There are programs that run on XP64 that don't work on XP32 or 7-32/64?
Even then, XPx64 isn't exactly accounting for that 5% of installed that have been compromised.
I think kaspersky and the paid version of AVG both supported XP 64 at one point. Whether or not you could find anything that does anymore is another matter.
"Safety Scanner, which replaced an older online-only tool, uses the same technology and detection signatures as Microsoft's free consumer-grade Security Essentials antivirus program and its Forefront Endpoint Protection product for enterprises."
considering that by now everyone should run SOME anti virus, of which MSE is a legally free option, and that something which uses MSE's signature database finds 5% of machines have been compromised I don't think says much about computer security as a whole. Obviously there are a lot of users who *still* don't have anti virus software, which isn't really news. But MS can't exactly go including free anti virus in their OS without screams of anti trust.
define successful? Sure the Wii has moved a lot of units. But in terms of games sold, hours played, or in terms of money made for developers (not necessarily manufacturers) they are way behind. Good for nintendo does not necessarily equate to success as platform.
Many people are still thinking like the US dollar is on the gold standard. When it was you could demand gold for cash, essentially instantly. In this case the French and the Swiss threatened Nixon with calling in US debt in gold (which the US didn't have enough of), in effect forcing the US out of bretton woods and into the current state of affairs. In this case calling in debt, or calling in debt in gold were not much different in practice.
Gold as a money reserve worked for a while, and managed a certain price stability. But now that currency is based on both the value of a countries entire assets (which is decidedly better than just gold) and the inherent trust in the government to not radically debase a currency (decidedly worse than gold, since well, governments are corrupt and incompetent), the rules are different. I means you have to hold Euros/dollars/pounds/etc. instead of gold certificates, and there's no point in sitting on cash when you can buy securities.
IMO people can be somewhat forgiven for being biased by events 40 years ago to some degree. While the world has moved on, perceptions tend to lag realities. (How many people still think the US has only 300 million people after all...)
only so much. I make a living selling games to a particular market*. Those people still want to buy my particular game. If it wasn't available for the last 3 weeks that hurts my revenue stream, but on a year over year basis it probably won't hurt much. No more than delaying a book launch for a month really hurts the author.
Unlike news, where being out for a month would mean you have no revenue for that month and your competitors pick up the slack, gaming is a series of niches, and people will still want that game. If they buy it on another platform it doesn't really hurt you, and if they wait on the PS3 version, again, it doesn't hurt you.
Sony will probably lose customers to MS (and the PC) from this, but only so much. You have to have enough money to go and buy another console, and then hope that MS hasn't killed it (optical drive, RROD etc.).
Paying for identity theft protection is probably not too bad. They can can get a good bulk deal probably. Giving away games, again, they can give away anything from their first party studios (i.e. stuff developed 'in house') for free, especially old stuff, and they can probably give away stuff from 3rd party developers on the cheap. Now, if they wanted to give away *new* products, or *any* product, that would cost a pile of money, either in lost revenue or having to pay the value of a product to someone. Then you could be easily talking in the billions. Imagine a $25 PS store credit, well that's really a 17.5 credit since sony I think takes 30%... they charge developers for bandwidth too, which I guess they could not do for the promo, but still, it's costs them something, but lets say 25 really means 17. x 77 million = 1.3 billion. And 25 bucks doesn't go all that far. Sure, some of that would be spent on sony first party goodies (think Uncharted), so it wouldn't be *that* bad. But ya.. it could get expensive, fast.
*technically I'm just a technology guy at a university. I'm working with people who make games for a various specific markets, but my point is clearer the other way.
no it wouldn't. They have trillions of US dollars which to them are worthless. They may as well have a warehouse with skids full of paper with hand written IOU's on it. As opposed to say west germany, which 30 or 40 years ago was in a similar trade surplus situation, the west germans actually wanted the US dollars for something, and had other customers who wanted it. At that point the US had things people wanted, not necessarily the west germans but west Germany's (future) friends. They basically gave the money away, and used it to bolster their friends. Of course most of west germany's friends were friends to the US. China's friends (Burma, North korea, various african states no one cares about), usually don't care about the US, and can't buy US goods even if they wanted to. About the only exception to that is pakistan which is officially reasonably friendly to both.
And while probably not in one sitting, the US could repay it's debt to china fairly easily. Right now you're paying less than 2% interest on most of your debt to china. Offer new bonds at 3% and you'll find a whole new crop of customers. Sure 2 trillion dollars would be a lot of money to raise on very short notice (not impossible, just inconvenient). Of course if you offer to pay 5% interest the chinese might reconsider their lending and be happy to keep the status quo.
sure but going from 4% to 5% of 'average' western wages is a 25% raise. Sure some rich jackass in London or New York is getting 100x that amount. But it's still a 20% raise for the poor guy - and I dunno about you, but a 20% raise means a hell of a lot.
Given that my relatives are those workers. Yes, it's is definitely better for them. By leaps and bounds. Even comparing india of a decade ago with today. China is even more stark (as india is about 15 years behind china in development). In a decade they have gone from ~5% of our per capita income (on a PPP basis) to 15% (china that is), india went from about 2% to 5%, which is, in practice, still pretty big.
Yes, it is in the interests of western society for the rest of the world to catch up. Ultimately their growth will benefit us all, more brains to come up with cool new stuff. Globalization *IS* good for them. It might be better for a bunch of rich corporate fat cats. But that doesn't mean it's isn't also good for them.
They catch up with us as Germany, the US, Japan, Taiwan, South korea etc. all caught up with the leaders in their day: Trade, and a mostly free exchange of ideas. Which is what is happening more or less now with india and china. It's not perfect of course, but you can't take an area where average earnings are 3 or 4% of what they are here and expect it to be a smooth ride.
Except pouring toxic sludge into the river isn't the only reason why they're there. No one sane manufactures anything in india (labour laws there are nuts, you'd have a hard time making any money). It's not like dell phone support is pouring toxic sludge into the ganges. My family in india make between 1/10th and 1/2 of what an equivalent worker in canada would. Labour *is* cheaper there. And I might note someone getting half of a canadian salary in india is doing pretty damn well*
The truth, insofar as people may wish to believe it, is that for all of the evils those multinationals are doing, they're also bringing with them huge improvements in standards of living. That doesn't make pouring toxic crap in rivers any better, but even without all that it's *still* cheaper to do business there. And they aren't ever going to catch up in terms of income or lifestyle if we just say 'oh well the risks of pollution are too much we won't let you have any business'. If anything those environmental problems are created because it's cheaper to bribe someone to let you dump it in india or africa than it is to actually clean it up. It's cheap to bribe someone because they're poor. That's sort of the point. The only way they're going to fix that is if people can both earn a decent wage honestly, and if that wage is enough that they can't be bribed for a pittance to sell out their own country.
They (india and china) have spent 50 years living like it was 1800 but with some modern health care to ensure survivability (and crazy population growth). To be anything other than a billion poor starving people they *need* to be drawn into the modern world. Persistent aid destroys economies, and ultimately doesn't help them. They need to be able to make a living, and they can do that through trade. Whether they're making chairs in cottage industry, cotton, or computers they need to make something people want, and that requires investment and trade in this day and age.
According to http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/economics-business/variable-638.html (data is only up until 2006) since 1971 the world went from a average per capita gdp of 929 to 7282. China went from a per capita gdp of 116 to 2002 - that's a HUGE improvement. That has come with enormous social and environmental costs, but it's a damn lot better than the preceding decades where their economies, despite being poor, actually grew slower than the world average. India's liberalization didn't start until 1991 so they're about 15 years behind, with much stupider labour laws so they probably won't grow as quickly.
*bribes make these figures hard to count. Society is corrupt top to bottom.
How is it exploitation? Cost of labour in india and china is cheap because they have huge, relatively under educated labour pools, poor access to jobs, etc. In short: they're poor. Labour is cheap, and they only way they will stop being less poor is if they get jobs and foreign investment, and frankly foreign ideas on how to actually be productive.
Sure, china has less up to date (enforced) labour and safety standards than in the west. But 1: bad shit still happens here. And 2: they're 100 years behind because 100 years ago we were actually outright exploiting them (from the opium wars up through the partial occupation by japan etc.).
In an ideal world they will catch up to our standard of living, or we will slide down to theirs, or, more likely, some combination of the two. And then you can specialize labour regionally etc. But right now they aspire to the lifestyle of a college student, because we walled them off and exploited them for so long.
Now that we're actually trying to be fair to them with trade rules etc. we are struggling to compete, but that is an issue that will resolve itself with time.
I agree. I'm working on a fullscreen application at the moment, and the all the development tools work on the second monitor. If I'm coding I have VS on one monitor and the fullscreen app on the other. If I'm working with the tools then the left screen is all the tools to manipulate stuff, and the main display is where all the changes show up as they will in the final version.
I *could* alt tab back and forth etc, but this is somewhat easier. Especially given that a monitor costs a couple of hundred bucks.
Yes, but the question is: is it worth spending more than double per capita what the japanese do then? Politics is about allocating money to priorities. The US system spends more money per capita than just about anyone else, e.g. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita, (obviously US GDP per capita is higher than most everyone else so that accounts for some, but not all of it), but leaves a great many without any healthcare. So sure, your Japanese americans may be doing better than their counterparts in japan, but they're paying 130% more money on average, and in the process there are a bunch of people who are, on average, doing much worse (i.e. those who don't have healthcare). As a percent of GDP the US spends about double what Japan does (link in 2nd to last paragraph).
The various national health services ensure everyone is covered, and work to ensure that people only get beneficial procedures. In Canada we regularly see stories of someone who wants something done for which there is no proven benefit. Oh but it's offered in the US! So they go tromping off to the US, spend thousands of dollars etc. to, on a statistical basis be no better off than they were before. But those are ideological issues. What cost benefit ratio do we want? That's a fairly deep question, considering the state of public finances around the world.
You are, presumably basing your assessment on http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html. Which is a bunch of nonsense sadly. First it says " For example, Japanese-Americans have an average life expectancy similar to that of Japanese.10" The reference 10 points to an article from 1996 - and it doesn't say what you just claimed it to. But lets have some fun. The article asserts that "A good deal of the lower life expectancy rate in the U.S. is accounted for by the difference in life expectancy of African-Americans versus other populations in the United States. Life expectancy for African-Americans is about 72.3 years, while for whites it is about 77.7 years.1" And yet the articles own chart has the average life expectancy for non US countries as 78.4 - and that includes their diversity. There is much to be said here about what statistics both mean, and how they represent the problem.
Your beloved thatchers UK spends a relatively small portion of it's GDP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita) 8.4% which is low compared to just about every one in the industrialized world (although japan is in at 8.1). But their healthcare quality measures are both pretty good. So maybe they, I don't know... have cost effective systems? Or maybe they have chosen as societies cost benefit ratio's that are pretty good, and have built systems that enforce those.
Which sort of goes to the overall point about raw data not encapsulating much. Assuming the raw data at all is correct, what it means, and what to do with it varies quite a lot.
and my point was that judging someone's reaction to raw data isn't really a good plan when the raw data itself rarely represents a problem well when that problem is solved by politics.
That poses the problem of what raw data properly represents the problem at hand. Ideology tries to boils down the complexity of real systems to a single ideological approach to solving them. It's not that real data is bad, only that real data requires years of research and multiple PhD's to grasp to any degree, and even then the best you have is an understanding of what the data says, not what good policy is about the data.
As a simple example, one can fairly easily find statistics on how much the US spends per capita on healthcare (vs other countries), as a percent of GDP, etc... and then health outcomes. Ok.. so the system is bad, raw data proves a point but provides no solution, since the questions is 'what should the healthcare system be' not 'what should it not be'. Good job proving the system is bad. Politics and ideology is 'what system should we implement, how do we massage that into a system we can implement, and how many votes will it get/cost me?'
The economy is another great example. You have GDP, GDP/c, median incomes, gini indices, etc. You can look at real data about what other countries do to. But there are a plethora of experts with PhD's in economics who can't agree on what a good gini index is, or how to get to whatever a good number is. So what does look at the raw data get you exactly? An opportunity for 4 years of poorly paid research to earn a doctorate which shows you know more about the problem than the average bloke, but not how to fix it.
And that assumes real data exists for your problem. Which, in many cases, it doesn't (the US wealth gap for example doesn't really map to other historical situations if you are trying to ask the question 'why', as it ties in deeply to foreign ownership and investment, education etc.). Data can guide an ideological approach, but by itself raw data rarely maps to implementable policies in anything other than an ideologically biased fashion.
Depends on what windows runs too. There are windows servers with 5 9's of uptime already. And it's not like your car OS runs 24/7. But even then I'm not sure MS wants to be in the CNC side of running a car. There's hundreds of millions of lines of code designed for that already. But the entertainment hub in the car, that can play movies for passengers, music for the driver, send and receive calls (voice activated presumably) doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Just because texting and driving is stupid doesn't mean thousands of people don't do it. There's a large market there for people to do that stuff.
Seriously, how popular is a DVD player in cars? Everyone I know with kids loves the things. But we have to accept that technology is plodding along, and DVD's are going the way of the dodo bird. If that means a Xbox360 integrated into your car, that can sync with your home computer, well, why not? Or a windows PC or whatever else.
ya, it's not, on the whole, a lot of money. But considering it's one course (of probably 5), in one term, it's not bad. And they're students, who would be expected to be slow since they well, are still learning after all.
sure, I wasn't suggesting they shouldn't have blown it up. I wouldn't trust the pakistani's or indians with anything valuable (I'm half indian, the whole region is corrupt to the bone). But I think the US would have the brains to bid on these bits of technology lying around. I don't think pakistan could easily keep it, precisely as I said, as a US ally the US has a lot it can take away from them for refusing to give it back (say.. billions a year in aid money).
US GDP on a nominal basis the US has about a 15 trillion dollar GDP, china 5.7. Even on PPP the US has 15 trillion to chinas 10 and a bit. In both real relative buying power numbers the US has a lot of money. Political incompetence in the management of that money is not the same as not having a lot of money.
Knowing that composites reduce radar signatures is well known in the civilian world. What specific composite works well against whatever brand of radar the pakistani's use is a whole other matter.
Everyone knew the F117 was a stealth fighter bomber, it had a shape, coating materials etc for that purpose. 10 years after it was built the russians still very quickly scooped up all the pieces they could find when one crashed in yugoslavia.
There's a big difference between knowing in general things that make something stealthy, it's quite another to have specific implementation you can copy/steal/learn from. In the same way that we all know nuclear bombs exist, and the basic principles of operation, but actually building a 5 Megaton bomb is a somewhat different problem.
The concern here is both what you can see externally, and then any of the electronics hardware on the inside that you can't see. When that EP3 spying on China in 2001 was forced to land on Hainan the important part wasn't the aircraft, it was the NSA operating system and all of the electronic stuff that we know sort of in general was there, but not how it worked.
The only thing to me is that Pakistan is officially a US ally in this, so for them to turn over the remains of the aircraft to anyone else would be... problematic (especially since it's a free market and who has more money to spend than the US?). Random bits that went flying around the neighbourhood, sure, they're gone. But any of the parts big enough to need a vehicle to move I'd guess the US will be wanting back.
Depends on how important the computers are. When you are both the person using the network, and the admin (as most of us who are scientists end up being) if you break the network, you can't work, except to fix the network. If you're only a network admin, and you break the network 99 other people can't work, most scientists can be semi independent, but a lot of employees really aren't.
It also depends on what the network does now. How many problems does it have? What is the staff turnover like of the non IT employees (if all the staff knows how everything works, even if you don't that reduces your time needed).
I went from being in networking to being a scientist. (Well actually i went from being a scientists who did networking, to networking to being a different kind of scientist).
So like I say. I'd break the job he's describing into 3 parts: Hardware, software and people/money. Learning the hardware is a 'go get a CCNA' sort of problem, and that will solve some of the software side of things. When you manage 12 computers, what did they connect to? And what did those connect to? Do you have load balancing issues? How many (physical) backups do you have, how are they organized? If you have wireless, do you know how to handle multiple access points that will have the same name to the user?
Software is 'what services do these computers provide', and 'what networked tools do people use that you could break'. Some of it will be solved by by a CCNA but a lot of it How many layers of security (if any) do you need on various things, how do you implement it? How do you detect an intrusion, how do you stop it? How is your backup system organized in software? Do you know how to do a restore on all the different types of things you have backed up, how long does it take, what can go wrong ? What services are people using? If it's just 12 office computers with some shared folders that are mostly independent it's not so bad. Is your office scheduling tool running on them, how does it work? How about the mail server? Where are these services accessed from? Who had licences, how much do they cost, how are they maintained? What are you storing (how much of it is confidental)? How much, if any of it, has regulatory requirements? Who oversees compliance with those rules? What do you do if the only network admin gets hit by a bus?
People is where cisco training in my experience failed miserably. Not that it was really trying. In CS I would call this 'requirements analysis'. What are you trying to do with all this software, and how much is it worth to you? I could spend a million dollars on IT for 100 computers, but you probably wouldn't get a lot of value for your money, but it depends on what you want. ultimately you're spending shareholder money, so you want to spend as little of it as possible to get the maximum return. What tools do people need to do their job effectively, and how much money are you wasting on using the wrong tools? If all your new employees only know how to use the ribbon in office but you have a 'no ribbon' policy from 5 years ago because no one wanted to learn do you now capitulate and let new employees have what they want, or do you try and train them on whatever you were doing before. On the thought of training, who does it? What needs to be taught etc.
We give 19 year olds who are barely literate a CCNA after 16 months of college (what in the US you would call tradeskill training). It is by no means demonstrative of knowing how to actually be the one in charge, which is, on a technical level, something you can learn pretty easily in a couple of months if you have a minimum of brainpower and know something about computers (we spent 3 weeks showing the kids how to assemble a computer, the bar isn't high here for some of it). It's much easier of course if the last person to do it is there and can show you the ropes so to speak. The hard part is in finding out all of the things people rely on that are going to break if you shut down a serv
Seriously. If you're learning networking from scratch you are not prepared to be in charge of a network with 100 computers. If you screw it up, you could mess things up for days. Start at the bottom and work your way up, or hire someone who knows wtf they're doing, you could contract in someone (there are always going to be consultants who do network around). Bring one of them in, have them go over some of it with you.
The 'go read a CCNA book' advice isn't far off. But if you're already in charge CCNA is at least one step down from where you want to be.
I reiterate: use your money to hire someone else. Either hire them to actually do the job and become network manager, or hire a consultant in (be prepared to see this person regularly for a year or so) to come in and help you get things going. Make sure you have people on staff who actually know what they're doing, and can tell you when you're being an idiot.
Going from programming to network administrator may as well be going to predator drone pilot. You use computers and networks, and familiarity with computer skills is great, but they are very, if not completely different skills. And while you're at it you need to learn to be a manager, because most programmers don't learn about budgets, HR practices, setting security and devices on the network policy and all that but from the sounds of it you have to decide how to spend money.
Maybe we're confused because only working 12 hour days 6 days a week is a huge improvement in the quality of life for a lot of chinese factory workers, and living in what could alternately be called cheap student housing or prison but without bars is actually an improvement in the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of them. Foxconn isn't perfect, no one who does business in china is. But you have to judge the quality of life Foxconn workers get compared to what they would get elsewhere in china... and it's not far off from average.
They're 'winning' because their standards of success and wealth are much, much lower than ours, and they are in a labour market that makes 10% unemployment in the US look appealing if you are low skilled. Tens if not hundreds of million other job seekers coming from the fields into the cities thrilled to only work 6 days a week and only 12 hours a day. At one point in the early 1800's the 10 hour work day was a huge improvement in Britain, and china, economically, is just barely coming out of the 1800's.
Bin laden wasn't stupid. Crazy yes, stupid, no. He knew the americans were after him. He knew one day he'd either have to flee or he'd be caught/killed. If he had anything important on those computers I'd be very surprised. How much stuff have al qaeda operatives either had to drop when they ran (say from tora bora), or was taken when they were captured.
He knew when the americans were tracking his phone it was time to never use the phone again - this is not a man who embraced technology for efficiency sake. Yes, his courier seems to have been his undoing (and not intentionally), but if he'd though carrier pidgins more secure I'm sure he'd have used those.
Granted, I could be completely wrong. But he could also have had a hard drive full of information on the breeding and raising of rabbits (apparently his family gave some out to neighbouring children).
sort of by definition, and as I argued, with a source, excessive speed *is* dangerous, regularly. How fast the road can handle is not the same as how fast people should drive, I'm not sure why one (the engineering speed) would imply the latter (the target speed). Lower speed can significantly improve fuel economy and safety in collisions, and remember the article is for europe, where they are far more concerned with car-people collisions than car-car collisions, this is reflected in different lights, different collision standards and just generally different cars. A car moving at a safe engineering speed for a road, even a very slow road (say 40 Km/h) is still going to seriously injure someone they hit, so if you're expecting foot traffic you set speed limits even lower.
Yes, that's a political decision, to incorporate more than just the design of the road, but also it's use, and the likely risk. Oh and depending on where you are, most places I've been no one follows speed limits, so you have to set the speed limit lower than the speed of the road, or else people will drive too fast for the road. Yes, collective disregard for posted speed limits is both strange and very hard to fix.
Yes, when driving you should move with the speed of traffic, speed traps slow traffic because everyone sees a cop and says 'oh shit I don't want a ticket' so they slow down to the 'not worth ticketing speed' (which around here is 15Km/h over the speed limit generally). And hey look, traffic slows down. Which is the point. Maybe in the US it's different but in canada cops don't tend to like stopping people, it's extremely dangerous for them, they would rather people just drove safely. So they do whatever they can to get people to slow down, and pull over the people who are reckless. Including putting 'speed trap' cop cars on the road, with no one in them. To get people to slow down. We had our money grab of speeding tickets, (photoradar), which is long gone for about about 15 years (not that photoradar is necessarily a money grab, but as implemented here, admittedly, before I could drive, it seemed to be).
So I ask you: Are you naive, or just stupid? Because clearly you haven't put much thought into this. Or you're just a reckless driver, and I hope you stay the hell away from roads people actually use.
Slashdot Mirror
There are programs that run on XP64 that don't work on XP32 or 7-32/64?
Even then, XPx64 isn't exactly accounting for that 5% of installed that have been compromised.
I think kaspersky and the paid version of AVG both supported XP 64 at one point. Whether or not you could find anything that does anymore is another matter.
"Safety Scanner, which replaced an older online-only tool, uses the same technology and detection signatures as Microsoft's free consumer-grade Security Essentials antivirus program and its Forefront Endpoint Protection product for enterprises."
considering that by now everyone should run SOME anti virus, of which MSE is a legally free option, and that something which uses MSE's signature database finds 5% of machines have been compromised I don't think says much about computer security as a whole. Obviously there are a lot of users who *still* don't have anti virus software, which isn't really news. But MS can't exactly go including free anti virus in their OS without screams of anti trust.
define successful? Sure the Wii has moved a lot of units. But in terms of games sold, hours played, or in terms of money made for developers (not necessarily manufacturers) they are way behind. Good for nintendo does not necessarily equate to success as platform.
Many people are still thinking like the US dollar is on the gold standard. When it was you could demand gold for cash, essentially instantly. In this case the French and the Swiss threatened Nixon with calling in US debt in gold (which the US didn't have enough of), in effect forcing the US out of bretton woods and into the current state of affairs. In this case calling in debt, or calling in debt in gold were not much different in practice.
Gold as a money reserve worked for a while, and managed a certain price stability. But now that currency is based on both the value of a countries entire assets (which is decidedly better than just gold) and the inherent trust in the government to not radically debase a currency (decidedly worse than gold, since well, governments are corrupt and incompetent), the rules are different. I means you have to hold Euros/dollars/pounds/etc. instead of gold certificates, and there's no point in sitting on cash when you can buy securities.
IMO people can be somewhat forgiven for being biased by events 40 years ago to some degree. While the world has moved on, perceptions tend to lag realities. (How many people still think the US has only 300 million people after all...)
only so much. I make a living selling games to a particular market*. Those people still want to buy my particular game. If it wasn't available for the last 3 weeks that hurts my revenue stream, but on a year over year basis it probably won't hurt much. No more than delaying a book launch for a month really hurts the author.
Unlike news, where being out for a month would mean you have no revenue for that month and your competitors pick up the slack, gaming is a series of niches, and people will still want that game. If they buy it on another platform it doesn't really hurt you, and if they wait on the PS3 version, again, it doesn't hurt you.
Sony will probably lose customers to MS (and the PC) from this, but only so much. You have to have enough money to go and buy another console, and then hope that MS hasn't killed it (optical drive, RROD etc.).
Paying for identity theft protection is probably not too bad. They can can get a good bulk deal probably. Giving away games, again, they can give away anything from their first party studios (i.e. stuff developed 'in house') for free, especially old stuff, and they can probably give away stuff from 3rd party developers on the cheap. Now, if they wanted to give away *new* products, or *any* product, that would cost a pile of money, either in lost revenue or having to pay the value of a product to someone. Then you could be easily talking in the billions. Imagine a $25 PS store credit, well that's really a 17.5 credit since sony I think takes 30%... they charge developers for bandwidth too, which I guess they could not do for the promo, but still, it's costs them something, but lets say 25 really means 17. x 77 million = 1.3 billion. And 25 bucks doesn't go all that far. Sure, some of that would be spent on sony first party goodies (think Uncharted), so it wouldn't be *that* bad. But ya.. it could get expensive, fast.
*technically I'm just a technology guy at a university. I'm working with people who make games for a various specific markets, but my point is clearer the other way.
no it wouldn't. They have trillions of US dollars which to them are worthless. They may as well have a warehouse with skids full of paper with hand written IOU's on it. As opposed to say west germany, which 30 or 40 years ago was in a similar trade surplus situation, the west germans actually wanted the US dollars for something, and had other customers who wanted it. At that point the US had things people wanted, not necessarily the west germans but west Germany's (future) friends. They basically gave the money away, and used it to bolster their friends. Of course most of west germany's friends were friends to the US. China's friends (Burma, North korea, various african states no one cares about), usually don't care about the US, and can't buy US goods even if they wanted to. About the only exception to that is pakistan which is officially reasonably friendly to both.
And while probably not in one sitting, the US could repay it's debt to china fairly easily. Right now you're paying less than 2% interest on most of your debt to china. Offer new bonds at 3% and you'll find a whole new crop of customers. Sure 2 trillion dollars would be a lot of money to raise on very short notice (not impossible, just inconvenient). Of course if you offer to pay 5% interest the chinese might reconsider their lending and be happy to keep the status quo.
sure but going from 4% to 5% of 'average' western wages is a 25% raise. Sure some rich jackass in London or New York is getting 100x that amount. But it's still a 20% raise for the poor guy - and I dunno about you, but a 20% raise means a hell of a lot.
Given that my relatives are those workers. Yes, it's is definitely better for them. By leaps and bounds. Even comparing india of a decade ago with today. China is even more stark (as india is about 15 years behind china in development). In a decade they have gone from ~5% of our per capita income (on a PPP basis) to 15% (china that is), india went from about 2% to 5%, which is, in practice, still pretty big.
Yes, it is in the interests of western society for the rest of the world to catch up. Ultimately their growth will benefit us all, more brains to come up with cool new stuff. Globalization *IS* good for them. It might be better for a bunch of rich corporate fat cats. But that doesn't mean it's isn't also good for them.
They catch up with us as Germany, the US, Japan, Taiwan, South korea etc. all caught up with the leaders in their day: Trade, and a mostly free exchange of ideas. Which is what is happening more or less now with india and china. It's not perfect of course, but you can't take an area where average earnings are 3 or 4% of what they are here and expect it to be a smooth ride.
Except pouring toxic sludge into the river isn't the only reason why they're there. No one sane manufactures anything in india (labour laws there are nuts, you'd have a hard time making any money). It's not like dell phone support is pouring toxic sludge into the ganges. My family in india make between 1/10th and 1/2 of what an equivalent worker in canada would. Labour *is* cheaper there. And I might note someone getting half of a canadian salary in india is doing pretty damn well*
The truth, insofar as people may wish to believe it, is that for all of the evils those multinationals are doing, they're also bringing with them huge improvements in standards of living. That doesn't make pouring toxic crap in rivers any better, but even without all that it's *still* cheaper to do business there. And they aren't ever going to catch up in terms of income or lifestyle if we just say 'oh well the risks of pollution are too much we won't let you have any business'. If anything those environmental problems are created because it's cheaper to bribe someone to let you dump it in india or africa than it is to actually clean it up. It's cheap to bribe someone because they're poor. That's sort of the point. The only way they're going to fix that is if people can both earn a decent wage honestly, and if that wage is enough that they can't be bribed for a pittance to sell out their own country.
They (india and china) have spent 50 years living like it was 1800 but with some modern health care to ensure survivability (and crazy population growth). To be anything other than a billion poor starving people they *need* to be drawn into the modern world. Persistent aid destroys economies, and ultimately doesn't help them. They need to be able to make a living, and they can do that through trade. Whether they're making chairs in cottage industry, cotton, or computers they need to make something people want, and that requires investment and trade in this day and age.
According to http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/economics-business/variable-638.html (data is only up until 2006) since 1971 the world went from a average per capita gdp of 929 to 7282. China went from a per capita gdp of 116 to 2002 - that's a HUGE improvement. That has come with enormous social and environmental costs, but it's a damn lot better than the preceding decades where their economies, despite being poor, actually grew slower than the world average. India's liberalization didn't start until 1991 so they're about 15 years behind, with much stupider labour laws so they probably won't grow as quickly.
*bribes make these figures hard to count. Society is corrupt top to bottom.
How is it exploitation? Cost of labour in india and china is cheap because they have huge, relatively under educated labour pools, poor access to jobs, etc. In short: they're poor. Labour is cheap, and they only way they will stop being less poor is if they get jobs and foreign investment, and frankly foreign ideas on how to actually be productive.
Sure, china has less up to date (enforced) labour and safety standards than in the west. But 1: bad shit still happens here. And 2: they're 100 years behind because 100 years ago we were actually outright exploiting them (from the opium wars up through the partial occupation by japan etc.).
In an ideal world they will catch up to our standard of living, or we will slide down to theirs, or, more likely, some combination of the two. And then you can specialize labour regionally etc. But right now they aspire to the lifestyle of a college student, because we walled them off and exploited them for so long.
Now that we're actually trying to be fair to them with trade rules etc. we are struggling to compete, but that is an issue that will resolve itself with time.
including from canada. Where we have a strong currency, diverse economy and marginally less incompetent politicians than in the US.
I agree. I'm working on a fullscreen application at the moment, and the all the development tools work on the second monitor. If I'm coding I have VS on one monitor and the fullscreen app on the other. If I'm working with the tools then the left screen is all the tools to manipulate stuff, and the main display is where all the changes show up as they will in the final version.
I *could* alt tab back and forth etc, but this is somewhat easier. Especially given that a monitor costs a couple of hundred bucks.
Yes, but the question is: is it worth spending more than double per capita what the japanese do then? Politics is about allocating money to priorities. The US system spends more money per capita than just about anyone else, e.g. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita, (obviously US GDP per capita is higher than most everyone else so that accounts for some, but not all of it), but leaves a great many without any healthcare. So sure, your Japanese americans may be doing better than their counterparts in japan, but they're paying 130% more money on average, and in the process there are a bunch of people who are, on average, doing much worse (i.e. those who don't have healthcare). As a percent of GDP the US spends about double what Japan does (link in 2nd to last paragraph).
The various national health services ensure everyone is covered, and work to ensure that people only get beneficial procedures. In Canada we regularly see stories of someone who wants something done for which there is no proven benefit. Oh but it's offered in the US! So they go tromping off to the US, spend thousands of dollars etc. to, on a statistical basis be no better off than they were before. But those are ideological issues. What cost benefit ratio do we want? That's a fairly deep question, considering the state of public finances around the world.
You are, presumably basing your assessment on http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html. Which is a bunch of nonsense sadly. First it says " For example, Japanese-Americans have an average life expectancy similar to that of Japanese.10" The reference 10 points to an article from 1996 - and it doesn't say what you just claimed it to. But lets have some fun. The article asserts that "A good deal of the lower life expectancy rate in the U.S. is accounted for by the difference in life expectancy of African-Americans versus other populations in the United States. Life expectancy for African-Americans is about 72.3 years, while for whites it is about 77.7 years.1" And yet the articles own chart has the average life expectancy for non US countries as 78.4 - and that includes their diversity. There is much to be said here about what statistics both mean, and how they represent the problem.
Your beloved thatchers UK spends a relatively small portion of it's GDP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita) 8.4% which is low compared to just about every one in the industrialized world (although japan is in at 8.1). But their healthcare quality measures are both pretty good. So maybe they, I don't know... have cost effective systems? Or maybe they have chosen as societies cost benefit ratio's that are pretty good, and have built systems that enforce those.
Which sort of goes to the overall point about raw data not encapsulating much. Assuming the raw data at all is correct, what it means, and what to do with it varies quite a lot.
and my point was that judging someone's reaction to raw data isn't really a good plan when the raw data itself rarely represents a problem well when that problem is solved by politics.
That poses the problem of what raw data properly represents the problem at hand. Ideology tries to boils down the complexity of real systems to a single ideological approach to solving them. It's not that real data is bad, only that real data requires years of research and multiple PhD's to grasp to any degree, and even then the best you have is an understanding of what the data says, not what good policy is about the data.
As a simple example, one can fairly easily find statistics on how much the US spends per capita on healthcare (vs other countries), as a percent of GDP, etc... and then health outcomes. Ok.. so the system is bad, raw data proves a point but provides no solution, since the questions is 'what should the healthcare system be' not 'what should it not be'. Good job proving the system is bad. Politics and ideology is 'what system should we implement, how do we massage that into a system we can implement, and how many votes will it get/cost me?'
The economy is another great example. You have GDP, GDP/c, median incomes, gini indices, etc. You can look at real data about what other countries do to. But there are a plethora of experts with PhD's in economics who can't agree on what a good gini index is, or how to get to whatever a good number is. So what does look at the raw data get you exactly? An opportunity for 4 years of poorly paid research to earn a doctorate which shows you know more about the problem than the average bloke, but not how to fix it.
And that assumes real data exists for your problem. Which, in many cases, it doesn't (the US wealth gap for example doesn't really map to other historical situations if you are trying to ask the question 'why', as it ties in deeply to foreign ownership and investment, education etc.). Data can guide an ideological approach, but by itself raw data rarely maps to implementable policies in anything other than an ideologically biased fashion.
Depends on what windows runs too. There are windows servers with 5 9's of uptime already. And it's not like your car OS runs 24/7. But even then I'm not sure MS wants to be in the CNC side of running a car. There's hundreds of millions of lines of code designed for that already. But the entertainment hub in the car, that can play movies for passengers, music for the driver, send and receive calls (voice activated presumably) doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Just because texting and driving is stupid doesn't mean thousands of people don't do it. There's a large market there for people to do that stuff.
Seriously, how popular is a DVD player in cars? Everyone I know with kids loves the things. But we have to accept that technology is plodding along, and DVD's are going the way of the dodo bird. If that means a Xbox360 integrated into your car, that can sync with your home computer, well, why not? Or a windows PC or whatever else.
ya, it's not, on the whole, a lot of money. But considering it's one course (of probably 5), in one term, it's not bad. And they're students, who would be expected to be slow since they well, are still learning after all.
sure, I wasn't suggesting they shouldn't have blown it up. I wouldn't trust the pakistani's or indians with anything valuable (I'm half indian, the whole region is corrupt to the bone). But I think the US would have the brains to bid on these bits of technology lying around. I don't think pakistan could easily keep it, precisely as I said, as a US ally the US has a lot it can take away from them for refusing to give it back (say.. billions a year in aid money).
US GDP on a nominal basis the US has about a 15 trillion dollar GDP, china 5.7. Even on PPP the US has 15 trillion to chinas 10 and a bit. In both real relative buying power numbers the US has a lot of money. Political incompetence in the management of that money is not the same as not having a lot of money.
Knowing that composites reduce radar signatures is well known in the civilian world. What specific composite works well against whatever brand of radar the pakistani's use is a whole other matter.
Everyone knew the F117 was a stealth fighter bomber, it had a shape, coating materials etc for that purpose. 10 years after it was built the russians still very quickly scooped up all the pieces they could find when one crashed in yugoslavia.
There's a big difference between knowing in general things that make something stealthy, it's quite another to have specific implementation you can copy/steal/learn from. In the same way that we all know nuclear bombs exist, and the basic principles of operation, but actually building a 5 Megaton bomb is a somewhat different problem.
The concern here is both what you can see externally, and then any of the electronics hardware on the inside that you can't see. When that EP3 spying on China in 2001 was forced to land on Hainan the important part wasn't the aircraft, it was the NSA operating system and all of the electronic stuff that we know sort of in general was there, but not how it worked.
The only thing to me is that Pakistan is officially a US ally in this, so for them to turn over the remains of the aircraft to anyone else would be... problematic (especially since it's a free market and who has more money to spend than the US?). Random bits that went flying around the neighbourhood, sure, they're gone. But any of the parts big enough to need a vehicle to move I'd guess the US will be wanting back.
Depends on how important the computers are. When you are both the person using the network, and the admin (as most of us who are scientists end up being) if you break the network, you can't work, except to fix the network. If you're only a network admin, and you break the network 99 other people can't work, most scientists can be semi independent, but a lot of employees really aren't.
It also depends on what the network does now. How many problems does it have? What is the staff turnover like of the non IT employees (if all the staff knows how everything works, even if you don't that reduces your time needed).
I went from being in networking to being a scientist. (Well actually i went from being a scientists who did networking, to networking to being a different kind of scientist).
So like I say. I'd break the job he's describing into 3 parts: Hardware, software and people/money.
Learning the hardware is a 'go get a CCNA' sort of problem, and that will solve some of the software side of things. When you manage 12 computers, what did they connect to? And what did those connect to? Do you have load balancing issues? How many (physical) backups do you have, how are they organized? If you have wireless, do you know how to handle multiple access points that will have the same name to the user?
Software is 'what services do these computers provide', and 'what networked tools do people use that you could break'. Some of it will be solved by by a CCNA but a lot of it How many layers of security (if any) do you need on various things, how do you implement it? How do you detect an intrusion, how do you stop it? How is your backup system organized in software? Do you know how to do a restore on all the different types of things you have backed up, how long does it take, what can go wrong ? What services are people using? If it's just 12 office computers with some shared folders that are mostly independent it's not so bad. Is your office scheduling tool running on them, how does it work? How about the mail server? Where are these services accessed from? Who had licences, how much do they cost, how are they maintained? What are you storing (how much of it is confidental)? How much, if any of it, has regulatory requirements? Who oversees compliance with those rules? What do you do if the only network admin gets hit by a bus?
People is where cisco training in my experience failed miserably. Not that it was really trying. In CS I would call this 'requirements analysis'. What are you trying to do with all this software, and how much is it worth to you? I could spend a million dollars on IT for 100 computers, but you probably wouldn't get a lot of value for your money, but it depends on what you want. ultimately you're spending shareholder money, so you want to spend as little of it as possible to get the maximum return. What tools do people need to do their job effectively, and how much money are you wasting on using the wrong tools? If all your new employees only know how to use the ribbon in office but you have a 'no ribbon' policy from 5 years ago because no one wanted to learn do you now capitulate and let new employees have what they want, or do you try and train them on whatever you were doing before. On the thought of training, who does it? What needs to be taught etc.
We give 19 year olds who are barely literate a CCNA after 16 months of college (what in the US you would call tradeskill training). It is by no means demonstrative of knowing how to actually be the one in charge, which is, on a technical level, something you can learn pretty easily in a couple of months if you have a minimum of brainpower and know something about computers (we spent 3 weeks showing the kids how to assemble a computer, the bar isn't high here for some of it). It's much easier of course if the last person to do it is there and can show you the ropes so to speak. The hard part is in finding out all of the things people rely on that are going to break if you shut down a serv
Seriously. If you're learning networking from scratch you are not prepared to be in charge of a network with 100 computers. If you screw it up, you could mess things up for days. Start at the bottom and work your way up, or hire someone who knows wtf they're doing, you could contract in someone (there are always going to be consultants who do network around). Bring one of them in, have them go over some of it with you.
The 'go read a CCNA book' advice isn't far off. But if you're already in charge CCNA is at least one step down from where you want to be.
I reiterate: use your money to hire someone else. Either hire them to actually do the job and become network manager, or hire a consultant in (be prepared to see this person regularly for a year or so) to come in and help you get things going. Make sure you have people on staff who actually know what they're doing, and can tell you when you're being an idiot.
Going from programming to network administrator may as well be going to predator drone pilot. You use computers and networks, and familiarity with computer skills is great, but they are very, if not completely different skills. And while you're at it you need to learn to be a manager, because most programmers don't learn about budgets, HR practices, setting security and devices on the network policy and all that but from the sounds of it you have to decide how to spend money.
Maybe we're confused because only working 12 hour days 6 days a week is a huge improvement in the quality of life for a lot of chinese factory workers, and living in what could alternately be called cheap student housing or prison but without bars is actually an improvement in the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of them. Foxconn isn't perfect, no one who does business in china is. But you have to judge the quality of life Foxconn workers get compared to what they would get elsewhere in china... and it's not far off from average.
They're 'winning' because their standards of success and wealth are much, much lower than ours, and they are in a labour market that makes 10% unemployment in the US look appealing if you are low skilled. Tens if not hundreds of million other job seekers coming from the fields into the cities thrilled to only work 6 days a week and only 12 hours a day. At one point in the early 1800's the 10 hour work day was a huge improvement in Britain, and china, economically, is just barely coming out of the 1800's.
Bin laden wasn't stupid. Crazy yes, stupid, no. He knew the americans were after him. He knew one day he'd either have to flee or he'd be caught/killed. If he had anything important on those computers I'd be very surprised. How much stuff have al qaeda operatives either had to drop when they ran (say from tora bora), or was taken when they were captured.
He knew when the americans were tracking his phone it was time to never use the phone again - this is not a man who embraced technology for efficiency sake. Yes, his courier seems to have been his undoing (and not intentionally), but if he'd though carrier pidgins more secure I'm sure he'd have used those.
Granted, I could be completely wrong. But he could also have had a hard drive full of information on the breeding and raising of rabbits (apparently his family gave some out to neighbouring children).
sort of by definition, and as I argued, with a source, excessive speed *is* dangerous, regularly. How fast the road can handle is not the same as how fast people should drive, I'm not sure why one (the engineering speed) would imply the latter (the target speed). Lower speed can significantly improve fuel economy and safety in collisions, and remember the article is for europe, where they are far more concerned with car-people collisions than car-car collisions, this is reflected in different lights, different collision standards and just generally different cars. A car moving at a safe engineering speed for a road, even a very slow road (say 40 Km/h) is still going to seriously injure someone they hit, so if you're expecting foot traffic you set speed limits even lower.
Yes, that's a political decision, to incorporate more than just the design of the road, but also it's use, and the likely risk. Oh and depending on where you are, most places I've been no one follows speed limits, so you have to set the speed limit lower than the speed of the road, or else people will drive too fast for the road. Yes, collective disregard for posted speed limits is both strange and very hard to fix.
Yes, when driving you should move with the speed of traffic, speed traps slow traffic because everyone sees a cop and says 'oh shit I don't want a ticket' so they slow down to the 'not worth ticketing speed' (which around here is 15Km/h over the speed limit generally). And hey look, traffic slows down. Which is the point. Maybe in the US it's different but in canada cops don't tend to like stopping people, it's extremely dangerous for them, they would rather people just drove safely. So they do whatever they can to get people to slow down, and pull over the people who are reckless. Including putting 'speed trap' cop cars on the road, with no one in them. To get people to slow down. We had our money grab of speeding tickets, (photoradar), which is long gone for about about 15 years (not that photoradar is necessarily a money grab, but as implemented here, admittedly, before I could drive, it seemed to be).
So I ask you: Are you naive, or just stupid? Because clearly you haven't put much thought into this. Or you're just a reckless driver, and I hope you stay the hell away from roads people actually use.