Not to mention the fact that CxOs are frequently the biggest offenders when it comes to poor security practices. I've seen more than one CEO of a Fortune 500 company use the name of the company as their domain/email password, and refuse to change it on a regular basis like the rest of the users at the company. Trying to enforce a security policy with someone who can have you escorted off the premises on a moment's notice is pretty much impossible.
The only way it works is to get the CEO/Chairman/Lord High Muckety-Muck to sign off on a policy that applies to EVERYONE, and then firing an executive for breach of policy as a demonstration of how serious the company takes security. (This assumes that a CxO breaches policy at some point, which is pretty much inevitable.) The attitude of "security policy is for little people" reminds me of Leona Helmsley's 'taxes are for little people' attitude.
In addition to the training, you need to make breaches of security a terminable offense, for everything from a deliberate theft of information, to writing down a password on a sticky note and putting it on your monitor. Without teeth, you cannot enforce a security policy, and a policy that isn't enforced isn't a policy.
Then you've spotted the movie-going equivalent of a unicorn, because I will bet a steak dinner that that was pretty much the ONLY time that that has happened. We have AMC theaters here too, and I've *never* seen anyone tossed, much less even spoken to.
It makes sense when you think about it. They've already got your money, why should they give a damn about anything else.
I know. The place is a license to print money, basically. They even have a full bar/restaurant as part of the theater. And you can bring your GLASS of BEER into the theater with you, just like they talk about in Pulp Fiction.
Yeah, I wasn't really comparing apples to apples there. Once you figure in the cost of the soda and popcorn, the difference in cost is pretty negligible (and totally worth it for the reasons I stated above.) The difference is that you don't *have to* buy the overpriced snacks if you go into the regular theater, so the comparison is a little misleading.
I do get soda and popcorn, so the difference isn't much at all.
The theater owners and the MPAA are well aware of the problem. If piracy was *really* a problem, those in charge would do what they could to make the modern theater-going experience more enjoyable for the people who actually want to watch the movies.
The trouble with throwing people out of the theater for yapping on their phones etc. is that those people won't come back to that theater the next time. What the theater owners are too short-sighted to realize is that if they establish a policy at those theaters that disruptive people will be thrown out without refund, then people who actually want to see the movie being shown will come to the theater in greater numbers. If my local theater advertised a "we'll toss you out on your ass for being a douchebag" policy, I would definitely go there more often. As it is, I only go to the premium cinema when I want to see a movie (21+, THX sound, leather seats, pull-out tray tables in front of you, two of your own armrests, digital projection, free soda and popcorn with admission. It costs about twice as much as a regular theater, but it is SO worth it not to have to yell at the 12 year olds to shut the fuck up.)
Yes, it's an obsolete technology. Unfortunately, if you want to interact with the majority of people who are retarded when it comes to computers (and are proud of it!) then we're all stuck using the technological equivalent of papyrus. And it won't change until people start getting fired for it.
Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to whitelist IPs from major security software providers. If they were really clever, they'd provide links to download software to fix the issue directly from one of their servers, thus preventing the need to maintain the whitelist.
I'm not saying it's perfect. However, the big ISPs have been sniffing and blocking compromised-system traffic for years, and it's not impossible for them to distinguish between legitimate traffic and the nasty stuff.
1) Nobody cares whether they're secure or not. People know "HURR STICK PAPER IN MASH BUTTONS HURR" and they don't want to change, or even listen to why they should change. 2) Kind of a corollary to 1): Nobody cares if they're secure or not, and nobody outside of IT knows they can encrypt email (or what 'encryption' is.)
Given the choice between something that's convenient and something that's secure, the average idiot office worker will take convenient every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Short of a CEO saying "Anyone that accepts a faxed signature here will be cleaning out their desks and being escorted out by Security before the paper has time to cool", this culture will not change. Bearing in mind the fact that CEOs are among the worst offenders regarding convenience over security... well, don't hold your breath.
They can and SHOULD charge you for zombie traffic. Matter of fact, they should charge you double for it once they notify you of said traffic coming from your setup.
Actually, a better solution would be to redirect all your web requests to a 'this is how to fix it' page until the traffic isn't coming from your setup any more. I'm sure someone is about to complain about how their grandma can't understand what that means and she just wants to see pictures of her grandkids.. cry me a river. Zombified systems are a threat to everyone on the network.
In my part of the US (Boston area) $55k NZD (at current rates $42,157.50) is practically poverty level. Bear in mind that a lot of the jobs that companies would want to hire H1B visa holders for are in high-cost-of-living areas.
Then again, our minimum wage here is $8/hr, which gives you an idea of how little employees are valued here. Hell, they don't even have to give you a reason when they fire you here without notice or severance. It's hard enough to be a citizen employee, let alone having the threat of deportation should you stand up for your legally guaranteed rights (sane working conditions, comparable wages to citizen workers, and so forth.)
That's easy for you to say, Mr. Former Wall-Street. The rest of us don't have the savings I'm sure you have by now, and have to make a living by doing something useful.
That being said, here's some unsolicited advice for anyone considering majoring in Philosophy: The most important phrase you can learn is "Would you like fries with that." I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying our society doesn't appreciate thinking, and you should be prepared by setting your expectations appropriately.
You don't. I think you're missing the point of the ban.
IMHO this ban is protection from asshole bosses who think they own you 24/7/365. When you go to one of these places you can say "I took my kids to such and such, they don't allow cell phones inside."
Clearly this doesn't work for anyone who has a job that requires 24/7 availability (for example, you need to be notified if your data center catches fire.) However, if your job is one where your availability ISN'T needed 24/7, but your asshole boss THINKS it is, then this works.
Without Marketing, there are no customers for the products developed by Engineering and therefore no reason for Upper Management to continue to sign paychecks for Engineering.
Without Marketing, Engineering doesn't have to waste countless man-hours on bullshit that Marketing promised the customer, when Marketing didn't know (or didn't care) what was actually possible to deliver.
Without Engineering, Marketing has nothing to market. The difference is that the engineers can go and find other gainful employment, while the Marketing drones have to go develop a useful skill or two first. Douglas Adams had the right idea when he wrote about a society that removed all its middlemen (which included marketing) by lying about a coming plague. The marketers were too stupid to think about it critically and queued up to go on the big saucer. (Yes, I know that the society then died from a communicable disease, but I don't consider sanitation workers to be middlemen).
So sorry, but marketing is an integral part of producing the wonderful technology we all play with: If you want better toys, there must be competition.
Then let the toys compete on their own merits, not on who has the shiniest advertising.
you better have someone to evaluate what 'better' is for this and the next generation.
Then let someone with an IQ above room temperature evaluate the product based on its quality and merits, not on what color it is, or, more likely, who plays golf with whom.
Later stages do their best to cover up deficiencies and emphasize strengths.
So that's when the "blatant lying" phase comes in, then.
but competition is all about messages, as most of us don't and can't comprehend the ultimate under-lying reality of any of the technologies we deal with.
Then maybe those people should go away and let the ones who DO understand prosper, instead of perpetuating the current cycle of everyone buying what they're told to buy, no matter the quality or safety.
This IMHO is another argument for treating your soon-to-be-former employer the same way that they would treat you were your roles reversed; by that, I mean going in to HR on your intended last day and saying "Oh, by the way, here's my ID, I don't work here anymore, good luck in the future". You are not required to give your employer notice when you quit, just like they're not required to give you any notice (or severance pay.)
It sounds negative and a little bridge-burn-y, but remember that the employer/employee relationship is not equitable under most circumstances; this case, where you're expected to waste a month of your life being useless, is a pretty extreme example of an employer causing grief for an employee because the employee DARES to take steps to improve their situation.
Personally, what I would do in this situation would be to call my future employer and offer to start sooner than the current starting date. If it's possible, do so. It'll leave your current employer in the lurch, but IMHO in this case they deserve it.
Because where I am, there sure as hell do have to provide cause for termination, and if the reason isn't in sync with labour laws then you can slap them with wrongful dismissal... I just assumed something similar to be the case in most "modern" economies.
In an "at will" employment state (the vast majority of states, I'm pretty sure) employers and employees do not have to justify their actions when a termination occurs. You can attempt to sue for wrongful dismissal, but unless you have extensive, undeniable evidence of a pattern of discrimination or harassment, you will not prevail. The burden of proof is on the ex-employee.
This, among other things, is why I'm negative about the rights of employees in this country. And yes, I should probably have a couple months' expenses worth of money set aside, but I live in the most expensive area of the country in terms of cost of living. I don't live extravagantly. We have a small house, two Volkswagens, a dog, and don't go out very much. The labor market in this area does not grow with inflation, and 3% raises each year are pretty much standard. I'm not trying to make an excuse, but it's not as easy as some make it sound to be able to put money away when houses cost $400k on average.
Yes, not everyone can afford a house, but throwing money down the toilet each month on rent isn't the way to go either.
There are *gasp* actually companies that are employee-oriented.
Unfortunately, the odds are very long that any given job hunter will actually get an offer from one of those companies. Most of us end up working for Dewey Screwem and Howe, and have this kind of Big Brother bullshit to deal with.
You are familiar with the term "at will employment"?
Yes, much more intimately than I'd like to be. (I've actually been told "We don't have to tell you why" when being terminated.) "At will" basically means "The only right you have is to quit."
You do realize that the terms of many/most jobs are significantly negotiable?
That might (or might not, IMHO) be true, but my bank won't negotiated with me regarding paying my mortgage if I don't have money.
You do realize that there are a huge number of companies out there and you can choose which one to work for?
Yes. The number of companies that will hire me, however, is a non-trivially tiny portion of that number. That's no reflection on my personality or skills, that's just a fact of life. Employers can choose who to hire, employees can't choose who makes them an offer.
The employer/employee relationship is not equitable only if you let it be that way.
Oh? So I can just arbitrarily not need a paycheck? What color is the sky on your planet?
They need something done and are offering you compensation to do it. That's a fair trade.
In an ideal world, yes. Unfortunately we all live in the real world.
If the company is not offering fair compensation in reasonable working conditions then don't take the job.
The definition of "fair" compensation is highly subjective, and the only opinion that really matters is the employer's in that situation, because, as I've said before, they have the money.
Seriously, why would anyone put up with that unless your employer was the Marine Corps?
Because the employer/employee relationship isn't equitable. It boils down to "We have money, you don't. We make the rules, if you don't like them, no money for you."
What makes you think the next place will be any better? So long as this sort of thing is legal/unregulated, you can assume every employer will do this in the name of productivity/competitiveness/because they can. If you're lucky you'll find a company that understands how treating your employees like human beings until it's proven that they're causing a problem is better than automatically assuming everyone is a lazy lying scumbag.
I also have to point out that the people who do actual work are the ones impacted by this sort of bullshit. Executives don't get disciplined/fired for sending a three-line email to their spouses unless one of the other executives wants them gone for some reason.
I couldn't disagree more. These are American consumers we're talking about here. They care more about what color their phone is than how much more they get screwed as compared to cell phone customers in any other civilized country.
I'd say they don't care about something until it costs them money, but here they don't know that there's any other way, since most Americans think other countries are fictional.
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Not to mention the fact that CxOs are frequently the biggest offenders when it comes to poor security practices. I've seen more than one CEO of a Fortune 500 company use the name of the company as their domain/email password, and refuse to change it on a regular basis like the rest of the users at the company. Trying to enforce a security policy with someone who can have you escorted off the premises on a moment's notice is pretty much impossible.
The only way it works is to get the CEO/Chairman/Lord High Muckety-Muck to sign off on a policy that applies to EVERYONE, and then firing an executive for breach of policy as a demonstration of how serious the company takes security. (This assumes that a CxO breaches policy at some point, which is pretty much inevitable.) The attitude of "security policy is for little people" reminds me of Leona Helmsley's 'taxes are for little people' attitude.
In addition to the training, you need to make breaches of security a terminable offense, for everything from a deliberate theft of information, to writing down a password on a sticky note and putting it on your monitor. Without teeth, you cannot enforce a security policy, and a policy that isn't enforced isn't a policy.
Then you've spotted the movie-going equivalent of a unicorn, because I will bet a steak dinner that that was pretty much the ONLY time that that has happened. We have AMC theaters here too, and I've *never* seen anyone tossed, much less even spoken to.
It makes sense when you think about it. They've already got your money, why should they give a damn about anything else.
I know. The place is a license to print money, basically. They even have a full bar/restaurant as part of the theater. And you can bring your GLASS of BEER into the theater with you, just like they talk about in Pulp Fiction.
Yeah, I wasn't really comparing apples to apples there. Once you figure in the cost of the soda and popcorn, the difference in cost is pretty negligible (and totally worth it for the reasons I stated above.) The difference is that you don't *have to* buy the overpriced snacks if you go into the regular theater, so the comparison is a little misleading.
I do get soda and popcorn, so the difference isn't much at all.
The theater owners and the MPAA are well aware of the problem. If piracy was *really* a problem, those in charge would do what they could to make the modern theater-going experience more enjoyable for the people who actually want to watch the movies.
The trouble with throwing people out of the theater for yapping on their phones etc. is that those people won't come back to that theater the next time. What the theater owners are too short-sighted to realize is that if they establish a policy at those theaters that disruptive people will be thrown out without refund, then people who actually want to see the movie being shown will come to the theater in greater numbers. If my local theater advertised a "we'll toss you out on your ass for being a douchebag" policy, I would definitely go there more often. As it is, I only go to the premium cinema when I want to see a movie (21+, THX sound, leather seats, pull-out tray tables in front of you, two of your own armrests, digital projection, free soda and popcorn with admission. It costs about twice as much as a regular theater, but it is SO worth it not to have to yell at the 12 year olds to shut the fuck up.)
Yes, it's an obsolete technology. Unfortunately, if you want to interact with the majority of people who are retarded when it comes to computers (and are proud of it!) then we're all stuck using the technological equivalent of papyrus. And it won't change until people start getting fired for it.
Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to whitelist IPs from major security software providers. If they were really clever, they'd provide links to download software to fix the issue directly from one of their servers, thus preventing the need to maintain the whitelist.
I'm not saying it's perfect. However, the big ISPs have been sniffing and blocking compromised-system traffic for years, and it's not impossible for them to distinguish between legitimate traffic and the nasty stuff.
Practical considerations:
1) Nobody cares whether they're secure or not. People know "HURR STICK PAPER IN MASH BUTTONS HURR" and they don't want to change, or even listen to why they should change.
2) Kind of a corollary to 1): Nobody cares if they're secure or not, and nobody outside of IT knows they can encrypt email (or what 'encryption' is.)
Given the choice between something that's convenient and something that's secure, the average idiot office worker will take convenient every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Short of a CEO saying "Anyone that accepts a faxed signature here will be cleaning out their desks and being escorted out by Security before the paper has time to cool", this culture will not change. Bearing in mind the fact that CEOs are among the worst offenders regarding convenience over security... well, don't hold your breath.
They can and SHOULD charge you for zombie traffic. Matter of fact, they should charge you double for it once they notify you of said traffic coming from your setup.
Actually, a better solution would be to redirect all your web requests to a 'this is how to fix it' page until the traffic isn't coming from your setup any more. I'm sure someone is about to complain about how their grandma can't understand what that means and she just wants to see pictures of her grandkids.. cry me a river. Zombified systems are a threat to everyone on the network.
In my part of the US (Boston area) $55k NZD (at current rates $42,157.50) is practically poverty level. Bear in mind that a lot of the jobs that companies would want to hire H1B visa holders for are in high-cost-of-living areas.
Then again, our minimum wage here is $8/hr, which gives you an idea of how little employees are valued here. Hell, they don't even have to give you a reason when they fire you here without notice or severance. It's hard enough to be a citizen employee, let alone having the threat of deportation should you stand up for your legally guaranteed rights (sane working conditions, comparable wages to citizen workers, and so forth.)
That's easy for you to say, Mr. Former Wall-Street. The rest of us don't have the savings I'm sure you have by now, and have to make a living by doing something useful.
That being said, here's some unsolicited advice for anyone considering majoring in Philosophy: The most important phrase you can learn is "Would you like fries with that." I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying our society doesn't appreciate thinking, and you should be prepared by setting your expectations appropriately.
You don't. I think you're missing the point of the ban.
IMHO this ban is protection from asshole bosses who think they own you 24/7/365. When you go to one of these places you can say "I took my kids to such and such, they don't allow cell phones inside."
Clearly this doesn't work for anyone who has a job that requires 24/7 availability (for example, you need to be notified if your data center catches fire.) However, if your job is one where your availability ISN'T needed 24/7, but your asshole boss THINKS it is, then this works.
The implication is that if marketing didn't exist, the world would not end.
Without Engineering, Marketing has nothing to market. The difference is that the engineers can go and find other gainful employment, while the Marketing drones have to go develop a useful skill or two first. Douglas Adams had the right idea when he wrote about a society that removed all its middlemen (which included marketing) by lying about a coming plague. The marketers were too stupid to think about it critically and queued up to go on the big saucer. (Yes, I know that the society then died from a communicable disease, but I don't consider sanitation workers to be middlemen).
Personally, I think working in Marketing should be a capital offense.
This IMHO is another argument for treating your soon-to-be-former employer the same way that they would treat you were your roles reversed; by that, I mean going in to HR on your intended last day and saying "Oh, by the way, here's my ID, I don't work here anymore, good luck in the future". You are not required to give your employer notice when you quit, just like they're not required to give you any notice (or severance pay.)
It sounds negative and a little bridge-burn-y, but remember that the employer/employee relationship is not equitable under most circumstances; this case, where you're expected to waste a month of your life being useless, is a pretty extreme example of an employer causing grief for an employee because the employee DARES to take steps to improve their situation.
Personally, what I would do in this situation would be to call my future employer and offer to start sooner than the current starting date. If it's possible, do so. It'll leave your current employer in the lurch, but IMHO in this case they deserve it.
This, among other things, is why I'm negative about the rights of employees in this country. And yes, I should probably have a couple months' expenses worth of money set aside, but I live in the most expensive area of the country in terms of cost of living. I don't live extravagantly. We have a small house, two Volkswagens, a dog, and don't go out very much. The labor market in this area does not grow with inflation, and 3% raises each year are pretty much standard. I'm not trying to make an excuse, but it's not as easy as some make it sound to be able to put money away when houses cost $400k on average.
Yes, not everyone can afford a house, but throwing money down the toilet each month on rent isn't the way to go either.
What makes you think the next place will be any better? So long as this sort of thing is legal/unregulated, you can assume every employer will do this in the name of productivity/competitiveness/because they can. If you're lucky you'll find a company that understands how treating your employees like human beings until it's proven that they're causing a problem is better than automatically assuming everyone is a lazy lying scumbag.
I also have to point out that the people who do actual work are the ones impacted by this sort of bullshit. Executives don't get disciplined/fired for sending a three-line email to their spouses unless one of the other executives wants them gone for some reason.
I couldn't disagree more. These are American consumers we're talking about here. They care more about what color their phone is than how much more they get screwed as compared to cell phone customers in any other civilized country.
I'd say they don't care about something until it costs them money, but here they don't know that there's any other way, since most Americans think other countries are fictional.