In every change some prosper, some lose. But the same happens in every status quo. We may as well choose technological progress.
Agreed, but the problem is larger than that: A very large part of the population simply is incapable of doing more than grunt labor. When the only work that an individual is capable of doing can be done by robots / computers, then how does that individual earn their keep in society?
We have a massive crisis looming, as less and less human activity is required to maintain society, our capitalist system breaks down. When there is not enough work to keep everyone gainfully employed, but enough product is produced so that everyone can have everything they want, what happens to capitalism? Think about it from a supply side perspective. XYZ factory is capable of producing doohickey A in sufficient quantities for every person on earth to have it, but no one can afford it because no one has a job. All agriculture is done by machines, all manufacturing is done by robots, Sales is all done online, Shipping is done by warehousing robots, and self driving trucks deliver the packages. The only people that are required are the designers who build and maintain the machines. Even the medical professions will fall to automation eventually. Eventually, even the designers and maintainers will no longer be required and everything will be automated. What will our society look like when people are no longer needed at all? How will capitalism work when companies do not need or want employees, but need a market to sell to? Do we make laws to force companies to use human labor just so that we can have employment? Answering these questions now, will help us to adapt to the ever-decreasing need for unskilled labor, and the massive unemployment that this will/is causing.
If we are compassionate, we can give the displaced workers opportunities to learn new skills.
That only really works if the worker is capable of learning the new skill or trade that will give them employment. We are slowly, but steadily replacing all the easiest jobs (read as jobs that any moron can do) with automation. What happens when the only work that is still done by humans requires an IQ over 80? 100? 120? 150?
The inability to copy previously copyrighted items is strangling INNOVATION? Perhaps they don't understand the word innovation.
Short answer, Yes it is.
The longer version is that if Disney et al had to give up their lucrative umpteenth anniversary collectors edition release income, they would be forced to go to greater lengths to find and fund creative new works. Instead they milk money from works that have long ago contributed to society, and draw those funds away from up and coming new works that should be more properly funded. We grant copyright so that corporations have some ability to extract a profit in exchange for paying the cost of copying and distribution of works, but giving them a nearly infinite monopoly serves no one except the wealthy who no longer have anything to contribute, and does so at the expense of those who do have something to contribute in the future.
I want to say that I'm glad the guy got fired, because he's now become a martyr and a very visible example of how corrupt everything has become.
Unfortunately, I'm just not that optimistic that it will amount to anything constructive. Things will need to get a whole lot worse before people finally start demanding real change.
Actually, the problem is a damn sight worse than that, The only real path to change is through massive wealth redistribution. Taxes are normally used to accomplish this in a socially acceptable fashion. The alternative method uses large quantities of violence... We either need to return to our tax-the-hell-out-of-the-rich method, invent a new alternative, or prepare for the inevitable uprising. In a country with this many guns, its going to be a bloody civil war.
47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income.
The tragedy isn't that 47 million people are getting food stamps, the tragedy is that a person can be holding down three part time jobs paying *more* than minimum wage, and still need food stamps. Corporations are paying their employees starvation wages, working their salaried employees for hundreds of mandatory unpaid overtime hours every year, and paying almost no taxes to boot. Our system isn't fostering corruption, it is the embodiment of it!
at the same time advising readers to stay away because of the struggling App ecosystem. Good luck attracting developers that way.
Many apps have passed the million download mark.
The first question that comes to mind is: If they have sold less than 1 million Surface', how is it that there have been more than a million downloads of any App? That sounds like false advertising to me...
Pity, so many people lost jobs because of a few retarded managers at the top of their companies.
There are two classes of people at Polaroid and Kodak who got the axe. The first are the technicians, engineers and related staff. Those people were going to lose their jobs regardless, as the products they made were no longer wanted. The other class of people at Kodak and Polaroid were the managers, supervisors and non-technical staff. Those people can get jobs elsewhere (and most of them have). Very few people lost their jobs who wouldn't have been let go when these companies transitioned to new technologies, except managers, who can hardly be said to be innocent victims.
It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.
It's only cheaper because the death penalty comes with automatic and mandatory appeals, appeals which cost a damn fortune, as the state ends up footing the bill for both sides of the argument. If all life sentences came with automatic appeals of the same scope and nature as the death penalty, then it would be cheaper to execute. The only reason the process is so long, complicated and expensive is that we have chosen to make it that way. Our justice system is badly flawed. There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people. The reality is that our laws are not a deterrent, as they are supposed to be. Its time to give up the ghost and work on something better. Getting tough on crime doesn't have to mean longer sentences, and more severe punishment, it can simply mean taking the time and effort to catch and punish the criminals we allow to get away with the crime every day. Instead of having their department parking their patrol cars in hidey holes and trying to catch people who are speeding, the police departments of our country should be out investigating and solving real property crimes. Instead of making recreational drug use illegal in an ill-advised and idiotic "war on drugs", the pointless drug laws need to be stripped off the books and replaced with laws like the drunk driving laws which are aimed at keeping the public safest without making criminals out of people who would otherwise be upstanding citizens. In short, its time to update our legal system to take advantage of the last 200 years of advances in psychology and criminology, and start addressing the problem instead of fighting the symptoms.
First the directors of the company generally sets the policies and in ITs case we follow them though we help engineer the policies when technical input is required but by your own responce we do what we are told. If your working for a company that doesnt consult with IT for data security or any related IT matters then i seriously do wonder what your IT department is doing. Often the higher ups in my company will seek guidance from the IT department when thinking about shinny toy A or B because they want to follow the company policy and keep the company safe.
Not sure which bit of my statement outright banned the use of any social technology. In your stated case its obvioulsy a usefull tool but that isnt the case 100% of the time. People need the right tools to do their job and not distractions from said job which the original poster seems to think is a right of employment.
This was a well reasoned and measured answer, and I applaud your control in response to what can only be described as deliberate provocation. You are right in that management needs to consult professionals before making IT policy, as most executives are dangerously ignorant of the security concerns. In my mind there are two significant issues that revolve around the use of electronic media. The first is that of retention. Whether deliberate or not, the retention of text based communication is almost ubiquitous, and very hard to keep secret. The second is the use of e-mail and other non-voice communication for transmitting sensitive materials. Far too many executives use e-mail as a primary method of sending important documents. These documents contain important marketing and sales secrets, but will contain almost no IP, as engineers and the generators of content need revision control, and will use that as a defacto distribution tool for their work product. As a consequence, the idea that the companies intellectual property is at risk from loss by loosing phones and tablets, is stretching credibility. You could make a case that laptops could contain valuable information, but tablets and phones are almost useless for creating or manipulation creative content, and as such they are not used to store any of this information. As for the marketing and sales information, Our entire society needs to get out of the habit of treating electronic communication the same as voice communication. With live voice communication, there is almost never a permanent record, but with e-mail, instant messages, and their ilk, the data must be treated as though it is permanent. This is where the biggest risk to the company comes from, and significant effort should be put towards exposing and demonstrating the risk of using these technologies to all employees. Executives need to get out of the habit of sending anything by text communication that does not have to be sent that way. Meeting schedules are one thing, but nothing should ever be put to electronic record that would be damaging if exposed to the general public. This level of paranoia comes naturally to most of the executives that I know, but for some reason they drop their guard when communicating by e-mail and text messages.
The company issued you a phone for emergency contact, not for your enjoyment. If you don't like that, refuse to take the phone and request a transfer to another job role, or find a job elsewhere, which don't need to carry such phones.
Too late, he already left, and started a company competing with you and stole most of your good talent. In two years they'll be moping the floors with you.
As an IT administrator all I can say is your attitude is poor. Why does the average worker need access to facebook and twitter? they are paid to work not to slack of tweeting and updating profiles.
That guy you just accused of having a poor attitude is your boss's boss. You don't have the right to tell him what he can and cant do with his corporate account. Your job Is to harden the system so that the things he feels the need to do with his equipment does not damage the company.
Too many IT people forget their place in the company. They are not corporate officers, and have no right to dictate company policies. They can make recommendations to the governing bodies, but making IT policy is *not* the IT departments mandate, enforcing it is.
Just because *you* think something is frivolous, doesn't mean that it is. Access to Pandora may not seem like a corporate necessity, but it could boost productivity. People could be using facebook and twitter in ways that are helping to improve communication within a company. Several of my co-workers spread across three states use twitter and flickr to do well what we paid a ton of many to have our sharepoint system do, only not as well. In short, if you have a productivity problem, it is a problem of local management: you're not going to fix it through draconian corporate IT policies, in fact, those corporate IT policies will likely make the problem worse not better, and can drive away otherwise qualified talent. If you treat your employees like criminals, then you will eventually get what you think you've got.
Or is it worth being stored securely offsite in a purpose-built structure with redundant *air molecules* on top of redundant everything else, with someone else having the responsibility and TRAINING to make sure it stays that way?
If you're storing company data it might be worth also noting that even in cases of notified breaches in data security you stand to be SUED for not only actual damages, but also punitive damages which have NO LIMITS. Losing a drive could break a large company.
Just because the other company has the responsibility for the backups and the data doesn't mean they are doing the right things. A good example of this was our corporate network connection in one of our buildings in upstate New York. The ISP kept having slow-downs and outright failures. We had less than 95% up-time, and it was killing us. It took them 6 months to find the problem, and it turned out to be a shoddily installed local network distribution center. They re-wired our building feed (after first having to be sued), and finally fixed the problem. The moral of the story, is that ultimately, we suffered 6 months of crappy service, and all we got back was the amount we had paid for the service. We did not get any restitution for our own financial losses as a result of the failures. We would have done much better to get independent redundant providers and had done with it. Could have saved ourselves a lot of aggravation if my boss had just done what I told him in the first place.
Another good example is our local Cable internet provider. They offer "basic" internet service for $50 / month. They also offer "enterprise class" service that costs ~$600 per month. Both offer the same throughput (about 20 Mbit down, and 1 Mbit up). The enterprise version comes with a 5 nines guarantee and a guarantee to have you back up within 1 hours of an unplanned outage. The fine print says that the guarantee is not in force in the event of all kinds of things like weather, wars, civil unrest, etc... The trouble is, those are the only reasons you will have a significant unplanned outage. The funny thing is that both services are powered by the same hardware and software. If I have an outage, the lawyers office 3 doors down with enterprise service has an outage, and we're both back up at the same time. Why people pay for enterprise class service is beyond me. If you really want redundant, get Cable internet, DSL, and a satelite backup, all for just $200 a month, and enjoy far better reliability than any of them alone can provide, have double the bandwidth, and pay 1/3 the price. In my experience, people with MBAs just don't know how to handle their money when it comes to technology. They fall victim to the snake oil salesmen far more often than they will admit.
All the carriers offer signature required services.
No. I mean, how will the government ensure that official communications reach Joe Nobody, -1 Nowhere? A commercial carrier will not do it since it's only profitable to run a regular service in densely populated areas. So either we accept that rural areas are incommunicado, or we subsidize the communication infrastructure there. And USPS is probably one of the cheapest options for that, especially since the existence of somewhat reliable communication infrastructure that can reach anywhere helps bolster business models such as Amazon which might well end up paying for it.
UPS and FedEx both deliver to anywhere in the united states. If the dispatchers at 911 can find you, the package carriers will find you...
Our government should do two things: First, release all the idiotic regulation of the post office as they have requested, and let them sink or swim on their own, and second, when the end comes, congress should let the post office sink... Private industry can and will step in.
How will the government ensure that official communications - such as court summons - reach their targets? Will it - that is, you, assuming you pay taxes - pay a courier service to deliver them? In which case private industry can and will squeeze it for every last cent it can. Or will citizens be required to report to, say, their local town hall at certain interval to check if there's such communications for them (and be penalized if there is and they won't)?
All the carriers offer signature required services. For many court related matters, a Marshall is required to serve notice anyway. In reality, you will get the same level of service from UPS or FedEx as you will from the post office on items that require a signature. In fact, UPS can even provide GPS co-ordinates on where a package was delivered if so requested by law enforcement, or court officers.
It can also be demonstrated that the USPS carries these bulk mailers at a per piece loss.
Please demonstrate that.
Bulk mail accounts for the vast majority of the Post office's volume and revenue, and they are loosing money. Doesn't take a genius to see that they are selling product at a loss. Since they are unable to reduce or increase the cost of first class mail, that only leaves their bulk mail prices as the culprit... The single best way to reduce their pension obligations is to become a much smaller organization. Their current pension obligations are already met, so they don't need the revenue to pay that.
As someone who has lived in rural areas and served overseas, let me be the first to say: Fuck that shit.
Does UPS or FedEx deliver letters from loved ones to APO/FPO addresses? No.
UPS, FedEx and DHL do not deliver to APO/FPO because they are expressly forbidden from doing so by US federal law. Same reason no one but you and the post office are allowed to touch your mailbox. Its a felony offense at the federal level. If Another carrier were to start doing this on a regular basis, there would be an investigation by the FBI, fines, and if it was willful, possibly jail time. Just one more example of the US government unable to keep their hands off things.
Mailing companies don't get enormous discounts. They actually do the majority of the USPS's work themselves. They take care of the presorting and processing of all the mail, and will even do drop shipments of the presorted mail to the delivery facilities directly. The only real part that the USPS does is take the sorted mail and have their carriers deliver it. It removes a large portion of the process, such as address analysis and routing processing. USPS also get revenue from the mandatory quarterly software updates used for sorting and processing of the mail.
And none of that changes the fact that bulk mailers get enormous discounts on a per piece basis. They pay a small fraction of what first class mail costs. It can also be demonstrated that the USPS carries these bulk mailers at a per piece loss. Our government should do two things: First, release all the idiotic regulation of the post office as they have requested, and let them sink or swim on their own, and second, when the end comes, congress should let the post office sink... Private industry can and will step in.
-=Geoskd
Re:Innovative companies fail a lot, MSFT included
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The Empire In Decline?
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Surface hasnt failed, and I dont think it will fail.
The problem is Windows RT. No one wants windows RT because theres no application support. However, I'll gladly take a Surface pro tablet with Windows 8 Pro that can run all of my regular desktop apps.
Yes, surface will fail. MS hasn't a clue. They tried to make tablets before, and failed. Apple succeeded because Apple knows how to make a truly exceptional product. MS only knows how to copy and steal. They have done a remarkable job behind the scenes of cleaning up their own dirty history, and still managing to keep the legacy applications working, but Joe average consumer doesn't care about that, they only care about the interface, and in that respect MS is like the idiot child in the bunch. They keep making stupid changes to the UI, and alienating more of their user base with every revision. I probably shouldn't be feeding you, as you're almost definitely on MS payroll given your posting history. If you're not, then you really need to get a life, and a clue.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that as agricultural regions shift poleward even slightly, the amount of arable land favorable to crop-growing will greatly increase.
That seems rather a complacent assumption to me (I am not a rocket scientist). While northern lands may warm up there is no guarantee that rainfall patterns there/then will be conducive to agriculture. There is also the effect of day lengths on some species to consider. Probably a bunch of other variables too (I am not a botanist). We may well end up with a cornflake glut but no coffee or orange juice to drink with them. The bad possibilities outnumber the good, it seems to me.
Quite simply put, at the higher latitudes there is more total land mass (until you start approaching the poles). The result is that statistically speaking, you will gain more land than you lose. I thought it was a pretty logical argument. Now there may be other more complicated factors involved, but with that much area, the power of raw statistics is more likely to win out over any other factors.
How is this sensationalist? Nicaragua has seen a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years and they have a very low mountain range, meaning they can't just keep moving up.
Also note, the change in climate has already affected production zones and quantity.
Anytime someone makes claims that are designed to create panic, or abnormal behavior without providing immediate evidential support, we call it sensationalism. The entire point of the article was to increase readership, not provide valuable knowledge. The prediction is far more likely to be incorrect than correct, and as such is simply sensationalistic. In my travels, I have never heard anyone provide any compelling evidence to support the idea that a couple of degree average temperature increase would do anything other than cause some extreme weather for a while,
The first question that comes to mind is: Why would a two degree increase in average temperature kill the plants? If they were that sensitive to temperature, a hot summer day would be the end of them right now. Rainfall could be an explanation, but farmers don't rely on rain as much as you might think, and global warming could just as likely lead to an increased rainfall, in any given area, as a decrease. The article mentions the increase in disease and pest trouble, but these days, the best pest and disease protection doesn't come from genetic diversity so much as from Monsanto, so again, the article is left with that ugly sensationalist after-taste.
I'm confused. Freightliner also does Sprinters, except with a rebadge...
Different model. We know about the re badged sprinters and don't buy those either. We use a different model that is designed and built by Freightliner. Different frame altogether. Same model we have been buying for over a decade now. The newer ones are using gasoline engines instead of diesel. Something to do with the availability of diesels because of California's laws, but otherwise they're the same truck.
I understand diesel engines are extremely efficient at idle compared to gasoline engines, and the EPA ratings don't properly account for the amount of time a real vehicle spends idling at stop lights, stop signs, and in heavy traffic. I've also read claims that the General Motors "mild hybrid" system that simply shuts off the motor when the vehicle stops moving and then instantly starts it when you lift your foot off the brake pedal similarly provides a big boost to real fuel economy, and is also unfairly undervalued by the EPA tests versus its real world performance.
We have several of the GM hybrid trucks, and I can tell you there is something seriously wrong with them. After two years of operation, we can say definitively that they get worse mileage than their diesel counterparts. No-one can say why this is. We started off having our drivers trained and certified in their use, checking the telematics to verify that they weren't doing anything wrong in their driving habits. After all that, GM cant explain it either. We keep buying them, but only because of various government subsidies to keep hybrids on the road, but I can say with 100% certainty that we are using more gas and creating more pollution because of that stupid subsidy. If it were discontinued tomorrow, we would junk the hybrids immediately, and replace them with the clean idle diesels.
Here in the US, one thing that businesses are doing is moving from the typical V8 vans to the Mercedes Sprinters
Not if they have any sense they aren't. We tried a few of the sprinters a few years back. Our fleet usually lasts 200,000 to 400,000 with vehicles regularly making it past 500,000. The sprinters all had to be junked well below the 200k mark. They just came apart. The frames cracked, the engines failed. It was just too damn expensive to maintain them. We went back to the tried and true Freightliners and haven't looked back. There was once a time when Mercedes made a top tier product. Those days are long gone.
Sorry guys, nobody cares what OS is on a phone. Only Geeks do and normal people will by Nokia because its a good brand and if half the devices out there run the same system (like what surface+windows8 is doing) users will just buy it without a care to what a tech review has to say.
The kinds of people willing to shell out extra for a smartphone are still borderline geeks, ad yes they do care what OS is on the phone. They care that they cant get XYZ app because its not supported by ABC OS, or that the phone wont play certain kinds of files, etc: and yes smartphone buyers do have enough savvy to know which ones are which. Smartphones are still too expensive for the "mainstream" population to buy one just because it has a shiny case.
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In every change some prosper, some lose. But the same happens in every status quo. We may as well choose technological progress.
Agreed, but the problem is larger than that: A very large part of the population simply is incapable of doing more than grunt labor. When the only work that an individual is capable of doing can be done by robots / computers, then how does that individual earn their keep in society?
We have a massive crisis looming, as less and less human activity is required to maintain society, our capitalist system breaks down. When there is not enough work to keep everyone gainfully employed, but enough product is produced so that everyone can have everything they want, what happens to capitalism? Think about it from a supply side perspective. XYZ factory is capable of producing doohickey A in sufficient quantities for every person on earth to have it, but no one can afford it because no one has a job. All agriculture is done by machines, all manufacturing is done by robots, Sales is all done online, Shipping is done by warehousing robots, and self driving trucks deliver the packages. The only people that are required are the designers who build and maintain the machines. Even the medical professions will fall to automation eventually. Eventually, even the designers and maintainers will no longer be required and everything will be automated. What will our society look like when people are no longer needed at all? How will capitalism work when companies do not need or want employees, but need a market to sell to? Do we make laws to force companies to use human labor just so that we can have employment? Answering these questions now, will help us to adapt to the ever-decreasing need for unskilled labor, and the massive unemployment that this will/is causing.
If we are compassionate, we can give the displaced workers opportunities to learn new skills.
That only really works if the worker is capable of learning the new skill or trade that will give them employment. We are slowly, but steadily replacing all the easiest jobs (read as jobs that any moron can do) with automation. What happens when the only work that is still done by humans requires an IQ over 80? 100? 120? 150?
-=Geoskd
The inability to copy previously copyrighted items is strangling INNOVATION? Perhaps they don't understand the word innovation.
Short answer, Yes it is.
The longer version is that if Disney et al had to give up their lucrative umpteenth anniversary collectors edition release income, they would be forced to go to greater lengths to find and fund creative new works. Instead they milk money from works that have long ago contributed to society, and draw those funds away from up and coming new works that should be more properly funded. We grant copyright so that corporations have some ability to extract a profit in exchange for paying the cost of copying and distribution of works, but giving them a nearly infinite monopoly serves no one except the wealthy who no longer have anything to contribute, and does so at the expense of those who do have something to contribute in the future.
-=Geoskd
I want to say that I'm glad the guy got fired, because he's now become a martyr and a very visible example of how corrupt everything has become.
Unfortunately, I'm just not that optimistic that it will amount to anything constructive. Things will need to get a whole lot worse before people finally start demanding real change.
Actually, the problem is a damn sight worse than that, The only real path to change is through massive wealth redistribution. Taxes are normally used to accomplish this in a socially acceptable fashion. The alternative method uses large quantities of violence... We either need to return to our tax-the-hell-out-of-the-rich method, invent a new alternative, or prepare for the inevitable uprising. In a country with this many guns, its going to be a bloody civil war.
-=Geoskd
47 million on food stamps, average welfare spending per poor household is HIGHER than median income.
The tragedy isn't that 47 million people are getting food stamps, the tragedy is that a person can be holding down three part time jobs paying *more* than minimum wage, and still need food stamps. Corporations are paying their employees starvation wages, working their salaried employees for hundreds of mandatory unpaid overtime hours every year, and paying almost no taxes to boot. Our system isn't fostering corruption, it is the embodiment of it!
-=Geoskd
at the same time advising readers to stay away because of the struggling App ecosystem. Good luck attracting developers that way.
Many apps have passed the million download mark.
The first question that comes to mind is: If they have sold less than 1 million Surface', how is it that there have been more than a million downloads of any App? That sounds like false advertising to me...
-=Geoskd
Pity, so many people lost jobs because of a few retarded managers at the top of their companies.
There are two classes of people at Polaroid and Kodak who got the axe. The first are the technicians, engineers and related staff. Those people were going to lose their jobs regardless, as the products they made were no longer wanted. The other class of people at Kodak and Polaroid were the managers, supervisors and non-technical staff. Those people can get jobs elsewhere (and most of them have). Very few people lost their jobs who wouldn't have been let go when these companies transitioned to new technologies, except managers, who can hardly be said to be innocent victims.
-=Geoskd
The prosecutor blew this case.
No, the forensic examiners blew the case, the prosecutor has to work with what they are given.
-=Geoskd
It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.
It's only cheaper because the death penalty comes with automatic and mandatory appeals, appeals which cost a damn fortune, as the state ends up footing the bill for both sides of the argument. If all life sentences came with automatic appeals of the same scope and nature as the death penalty, then it would be cheaper to execute. The only reason the process is so long, complicated and expensive is that we have chosen to make it that way. Our justice system is badly flawed. There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people. The reality is that our laws are not a deterrent, as they are supposed to be. Its time to give up the ghost and work on something better. Getting tough on crime doesn't have to mean longer sentences, and more severe punishment, it can simply mean taking the time and effort to catch and punish the criminals we allow to get away with the crime every day. Instead of having their department parking their patrol cars in hidey holes and trying to catch people who are speeding, the police departments of our country should be out investigating and solving real property crimes. Instead of making recreational drug use illegal in an ill-advised and idiotic "war on drugs", the pointless drug laws need to be stripped off the books and replaced with laws like the drunk driving laws which are aimed at keeping the public safest without making criminals out of people who would otherwise be upstanding citizens. In short, its time to update our legal system to take advantage of the last 200 years of advances in psychology and criminology, and start addressing the problem instead of fighting the symptoms.
-=Geoskd
First the directors of the company generally sets the policies and in ITs case we follow them though we help engineer the policies when technical input is required but by your own responce we do what we are told. If your working for a company that doesnt consult with IT for data security or any related IT matters then i seriously do wonder what your IT department is doing. Often the higher ups in my company will seek guidance from the IT department when thinking about shinny toy A or B because they want to follow the company policy and keep the company safe. Not sure which bit of my statement outright banned the use of any social technology. In your stated case its obvioulsy a usefull tool but that isnt the case 100% of the time. People need the right tools to do their job and not distractions from said job which the original poster seems to think is a right of employment.
This was a well reasoned and measured answer, and I applaud your control in response to what can only be described as deliberate provocation. You are right in that management needs to consult professionals before making IT policy, as most executives are dangerously ignorant of the security concerns. In my mind there are two significant issues that revolve around the use of electronic media. The first is that of retention. Whether deliberate or not, the retention of text based communication is almost ubiquitous, and very hard to keep secret. The second is the use of e-mail and other non-voice communication for transmitting sensitive materials. Far too many executives use e-mail as a primary method of sending important documents. These documents contain important marketing and sales secrets, but will contain almost no IP, as engineers and the generators of content need revision control, and will use that as a defacto distribution tool for their work product. As a consequence, the idea that the companies intellectual property is at risk from loss by loosing phones and tablets, is stretching credibility. You could make a case that laptops could contain valuable information, but tablets and phones are almost useless for creating or manipulation creative content, and as such they are not used to store any of this information. As for the marketing and sales information, Our entire society needs to get out of the habit of treating electronic communication the same as voice communication. With live voice communication, there is almost never a permanent record, but with e-mail, instant messages, and their ilk, the data must be treated as though it is permanent. This is where the biggest risk to the company comes from, and significant effort should be put towards exposing and demonstrating the risk of using these technologies to all employees. Executives need to get out of the habit of sending anything by text communication that does not have to be sent that way. Meeting schedules are one thing, but nothing should ever be put to electronic record that would be damaging if exposed to the general public. This level of paranoia comes naturally to most of the executives that I know, but for some reason they drop their guard when communicating by e-mail and text messages.
-=Geoskd
The company issued you a phone for emergency contact, not for your enjoyment. If you don't like that, refuse to take the phone and request a transfer to another job role, or find a job elsewhere, which don't need to carry such phones.
Too late, he already left, and started a company competing with you and stole most of your good talent. In two years they'll be moping the floors with you.
-=Geoskd
As an IT administrator all I can say is your attitude is poor. Why does the average worker need access to facebook and twitter? they are paid to work not to slack of tweeting and updating profiles.
That guy you just accused of having a poor attitude is your boss's boss. You don't have the right to tell him what he can and cant do with his corporate account. Your job Is to harden the system so that the things he feels the need to do with his equipment does not damage the company.
Too many IT people forget their place in the company. They are not corporate officers, and have no right to dictate company policies. They can make recommendations to the governing bodies, but making IT policy is *not* the IT departments mandate, enforcing it is.
Just because *you* think something is frivolous, doesn't mean that it is. Access to Pandora may not seem like a corporate necessity, but it could boost productivity. People could be using facebook and twitter in ways that are helping to improve communication within a company. Several of my co-workers spread across three states use twitter and flickr to do well what we paid a ton of many to have our sharepoint system do, only not as well. In short, if you have a productivity problem, it is a problem of local management: you're not going to fix it through draconian corporate IT policies, in fact, those corporate IT policies will likely make the problem worse not better, and can drive away otherwise qualified talent. If you treat your employees like criminals, then you will eventually get what you think you've got.
-=Geoskd
Or is it worth being stored securely offsite in a purpose-built structure with redundant *air molecules* on top of redundant everything else, with someone else having the responsibility and TRAINING to make sure it stays that way?
If you're storing company data it might be worth also noting that even in cases of notified breaches in data security you stand to be SUED for not only actual damages, but also punitive damages which have NO LIMITS. Losing a drive could break a large company.
Just because the other company has the responsibility for the backups and the data doesn't mean they are doing the right things. A good example of this was our corporate network connection in one of our buildings in upstate New York. The ISP kept having slow-downs and outright failures. We had less than 95% up-time, and it was killing us. It took them 6 months to find the problem, and it turned out to be a shoddily installed local network distribution center. They re-wired our building feed (after first having to be sued), and finally fixed the problem. The moral of the story, is that ultimately, we suffered 6 months of crappy service, and all we got back was the amount we had paid for the service. We did not get any restitution for our own financial losses as a result of the failures. We would have done much better to get independent redundant providers and had done with it. Could have saved ourselves a lot of aggravation if my boss had just done what I told him in the first place.
Another good example is our local Cable internet provider. They offer "basic" internet service for $50 / month. They also offer "enterprise class" service that costs ~$600 per month. Both offer the same throughput (about 20 Mbit down, and 1 Mbit up). The enterprise version comes with a 5 nines guarantee and a guarantee to have you back up within 1 hours of an unplanned outage. The fine print says that the guarantee is not in force in the event of all kinds of things like weather, wars, civil unrest, etc... The trouble is, those are the only reasons you will have a significant unplanned outage. The funny thing is that both services are powered by the same hardware and software. If I have an outage, the lawyers office 3 doors down with enterprise service has an outage, and we're both back up at the same time. Why people pay for enterprise class service is beyond me. If you really want redundant, get Cable internet, DSL, and a satelite backup, all for just $200 a month, and enjoy far better reliability than any of them alone can provide, have double the bandwidth, and pay 1/3 the price. In my experience, people with MBAs just don't know how to handle their money when it comes to technology. They fall victim to the snake oil salesmen far more often than they will admit.
-=Geoskd
No. I mean, how will the government ensure that official communications reach Joe Nobody, -1 Nowhere? A commercial carrier will not do it since it's only profitable to run a regular service in densely populated areas. So either we accept that rural areas are incommunicado, or we subsidize the communication infrastructure there. And USPS is probably one of the cheapest options for that, especially since the existence of somewhat reliable communication infrastructure that can reach anywhere helps bolster business models such as Amazon which might well end up paying for it.
UPS and FedEx both deliver to anywhere in the united states. If the dispatchers at 911 can find you, the package carriers will find you...
-=Geoskd
How will the government ensure that official communications - such as court summons - reach their targets? Will it - that is, you, assuming you pay taxes - pay a courier service to deliver them? In which case private industry can and will squeeze it for every last cent it can. Or will citizens be required to report to, say, their local town hall at certain interval to check if there's such communications for them (and be penalized if there is and they won't)?
All the carriers offer signature required services. For many court related matters, a Marshall is required to serve notice anyway. In reality, you will get the same level of service from UPS or FedEx as you will from the post office on items that require a signature. In fact, UPS can even provide GPS co-ordinates on where a package was delivered if so requested by law enforcement, or court officers.
-=Geoskd
It can also be demonstrated that the USPS carries these bulk mailers at a per piece loss.
Please demonstrate that.
Bulk mail accounts for the vast majority of the Post office's volume and revenue, and they are loosing money. Doesn't take a genius to see that they are selling product at a loss. Since they are unable to reduce or increase the cost of first class mail, that only leaves their bulk mail prices as the culprit... The single best way to reduce their pension obligations is to become a much smaller organization. Their current pension obligations are already met, so they don't need the revenue to pay that.
-=Geoskd
As someone who has lived in rural areas and served overseas, let me be the first to say: Fuck that shit.
Does UPS or FedEx deliver letters from loved ones to APO/FPO addresses? No.
UPS, FedEx and DHL do not deliver to APO/FPO because they are expressly forbidden from doing so by US federal law. Same reason no one but you and the post office are allowed to touch your mailbox. Its a felony offense at the federal level. If Another carrier were to start doing this on a regular basis, there would be an investigation by the FBI, fines, and if it was willful, possibly jail time. Just one more example of the US government unable to keep their hands off things.
-=Geoskd
Mailing companies don't get enormous discounts. They actually do the majority of the USPS's work themselves. They take care of the presorting and processing of all the mail, and will even do drop shipments of the presorted mail to the delivery facilities directly. The only real part that the USPS does is take the sorted mail and have their carriers deliver it. It removes a large portion of the process, such as address analysis and routing processing. USPS also get revenue from the mandatory quarterly software updates used for sorting and processing of the mail.
And none of that changes the fact that bulk mailers get enormous discounts on a per piece basis. They pay a small fraction of what first class mail costs. It can also be demonstrated that the USPS carries these bulk mailers at a per piece loss. Our government should do two things: First, release all the idiotic regulation of the post office as they have requested, and let them sink or swim on their own, and second, when the end comes, congress should let the post office sink... Private industry can and will step in.
-=Geoskd
Surface hasnt failed, and I dont think it will fail.
The problem is Windows RT. No one wants windows RT because theres no application support. However, I'll gladly take a Surface pro tablet with Windows 8 Pro that can run all of my regular desktop apps.
Yes, surface will fail. MS hasn't a clue. They tried to make tablets before, and failed. Apple succeeded because Apple knows how to make a truly exceptional product. MS only knows how to copy and steal. They have done a remarkable job behind the scenes of cleaning up their own dirty history, and still managing to keep the legacy applications working, but Joe average consumer doesn't care about that, they only care about the interface, and in that respect MS is like the idiot child in the bunch. They keep making stupid changes to the UI, and alienating more of their user base with every revision. I probably shouldn't be feeding you, as you're almost definitely on MS payroll given your posting history. If you're not, then you really need to get a life, and a clue.
-=Geoskd
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that as agricultural regions shift poleward even slightly, the amount of arable land favorable to crop-growing will greatly increase.
That seems rather a complacent assumption to me (I am not a rocket scientist). While northern lands may warm up there is no guarantee that rainfall patterns there/then will be conducive to agriculture. There is also the effect of day lengths on some species to consider. Probably a bunch of other variables too (I am not a botanist). We may well end up with a cornflake glut but no coffee or orange juice to drink with them. The bad possibilities outnumber the good, it seems to me.
Quite simply put, at the higher latitudes there is more total land mass (until you start approaching the poles). The result is that statistically speaking, you will gain more land than you lose. I thought it was a pretty logical argument. Now there may be other more complicated factors involved, but with that much area, the power of raw statistics is more likely to win out over any other factors.
-=Geoskd
How is this sensationalist? Nicaragua has seen a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years and they have a very low mountain range, meaning they can't just keep moving up.
Also note, the change in climate has already affected production zones and quantity.
Anytime someone makes claims that are designed to create panic, or abnormal behavior without providing immediate evidential support, we call it sensationalism. The entire point of the article was to increase readership, not provide valuable knowledge. The prediction is far more likely to be incorrect than correct, and as such is simply sensationalistic. In my travels, I have never heard anyone provide any compelling evidence to support the idea that a couple of degree average temperature increase would do anything other than cause some extreme weather for a while,
The first question that comes to mind is: Why would a two degree increase in average temperature kill the plants? If they were that sensitive to temperature, a hot summer day would be the end of them right now. Rainfall could be an explanation, but farmers don't rely on rain as much as you might think, and global warming could just as likely lead to an increased rainfall, in any given area, as a decrease. The article mentions the increase in disease and pest trouble, but these days, the best pest and disease protection doesn't come from genetic diversity so much as from Monsanto, so again, the article is left with that ugly sensationalist after-taste.
-=Geoskd
I'm confused. Freightliner also does Sprinters, except with a rebadge...
Different model. We know about the re badged sprinters and don't buy those either. We use a different model that is designed and built by Freightliner. Different frame altogether. Same model we have been buying for over a decade now. The newer ones are using gasoline engines instead of diesel. Something to do with the availability of diesels because of California's laws, but otherwise they're the same truck.
-=Geoskd
I understand diesel engines are extremely efficient at idle compared to gasoline engines, and the EPA ratings don't properly account for the amount of time a real vehicle spends idling at stop lights, stop signs, and in heavy traffic. I've also read claims that the General Motors "mild hybrid" system that simply shuts off the motor when the vehicle stops moving and then instantly starts it when you lift your foot off the brake pedal similarly provides a big boost to real fuel economy, and is also unfairly undervalued by the EPA tests versus its real world performance.
We have several of the GM hybrid trucks, and I can tell you there is something seriously wrong with them. After two years of operation, we can say definitively that they get worse mileage than their diesel counterparts. No-one can say why this is. We started off having our drivers trained and certified in their use, checking the telematics to verify that they weren't doing anything wrong in their driving habits. After all that, GM cant explain it either. We keep buying them, but only because of various government subsidies to keep hybrids on the road, but I can say with 100% certainty that we are using more gas and creating more pollution because of that stupid subsidy. If it were discontinued tomorrow, we would junk the hybrids immediately, and replace them with the clean idle diesels.
-=Geoskd
Here in the US, one thing that businesses are doing is moving from the typical V8 vans to the Mercedes Sprinters
Not if they have any sense they aren't. We tried a few of the sprinters a few years back. Our fleet usually lasts 200,000 to 400,000 with vehicles regularly making it past 500,000. The sprinters all had to be junked well below the 200k mark. They just came apart. The frames cracked, the engines failed. It was just too damn expensive to maintain them. We went back to the tried and true Freightliners and haven't looked back. There was once a time when Mercedes made a top tier product. Those days are long gone.
-=Geoskd
Catchy, edgy name.
X-Phone would be catchy.
How about " X Player". Seems more appropriate given Microsoft history.
-=Geoskd
Sorry guys, nobody cares what OS is on a phone. Only Geeks do and normal people will by Nokia because its a good brand and if half the devices out there run the same system (like what surface+windows8 is doing) users will just buy it without a care to what a tech review has to say.
The kinds of people willing to shell out extra for a smartphone are still borderline geeks, ad yes they do care what OS is on the phone. They care that they cant get XYZ app because its not supported by ABC OS, or that the phone wont play certain kinds of files, etc: and yes smartphone buyers do have enough savvy to know which ones are which. Smartphones are still too expensive for the "mainstream" population to buy one just because it has a shiny case.
-=Geoskd