So in other words you admit to not being qualified to speak on the subject, so you should, by your own doctrine, "STFU"
As with any religion, Global warming fanatics are quick to tell others to shut up.... apparently they're afraid someone might say something they don't have a good answer for...
when you're connected to the internet, you remove the bandwidth problem of a modem connection. AND, because you're not tying up a phone line anymore, you have more flexibility with your communications.
and that's the problem, on a modem only one machine can attack you at a time, on the internet millions can have a go at once. the flexibility argument also cuts both ways...
So, machines that are hooked in via TCP/IP do not have the option to accept remote connections initiated from anywhere other than the machine. The communication HAS to start with the machine,
So, what you're saying is that dialup connected machines have the facility to receive calls, but internet connected machines only do outgoing connections? that seems odd. It would be just as easy to secure a dialup machine by simply telling it not to answer the phone. I have to believe that if the dialup machine is set to answer phone calls, the internet connected machine will be set to receive some form of incoming connection as well. otherwise it's not the communication medium that is adding the security, but the decision on whether or not to accept incoming communications.
These machines are also usually programmed to auto-connect every 15 or 30 minutes with a machine status update (thereby eliminating the need to dial in remotely).
there's no reason a dialup machine couldn't behave exactly the same, once again the security increase isn't in changing to TCP/IP, it's in not accepting incoming connections. In fact arguably the TCP/IP connection is still less secure than a similarly configured dialup connection due to increased chance of various MITM attacks, IP or DNS spoofing attacks, or simple protocol vulnerabilities in the OS that get found/exploited by the millions of bots that can be brought to bear on attacking a machine over the internet
The machines that are located at gas stations and bars and whatnot use a standard internet connection. The only requirement is that the location has to have a static IP. You have to remember, these machines only cost $2K - $5K, and the owner only makes $100 - $500 per month on the machine. Not to mention, they're not doing that many transactions.
The machines I've worked on have mainly been big bank branded ATMs, but located at gas stations, convenience stores, etc. And they have definitely not been "consumer grade" ADSL lines (we call them ADSL CWAN (Carrier Wide Area Networking) it's still an ADSL modem, but instead of connecting to our DHCP servers and getting a public IP, the machine is logically connected to the bank's network directly and either gets it's IP from their DHCP server, or hard-codes an IP (I've left before that config is done so I'm not sure which)). The "white label" ATMs I've worked with have never required me to do more than supply a phone jack, so you may be right about them using consumer grade ADSL connections.
Would the solution you propose make more sense? Absolutely. But it's cost prohibitive, and beyond the scope of 99% of the owners, and 75% of the service techs.
It changes nothing for the owner, and likely nothing for the service tech either (he doesn't care what IP he enters in to the config screen, as long as it's the one on his work order). The only differences are cost of the connection itself (so you may be right about it being prohibitive) and some routing at the server end, however the big banks are already set up for that sort of stuff, so it shouldn't be much effort to do it for the white labels as well.
...and the ATM machines I've worked with...
Pet peeve.
DOH! and I thought I'd been so careful about that too!
Actually, as many people on here have pointed out, we have data back about 500 million years... and we are nowhere NEAR the warmest it's been... We're slowly coming out of the last ice age, we have several degrees left to go...
And what is your personal qualification to speak on the subject that you think YOUR opinion entitles you to comment, but that someone with an opposing opinion should not?
oh great... so now our solution to too much pollution is to throw MORE pollution in to the atmosphere? and nobody sees a problem with throwing random chemicals in to a system that humanity doesn't even come close to understanding and hoping that it will solve our problems without creating new and potentially worse ones?
Let's start at the beginning. This hack requires that a machine be connected to the outside via phone. This is increasingly going away. I would guess that 40% of the machines I work on are connected via internet now, as opposed to 15% a year ago.
But does that really help matters any? wouldn't being connected to the internet be even MORE risky? surely the same "dial-in" access is still there, just over TCP/IP instead of dialup, and with exposure to the internet you have even more capacity for abuse by millions of hosts.
Now I work as a tech for a local telco, and the ATM machines I've worked with have mostly been connected by ADSL, but my understanding was that although it was still a TCP/IP connection, they were actually on a special logical connection back to the bank that kept their data away from the internet? wouldn't this make more sense? (from the stand point of a telco tech, these machines do not connect to our usual DHCP servers, and I believe their entire logical connection is separate, though what the end point is I don't know as I don't handle that end of the connection)
the pre-made cables we use at work have a great compromise on them, instead of the full "boot" you see on many cables, they have just a rubber tab that sits over the retaining clip, without sides to the boot it doesn't harden and make it difficult to operate, however it still keeps those retaining clips from breaking off when disentangling cables.
I love bacon, but then I also like it crispy meaning most of the fat is cooked off, also you'll notice the cheap bacon in the store has lots of fat, but the good stuff has much less.
Fat isn't the part people eat, it's the muscle that we all enjoy so much.
For the most part, in the company that I work for, it is much more complicated than that.
The customer service issues that we have come from a combination of a few factors, outsourced foreign call centres, combined with inadequate training is one of the big ones. It's not that the reps don't want to help, most of them genuinely do, but if you fall off their carefully laid out script they just don't know what to do. And some of them can't even follow the script properly (either that, or the script is very poorly written? (if there are no lights on the DSL modem, stop telling the customer that their computer is the problem, and start troubleshooting the modem itself (or the connections to it))) But beyond that we have systems process issues that make things that SHOULD be simple complicated. "you want our phone, internet, and TV service? ok, we'll need to send 3 different techs out on 3 different days to hook that all up, can you take 3 days off work and wait 2 weeks for the TV portion to be complete?" In reality, one tech can do all of the work, however some billing system can't handle concurrent orders properly. (and apparently requires a very complicated and expensive fix)
On the bright side, I think the higher ups are starting to see some of the process and systems issues, and realize the detrimental effect it has on customer service (while providing no benefit to the business) and are working to get things fixed (I just wish they had worked on it 4 years ago when this system came to be)
One of the metrics used quite extensively by the telecom company that I work for is "churn" this is the percentage of customers that leave the service. It is compared extensively with churn numbers from our competing carriers, as well as with our historic churn levels for previous quarters or years. The company is well aware of the cost to acquire a new customer, (they have it figured out down to fractions of a cent) and the churn rate for existing customers.
Although this doesn't help you see "why" someone left, you CAN see any trends based on various policies. (ie. we instituted policy "screw the customer" in Q1 2009, and in subsequent quarters we started to show a higher churn rate, maybe we should re-think that policy?)
Additionally whenever anyone cancels their service, A rep tries to get a reason out of the customer, this is obviously 2 fold, part of it is to try to keep them by offering some form of "save" deal, but the other one is to keep statistics on why people leave, if most people leave for "price" then you consider changes to pricing structure, if most people leave for "reliability" you consider upgrades to infrastructure, if most people leave for "customer service"... well... our execs still haven't decided what to do about that one... but I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually...
problem with that is that in most major centres, although there are usually at least 3 TV providers, they use completely different technologies to get the signal there, so an unlocked box will still only work on the one system. eg. in BC and Alberta you can get service from: - Shaw (Cable/Satellite) - TELUS (IPTV/Satellite) - Bell (Satellite)
Even the satellite systems aren't compatible though (ok, the TELUS and Bell satellites are, but the shaw direct (formerly "starchoice") satellite is different)
So what exactly would you DO with your unlocked Shaw cable receiver? it isn't capable of working as a satellite or IPTV receiver...
Apparently you've never worked as one of the "hard hat" crowd.
We spend hours at a time in these rooms installing, testing, or repairing equipment. Most of which needs to be done concurrently with phone calls to someone sitting at a desk in a quiet area somewhere. This is done to test individual cards, circuits, etc (which as you just pointed out, often can't be done by the person in the machine room) It is simply not practical to run back and forth to a control room for each adjustment, we need to work on equipment while talking with someone who is making the changes live. Running back and forth would increase the time requirements (and the outage lengths) by a very large factor.
The machine room is a constant test of how loud my headset can go, along with a hefty dose of "say again please?"
Unfortunately we don't have a party like that to vote for in Canada.
The choices as far as I've seen are: Conservative: social conservative, fiscal liberal Liberal: social mid ground, fiscal liberal NDP: social liberal, fiscal liberal Green: social liberal, fiscal liberal
In fact the only fiscal conservative party I've ever seen on a ballot is the Libertarian party, and they are social conservative, fiscal conservative (and such a fringe party that I don't see them winning any seats in my lifetime)
All the major parties are fiscal liberals, your only choice is social liberal or conservative.
I too want to find social liberal, fiscal conservative, but the party just doesn't exist.
You can't consider something to be "worth" the lifetime productivity of an item either. If I have a tool that I use extensively to make my living, it may "produce" thousands of dollars worth of productivity, but if I can buy a new one for $50 at the hardware store, the tool is still worth only $50, not several thousand dollars, in fact after depreciation, my tool is probably not even worth the $50, even though it continues to make me thousands of dollars.
The cost to replace an item though is only relevant if there is a point to replacing the item in question. I have all sorts of stuff lying around in my crawl space that would cost money to replace, but would never be replaced if it were lost, is it still worth money?
If I were to die, my parents wouldn't suddenly decide they need a new me and make a new person. My boss would replace me, but they wouldn't have to pay the amount of my lost productivity for the remainder of my natural life, they'd only have to pay about $10,000-$20,000 (cost to hire and train someone to my level)
My point was that "Economics FAIL" is a more accurate term than you realize. Economics DO fail to work in this situation. As much as humans love to think of everything in terms of little pieces of paper with weird pictures on them, some things simply can't be categorized in that way. Human life is one of those things.
A person is worth different amounts to different people.
I am worth nothing to you, but an immeasurable amount to my family, no dollar value would ever be enough to satisfy them if I were to die.
I am worth about $10,000 - $20,000 to my employer (cost to hire and train a replacement) And I'm worth up to a million or so to my insurance company (what I could cost them depending on specific injuries or demise)
Well if you want to go based on cost to acquire an item, a human life is quite cheap, in fact even the poorest people can afford to do so many times in fact between consenting adults it often costs more to avoid creating a human life than it costs to actually do so. of course ongoing maintenance costs are quite high, but that is usually a problem not thought of in the spur of the moment (which tends to cause all sorts of problems, but that's an entirely different discussion.)
Most human lives are worth $0, unless they are specifically insured, in which case they are worth the dollar value on the policy. I think the harder part to deal with is that we consider specific humans to be worth immeasurable amounts to us personally, while perhaps much less to others elsewhere. People die all over the world all the time, MANY MANY people, but most of us don't even give it a second thought unless it is someone we can relate to. Human lives may be "valuable" but they are not worth money most of the time because it is usually not possible to simply buy a replacement.
I think it is generally considered acceptable to keep agregate statistics (ie. 125,435 people clicked on this link) but not so good to keep individual statistics (ip ___.___.___.___ clicked on this link, then that one, then this other one) And keeping the former does not require keeping the later. The first example lets you improve your searches based on how many people like different links, the second one lets you track how a specific person uses the internet. one of these things I object to, the other one I'm ok with.
Ever see the original ads for the 747 or the new 2 storey airbus? They both show people lounging around in luxury, the whole second floor of the 747 was supposed to be a lounge... until the airlines realized that they could cram more passengers in to that space...
What makes you think the same economics would be missing in a zeppelin? Now instead of spending a couple hours in a cramped plane, you can spend a couple days in a cramped zeppelin... what progress!
Roads should be like this too, charge taxes by the mile using gps. Charge everyone for what they're using and everyone will be happy I'm sure.
Theoretically roads already are like that in Canada, a large share of the price of automotive fuel is road taxes, you use more fuel, you pay more road tax. (at the time they came up with the system GPS wasn't an option)
TELUS officially already has overage charges, though I've never heard of anyone ever being billed for them, they currently have 3 plans (there are also many older grandfathered plans that don't line up):
Lite: 256kbps connection, monthly limit of 10GB, $5/GB extra Regular: 6Mbps connection, monthly limit of 60GB, $2/GB extra Turbo: 15Mbps connection, monthly limit of 100GB, $2/GB extra
So Bell's $1.12/GB with a maximum of $22.50 is much less than TELUS' $2/GB (or if you're on the lowest plan $5/GB) with no limit at all!
The real differences are: 1) TELUS seems to ignore that part at the moment (though who knows for how long!) 2) TELUS hasn't been targeting the wholesale ISPs the same way (or at least their wholesale ISPs haven't been complaining...)
maybe was too limiting to really be practical, but I don't necessarily think it equates to a matter of ensuring job security as has been claimed.
there's a simple test for that... If he had suddenly vanished off the face of the earth one day, can the business keep on going without interruption, has he documented all necessary information for someone equally qualified to him to simply step in and maintain what he started.
The answer here is clearly no, there was no way for someone else to get in to administer those systems because he refused to let the password be known to anyone other than himself. That is not the way ANY successful company operates.
This was him trying to make himself indispensable, not simply him making things "secure". There always has to be some way for business to continue if any one person vanishes, as such, any essential passwords, backups, etc need to be accessible to a replacement in some way. What that way is will vary by organization, some will have a safe for this information, some will simply make sure multiple people know the information, others will find a letter sealed in an envelope in the bottom of a filling cabinet to be "good enough" but whatever method is chosen it must be followed.
It sounds like in this case the approved method was a secure database accessible by the sysadmins and management. his refusal to document his passwords and configs in that database are where he crossed the line from "secure" to "self important"
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
As long as the new rules don't break any laws, and everything you do complies with the rules in place, and you get all of the communications in a traceable/logable format, It's not your problem.
If he asks for the password and there is no written law or rule that contradicts this, get him to submit the request in writing and then give it to him, if it turns out that it was a bad decision, it was HIS decision (and you can prove it) and it's not your problem.
If you strongly disagree with his request you can advise him of why, and you can escalate it to a higher level, but in the end, it's not your decision to make, get everything in writing and you're covered if things go wrong.
And if this sort of thing becomes routine, maybe you should consider if the company is really a good "fit" for you.
I have to second this, I have yet to see any social network that can do anything useful that email can't already do.
I don't have a facebook account, unfortunately though, many of my friends who do seem to have forgotten about email altogether, where they used to send an email to a bunch of friends to invite them to a party, they now post it on facebook, this actually causes a bunch of problems, first of all, those of us not on facebook don't hear about it, secondly several people they don't like on facebook manage to see it and invite themselves... If they went back to email they'd have full control over who got the invite again, and the knowledge that everyone has an email account.
But they might loose the ability to find out what neat new shoes the cousin of the friend of the mother of the person they haven't talked to in 15 years bought the other day....
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So in other words you admit to not being qualified to speak on the subject, so you should, by your own doctrine, "STFU"
As with any religion, Global warming fanatics are quick to tell others to shut up.... apparently they're afraid someone might say something they don't have a good answer for...
when you're connected to the internet, you remove the bandwidth problem of a modem connection. AND, because you're not tying up a phone line anymore, you have more flexibility with your communications.
and that's the problem, on a modem only one machine can attack you at a time, on the internet millions can have a go at once. the flexibility argument also cuts both ways...
So, machines that are hooked in via TCP/IP do not have the option to accept remote connections initiated from anywhere other than the machine. The communication HAS to start with the machine,
So, what you're saying is that dialup connected machines have the facility to receive calls, but internet connected machines only do outgoing connections? that seems odd. It would be just as easy to secure a dialup machine by simply telling it not to answer the phone. I have to believe that if the dialup machine is set to answer phone calls, the internet connected machine will be set to receive some form of incoming connection as well. otherwise it's not the communication medium that is adding the security, but the decision on whether or not to accept incoming communications.
These machines are also usually programmed to auto-connect every 15 or 30 minutes with a machine status update (thereby eliminating the need to dial in remotely).
there's no reason a dialup machine couldn't behave exactly the same, once again the security increase isn't in changing to TCP/IP, it's in not accepting incoming connections. In fact arguably the TCP/IP connection is still less secure than a similarly configured dialup connection due to increased chance of various MITM attacks, IP or DNS spoofing attacks, or simple protocol vulnerabilities in the OS that get found/exploited by the millions of bots that can be brought to bear on attacking a machine over the internet
The machines that are located at gas stations and bars and whatnot use a standard internet connection. The only requirement is that the location has to have a static IP. You have to remember, these machines only cost $2K - $5K, and the owner only makes $100 - $500 per month on the machine. Not to mention, they're not doing that many transactions.
The machines I've worked on have mainly been big bank branded ATMs, but located at gas stations, convenience stores, etc. And they have definitely not been "consumer grade" ADSL lines (we call them ADSL CWAN (Carrier Wide Area Networking) it's still an ADSL modem, but instead of connecting to our DHCP servers and getting a public IP, the machine is logically connected to the bank's network directly and either gets it's IP from their DHCP server, or hard-codes an IP (I've left before that config is done so I'm not sure which)). The "white label" ATMs I've worked with have never required me to do more than supply a phone jack, so you may be right about them using consumer grade ADSL connections.
Would the solution you propose make more sense? Absolutely. But it's cost prohibitive, and beyond the scope of 99% of the owners, and 75% of the service techs.
It changes nothing for the owner, and likely nothing for the service tech either (he doesn't care what IP he enters in to the config screen, as long as it's the one on his work order). The only differences are cost of the connection itself (so you may be right about it being prohibitive) and some routing at the server end, however the big banks are already set up for that sort of stuff, so it shouldn't be much effort to do it for the white labels as well.
...and the ATM machines I've worked with...
Pet peeve.
DOH! and I thought I'd been so careful about that too!
Actually, as many people on here have pointed out, we have data back about 500 million years... and we are nowhere NEAR the warmest it's been... We're slowly coming out of the last ice age, we have several degrees left to go...
And what is your personal qualification to speak on the subject that you think YOUR opinion entitles you to comment, but that someone with an opposing opinion should not?
oh great... so now our solution to too much pollution is to throw MORE pollution in to the atmosphere? and nobody sees a problem with throwing random chemicals in to a system that humanity doesn't even come close to understanding and hoping that it will solve our problems without creating new and potentially worse ones?
Let's start at the beginning. This hack requires that a machine be connected to the outside via phone. This is increasingly going away. I would guess that 40% of the machines I work on are connected via internet now, as opposed to 15% a year ago.
But does that really help matters any? wouldn't being connected to the internet be even MORE risky? surely the same "dial-in" access is still there, just over TCP/IP instead of dialup, and with exposure to the internet you have even more capacity for abuse by millions of hosts.
Now I work as a tech for a local telco, and the ATM machines I've worked with have mostly been connected by ADSL, but my understanding was that although it was still a TCP/IP connection, they were actually on a special logical connection back to the bank that kept their data away from the internet? wouldn't this make more sense? (from the stand point of a telco tech, these machines do not connect to our usual DHCP servers, and I believe their entire logical connection is separate, though what the end point is I don't know as I don't handle that end of the connection)
the pre-made cables we use at work have a great compromise on them, instead of the full "boot" you see on many cables, they have just a rubber tab that sits over the retaining clip, without sides to the boot it doesn't harden and make it difficult to operate, however it still keeps those retaining clips from breaking off when disentangling cables.
I love bacon, but then I also like it crispy meaning most of the fat is cooked off, also you'll notice the cheap bacon in the store has lots of fat, but the good stuff has much less.
Fat isn't the part people eat, it's the muscle that we all enjoy so much.
People prefer lean meat, which means more muscle and less fat....
For the most part, in the company that I work for, it is much more complicated than that.
The customer service issues that we have come from a combination of a few factors, outsourced foreign call centres, combined with inadequate training is one of the big ones. It's not that the reps don't want to help, most of them genuinely do, but if you fall off their carefully laid out script they just don't know what to do. And some of them can't even follow the script properly (either that, or the script is very poorly written? (if there are no lights on the DSL modem, stop telling the customer that their computer is the problem, and start troubleshooting the modem itself (or the connections to it))) But beyond that we have systems process issues that make things that SHOULD be simple complicated. "you want our phone, internet, and TV service? ok, we'll need to send 3 different techs out on 3 different days to hook that all up, can you take 3 days off work and wait 2 weeks for the TV portion to be complete?"
In reality, one tech can do all of the work, however some billing system can't handle concurrent orders properly. (and apparently requires a very complicated and expensive fix)
On the bright side, I think the higher ups are starting to see some of the process and systems issues, and realize the detrimental effect it has on customer service (while providing no benefit to the business) and are working to get things fixed (I just wish they had worked on it 4 years ago when this system came to be)
One of the metrics used quite extensively by the telecom company that I work for is "churn" this is the percentage of customers that leave the service. It is compared extensively with churn numbers from our competing carriers, as well as with our historic churn levels for previous quarters or years.
The company is well aware of the cost to acquire a new customer, (they have it figured out down to fractions of a cent) and the churn rate for existing customers.
Although this doesn't help you see "why" someone left, you CAN see any trends based on various policies. (ie. we instituted policy "screw the customer" in Q1 2009, and in subsequent quarters we started to show a higher churn rate, maybe we should re-think that policy?)
Additionally whenever anyone cancels their service, A rep tries to get a reason out of the customer, this is obviously 2 fold, part of it is to try to keep them by offering some form of "save" deal, but the other one is to keep statistics on why people leave, if most people leave for "price" then you consider changes to pricing structure, if most people leave for "reliability" you consider upgrades to infrastructure, if most people leave for "customer service"... well... our execs still haven't decided what to do about that one... but I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually...
problem with that is that in most major centres, although there are usually at least 3 TV providers, they use completely different technologies to get the signal there, so an unlocked box will still only work on the one system.
eg. in BC and Alberta you can get service from:
- Shaw (Cable/Satellite)
- TELUS (IPTV/Satellite)
- Bell (Satellite)
Even the satellite systems aren't compatible though (ok, the TELUS and Bell satellites are, but the shaw direct (formerly "starchoice") satellite is different)
So what exactly would you DO with your unlocked Shaw cable receiver? it isn't capable of working as a satellite or IPTV receiver...
Apparently you've never worked as one of the "hard hat" crowd.
We spend hours at a time in these rooms installing, testing, or repairing equipment. Most of which needs to be done concurrently with phone calls to someone sitting at a desk in a quiet area somewhere. This is done to test individual cards, circuits, etc (which as you just pointed out, often can't be done by the person in the machine room) It is simply not practical to run back and forth to a control room for each adjustment, we need to work on equipment while talking with someone who is making the changes live. Running back and forth would increase the time requirements (and the outage lengths) by a very large factor.
The machine room is a constant test of how loud my headset can go, along with a hefty dose of "say again please?"
Politician thinks the rules only apply to other people. News at 11.
Where I live, they're right. All telemarketing and Robo-calling laws in Canada have specific exceptions for political campaigns...
Of course as soon as I get one from a candidate I immediately remove them from my list of parties to vote for in that election...
(I'm a social liberal, fiscal conservative)
Unfortunately we don't have a party like that to vote for in Canada.
The choices as far as I've seen are:
Conservative: social conservative, fiscal liberal
Liberal: social mid ground, fiscal liberal
NDP: social liberal, fiscal liberal
Green: social liberal, fiscal liberal
In fact the only fiscal conservative party I've ever seen on a ballot is the Libertarian party, and they are social conservative, fiscal conservative (and such a fringe party that I don't see them winning any seats in my lifetime)
All the major parties are fiscal liberals, your only choice is social liberal or conservative.
I too want to find social liberal, fiscal conservative, but the party just doesn't exist.
You can't consider something to be "worth" the lifetime productivity of an item either. If I have a tool that I use extensively to make my living, it may "produce" thousands of dollars worth of productivity, but if I can buy a new one for $50 at the hardware store, the tool is still worth only $50, not several thousand dollars, in fact after depreciation, my tool is probably not even worth the $50, even though it continues to make me thousands of dollars.
The cost to replace an item though is only relevant if there is a point to replacing the item in question. I have all sorts of stuff lying around in my crawl space that would cost money to replace, but would never be replaced if it were lost, is it still worth money?
If I were to die, my parents wouldn't suddenly decide they need a new me and make a new person. My boss would replace me, but they wouldn't have to pay the amount of my lost productivity for the remainder of my natural life, they'd only have to pay about $10,000-$20,000 (cost to hire and train someone to my level)
My point was that "Economics FAIL" is a more accurate term than you realize. Economics DO fail to work in this situation. As much as humans love to think of everything in terms of little pieces of paper with weird pictures on them, some things simply can't be categorized in that way. Human life is one of those things.
A person is worth different amounts to different people.
I am worth nothing to you, but an immeasurable amount to my family, no dollar value would ever be enough to satisfy them if I were to die.
I am worth about $10,000 - $20,000 to my employer (cost to hire and train a replacement) And I'm worth up to a million or so to my insurance company (what I could cost them depending on specific injuries or demise)
Well if you want to go based on cost to acquire an item, a human life is quite cheap, in fact even the poorest people can afford to do so many times in fact between consenting adults it often costs more to avoid creating a human life than it costs to actually do so. of course ongoing maintenance costs are quite high, but that is usually a problem not thought of in the spur of the moment (which tends to cause all sorts of problems, but that's an entirely different discussion.)
Most human lives are worth $0, unless they are specifically insured, in which case they are worth the dollar value on the policy. I think the harder part to deal with is that we consider specific humans to be worth immeasurable amounts to us personally, while perhaps much less to others elsewhere. People die all over the world all the time, MANY MANY people, but most of us don't even give it a second thought unless it is someone we can relate to. Human lives may be "valuable" but they are not worth money most of the time because it is usually not possible to simply buy a replacement.
I think it is generally considered acceptable to keep agregate statistics (ie. 125,435 people clicked on this link) but not so good to keep individual statistics (ip ___.___.___.___ clicked on this link, then that one, then this other one)
And keeping the former does not require keeping the later. The first example lets you improve your searches based on how many people like different links, the second one lets you track how a specific person uses the internet. one of these things I object to, the other one I'm ok with.
Ever see the original ads for the 747 or the new 2 storey airbus?
They both show people lounging around in luxury, the whole second floor of the 747 was supposed to be a lounge... until the airlines realized that they could cram more passengers in to that space...
What makes you think the same economics would be missing in a zeppelin? Now instead of spending a couple hours in a cramped plane, you can spend a couple days in a cramped zeppelin... what progress!
Roads should be like this too, charge taxes by the mile using gps. Charge everyone for what they're using and everyone will be happy I'm sure.
Theoretically roads already are like that in Canada, a large share of the price of automotive fuel is road taxes, you use more fuel, you pay more road tax. (at the time they came up with the system GPS wasn't an option)
TELUS officially already has overage charges, though I've never heard of anyone ever being billed for them, they currently have 3 plans (there are also many older grandfathered plans that don't line up):
Lite: 256kbps connection, monthly limit of 10GB, $5/GB extra
Regular: 6Mbps connection, monthly limit of 60GB, $2/GB extra
Turbo: 15Mbps connection, monthly limit of 100GB, $2/GB extra
So Bell's $1.12/GB with a maximum of $22.50 is much less than TELUS' $2/GB (or if you're on the lowest plan $5/GB) with no limit at all!
The real differences are:
1) TELUS seems to ignore that part at the moment (though who knows for how long!)
2) TELUS hasn't been targeting the wholesale ISPs the same way (or at least their wholesale ISPs haven't been complaining...)
maybe was too limiting to really be practical, but I don't necessarily think it equates to a matter of ensuring job security as has been claimed.
there's a simple test for that... If he had suddenly vanished off the face of the earth one day, can the business keep on going without interruption, has he documented all necessary information for someone equally qualified to him to simply step in and maintain what he started.
The answer here is clearly no, there was no way for someone else to get in to administer those systems because he refused to let the password be known to anyone other than himself. That is not the way ANY successful company operates.
This was him trying to make himself indispensable, not simply him making things "secure". There always has to be some way for business to continue if any one person vanishes, as such, any essential passwords, backups, etc need to be accessible to a replacement in some way. What that way is will vary by organization, some will have a safe for this information, some will simply make sure multiple people know the information, others will find a letter sealed in an envelope in the bottom of a filling cabinet to be "good enough" but whatever method is chosen it must be followed.
It sounds like in this case the approved method was a secure database accessible by the sysadmins and management. his refusal to document his passwords and configs in that database are where he crossed the line from "secure" to "self important"
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
As long as the new rules don't break any laws, and everything you do complies with the rules in place, and you get all of the communications in a traceable/logable format, It's not your problem.
If he asks for the password and there is no written law or rule that contradicts this, get him to submit the request in writing and then give it to him, if it turns out that it was a bad decision, it was HIS decision (and you can prove it) and it's not your problem.
If you strongly disagree with his request you can advise him of why, and you can escalate it to a higher level, but in the end, it's not your decision to make, get everything in writing and you're covered if things go wrong.
And if this sort of thing becomes routine, maybe you should consider if the company is really a good "fit" for you.
I have to second this, I have yet to see any social network that can do anything useful that email can't already do.
I don't have a facebook account, unfortunately though, many of my friends who do seem to have forgotten about email altogether, where they used to send an email to a bunch of friends to invite them to a party, they now post it on facebook, this actually causes a bunch of problems, first of all, those of us not on facebook don't hear about it, secondly several people they don't like on facebook manage to see it and invite themselves... If they went back to email they'd have full control over who got the invite again, and the knowledge that everyone has an email account.
But they might loose the ability to find out what neat new shoes the cousin of the friend of the mother of the person they haven't talked to in 15 years bought the other day....