Out here in California, the state lottery was sold to the public as a way to fund education. Problem is, the first year, the lottery brought in an extra $400 million. The next year, Sacramento transferred $400 million less into the education fund from the general fund, and spread the new found wealth in the general fund into everything except education.
So on a technicality, they did right: all the non-payout money (minus expenses) went into the education budget. But the total funding for education didn't rise (except for the single initial bump).
Humor is pain, purposely inflicted, when everyone understands it's a joke.
Is the death of people painful? Check. Is the possibility of a software glitch causing death painful? Check. Would the notification of your impending death due to software glitch be painful? Check. Did the poster purposely present you with this possibility to make you experience this pain? Check. Does everyone understand that the poster doesn't actually want people to go through the horror of being notified that the robot will kill them in 30 seconds? Check.
It's a joke. It's meant to be painful*.
(Should you disagree, go ahead and try to find something funny that doesn't inflict pain).
The difference between cruelty and humor is the intent behind the delivery.
This comment would be cruel if the robot really was programmed to taunt people with their death and then kill them. Nobody believes that this is the case though.
Is it sad that nine people lost their lives? Certainly. Does that preclude a joke about Robocop and the horrors of automated weapons? I don't think so. It's not like anyone wanted those soldiers to die. That's why the joke is funny.
*And if you look hard enough, you'll find that we only tease those we love. I don't know if it is a defense mechanism or a bonding act or a challenge to strengthen trust - but invariably, the fun comes from applying pain that is obviously not-what-any-of-us-would-want. This is why self-deprecating humor is so good within groups of strangers. Everyone gets a laugh, but no-one gets hurt (except the funny guy who has shoulders broad enough to take it).
Well there you go - that was easy. And, you'd have a built in keyboard. At my house, the cable modem is sitting in the printer stand next to the ethernet switch. So for me, I'd just as soon have a small box sans LCD and keyboard. But sure, you make a good point that a laptop could be a fine firewall, cheap. And the built-in battery means a clean shutdown when the UPS signals the power has gone out.
This device would actually make a decent firewall. Likely your laptop doesn't have two ethernet ports. And a WRT54 doesn't have a 40 GB hard drive for logging. Throw on SmoothWall or DansGuardian and you have a low power box that sits between the cable/DSL modem and your home network. Seems like a good fit to me. Another poster points out that it would be even better with three ethernet ports, for a DMZ. I don't know how much a WRT54 would cost if they added a 40 GB laptop drive, but I think this is probably near the same price range. Probably a little higher, but not unreasonably so.
What Novell sells, Novell has to support. They have trained practically everybody in the company to use SuSE, and the tech support people have been trained enough to troubleshoot and isolate bugs - in SuSE. And now you want them to be subject matter experts for RedHat / Debian / Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Slackware / Damn Small / Joe's Own /...?
At what point does it end?
And from a system administrator's point of view: if you can run Debian, can you run SuSE? Of course you can. ssh into the SLES isn't going to look any different....
Part of Novell's problem stems from having to ship binary code. GroupWise has that built-in encryption. NCP uses RSA encryption. Novell really isn't in a position to spill the security beans by releasing source code. Even good old NetWare has that proprietary C-Shell menu system that belongs to someone else - it's not theirs to open source.
So they are stuck with the binaries. They'll even help you get eDirectory installed on RedHat - but if your environment has something tweaked that causes the whole thing to go boom, well... sorry. What more can they do? It's not like they have the bankroll that Microsoft has.
You asked what Novell's job is. Novell's job is to keep and gain customers. The NetWare customers are happy enough with SLES - particularly when SLES comes pre-set-up with XEN to run NetWare 6.5 inside it. For gaining new customers, Novell is going to get them from people fed up with Windows. SLES / RedHat / Debian - doesn't matter to the Windows admin. He/she will bite whichever bullet and learn to love ssh and grep.
I would love it if Novell had the resources to port the GroupWise 8 to RedHat / Ubuntu / etc. The reason they wrote the client in java is that it does port to Mac OS X (and their own WebAccess client). But the reality of their world is that the GroupWise team has to compete with Outlook / Exchange, and that means a Win32 client in a constant upgrade cycle, or else they suffer the fate of looking abandoned (like the Lotus Notes client).
So far, they have managed to keep the java client only one revision behind the Win32 client. That's not terrible, considering the size of the company.
You do make a decent point that if GroupWise ran on RedHat / etc., that could grow the GroupWise market. But I think there are more people unhappy with Exchange who want to migrate. If I were Novell, I'd pursue the largest market - particularly if my email product already ran on Windows, and I had a native migration tool.
The worst part about Novell is that they have some large stockholders who want out, and wouldn't mind liquidating the company if it means getting their cash back. So stupid financial acts tend to periodically damage the company. It's really hard to convince management to grow the investment in your email product when the finance robots are telling management to downsize instead (More cash! Reputation that we're dying? Not quantifiable - why do you ask?)
There is nothing wrong with being skeptical, and it's probably a good idea. Wait it out and see.:-)
The biggest benefit to NetWare ------> Linux + Xen + NetWare is drivers. The Xen environment provides (standardized/generic) Novell written drivers to the NetWare OS, and it becomes SLES' job to fulfill those calls. NetWare can be pretty brittle (the trade-off being high speed). This new environment provides a whole additional layer to buffer the ugliness of actual hardware calls away from the sometimes brittle NetWare OS.
Obviously, Linux + Xen + NetWare will b slower than native NetWare, but on a 3.0 GHz dual core box, is that really going to be noticeable?
So I understand where you would be skeptical - but I think you might (eventually) end up being pleasantly surprised.
For some reason, all problems seem to solvable by adding one-more-level of redirection.;-)
Limits and the software
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Ask Rob Malda
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I suppose the limit on 200 people in a person's friends list (and the limit of no more than 50 messages in a message list) was done to keep the hardware from buckling under the load. Are there any plans to redo the software to make the site still perform acceptably, but also allow greater user customization? For example, I'd love the ability to change the comment scores based on individual friend modifiers.
I guess I just don't understand the point you are making. I don't see how the spammer can receive the reply back (to then send the 'authorize me' message). Consider that if the spammer forges the header, my mail servers use DNS to do an MX record lookup and connect to the 'real' mail server - that's how a bounce-back works. At no time would my mail servers attempt to connect to the originating (spoofed) spammer's mail server. Under this RIA scheme, I'd get an email back with the real IP address of the mail server that sends mail on behalf of the real email domain.
Now, I don't think this whole scheme will work, because it requires all the mail servers in the world to upgrade and implement this scheme - or else annoy all email users into despair to clamor for the upgrade. If you're going to go to the trouble to upgrade, you might as well just add a SPF hard-fail record to your DNS and be done with it.
SPF only solves the problem of SpammerS sending mail to MailserverB with a forged header to make the message look like it came from MailserverA. The assumption is that UserB might open the message if it says it comes from UserA.
SPF causes MailserverB look up DNS data for the email domain for MailserverA, and compare it's SPF published IP addresses with the IP address of the incoming email connection from SpammerS. If the two don't match, then MailserverB hangs up on SpammerS with a 566 eat-shit-and-die error code.
That's all SPF does: eliminate impersonation.
For that, it's a great idea.
If you think that SPF is going to eliminate all spam, then you have misplaced hopes. Don't throw out SPF just because it is a piece of the solution instead of the whole solution.
The real option is ISDN: your phone company is required by law to implement it and supply it to you if you request it. You may get a bit of a run-around, so make the request in writing and follow up with a letter to the FCC if they drag their feet. It will be more expensive than dial-up, but it will be enough to run a Citrix client.
Now for the silly answer: clear out the house of illegal drugs and join NORML and do what you can to get your house raided. A friend of a friend had crappy dial-up because of his remote location and after much complaining was told too bad, so sad, the dial-up he got was the dial-up he had to live with. Being one of the more unusual types in his neck of the woods, he was vocal about legalizing drugs. Eventually, his trailer got raided, and lo-and-behold, although he was an advocate for drugs, he didn't use them himself - so with zero evidence, the D.A. dropped the charges and he was free to go home.
But his dial-up speed magically hit 56K solid forever after that.;-)
In most (if not all) accounting systems, the way to stop internal employees from stealing is to twice-check the transaction. Stealing by one employee is easy, but making the dishonest employee find and hook up with another dishonest employee makes the planned theft difficult. For example, this is done with an accountant writing checks; the checks are signed by someone else. One cashier rings up the sale; another verifies the shopping cart has only the items listed on the receipt.
If the accountant can write AND sign checks, what would stop writing checks to the bogus business run by their spouse? If the cashier doesn't get checked, what would stop the cashier's spouse from pasting the UPC barcode for a box of diskettes over the UPC for a 700 MB disk drive (to later be sold on eBay)?
Sure, eventually the inventory or cash balances aren't going to match - and some sort of twice-checking will have to be implemented.
So would you shop at a place that made you go through the register twice? Would you shop at the place where everything over $100 dollars was purchased through a slip of paper with the barcode (and then at the door, an inventory clerk brings the item to you from the warehouse (which still needs twice checking, in case the inventory clerk is the thief))?
My point is: protecting against theft from insiders is generally implemented by forcing the insiders to collaborate against the anti-theft system. If you can figure out a better way to for stores with expensive items to protect themselves, I'm sure the stores would love to hear it.
Because the alternative is to just let the theft happen, and raise the price of the goods to cover the loss. The honest people then subsidize the thieves.
... it's likely the police officer (really, his department since it's likely a law suit would be against the department rather than against the individual officer)... IIRC, officers are told that their behavior can get them in trouble; i.e., if the lawsuit happens, they can be held personally responsible. On the other hand, the lawyer doesn't want to sue some poor schlub making $35,000 a year - he wants to sue the whole department with it's deep pockets. If the action is bad enough, the department will cut the guy loose, and point the finger at the cop who wasn't "following the rules".
It isn't mutual assured destruction. The problem is one-sided; if Circuit City or the police apologized, and the victim is sue happy, then his lawyer will use their apology as an admission of guilt. It's smartest for the alleged offender to assume that the thing is going to court and offer zero assistance to the enemy.
I'm 99% sure this is still internal. The next version of OES is supposed to put this into production with us customers, and that's been delayed. FWIW, (at least in the GroupWise camp I'm a part of), when Novell asks, we tell them we would rather have something late than on-schedule but with horrific bugs. So yes, this NetWare as a VM under Xen is just around the corner; but other promised features in OES are taking some time to solidify.
IIRC, in the labs, Novell had NetWare in a Xen VM back in January.
Actually, I got my info from a co-worker who saw a photo printed from one of the high-resolution military satellites. I've never known him to be a liar, so I trust that when he says he saw a photo that resolved printing on a one centimeter object, that indeed it is for real.
In TFA they mentioned that in the past, the DOD would sometimes provide info to the Feds. I recall that after the Oklahoma City Bombing, it was mentioned on the radio that one of the perps was caught because he traveled 200 miles away from the bombing the fastest of anyone else. How, in 1995, would you measure who drove 70 miles an hour, for over 200 miles, specifically away from Oklahoma City directly after the bombing?
It should be pointed out that satellites come in several forms and with different orbits. Some don't gather much detail, but can watch a large area for a long time. If you've read enough Tom Clancy novels, you know that these types of satellites are terrific for passively recording movement of vehicles and (specks that are people), and running the tape backward after an event to see where the perpetrators originated from. Then you run the tape forward and catch the perp's.
Of course, once you've run the tape back to find where the perp's live, you know which telephone recordings to scan.... But there's no domestic telephone recording going on, right?
Another type of satellite has super magnification, but a narrow field of view. These need to be targeted (which is expensive), but yes, they can tell if you need a haircut or not. These are the ones that cannot hover over an area. But if the goal is to snap a photo of you holding evidence (or being in the presence of the wrong people), and DHS has an idea of when to monitor you, it is possible. Not likely, but absolutely possible.
This shouldn't be all that worrisome, until DOD+DHS announces a plan to put up one satellite a week, forever. Go for that price-break on the large quantity discounts, you see.
Frankly, even if you don't like it, too bad for you. Consider the Hans Reiser case: take the wide field view tape, and follow his car. If it doesn't show him driving off to any remote areas the day of the murder, maybe the tape should be played back from his wife's house to see if someone else showed up there that day, then follow them.
In either case, having evidence of who dumped the body will convict murderers. Even if you don't like spying by DHS, DHS isn't going to give it up without a fight.
We shut down our Token-Ring MAU only last year - so it wouldn't surprise me to find that other people still had it. On the other hand, I would expect LAX (and especially DHS) to be on modern equipment.
You would think that a data company would have a more efficient billing process.
But if you are a regulated monopoly that gets to charge operating costs + 10%, isn't it is your best interest to maximize your operating costs?
Now admittedly, wireless is probably the most competitive of all the data services (easiest to switch vendors, you actually have more than one vendor to choose from (well, not for iPhone users)). But my point is that these aren't new corporations with new ways of thinking. They are still old fashioned corporations where CYA is more important than customer service. Will they change to a shorter form? Of course they will. But it won't be because the director of billing information systems told his people "If it's what is best for the customer, do it!" It will be because the customers complained to the customer service reps, who told their supervisors, who scheduled a cross-business-line-meeting, who will tell the billing information systems manager what screw-up he is. And he will whine that if they didn't print out every freaking line item, then he wouldn't have been allowed to cover his ass with the customer bills.
Besides, when the bean-counters come snooping around looking for ways to cut costs, the billing information systems manager will get to propose emailing the bill, and then shift the work to the CSRs to convince the customers to sign up. If cost's aren't going down, it's because the CSRs aren't selling it enough. Meanwhile, billing information systems manager gets a bigger part of the company budget than he would have otherwise. By costing more, his department is worth more to the company.
In a truly free market, this would be financial suicide. But due to origins of telecom, these aren't really free-market companies (or at least they don't think like them yet).
Apparently this is a version of the original Storm Worm. The original sent along executable file attachments. This version asks the user to click on the link, which then uses javascript to push down the.exe and launch it. Some of the infected machines become web servers to deliver the trojan, others become spam engines to spread the invitations.
Certainly, the recipient has the right at the time of placing the order to put restrictions on the delivery. For example, almost all restaurants tell their supplier to put a restriction on the delivery: do not deliver between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM. Within those predefined restrictions, the shipper has to comply. Your high-security scenario is another example. But that doesn't mean that just because you are pissed at your supplier that you can refuse delivery. You ordered it and the innocent third party delivered it. What right do you have to burden the innocent third party with the expense of shipping it back?
If you didn't order it in the first place, then sure, you do have right of refusal.
But if you claim that you didn't order it, you send it back, your pissing match goes to court, and it is proven that you did place the order - then not only are you on the hook for shipment costs both directions, but you are also on the hook for the lost business and damaged reputation the shipper incurred because his truck that was supposed to be empty, wasn't, because you felt like jerking the shipper around.
Note that the shipper's contract is with the supplier. The supplier is paying the shipper for the service. If the supplier tells the shipper to unload on your dock or parking lot, or even outside your front door, then the shipper has that right. If you have a problem with that, you can hire your own shipper to send the goods back ASAP. Heck, you can hire the shipper that is doing the initial delivery, if he/she is willing to take the job. But you can't force him/her into your own little war with a supplier you decide to fight.
I was told that this whole thing came to a head when a piano store ordered a piano but then figured out they couldn't afford to put it in their inventory. They tried to get the supplier to stop shipment, and the supplier refused. When the truck arrived, the store owner tried to refuse the shipment. The shipper said "I have an order to deliver this piano, and I'm going to deliver it!" The store owner was supposed to supply the special forklift to bring the piano off the truck gently - but he refused. So the shipper just slid the piano off the back of his truck and drove off (yes, at some point there was less sliding / more ka-whumping). The store owner then claimed the improper delivery damaged the piano. The court found in favor of the innocent third party: the shipper. Just because the piano store owner and piano supplier were fighting didn't mean the store owner had the right to piss all over the shipper.
Yeah, I don't know. I know that we (County departments) do have to pay sales tax. I'm sure that we don't pay income tax, but I think we may have to pay property tax. We'd end up paying it to ourselves, so that may be a moot point.
Depreciation is really just a part of computing the total value of assets an organization holds. It happens to also be a tax write-off, but really all you are computing is how much your gear would be worth if you sold it. Just because an organization bought a $5,000 PC in 1988 doesn't mean they have $5,000 of value sitting on a shelf somewhere in 2007. My point is, I think the school district still has to follow the accounting rules, and I wonder if they included the $5 million of PC's in those rules. That would bolster IBM's case that goods were delivered and should therefor be paid for.
I believe that under GAAP, they have to forgive the debt to take the write-off. Until then, the 5 million dollars actually stays on the books as an asset "Accounts Receivable".
I wonder if the Contra Costa School District wrote off the depreciation of this capital equipment over the ten years?
Something that had been hashed out in civil court was the concept of "innocent third party" - this being the shipper. If you and your vendor are in a pissing match, it doesn't become the shipping company's problem. Two parts to it: when the shipper shows up, you have to accept it. Period. The shipper is not your own private storage rental; he/she uses their trucks to make a living. Were the recipient to refuse to accept, then the shipper's truck is not empty for their next customer (and he/she didn't get paid to haul the goods a second time to storage while you and your vendor finish the pissing match). The other part is that someone has to call up the shipper and place an order for shipment back to the vendor's warehouse. Whomever places the order is on the hook for shipment costs (unless other arrangements have been made. If you are in a pissing match, you'd better get that in writing).
The upshot is that the shipper has the right to unload the goods on your sidewalk and walk away if you are being difficult. Obviously, they'd do all sorts of CYA stuff to document their actions - and this sort of ultimate action is never good for business. But in the end, the innocent third party has the right to walk away without burden (providing the shipping order doesn't place restrictions on the delivery. "Must be kept frozen" overrides "I waited five whole minutes for them to empty the freezer and then dropped the goods on the burning sidewalk."
It may be that you legally have the right to return the goods. But, you need to be careful about who has possession the goods, and have proof of transfer of possession.
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So on a technicality, they did right: all the non-payout money (minus expenses) went into the education budget. But the total funding for education didn't rise (except for the single initial bump).
And of course, the pain is the embarrassment / stupidity of the poor dog. "Holy Cow! What was THAT?!?!?!"
Thanks - that one's terrific.
Is the death of people painful? Check. Is the possibility of a software glitch causing death painful? Check. Would the notification of your impending death due to software glitch be painful? Check. Did the poster purposely present you with this possibility to make you experience this pain? Check. Does everyone understand that the poster doesn't actually want people to go through the horror of being notified that the robot will kill them in 30 seconds? Check.
It's a joke. It's meant to be painful*.
(Should you disagree, go ahead and try to find something funny that doesn't inflict pain).
The difference between cruelty and humor is the intent behind the delivery.
This comment would be cruel if the robot really was programmed to taunt people with their death and then kill them. Nobody believes that this is the case though.
Is it sad that nine people lost their lives? Certainly. Does that preclude a joke about Robocop and the horrors of automated weapons? I don't think so. It's not like anyone wanted those soldiers to die. That's why the joke is funny.
*And if you look hard enough, you'll find that we only tease those we love. I don't know if it is a defense mechanism or a bonding act or a challenge to strengthen trust - but invariably, the fun comes from applying pain that is obviously not-what-any-of-us-would-want. This is why self-deprecating humor is so good within groups of strangers. Everyone gets a laugh, but no-one gets hurt (except the funny guy who has shoulders broad enough to take it).
What Novell sells, Novell has to support. They have trained practically everybody in the company to use SuSE, and the tech support people have been trained enough to troubleshoot and isolate bugs - in SuSE. And now you want them to be subject matter experts for RedHat / Debian / Ubuntu / Kubuntu / Slackware / Damn Small / Joe's Own / ...?
At what point does it end?
And from a system administrator's point of view: if you can run Debian, can you run SuSE? Of course you can. ssh into the SLES isn't going to look any different....
Part of Novell's problem stems from having to ship binary code. GroupWise has that built-in encryption. NCP uses RSA encryption. Novell really isn't in a position to spill the security beans by releasing source code. Even good old NetWare has that proprietary C-Shell menu system that belongs to someone else - it's not theirs to open source.
So they are stuck with the binaries. They'll even help you get eDirectory installed on RedHat - but if your environment has something tweaked that causes the whole thing to go boom, well... sorry. What more can they do? It's not like they have the bankroll that Microsoft has.
You asked what Novell's job is. Novell's job is to keep and gain customers. The NetWare customers are happy enough with SLES - particularly when SLES comes pre-set-up with XEN to run NetWare 6.5 inside it. For gaining new customers, Novell is going to get them from people fed up with Windows. SLES / RedHat / Debian - doesn't matter to the Windows admin. He/she will bite whichever bullet and learn to love ssh and grep.
I would love it if Novell had the resources to port the GroupWise 8 to RedHat / Ubuntu / etc. The reason they wrote the client in java is that it does port to Mac OS X (and their own WebAccess client). But the reality of their world is that the GroupWise team has to compete with Outlook / Exchange, and that means a Win32 client in a constant upgrade cycle, or else they suffer the fate of looking abandoned (like the Lotus Notes client).
So far, they have managed to keep the java client only one revision behind the Win32 client. That's not terrible, considering the size of the company.
You do make a decent point that if GroupWise ran on RedHat / etc., that could grow the GroupWise market. But I think there are more people unhappy with Exchange who want to migrate. If I were Novell, I'd pursue the largest market - particularly if my email product already ran on Windows, and I had a native migration tool.
The worst part about Novell is that they have some large stockholders who want out, and wouldn't mind liquidating the company if it means getting their cash back. So stupid financial acts tend to periodically damage the company. It's really hard to convince management to grow the investment in your email product when the finance robots are telling management to downsize instead (More cash! Reputation that we're dying? Not quantifiable - why do you ask?)
The biggest benefit to NetWare ------> Linux + Xen + NetWare is drivers. The Xen environment provides (standardized/generic) Novell written drivers to the NetWare OS, and it becomes SLES' job to fulfill those calls. NetWare can be pretty brittle (the trade-off being high speed). This new environment provides a whole additional layer to buffer the ugliness of actual hardware calls away from the sometimes brittle NetWare OS.
Obviously, Linux + Xen + NetWare will b slower than native NetWare, but on a 3.0 GHz dual core box, is that really going to be noticeable?
So I understand where you would be skeptical - but I think you might (eventually) end up being pleasantly surprised.
For some reason, all problems seem to solvable by adding one-more-level of redirection. ;-)
I suppose the limit on 200 people in a person's friends list (and the limit of no more than 50 messages in a message list) was done to keep the hardware from buckling under the load. Are there any plans to redo the software to make the site still perform acceptably, but also allow greater user customization? For example, I'd love the ability to change the comment scores based on individual friend modifiers.
Now, I don't think this whole scheme will work, because it requires all the mail servers in the world to upgrade and implement this scheme - or else annoy all email users into despair to clamor for the upgrade. If you're going to go to the trouble to upgrade, you might as well just add a SPF hard-fail record to your DNS and be done with it.
SPF causes MailserverB look up DNS data for the email domain for MailserverA, and compare it's SPF published IP addresses with the IP address of the incoming email connection from SpammerS. If the two don't match, then MailserverB hangs up on SpammerS with a 566 eat-shit-and-die error code.
That's all SPF does: eliminate impersonation.
For that, it's a great idea.
If you think that SPF is going to eliminate all spam, then you have misplaced hopes. Don't throw out SPF just because it is a piece of the solution instead of the whole solution.
The problem you describe is solved with SURBLs.
IMO, people should use both.
Now for the silly answer: clear out the house of illegal drugs and join NORML and do what you can to get your house raided. A friend of a friend had crappy dial-up because of his remote location and after much complaining was told too bad, so sad, the dial-up he got was the dial-up he had to live with. Being one of the more unusual types in his neck of the woods, he was vocal about legalizing drugs. Eventually, his trailer got raided, and lo-and-behold, although he was an advocate for drugs, he didn't use them himself - so with zero evidence, the D.A. dropped the charges and he was free to go home.
But his dial-up speed magically hit 56K solid forever after that. ;-)
If the accountant can write AND sign checks, what would stop writing checks to the bogus business run by their spouse? If the cashier doesn't get checked, what would stop the cashier's spouse from pasting the UPC barcode for a box of diskettes over the UPC for a 700 MB disk drive (to later be sold on eBay)?
Sure, eventually the inventory or cash balances aren't going to match - and some sort of twice-checking will have to be implemented.
So would you shop at a place that made you go through the register twice? Would you shop at the place where everything over $100 dollars was purchased through a slip of paper with the barcode (and then at the door, an inventory clerk brings the item to you from the warehouse (which still needs twice checking, in case the inventory clerk is the thief))?
My point is: protecting against theft from insiders is generally implemented by forcing the insiders to collaborate against the anti-theft system. If you can figure out a better way to for stores with expensive items to protect themselves, I'm sure the stores would love to hear it.
Because the alternative is to just let the theft happen, and raise the price of the goods to cover the loss. The honest people then subsidize the thieves.
... it's likely the police officer (really, his department since it's likely a law suit would be against the department rather than against the individual officer)It isn't mutual assured destruction. The problem is one-sided; if Circuit City or the police apologized, and the victim is sue happy, then his lawyer will use their apology as an admission of guilt. It's smartest for the alleged offender to assume that the thing is going to court and offer zero assistance to the enemy.
IIRC, in the labs, Novell had NetWare in a Xen VM back in January.
In TFA they mentioned that in the past, the DOD would sometimes provide info to the Feds. I recall that after the Oklahoma City Bombing, it was mentioned on the radio that one of the perps was caught because he traveled 200 miles away from the bombing the fastest of anyone else. How, in 1995, would you measure who drove 70 miles an hour, for over 200 miles, specifically away from Oklahoma City directly after the bombing?
Of course, once you've run the tape back to find where the perp's live, you know which telephone recordings to scan.... But there's no domestic telephone recording going on, right?
Another type of satellite has super magnification, but a narrow field of view. These need to be targeted (which is expensive), but yes, they can tell if you need a haircut or not. These are the ones that cannot hover over an area. But if the goal is to snap a photo of you holding evidence (or being in the presence of the wrong people), and DHS has an idea of when to monitor you, it is possible. Not likely, but absolutely possible.
This shouldn't be all that worrisome, until DOD+DHS announces a plan to put up one satellite a week, forever. Go for that price-break on the large quantity discounts, you see.
Frankly, even if you don't like it, too bad for you. Consider the Hans Reiser case: take the wide field view tape, and follow his car. If it doesn't show him driving off to any remote areas the day of the murder, maybe the tape should be played back from his wife's house to see if someone else showed up there that day, then follow them.
In either case, having evidence of who dumped the body will convict murderers. Even if you don't like spying by DHS, DHS isn't going to give it up without a fight.
We shut down our Token-Ring MAU only last year - so it wouldn't surprise me to find that other people still had it. On the other hand, I would expect LAX (and especially DHS) to be on modern equipment.
But if you are a regulated monopoly that gets to charge operating costs + 10%, isn't it is your best interest to maximize your operating costs?
Now admittedly, wireless is probably the most competitive of all the data services (easiest to switch vendors, you actually have more than one vendor to choose from (well, not for iPhone users)). But my point is that these aren't new corporations with new ways of thinking. They are still old fashioned corporations where CYA is more important than customer service. Will they change to a shorter form? Of course they will. But it won't be because the director of billing information systems told his people "If it's what is best for the customer, do it!" It will be because the customers complained to the customer service reps, who told their supervisors, who scheduled a cross-business-line-meeting, who will tell the billing information systems manager what screw-up he is. And he will whine that if they didn't print out every freaking line item, then he wouldn't have been allowed to cover his ass with the customer bills.
Besides, when the bean-counters come snooping around looking for ways to cut costs, the billing information systems manager will get to propose emailing the bill, and then shift the work to the CSRs to convince the customers to sign up. If cost's aren't going down, it's because the CSRs aren't selling it enough. Meanwhile, billing information systems manager gets a bigger part of the company budget than he would have otherwise. By costing more, his department is worth more to the company.
In a truly free market, this would be financial suicide. But due to origins of telecom, these aren't really free-market companies (or at least they don't think like them yet).
Here is an article from SANS: Riding out yet Another Storm Wave (June 28, 2007), and The wave continues - Subject line variation from June 30.
If you didn't order it in the first place, then sure, you do have right of refusal.
But if you claim that you didn't order it, you send it back, your pissing match goes to court, and it is proven that you did place the order - then not only are you on the hook for shipment costs both directions, but you are also on the hook for the lost business and damaged reputation the shipper incurred because his truck that was supposed to be empty, wasn't, because you felt like jerking the shipper around.
Note that the shipper's contract is with the supplier. The supplier is paying the shipper for the service. If the supplier tells the shipper to unload on your dock or parking lot, or even outside your front door, then the shipper has that right. If you have a problem with that, you can hire your own shipper to send the goods back ASAP. Heck, you can hire the shipper that is doing the initial delivery, if he/she is willing to take the job. But you can't force him/her into your own little war with a supplier you decide to fight.
I was told that this whole thing came to a head when a piano store ordered a piano but then figured out they couldn't afford to put it in their inventory. They tried to get the supplier to stop shipment, and the supplier refused. When the truck arrived, the store owner tried to refuse the shipment. The shipper said "I have an order to deliver this piano, and I'm going to deliver it!" The store owner was supposed to supply the special forklift to bring the piano off the truck gently - but he refused. So the shipper just slid the piano off the back of his truck and drove off (yes, at some point there was less sliding / more ka-whumping). The store owner then claimed the improper delivery damaged the piano. The court found in favor of the innocent third party: the shipper. Just because the piano store owner and piano supplier were fighting didn't mean the store owner had the right to piss all over the shipper.
Depreciation is really just a part of computing the total value of assets an organization holds. It happens to also be a tax write-off, but really all you are computing is how much your gear would be worth if you sold it. Just because an organization bought a $5,000 PC in 1988 doesn't mean they have $5,000 of value sitting on a shelf somewhere in 2007. My point is, I think the school district still has to follow the accounting rules, and I wonder if they included the $5 million of PC's in those rules. That would bolster IBM's case that goods were delivered and should therefor be paid for.
Notice who gets the largest chunk.
Obviously, a County can fund things however they want. But I'd be surprised if the ratio was 20% different.
I wonder if the Contra Costa School District wrote off the depreciation of this capital equipment over the ten years?
The upshot is that the shipper has the right to unload the goods on your sidewalk and walk away if you are being difficult. Obviously, they'd do all sorts of CYA stuff to document their actions - and this sort of ultimate action is never good for business. But in the end, the innocent third party has the right to walk away without burden (providing the shipping order doesn't place restrictions on the delivery. "Must be kept frozen" overrides "I waited five whole minutes for them to empty the freezer and then dropped the goods on the burning sidewalk."
It may be that you legally have the right to return the goods. But, you need to be careful about who has possession the goods, and have proof of transfer of possession.