lot and not contributing to increased sales. the decisions you make should be sound business decisions, as well as consideration of your personal or family situation if you think there is any risk (what happens if someone comes in while you are in the store?). for the business, add it to your threats column and see how it all stacks up. if you are spending more on security to the point where you're not making enough to pay your bills then the viability of your business in on the line. continuing an unviable business out of spite for the criminals is stupid obviously (that's how government's think, not small busininesses).
trying to shape the problem to suit a solution that an IT specialist can help with is putting the cart before the horse; more security may not be the right solution.
there isn't really enough info provided to give much more of a story but its a fairly common problem with shop fronts so there should be a lot of folks out there with ideas.
call homeland security and tell them that terrorists broke in
they will be all over it like flies on shit
just don't expect to do much business... everyone that walks into the store will have to be anally probed and interrogated, and there is a good chance every 3rd one will be sent to guantanamo bay on suspicion without charge... especially kids cos they are a real security risk (just ask the TSA)
i dunno whether the whole 'mad-made' (or 'anthropomorphic' or whatever other names there are) issue is even relevant... it's an issue regardless of the cause and there is a need to address is before it addresses humanity in a rather unfavorable manner (like permanent flooding of all the heavily populated coastlines of the world).
it's like the whole 'spending crisis' in the us government... why the hell do they keep bickering about whose fault it is? if they don't get over themselves and do something about it there may well be no economy left to bicker over (well certainly none that the government has any level of control over). yeah i know those keynesians think they know everything, but history shows they are full of shit and businessmen in the real world like peter schiff were right no matter how they spin it.
rtfa? this is slashdot... why the hell would i do that? most of the articles i have read on slashdot are full of stupidness... my interest is in the comments
"year of the linux desktop" has been an inside joke for years, but a decent chunk of the modern world depends on linux already (often without even realising it), which is why i would argue that "year of the linux desktop" doesn't even really matter because linux has already made its mark and is increasing its domination
microsoft and apple may win their little battles, but linux has the war beat with one hand tied behind its back
policy of cloud usage is a problem, but i think the problems can be solved. i also think that problems are much worse in the united states than they are elsewhere because of privacy and security concerns from laws like patriot and the ndaa. i also think as the technical issues of cloud migration are settled, we will probably see a lot more smaller hosting startups because of access, trust and liability requirements for businesses. the availability offered by industrial data centers obviously has advantages, but there are a lot of supposed "five nines" availability providers that rarely actually live up to that but customers still pay a premium.
Of course i do, which is why i wonder why you would present me with an 'unequivalent proposition', you claim you can get a different laptop with the same specs for 1/2 the cost and cannot understand why somebody wouldn't do that. The obvious answer would be that they are unequivalent, as such that should tell you immediately there must be a reason for it and if you present me with a concrete example i will tell you what it is.
there are laptops made by companies other than apple that have equivalent performance specs to apple laptops but are much cheaper (exact fraction being irrelevant; original figures were illustrative only). maybe if take apple out of the picture to help remove any subjectivity; if you had the choice of two hamburgers... both had the same ingredients, both were the same size and weight, but one was cheaper, which would you buy? most would obviously buy the cheaper one unless there was some aspect of the other that you perceived to make the extra expense worth it (maybe you saw the guy making the cheaper one looked like a druggo or something). i guess where i'm coming from in the whole apple thing is that i can't identify with that aspect that makes the extra expense of an apple product worth while when just about everything in cheaper products is the same. the only thing i can think of that's obvious is appearance, and aesthetics is important, but surely its worth in a laptop can only be so much, and i just can't see how it could be worth all of the difference.
How can i give you a valid reason for choosing one item over another when you don't tell me what those items are?
but i did... "q: why spend $2000 on a laptop when you can get a different laptop with the same specs for $1000?"
one is a laptop made by apple, the other is a laptop with the same specs made by any other company (such as toshiba)
if you want to get specific, there are some slight differences (flash hdd for mac over sata for satellite, 256 gb storage for mac vs 750 gb for satellite, different os, 1gb gddr for mac vs 2gb gddr for satellite) but generally they appear to be similar in spec.
http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?afid=p219|GOAU&cid=AOS-AU-KWG-PLA
15-inch: 2.4GHz
i7,15in,8gb ram,256gb flash hdd, 1gb gddr
with Retina display
AU$2,499.00
http://www.mytoshiba.com.au/products/computers/satellite/pro#
Satellite Pro L850
i7,15in,8gb ram,750gb sata hdd,2gb gddr
AU$1,299.00
so tell me what about the mac justifies the extra $1200?
- i personally think retina is a big wank (what's the point of having smaller pixels if you can't take advantage of them with a higher resolution?)
- flash hdd may be better, but smaller capacity makes it less of an 'upgrade' (likely requiring an additional removable hdd; pain in the ass)
- didn't go into depth with the graphics comparison, but the mac would have to be super fucking crazy awesome to make it worth it
i look forward to your response, but i won't hold my breath :)
not sensible for a thing that needs to receive regular security updates to have most of the (vulnerable) code in read-only storage
i dunno... i reckon making vulnerable code read-only seems like a pretty good way to prevent any vulnerabilities being taken advantage of... perhaps not while in resident memory, but certainly in case of file infections
security updates are useful, but not always absolutely essential... many modem/routers never get updated (even though most can be) and set-top boxes etc (the 'embedded systems' you refer to). regarding general computing devices, if you're not doing anything that requires root access (like installing system apps) then a linux system will generally be secure. a simple example of this is the use of stable releases for reliability of servers in data centers. stable distros are often months behind the latest release, but are preferred for their lower maintenance requirements. there are ways to automatically install just security updates (in debian anyways) but even that can pose an unjustifyable stability risk.
the android application layer (dalvik) is a different kettle of fish, and i'm not sure how much of dalvik is stored in rom on the particular device in question (i don't have one) but by far the biggest security risk to android is conventional apps downloaded from google play, which obviously aren't stored in rom and can/should be updated. regardless of how many holes there are in dalvik and the apps running on it, as long as dalvik isn't running as root (which i assume in most cases and in line with how linux generally works that it would run as a separate user just like mysql and apache etc) there is little risk to the underlying linux kernel.
complaining that a 1GHz phone with 512MB of RAM is underpowered is ridiculous
many nas servers are run on 1ghz/512mb or less so i agree
the problem isn't the os itself, its the apps (read: games) that the user wants to install on top of the os
spews of trolls: cruft that flatters
all programs end up being "functionless" if you look at the compiled opcodes
functional programming is the basis of code reuse, and you could think of oop as being functional to some extent (classes have methods that are like functions that operate on objects) but oop has the overheads associated with rtti and keeping track of inheritance and polymorphism. this isn't to say that classes are useless... for things like database engines where you are dealing with multiple types of data for fields etc, abstraction is definitely useful, but i think a lot of programmers use classes because they are either lazy or they are lacking in functional programming skills (most programmers know how to write a function, but proper functional programming requires thinking a little differently to manage data, which requires a bit of 'old school' thinking like explicit pointers rather than implicitly passing objects by reference that is taken for granted in modern oop languages).
won't be long... microsoft knew long ago that w8 was a looming disaster so they'll be frantically trying to make up some new icons for w7 so they can rebrand it as w9.
maybe it'll have some kind of new bastardized desktop icons resulting from a traditional icon having sex with a desktop widget to spawn something like those rediculous tiles in w8... maybe to at least attempt to avoid appearing like a complete backflip
lucky for them much of the cloud is powered by linux
when i read "windows rtm" the first thing that came to mind was "read the manual"
maybe linux ideology is already infiltrating... by stealth :)
but would it double as a cock ring?
except that if it has an apple logo it won't be geeky anymore regardless of what it looks like
a good smart watch needs a handset shaped like a shoe... you can't get smart without the old phone in the shoe trick
or an appendage shaped like steve jobs' knob
or just shove your phone up your ass
global warming has been proven and doesn't require belief... whether governments, government-controlled media, or fruitloops like you like it or not
oh c'mon
why don't you go back to sitting in the corner you dunce
not that i know but i've heard that being gay or living in your mom's basement is apparently a good way to prevent infection by the female program. i assume apple users most likely use these kind of defenses.
i think maybe we're sort of talking across each other
compilers are much smarter than they used to be, but software is still extremely unstable (just have a look at your windows update history and see all the hotfixes and security patches that nowadays often get installed in the background without the user even knowing; an illusion of stability and freedom of bugs).
c is probably the most efficient (whether it is compiled by a c compiler or c++ compiler is irrelevant; i'm talking about the langauge used in the program and avoiding oo). most low level hardware interfaces are still written in c.
debugging is and has always been the hardest and longest part of developing software and patterns or not this will remain the case, but use of design patterns while being efficient for the programmer are wasteful for a program because it tries to fit every problem into a given set of solutions, with less allowance for creativity and skill (the art of programming). software companies will always favor patterns because they make developing software cheaper, but that is often at the expense of the user experience. companies need to make a profit and without patterns software would probably be much more expensive for the user, but they don't make programs more efficient to run.
compilers are dumb machines. they can optimise small parts of the code that fit known patterns, but they can't optimize at the architectural level. algorithms (in the sense that standard patterns can be used) aren't really that bigger part of an application unless you're talking about a small tool like a linux cli tool.
i think a lot of the waste is in use of patterns that are overly generic, such as a class with loads of interfaces/methods/properties etc that are useful for a bunch of different scenarios, which again makes programming much more efficient, but makes more more bloated executables and less efficient running time. compilers are good at stripping out a lot of useless stuff (such as unused variables and procedures), but they can't strip everything, and all those clock cycles spent on conditions determining that a generic class isn't trying to perform a host of other functions that it could but doesn't need to in a specific program could be saved with development of algorithms that are specifically designed for the required task.
anyway, enjoyable and thought provoking discussion. i use objects a lot in delphi, but i tend to avoid them in php in favor of functional programs and each has their strengths and weaknesses. i just think that functional code "can" be made to run faster than oo, but i guess it depends on the programmer.