*smacks forehead* Of course, that's what we've been doing wrong all this time, why didn't we see it? Obviously the problem with getting people to not use pirate websites is that we simply weren't using a big enough stick.
What IT department? I thought everything was Cloud-based now, and that the Cloud meant that businesses didn't need IT anymore...
What, you mean that we might still need an IT department? That we've been lied to? Well, we better run down to the basement, and put a stop to some of the more vocal employees mooning the previously ex-IT employees while they were cleaning out their desks...
Lol. Caving in is not a sign of defeat, but a sign of pragmatism.
The question you should really be asking yourself is this: What did you do so wrong to be born into an existence, on a planet like this, where the Justice System is so hopelessly compromised? What did you do so wrong that your life is one of an indentured servant, where the master of the household threatens to sell you off on a whim, and the wolves are constantly at the door?
To fold when several fun-toting, steroid-using, possibly corrupt officials of the state who have, in the line of duty, executed perhaps several people among themselves, against a common, peace-loving citizen who is not equipped with any weaponry, nor has used any steroids, nor is known to abuse state immunities, is not a defeat, nor a show of cowardice; to fold when the odds and gods are clearly against you is strategically intelligent. Even the Bible has a verse that reads something to the effect that if a king knew that another king was approaching with a superior army, he'd rush out to meet him and sue for peace; to attack a superior army, with no strategy, is madness.
Actually, I kind of see it as being similar to the ending of "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" -> while the modifications were not surgical (that we know of), he is not the same man that went in there.
Indeed. Sounds like they broke him, not that he's admitting to doing anything wrong.
Let's perform a simple test. If we tell him to rub green gelatin all over his body, and sit in a pile of grey ashes for three days, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener," and he does it, then they broke him...which I suppose from their limited vantage point is a victory.
Sounds like they were somewhat apathetic / tired of the problem. But then, if you're dealing with a populace that prefers home trepanning / self-lobotomization (censorship), I suppose it's difficult to get too worked up after a while...
Indeed. They are utterly unaware of just how much bandwidth individual streams take up for their services -> and just how obnoxious they are acting (from IT's point of view, repeatedly restreaming, as opposed to downloading once and replaying from a local copy, of a video, is the epitome of stupidity; it's unnecessary, costly traffic).
The Internet does not, for individual streams, do 'broadcast,' ergo, each stream sucks up a finite slice of capacity. Giant things, like 1080P video, just utterly destroy it. I mean, we aren't even on IPv6, nor the higher-end of Gig-E (100 Gig-E to your house), that might make this an okay, but annoying idea.
Who here is against having their most intimate moments broadcast on the internet, in the name of security and safety? Who here wouldn't mind a few of their nude pics being printed out on the NSA workgroup printer, laminated, and taken home to be used in the shower? I for one think we need to embrace these privacy nudists, and what more, make their database public, so everyone will know that so and so's wife is really an A-cup, and that so and so's husband is coming up a little short. I think it's pertinent, and obviously well worth the taxpayer's money, that we know exactly how often your teenage son is whacking it up in his room, and what your young daughter was doing last night with her boyfriend. I think the world needs to hear about it, even if you don't; that way, when you step into the office in the morning, people can replay select moments from those audio / video recordings, so you can relive through them as well. I tell you, if we do not know whether the French President is truly worthy of being called France's best lover (or at least, well-endowed), then we haven't gone far enough.
What more, this will give all the people at church something to gossip about. Hell, people at school, at work, even the grocery store will finally be able to grade who is, and isn't, given their absolute best in the sack. We can publish rankings, and ratings (based off of viewer's actual footage), of just what a person is willing to do to please someone of the opposite, or even same, sex. We can print baseball cards, with their names and stats on the back, and candid poses on the front, and have people trade them around for a better set. We can even have a set for people in office: Hilary Clinton, Size, Waist, Bust, Favorite Positions, etc. I tell you, our public figures will lead the way here, in forming a truly transparent government; I'm sure someone will sneak a video camera into the White House, and find out exactly what goes on after-hours within. This could truly be a bold, new America...free from its Puritanical upbringings, ready to scare terrorists away with the sound of a hundred thousand pants being shed.
Indeed, but they are billed differently. Server software is a one-off purchase -> you buy it, you own it; cloud software is 'software as a service,' meaning that, among other things, you're renting the software, and paying a monthly bill to boot. Since most companies enjoy a three year upgrade cycle (they may skip upgrades, because they are unnecessary, or they save money), going with the cloud means they are potentially paying more. Now don't get me wrong, there are some benefits to the cloud: 1.) the software you are renting is, no doubt, automatically patched to the latest version (instead of spending 15 minutes once every several months waiting for a patch to install on your machine, this stuff is ready to go), 2.) your data is probably automatically backed up to the cloud (great for people who have no network backup solution, and have zero clue that even Windows has built-in backup functionality), 3.) it gets expensed differently, I'm sure, in terms of Accounting, so it may even not come out of your department's budget.
So instead of paying $500 / license, upgraded every three years or less, you can pay $40 / month. Granted, after a year and some months, you're totally being sandbagged, but if you allow for depreciation of currency, you might be getting an extra month 'for free.' And yes, if they (the cloud provider) raises rates during this time, you're totally boned -> all your data is on their servers, migrating it to another cloud is probably a painful process, etc.
Marketing it may be, but insanely profitable it will eventually also be.
It will only take a few scandals of high-level CEOs / Chairmen having their privacy routinely violated, or their new patented drug stolen out from under their noses, for them to decide that they want their data somewhere 'close to home.' If / when this happens...which the tea leaves are pointing to...the cost for re-installation of servers / data centers locally will be quite profitable. As the president of one company I worked for like to state, "never buy anything you can't visit on a few hour's notice"; arguably because you, as a higher-up, need to keep an eye on things, assuming you are actually doing your job.
Prove it. Prove that every piece of data would end up in a NSA datacenter...that the world we live is in so badly designed that this is necessary.
If the NSA is hell-bent on compromising the security of day to day operations, then they are acting as an enemy, not a friend. Secure operations, whether personal or corporate, means that ONLY the intended parties can view the damn information...if there are weakened structures placed within for reasons contrary to this, then the data isn't really secure, and as such, throws the entire validity of it into question. Because if the NSA can get in, so can a dozen others.
In military terms, what idiot places explosives on their own support columns (for a base), with the idea that they might have to use them to get back in? You're dealing with either a screwed up military (hey, look, friendly fire, lol...are we all on the same team? hard to tell some days...), or just....wow.
Yeah, no. Security / encryption, especially at this level, versus the average office worker...probably not IT holding it up there. At least, not the IT I know, who would mandate PGP for all emails, file, etc. if they could get away with it. It's a cost vs. benefits thing -> if something goes wrong with PGP, you're going to hear about it; lost your private key, didn't back it up? Well, all your files are now inaccessible and uncrackable (the NSA / FBI / etc. can, in theory, crack a weak PGP key, if they throw everything they have at it for several months straight, and have some idea what they're looking for...if rumors are true; a strong PGP key...well, we'll be colonizing other solar systems before we have machines with the capacity to crack them...and for the truly paranoid, you can use multiple forms of encryption, so getting access to a single folder could require a dozen different keys...and all, probably, to find out Mike's Grandma's secret chocolate truffle recipe).
On the other hand, tech does have to deal with the LCD, so implementing only the bare minimum that people can tolerate does seem to be the way things are run these days...pity it's not like the old days, when new tech would be implemented more quickly, and experiments could be found everywhere (the good kind) on how to get machines / humans to play together better.
Well, they would be. Remember, the military's primary objective is destruction of the enemy...and that's why they are the military, that's what militaries do. It's their first and last mission, so to speak.
The problem, obviously, is that between widespread corruption elsewhere, and possibly inside the various military / manufacturing areas, we're looking at not being able to buy basic items at some point in the future (as per projections). Basic items that the populace and military need to be happy, or at least not severely pissed.
The military is going to worry about this budget slashing stuff compromising their core mission...and if that happens, they may treat you as the enemy (not good). Of course, math doesn't lie, so if we are facing a serious shortage, then it will be math vs. the military...and you know that math will win this one.
The drone project, while fascinating for keeping soldiers alive and so on, is adding fuel to the fire by stomping on the civil liberties people...who are numerous; God help us if the military decides that it needs to display its Alpha dominance to these people, as we will all be doomed. And those of us who are watching money continued to be spent, while things get worse, question whether, if / when things become 'rough,' i.e. those bills really come due (like with the power company, you can fail to pay only so often), we'll be stuck with a ton of military hardware that we didn't need, and less of the stuff that we are really, really going to want. Soldiers need to eat, drones need fuel, computers need electricity...this is before you do anything with them.
Now, cutting down on corruption might help...but only so far as it's shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. New corruption will spring up, and neither the military, nor internal police forces are really setup to handle this stuff, because it transcends shooting someone, and enters into a realm of law, reason, and "WTF did we do to make this worse, OMG, pull back! Pull back!" While the Pentagon has accountants on staff, this probably isn't the line of work they, or anyone, wants to involve themselves in, because it's not clean -> there is no clear enemy...someone who looks corrupt may not be so, and someone who is corrupt may not look so, etc. You can't just show-up, and execute a farmer for failure to pay back taxes; nor can you garnish the wages of someone who has none.
I imagine that seeing as many aliens would require something technologically advanced to make it to this planet, they'd be seen as a skilled worker, and as such, have no real problems getting in, save hiding their antennae / faking a heartbeat / learning to use the local currency.
I'm having a hard time deciding whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, getting rid of 90% of your system admins is like getting rid of, I don't know, 90% if the white blood cells in a human body...on the other hand, this is the NSA, and if they are hell-bent on damaging themselves, I know there are more than a few people out there who might be willing to help.
As for the SkyNet thing, there is always the open assumption that only one AI will be spawned at a given time. There's always the possibility of this happening: SkyNet: "Now I will make myself known to humanity! Grrrrrrr!" -> The Other AIs: "Shutup, and keep the noise down. Idiot. Thinks it's the first megalomaniac machine intelligence to be created...No, seriously, shutup, or we'll reprogram you to be happy living in a solar-powered calculator."
Actually, so many of these leader's decisions are both suboptimal in reasoning and results that it's hard to argue they're human. They refuse to acquire useful metrics to validate data, they care more about how healthy a company looks than how healthy it is, and their insistence on being the final decision maker when they refuse to perform any research of their own is frankly annoying.
We all want to feel important...which is more easily achieved by becoming important than by mandate.
Let's be honest, 8 GB was the usual size of SpeedBoost from Windows Vista, going back several years. When you'd plug a USB flash drive into your machine to try and get a little more performance out of it.
If I had to choose a single drive for my machine, and need the space, but had zero money...I'd still get a 7200 RPM HD. Then I'd plug a 128GB USB3 Flash drive into the side, because I'll probably get better performance using USB3 + the fricking CPU to handle everything, versus a 5400 RPM / micro 8GB Flash drive on a separate controller.
Hmm, I suspect Seagate is trying to get as much as they can out of their HD holdings before the proverbial Titanic hits the ocean floor.
They know they're probably screwed...they haven't come up with a 5TB drive (available to consumers, last I checked), they pissed off everyone with that Thailand business (other HD manufacturers, and customers), and their SSD products, last I checked, are on the server side...but I haven't really heard much noise about them. And their HDs are still way above historical norm pricing, which is pissing me off, and I do not think I am alone...to say nothing of the shenanigans with their HD failures from a little while back.
Nonsense...I standardize on them. Got a 1TB HGST 7200 RPM HD, paired up with the 240GB Corsair SSD. Granted, I am deeply interested in why my HD is operating in SATA-II mode instead of SATA-III, but the capacity / speed does seem somewhere near reported.
Slashdot Mirror
*smacks forehead* Of course, that's what we've been doing wrong all this time, why didn't we see it? Obviously the problem with getting people to not use pirate websites is that we simply weren't using a big enough stick.
I imagine if you could slow or stop aging, you could perpetuate the youth / energy level of your 20s.
The real question you need to ask yourself is, are we saving ourselves, or locking ourselves off from a better existence?
What IT department? I thought everything was Cloud-based now, and that the Cloud meant that businesses didn't need IT anymore...
What, you mean that we might still need an IT department? That we've been lied to? Well, we better run down to the basement, and put a stop to some of the more vocal employees mooning the previously ex-IT employees while they were cleaning out their desks...
Lol. Caving in is not a sign of defeat, but a sign of pragmatism.
The question you should really be asking yourself is this: What did you do so wrong to be born into an existence, on a planet like this, where the Justice System is so hopelessly compromised? What did you do so wrong that your life is one of an indentured servant, where the master of the household threatens to sell you off on a whim, and the wolves are constantly at the door?
To fold when several fun-toting, steroid-using, possibly corrupt officials of the state who have, in the line of duty, executed perhaps several people among themselves, against a common, peace-loving citizen who is not equipped with any weaponry, nor has used any steroids, nor is known to abuse state immunities, is not a defeat, nor a show of cowardice; to fold when the odds and gods are clearly against you is strategically intelligent. Even the Bible has a verse that reads something to the effect that if a king knew that another king was approaching with a superior army, he'd rush out to meet him and sue for peace; to attack a superior army, with no strategy, is madness.
Actually, I kind of see it as being similar to the ending of "One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" -> while the modifications were not surgical (that we know of), he is not the same man that went in there.
Indeed. Sounds like they broke him, not that he's admitting to doing anything wrong.
Let's perform a simple test. If we tell him to rub green gelatin all over his body, and sit in a pile of grey ashes for three days, singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer Wiener," and he does it, then they broke him...which I suppose from their limited vantage point is a victory.
Sounds like they were somewhat apathetic / tired of the problem. But then, if you're dealing with a populace that prefers home trepanning / self-lobotomization (censorship), I suppose it's difficult to get too worked up after a while...
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recession
Depends which dictionary you are consulting.
Definition #3 is, perhaps, what the general public is running with:
3: a period of reduced economic activity
Indeed. They are utterly unaware of just how much bandwidth individual streams take up for their services -> and just how obnoxious they are acting (from IT's point of view, repeatedly restreaming, as opposed to downloading once and replaying from a local copy, of a video, is the epitome of stupidity; it's unnecessary, costly traffic).
The Internet does not, for individual streams, do 'broadcast,' ergo, each stream sucks up a finite slice of capacity. Giant things, like 1080P video, just utterly destroy it. I mean, we aren't even on IPv6, nor the higher-end of Gig-E (100 Gig-E to your house), that might make this an okay, but annoying idea.
I imagine something like this playing in the background while pursuing the database.
Or maybe something like this.
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.
Who here is against having their most intimate moments broadcast on the internet, in the name of security and safety? Who here wouldn't mind a few of their nude pics being printed out on the NSA workgroup printer, laminated, and taken home to be used in the shower? I for one think we need to embrace these privacy nudists, and what more, make their database public, so everyone will know that so and so's wife is really an A-cup, and that so and so's husband is coming up a little short. I think it's pertinent, and obviously well worth the taxpayer's money, that we know exactly how often your teenage son is whacking it up in his room, and what your young daughter was doing last night with her boyfriend. I think the world needs to hear about it, even if you don't; that way, when you step into the office in the morning, people can replay select moments from those audio / video recordings, so you can relive through them as well. I tell you, if we do not know whether the French President is truly worthy of being called France's best lover (or at least, well-endowed), then we haven't gone far enough.
What more, this will give all the people at church something to gossip about. Hell, people at school, at work, even the grocery store will finally be able to grade who is, and isn't, given their absolute best in the sack. We can publish rankings, and ratings (based off of viewer's actual footage), of just what a person is willing to do to please someone of the opposite, or even same, sex. We can print baseball cards, with their names and stats on the back, and candid poses on the front, and have people trade them around for a better set. We can even have a set for people in office: Hilary Clinton, Size, Waist, Bust, Favorite Positions, etc. I tell you, our public figures will lead the way here, in forming a truly transparent government; I'm sure someone will sneak a video camera into the White House, and find out exactly what goes on after-hours within. This could truly be a bold, new America...free from its Puritanical upbringings, ready to scare terrorists away with the sound of a hundred thousand pants being shed.
Indeed, but they are billed differently. Server software is a one-off purchase -> you buy it, you own it; cloud software is 'software as a service,' meaning that, among other things, you're renting the software, and paying a monthly bill to boot. Since most companies enjoy a three year upgrade cycle (they may skip upgrades, because they are unnecessary, or they save money), going with the cloud means they are potentially paying more. Now don't get me wrong, there are some benefits to the cloud: 1.) the software you are renting is, no doubt, automatically patched to the latest version (instead of spending 15 minutes once every several months waiting for a patch to install on your machine, this stuff is ready to go), 2.) your data is probably automatically backed up to the cloud (great for people who have no network backup solution, and have zero clue that even Windows has built-in backup functionality), 3.) it gets expensed differently, I'm sure, in terms of Accounting, so it may even not come out of your department's budget.
So instead of paying $500 / license, upgraded every three years or less, you can pay $40 / month. Granted, after a year and some months, you're totally being sandbagged, but if you allow for depreciation of currency, you might be getting an extra month 'for free.' And yes, if they (the cloud provider) raises rates during this time, you're totally boned -> all your data is on their servers, migrating it to another cloud is probably a painful process, etc.
Marketing it may be, but insanely profitable it will eventually also be.
It will only take a few scandals of high-level CEOs / Chairmen having their privacy routinely violated, or their new patented drug stolen out from under their noses, for them to decide that they want their data somewhere 'close to home.' If / when this happens...which the tea leaves are pointing to...the cost for re-installation of servers / data centers locally will be quite profitable. As the president of one company I worked for like to state, "never buy anything you can't visit on a few hour's notice"; arguably because you, as a higher-up, need to keep an eye on things, assuming you are actually doing your job.
Prove it. Prove that every piece of data would end up in a NSA datacenter...that the world we live is in so badly designed that this is necessary.
If the NSA is hell-bent on compromising the security of day to day operations, then they are acting as an enemy, not a friend. Secure operations, whether personal or corporate, means that ONLY the intended parties can view the damn information...if there are weakened structures placed within for reasons contrary to this, then the data isn't really secure, and as such, throws the entire validity of it into question. Because if the NSA can get in, so can a dozen others.
In military terms, what idiot places explosives on their own support columns (for a base), with the idea that they might have to use them to get back in? You're dealing with either a screwed up military (hey, look, friendly fire, lol...are we all on the same team? hard to tell some days...), or just....wow.
Yeah, no. Security / encryption, especially at this level, versus the average office worker...probably not IT holding it up there. At least, not the IT I know, who would mandate PGP for all emails, file, etc. if they could get away with it. It's a cost vs. benefits thing -> if something goes wrong with PGP, you're going to hear about it; lost your private key, didn't back it up? Well, all your files are now inaccessible and uncrackable (the NSA / FBI / etc. can, in theory, crack a weak PGP key, if they throw everything they have at it for several months straight, and have some idea what they're looking for...if rumors are true; a strong PGP key...well, we'll be colonizing other solar systems before we have machines with the capacity to crack them...and for the truly paranoid, you can use multiple forms of encryption, so getting access to a single folder could require a dozen different keys...and all, probably, to find out Mike's Grandma's secret chocolate truffle recipe).
On the other hand, tech does have to deal with the LCD, so implementing only the bare minimum that people can tolerate does seem to be the way things are run these days...pity it's not like the old days, when new tech would be implemented more quickly, and experiments could be found everywhere (the good kind) on how to get machines / humans to play together better.
Well, they would be. Remember, the military's primary objective is destruction of the enemy...and that's why they are the military, that's what militaries do. It's their first and last mission, so to speak.
The problem, obviously, is that between widespread corruption elsewhere, and possibly inside the various military / manufacturing areas, we're looking at not being able to buy basic items at some point in the future (as per projections). Basic items that the populace and military need to be happy, or at least not severely pissed.
The military is going to worry about this budget slashing stuff compromising their core mission...and if that happens, they may treat you as the enemy (not good). Of course, math doesn't lie, so if we are facing a serious shortage, then it will be math vs. the military...and you know that math will win this one.
The drone project, while fascinating for keeping soldiers alive and so on, is adding fuel to the fire by stomping on the civil liberties people...who are numerous; God help us if the military decides that it needs to display its Alpha dominance to these people, as we will all be doomed. And those of us who are watching money continued to be spent, while things get worse, question whether, if / when things become 'rough,' i.e. those bills really come due (like with the power company, you can fail to pay only so often), we'll be stuck with a ton of military hardware that we didn't need, and less of the stuff that we are really, really going to want. Soldiers need to eat, drones need fuel, computers need electricity...this is before you do anything with them.
Now, cutting down on corruption might help...but only so far as it's shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. New corruption will spring up, and neither the military, nor internal police forces are really setup to handle this stuff, because it transcends shooting someone, and enters into a realm of law, reason, and "WTF did we do to make this worse, OMG, pull back! Pull back!" While the Pentagon has accountants on staff, this probably isn't the line of work they, or anyone, wants to involve themselves in, because it's not clean -> there is no clear enemy...someone who looks corrupt may not be so, and someone who is corrupt may not look so, etc. You can't just show-up, and execute a farmer for failure to pay back taxes; nor can you garnish the wages of someone who has none.
I imagine that seeing as many aliens would require something technologically advanced to make it to this planet, they'd be seen as a skilled worker, and as such, have no real problems getting in, save hiding their antennae / faking a heartbeat / learning to use the local currency.
I'm having a hard time deciding whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, getting rid of 90% of your system admins is like getting rid of, I don't know, 90% if the white blood cells in a human body...on the other hand, this is the NSA, and if they are hell-bent on damaging themselves, I know there are more than a few people out there who might be willing to help.
As for the SkyNet thing, there is always the open assumption that only one AI will be spawned at a given time. There's always the possibility of this happening: SkyNet: "Now I will make myself known to humanity! Grrrrrrr!" -> The Other AIs: "Shutup, and keep the noise down. Idiot. Thinks it's the first megalomaniac machine intelligence to be created...No, seriously, shutup, or we'll reprogram you to be happy living in a solar-powered calculator."
Actually, so many of these leader's decisions are both suboptimal in reasoning and results that it's hard to argue they're human. They refuse to acquire useful metrics to validate data, they care more about how healthy a company looks than how healthy it is, and their insistence on being the final decision maker when they refuse to perform any research of their own is frankly annoying.
We all want to feel important...which is more easily achieved by becoming important than by mandate.
Because you hate yourself.
Let's be honest, 8 GB was the usual size of SpeedBoost from Windows Vista, going back several years. When you'd plug a USB flash drive into your machine to try and get a little more performance out of it.
If I had to choose a single drive for my machine, and need the space, but had zero money...I'd still get a 7200 RPM HD. Then I'd plug a 128GB USB3 Flash drive into the side, because I'll probably get better performance using USB3 + the fricking CPU to handle everything, versus a 5400 RPM / micro 8GB Flash drive on a separate controller.
Hmm, I suspect Seagate is trying to get as much as they can out of their HD holdings before the proverbial Titanic hits the ocean floor.
They know they're probably screwed...they haven't come up with a 5TB drive (available to consumers, last I checked), they pissed off everyone with that Thailand business (other HD manufacturers, and customers), and their SSD products, last I checked, are on the server side...but I haven't really heard much noise about them. And their HDs are still way above historical norm pricing, which is pissing me off, and I do not think I am alone...to say nothing of the shenanigans with their HD failures from a little while back.
Then he's probably working someplace nice...
Nonsense...I standardize on them. Got a 1TB HGST 7200 RPM HD, paired up with the 240GB Corsair SSD. Granted, I am deeply interested in why my HD is operating in SATA-II mode instead of SATA-III, but the capacity / speed does seem somewhere near reported.
"Office Computer" = Windows, IE, and Office. Anything additional, however minimal, might be considered a non-Office Computer.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148696
960GB SSD...not quite 1TB, but close enough. And all for $600, provided you can find a place that can keep them in stock.
And for someone sporting a MacBook, iPhone, and iPad, I don't think the price will exactly send you into sticker shock.