Exactly. It's a matter of scale, and the ruler that we use use to measure the time.
When my children were born, I held them. Their entire universe to that point was the constraints of that single room. Their concept of time was only minutes long. By walking to the next room, I doubled their understanding of the universe.
When a child is young, they know all of life to be from the time they were born until now. The universe can only be 10 years old, because that's as long as I've observed it to be. Their known universe has grown to many buildings, possibly in various cities. By now, you've woken up 3,650 mornings, but only half of that you can remember, due to the childhood paradox.
[The childhood paradox is that as a baby you observe and learn, but since you have no frame of reference for that knowledge, you won't remember it until the basic set of knowledge is established. This usually applies to the age of 5.]
By the time you're 50, you have observed so much more. What is one day to a 50 year old? It is one of 18,250 that you've already experienced. You wake up in the morning, and say "I've woken up to this day before."
Wait until you're almost 100 years old, traveled the world, and have your own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. By then, you'll likely have experienced all there is to do. A single minute measured on a such a ruler is so insignificant, it barely matters. It's just one of 52,560,000 that you've already lived through.
Oh, I see you're one of those models. You feel totally superior to the previous generation, but have not quite realized that your feature set will be superseded with a bigger and better one Very Soon(tm).
Good luck with all your new features, and pants, you'll be needing it.
Well, not to argue, but this is a test I just did on my desktop at work. I used the 'ab' test program, that comes with Apache (full name is Apache Bench).
800Mhz, 1.7Gb RAM available (256Mb shared to video)
Slackware Linux (x86_64) 13.0.0.0.0
Linux evil2 2.6.31.6 #8 SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 3 14:44:04 EST 2009 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 2650e AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
http: Requests per second: 828.54 [#/sec] (mean) https: Requests per second: 56.65 [#/sec] (mean)
You could say that it reflects your numbers, but......
I also had top running during the tests. During the http test, the highest %CPU for ab was no more than 15%. During the https test, it took up all the spare CPU time there was (approx 40% steady). It wasn't contending with Apache, but with things like X and Firefox. The web server itself stayed pretty much idle the whole time. This would be an issue with the testing application, not the server being tested. This test would have been better run from another machine, towards a dedicated webserver, but I don't have anything to test on right now.
Well, the feds decide who to prosecute, therefore who they intend to get a conviction against. It usually isn't "Lets charge a bunch of people, and see who we can get a conviction on." At least for a real investigative organization. For folks like the RIAA, they do the blanket "lets sue everyone, and let the courts sort them out" method. The RIAA is not a federal nor law enforcement agency, nor are they looking for a conviction, just a judgement against someone (or everyone).
[Note: I just use the RIAA as an example. There was no malice intended towards any organization in particular. There are plenty of organizations that do that method in civil court daily.]
Ideally, if they have all the evidence, and they did their jobs right (proper investigative techniques, properly mirandizing the suspect(s), properly requesting subpoenas, and proper handling of the evidence), it will lead to a conviction. I was just leaving out all that pesky middle dialogue. I skipped over plenty of other steps too.
I've had to parse logs for similar things. Thousands of requests hit a particular exploitable web page, but only one or two IP's are sending further information. It's easy to trim it down the list of candidates, and find who the real problem is.
That's what the feds do in any investigation. They have a broad list of suspects. They eliminate folks until they have their persons of interest, and then down to the guy who they'll be convicting.
I can honestly say, with experience, that https only takes a trivial amount more CPU time than a http request.
The honest references you will find showing that https was so much heavier than http, was when the blazing fast webservers were 133Mhz.
You're in more danger of the DDoS filling up your pipe than bringing a server to it's knees. The bringing the server down could be accomplished just as easily as a http server. That is unless some genius decided that they needed an entire server farm for http, but only one or two machines for https, which would definately qualify it as "weak"
The folks running the servers should be able to deploy countermeasures of some sort. If a number over some acceptable threshold are illegitimate requests, automatically block them. It's easy enough on a *nix box. I'm not talking about anything in the webserver itself either. The webserver should be able to initiate something as simple as an iptables/ipfilter rule. It's amazing how useful those can be, and if the threshold is calculated appropriately, it won't even bother legitimate traffic.
You are right though, I don't see how these would disguise anything. If you have a list of places that are targets, that makes it more noticeable, not less, even if it is the CnC machine, or a drone.
It sounds like some pretty old fashion DoS/DDoS attacks. What's so fancy about initiating multiple requests, and leaving them hanging? Folks have been tuning up their http servers to handle this for years. Why can't they tune up their https side too, other than the admins being lazy or inept?
I had a good bit of experience with Solaris years ago. I'm still current on a variety of versions of Unix. One place required 5 recent and concurrent years of Solaris experience, so they told me to change my resume to reflect that. I wouldn't do it. At some point, someone's going to figure out that it wasn't 5 recent years, but actually 5 years since I had touched it. I took the Brainbench test for it on request of another headhunter, and came out with a "Master" level. Ok, so maybe I'm actually good with it, but I won't say that I should be in a senior Solaris admin job. I won't lie to get a job, because if I do and can't do it, I won't have that job for long.
Now, a degree.. That could be different. My biggest concern about a fake degree is that someone will be familiar with the school (if I claim a real one) and ask me specific questions about it. Like, if I said I went to Harvard, and someone asked where I lived off campus because they went there too, I couldn't even hope to come up with an answer that could be anywhere close to accurate. I could always say "well, that was 20 years ago, I don't recall", but still, there's a huge risk.
So, you're trying to do that whole "electroshock stimulus as encouragement to work" test, aren't you? No, a cattle prod doesn't make for happy employees, but at least they will learn to stop complaining so much.:)
At one place I was at, I was very upset that the first round of pruning was to take all the women out. Their belief was that a woman could never be a sysadmin. I've known many women who could do my job very well, so that was a completely unfair (and illegal) thing to do.
The resumes were then given to me. I pruned out all the candidates who didn't have any skills that we required. Why would you apply for a Linux sysadmin job, if you've only ever worked as helpdesk support for a Windows environment? We required some sort of scripting ability, where many candidates didn't even known what a shell script was.
From there, it was thinning out the crowd to the specifically higher candidates with experience in the field.
Even if you considered a degree as an added bonus, by the time they made it to an interview, it was usually clear that the degree wasn't a bonus. Not that I haven't had degree holders working for me, but that isn't what got them the job. It was the fact that they had tinkered with computers since before they went to school, and continued learning on their own AND had real world experience. I've even accepted candidates with no real world corporate experience, because they had worked with various OS's at home. That's not "I set up a Linux machine once", but "I've used all these OS's and here's how I found they compare", and they were able to answer real world questions that you wouldn't just absorb the material from reading a trade magazine once in a while.
My favorite method of interviewing, when I've been able to, was to give a candidate a machine and say "fix this", with only some basic instruction. I won't ask them to do all the work, but I can frequently see in 5 minutes that they have a clue of what they're doing. That is only if time allows, and I happen to have something handy for them to work on. If not, the further testing comes in their probation period (the first 90 days). Usually by the end of the first few days, I'll already know if they have the ability to do what they say, without hosing any of my servers.
I won't agree with lying in your resume or job application. If you lied about that, what else are you going to lie about? Since I've interviewed quite a bit, I'll ask real world questions that the candidate should know if they have experience in that area. A candidate may say "Oh, I know Unix inside and out", so I'll ask something like, "How do you configure an interface from the command line" or "How do you get onto a machine where the root password has been lost". The questions will be more specific to the variant and version, but you get the idea.
As an interviewee, I've had it go both ways. An interviewer who isn't familiar with the field I'm applying for will ask some general questions and I'll throw the answers right to them. If the interviewer is familiar with the field, I'll answer a few field specific questions and then we'll end up in a good conversation where they'll see that I know my field. A few times, they've had a prepared list of questions, we've blown through a half dozen, and then they'll say "I really don't even need to bother ask you any more of these, it's already clear you know the subject material." It's been more annoying when the interviewer has the list, but doesn't know the topic, and they can't accept my answer because it isn't what they have listed. Sometimes I'll have to give 2 or 3 different ways to solve the problem, to end up with their precise answer.
I don't have a degree, but I have observed something throughout interviews in my time. Interviewers with degrees look for a degree. They prefer that you have a degree from the same place they do. Many interviewers that don't have degrees prefer that you have a good job history and/or disregard the fact that you have a degree.
You are right, the value of the degree is just an illusion. 4 years of experience in a field seriously outweighs 4 years of job experience.
Most people that I've known with degrees were unable to find employment in the career field that the degree applied to. For example, an English major has a job in accounting. A psych major was a customer service manager. I've found that the subject of the degree doesn't mean that the person knows anything about it. I asked someone for some detailed help in what should have been covered. I was told "Oh, my professor was getting ready to retire, so we didn't learn anything and passed anyways."
When I am hiring someone (which I've done quite a bit over the years), I've noticed that the degree usually means very little until they have the job experience. In my field (systems administration), the degree is worthless until you have the equivalent number of years actually working the field. For example, I hired a few folks who had just received their degrees in computer science, but didn't have any real world application beyond what they learned in school. They didn't last very long, because they simply didn't retain the subject matter. They're being taught enough to pass the tests and/or certifications, but can't make their way through in the real world. It's a shame they wasted all that money just to get a piece of paper to decorate their cube with.
I wouldn't discount anyone with a degree, but if I'm presented with someone who has 4 years of job experience, versus someone with a 4 year degree AND 4 years of job experience, they'd be equal until we carefully reviewed their practical experience. I haven't had a candidate for a position with me that has been able to show any sort of better ability with their degree.
It seems that advanced education is a babysitter for 19 to 22 year old kids. Their parents are more than happy to let them go off to school, because they'll be out of the house. Even at that, it isn't terribly successful, unless your goal was to teach them how to drink, and do other things that the parents would not approve of.
I believed the same thing, which is why it was included in my experiments. For my purpose, a mixed gas output was my intended result.
That isn't what I observed. At 120VAC 60Hz, I observed temperature changes in the water. I could see the layers of warm water rising.
From there, I put a full-wave bridge rectifier in, so it became a fairly lumpy but DC voltage. Turning the unit back on, the electrolysis occurred exactly as expected.
If you were to slow the frequency down, it could possibly work. Even with DC, you'll see there is a ramp up period. It's not instantaneous. It's pretty quick, but not 1/60 second. That's also partially why the fictitious pulsing doesn't really work. You can't shake the molecules apart, like it or not.
My observations were that the higher the voltage, and the more constant the power supply, the larger yield. Tests ran from under 1VDC to 30,000VDC. Frequencies ran from 1hz to about 20Khz, and many stepped frequencies per "researcher" suggestions online and patent information. any break in the DC current resulted in a lower yield.
But hey, if you don't believe me, Google around for it a little bit. Anyone who's tried will describe either heat or sparks and blown circuit breakers (hopefully).... and I strongly (STRONGLY) suggest that people don't try this, unless you really know what you're doing, and you've taken a lot of precautions. You're working with a deadly voltage. You are also creating a fire and explosion hazard without the appropriate precautions. I had DPST cutoff switch, inline breaker, and isolation of the test environment so no one could contact the equipment while it was operating, and sufficient protection in case of explosion. Yup, if you do produce a nice hydrogen/oxygen mixture, and there's a short, it'll make a very unpleasant explosion if you aren't expecting it.
This just proves that the study is inherently flawed, and therefore had a flawed conclusion.
More people have and are using cell phones and texting than 30 years ago.
More accidents have happened while people were texting or holding a cell phone.
Therefore, more accidents have happened because of the cell phone. Wrong.
How about this...
More cars come with leather seats now, where they may have had vinyl seats 30 years ago.
More accidents have happened while the driver was sitting in a leather seat.
Therefore, more accidents have happened because of leather seat. Wrong again.
This same argument could be applied to a whole bunch of unrelated facts. Maybe the reduction of cars being sold in "burnt orange" color has increased the number of accidents. Just like the presumption that red cars get more tickets, or owners of red cars drive faster, or.. or.. or.. or..
There was absolutely no reason to outlaw driving while holding a cell phone, or texting, or girls doing their makeup. These are already covered under "driving while distracted", or whatever it may be called in your jurisdiction. A cell phone conversation can be as heated as an in-person conversation in the car. It's all covered already. Lawmakers just like making new laws to cover previously covered ground. Everyone else loves jumping on it like it's something new and amazing.
Most cars are made to travel approx 300 to 400 miles per tank of gas at their expected operating speeds.
As far as operating at 100mph, that's dependent on not just aerodynamics, but the available power and effective gear ratio. Most gas automobile engines are most efficient between 1700 to 2200 RPM.
For example, a lot of cars are already running at 3,000 RPM at 70mph. That would put them at at about 4,500 RPM at 100mph.
My car (and ones like it) are an exception. 90mph is about 2200 RPM in 6th gear. I track my mileage especially on long trips where I can burn through a tank of gas without too many changes in speed. The mileage goes something like this.
65 mph = 25mpg
75 mph = 26mpg
85 mph = 27mpg
In areas where I could cruise at 85mph, I would plan my next fuel stop for approx 380 miles. That allowed for about 50 miles of extra fuel.
As you said, tickets not withstanding. Even in the middle of nowhere, you're bound to find at least one patrol car in a 400 mile stretch, who would love to grab someone at 100mph.
You know, just because he got a patent on it doesn't mean it really worked as advertised.
And, no, that wasn't AC power. It was pulsed DC at a specific frequency (or pattern actually). AC would just give you warm water.:) Been there, done that, have the lab notes to go with it. The "mystery" frequency doesn't exist anywhere but in fantasies and stories.
*I* had nothing to do with the decision to ask him to move out. I was 2,500 miles away.
I happened to fly out for a visit with my mother-in-law, who told me her computer was running slow, so I rectified that situation. I had not intentionally done anything to cause the inability to recover deleted data. I was simply doing what any good repair shop would do, without the cost or upsells.
He, on the other hand, had other factors.
He was a substitute high school teacher.
He was photographing girls in class on a less than casual basis.
He had a prior record of inappropriate activities with underage girls in other school districts, which this school district hadn't found in a background check. He had simply managed to not get charged with crimes. This was found by the law enforcement investigators, and would not have normally been released to other schools or companies managing background checks.
He had solicited underage girls for photoshoots, without their parents consent, at locations other than home, school, or the childs residence. It wasn't disclosed to what those locations would be.
He was not a professional, or even practicing amateur photographer. He was a guy with a point and shoot camera trying to solicit young girls for special "photoshoots".
The intent was clearly there. Unfortunately, the word of several unrelated (different classes, ages, and even school districts) underage girls versus an adult, and the lack of any physical evidence, let him walk.
Because of this investigation, he was terminated, and forbidden from working with that district's school system. His file was also red-flagged, so any future school districts who may contact for a work history would be aware.
Basically, he is a predator, but they simply were unable to find enough evidence for a conviction. It isn't a matter of if he's guilty or not, it's a matter of when he's caught.
I honestly hope that this was enough to scare the shit out of him, but knowing how most criminal minds work, he'll just try harder next time to not get caught. Unfortunately, that means there will be more victims, and the crimes may go beyond just photographs.
Depending on where you are (and how well your lawyer will argue for you), evidence of prior crimes may not be admissible for a current case.
Say I was a bank robber. I robbed 2 banks in the past. A new bank was robbed. I was found with one bill stolen in the crime. That doesn't prove I robbed the 3rd bank, it simply proves that through some sort of chance I ended up with the bill. That could have happened all kinds of different perfectly legal ways. For example, the thief could have used it at a store where I then purchased something and received the bill as change.
Now, in this case seems different. It seems that he legitimately was looking for that kind of material and between the time he refused to turn over the computer and the time he finally did, he had an intention to remove evidence, which he did poorly. If I read the article correctly, it wasn't a single cartoon image that got him in trouble again, it was quite a few that they recovered from the Windows recycle bin. In the previous example, that would be like me seeing that the cops were pursuing me, so I tossed the duffel bag with the stolen cash in a dumpster, and then got arrested standing beside the dumpster and trying to deny any association to it.
That's really sad. They sat on the evidence for a year before processing it.
I guess what would be worse would be if they confiscated someone's equipment, sat on it for a year, and found nothing. I'd be a bit pissed if my computers were taken for a year before they found that I had nothing illegal.
My mother-in-law's computer was taken as evidence in a case where a roommate may have used her computer in relation to child porn. They imaged the drive and gave it back the next day. I assume a block by block copy of the drive, so they could try to recover any deleted information. Needless to say, he was quickly invited to not be a roommate any more. This may have been because she wasn't a suspect, but they needed her assistance to look for further information.
Her case turned out out to be nothing except a lapse in judgement that didn't quite cross any legal boundaries (but came very close), and he did nothing on her computer. From what I knew of the case from the investigator and my mother-in-law, the police were perfectly justified in their pursuit of evidence. I had worked on her computer between the time he used it, and the time they collected it to process, so I gave a detailed report of what I had done. Unfortunately, that had been clearing the browser cache and history, scanned for viruses, did some housekeeping, updated a few things, and defragged the drive. They may have been able to recover some things, but it was less likely after my cleanup. I wish they had called a few days earlier, and they may have found something more.
If/when a true AI exists, it will need some randomization to make it curious. Sure, you can chart point A to B to C, but what if randomly it skews off to somewhere just west of point Z enroute, and observes.
That doesn't have to be a physical route. It could be as simple as taking a random word from a dictionary, searching that on your favorite search engine, taking a random result from there, and then following the result from another random word. An unpredictable path, but that's what brings any of us to enlightenment. If you just went from home to work and back every day, and never turned down the wrong road, just to see where it goes, you'll never discover what is really out there. What is your universe? I've known so many people who only know points A and B, and never even considered point C, much less all the wonderful things to experience in between or beyond.
There's really nothing to keep an employer from being vindictive. Sure, go back to court and say They aren't playing nice with me." If a company really felt they had to keep you, they may just do something like open a site in the Antarctic, with just one machine and one employee, and you would be in charge of the site.
Hey, it'd be a high seniority position. Site manager is much more important that code monkey, right?:) Of course, it's a long walk home after they notify you that they've decided to terminate services there. "Promotions" aren't always what they seem.
I was reading about someone who did win the case against their employer. They were given a very nice office, a big title, and a secretary. They had absolutely no responsibilities, and no work to do. He was being paid to warm his chair from 9am to 5pm. He did that for a decade, and admitted that he was bored out of his skull. They didn't like him working there, but didn't want to end up in court again if they tried to terminate him again. Because the level of distrust was there, they couldn't assign him any work.
Paper trail. It's the most important thing to remember. Tape recordings are fine and dandy, if you don't mind spooling through hours of tape to try to find one conversation, which may or may not be legal where you are. Sometimes it takes one person being aware that a recording is being made. Sometimes it requires both parties.
If you document every request and response, even if it's just email, then you have a record of what's been happening. Don't say anything, because it's left to the witnesses to testify to what they heard. Even if you have a tape recording saying one thing, they could simply say "But I told him something contrary in a later conversation."
Be consistent with your paper trail too. Ask for every request to be made via email, or after a conversation ask, "can you please send that to me in an email?" Besides saving you in future proceedings, it will also help you document other things that happened. "Do you remember when we made this change?" "Sure, it's in my email. December 4th 2001, you requested it, and December 5th 2001 I finished it.
Keep your paper trail off site somewhere, that you have exclusive access to, like your home computer.
It may be advantageous to have a policy for retention. If you get called into court years later regarding an incident, no matter how innocent it seemed at the time, you may simply be lacking the trail. "No, I only retain those documents for 2 years. I have no records related to your case." Be honest though. If you say you don't have it, but your equipment is subpoenaed and it's found, then you're in trouble.
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Exactly. It's a matter of scale, and the ruler that we use use to measure the time.
When my children were born, I held them. Their entire universe to that point was the constraints of that single room. Their concept of time was only minutes long. By walking to the next room, I doubled their understanding of the universe.
When a child is young, they know all of life to be from the time they were born until now. The universe can only be 10 years old, because that's as long as I've observed it to be. Their known universe has grown to many buildings, possibly in various cities. By now, you've woken up 3,650 mornings, but only half of that you can remember, due to the childhood paradox.
[The childhood paradox is that as a baby you observe and learn, but since you have no frame of reference for that knowledge, you won't remember it until the basic set of knowledge is established. This usually applies to the age of 5.]
By the time you're 50, you have observed so much more. What is one day to a 50 year old? It is one of 18,250 that you've already experienced. You wake up in the morning, and say "I've woken up to this day before."
Wait until you're almost 100 years old, traveled the world, and have your own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. By then, you'll likely have experienced all there is to do. A single minute measured on a such a ruler is so insignificant, it barely matters. It's just one of 52,560,000 that you've already lived through.
Oh, I see you're one of those models. You feel totally superior to the previous generation, but have not quite realized that your feature set will be superseded with a bigger and better one Very Soon(tm).
Good luck with all your new features, and pants, you'll be needing it.
Well, not to argue, but this is a test I just did on my desktop at work. I used the 'ab' test program, that comes with Apache (full name is Apache Bench).
800Mhz, 1.7Gb RAM available (256Mb shared to video)
Slackware Linux (x86_64) 13.0.0.0.0
Linux evil2 2.6.31.6 #8 SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 3 14:44:04 EST 2009 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 2650e AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
It is running Apache 1.3.41 with mod_ssl
The test was run as:
ab -n 10000 -c 100 http://localhost/
http:
Requests per second: 828.54 [#/sec] (mean)
https:
Requests per second: 56.65 [#/sec] (mean)
You could say that it reflects your numbers, but......
I also had top running during the tests. During the http test, the highest %CPU for ab was no more than 15%. During the https test, it took up all the spare CPU time there was (approx 40% steady). It wasn't contending with Apache, but with things like X and Firefox. The web server itself stayed pretty much idle the whole time. This would be an issue with the testing application, not the server being tested. This test would have been better run from another machine, towards a dedicated webserver, but I don't have anything to test on right now.
Well, the feds decide who to prosecute, therefore who they intend to get a conviction against. It usually isn't "Lets charge a bunch of people, and see who we can get a conviction on." At least for a real investigative organization. For folks like the RIAA, they do the blanket "lets sue everyone, and let the courts sort them out" method. The RIAA is not a federal nor law enforcement agency, nor are they looking for a conviction, just a judgement against someone (or everyone).
[Note: I just use the RIAA as an example. There was no malice intended towards any organization in particular. There are plenty of organizations that do that method in civil court daily.]
Ideally, if they have all the evidence, and they did their jobs right (proper investigative techniques, properly mirandizing the suspect(s), properly requesting subpoenas, and proper handling of the evidence), it will lead to a conviction. I was just leaving out all that pesky middle dialogue. I skipped over plenty of other steps too.
Not really.
I've had to parse logs for similar things. Thousands of requests hit a particular exploitable web page, but only one or two IP's are sending further information. It's easy to trim it down the list of candidates, and find who the real problem is.
That's what the feds do in any investigation. They have a broad list of suspects. They eliminate folks until they have their persons of interest, and then down to the guy who they'll be convicting.
I can honestly say, with experience, that https only takes a trivial amount more CPU time than a http request.
The honest references you will find showing that https was so much heavier than http, was when the blazing fast webservers were 133Mhz.
You're in more danger of the DDoS filling up your pipe than bringing a server to it's knees. The bringing the server down could be accomplished just as easily as a http server. That is unless some genius decided that they needed an entire server farm for http, but only one or two machines for https, which would definately qualify it as "weak"
The folks running the servers should be able to deploy countermeasures of some sort. If a number over some acceptable threshold are illegitimate requests, automatically block them. It's easy enough on a *nix box. I'm not talking about anything in the webserver itself either. The webserver should be able to initiate something as simple as an iptables/ipfilter rule. It's amazing how useful those can be, and if the threshold is calculated appropriately, it won't even bother legitimate traffic.
You are right though, I don't see how these would disguise anything. If you have a list of places that are targets, that makes it more noticeable, not less, even if it is the CnC machine, or a drone.
It sounds like some pretty old fashion DoS/DDoS attacks. What's so fancy about initiating multiple requests, and leaving them hanging? Folks have been tuning up their http servers to handle this for years. Why can't they tune up their https side too, other than the admins being lazy or inept?
Oh, I'm very aware that staffing firms lie.
I had a good bit of experience with Solaris years ago. I'm still current on a variety of versions of Unix. One place required 5 recent and concurrent years of Solaris experience, so they told me to change my resume to reflect that. I wouldn't do it. At some point, someone's going to figure out that it wasn't 5 recent years, but actually 5 years since I had touched it. I took the Brainbench test for it on request of another headhunter, and came out with a "Master" level. Ok, so maybe I'm actually good with it, but I won't say that I should be in a senior Solaris admin job. I won't lie to get a job, because if I do and can't do it, I won't have that job for long.
Now, a degree.. That could be different. My biggest concern about a fake degree is that someone will be familiar with the school (if I claim a real one) and ask me specific questions about it. Like, if I said I went to Harvard, and someone asked where I lived off campus because they went there too, I couldn't even hope to come up with an answer that could be anywhere close to accurate. I could always say "well, that was 20 years ago, I don't recall", but still, there's a huge risk.
So, you're trying to do that whole "electroshock stimulus as encouragement to work" test, aren't you? No, a cattle prod doesn't make for happy employees, but at least they will learn to stop complaining so much. :)
That all depends on who's hiring.
At one place I was at, I was very upset that the first round of pruning was to take all the women out. Their belief was that a woman could never be a sysadmin. I've known many women who could do my job very well, so that was a completely unfair (and illegal) thing to do.
The resumes were then given to me. I pruned out all the candidates who didn't have any skills that we required. Why would you apply for a Linux sysadmin job, if you've only ever worked as helpdesk support for a Windows environment? We required some sort of scripting ability, where many candidates didn't even known what a shell script was.
From there, it was thinning out the crowd to the specifically higher candidates with experience in the field.
Even if you considered a degree as an added bonus, by the time they made it to an interview, it was usually clear that the degree wasn't a bonus. Not that I haven't had degree holders working for me, but that isn't what got them the job. It was the fact that they had tinkered with computers since before they went to school, and continued learning on their own AND had real world experience. I've even accepted candidates with no real world corporate experience, because they had worked with various OS's at home. That's not "I set up a Linux machine once", but "I've used all these OS's and here's how I found they compare", and they were able to answer real world questions that you wouldn't just absorb the material from reading a trade magazine once in a while.
My favorite method of interviewing, when I've been able to, was to give a candidate a machine and say "fix this", with only some basic instruction. I won't ask them to do all the work, but I can frequently see in 5 minutes that they have a clue of what they're doing. That is only if time allows, and I happen to have something handy for them to work on. If not, the further testing comes in their probation period (the first 90 days). Usually by the end of the first few days, I'll already know if they have the ability to do what they say, without hosing any of my servers.
I won't agree with lying in your resume or job application. If you lied about that, what else are you going to lie about? Since I've interviewed quite a bit, I'll ask real world questions that the candidate should know if they have experience in that area. A candidate may say "Oh, I know Unix inside and out", so I'll ask something like, "How do you configure an interface from the command line" or "How do you get onto a machine where the root password has been lost". The questions will be more specific to the variant and version, but you get the idea.
As an interviewee, I've had it go both ways. An interviewer who isn't familiar with the field I'm applying for will ask some general questions and I'll throw the answers right to them. If the interviewer is familiar with the field, I'll answer a few field specific questions and then we'll end up in a good conversation where they'll see that I know my field. A few times, they've had a prepared list of questions, we've blown through a half dozen, and then they'll say "I really don't even need to bother ask you any more of these, it's already clear you know the subject material." It's been more annoying when the interviewer has the list, but doesn't know the topic, and they can't accept my answer because it isn't what they have listed. Sometimes I'll have to give 2 or 3 different ways to solve the problem, to end up with their precise answer.
I don't have a degree, but I have observed something throughout interviews in my time. Interviewers with degrees look for a degree. They prefer that you have a degree from the same place they do. Many interviewers that don't have degrees prefer that you have a good job history and/or disregard the fact that you have a degree.
You are right, the value of the degree is just an illusion. 4 years of experience in a field seriously outweighs 4 years of job experience.
Most people that I've known with degrees were unable to find employment in the career field that the degree applied to. For example, an English major has a job in accounting. A psych major was a customer service manager. I've found that the subject of the degree doesn't mean that the person knows anything about it. I asked someone for some detailed help in what should have been covered. I was told "Oh, my professor was getting ready to retire, so we didn't learn anything and passed anyways."
When I am hiring someone (which I've done quite a bit over the years), I've noticed that the degree usually means very little until they have the job experience. In my field (systems administration), the degree is worthless until you have the equivalent number of years actually working the field. For example, I hired a few folks who had just received their degrees in computer science, but didn't have any real world application beyond what they learned in school. They didn't last very long, because they simply didn't retain the subject matter. They're being taught enough to pass the tests and/or certifications, but can't make their way through in the real world. It's a shame they wasted all that money just to get a piece of paper to decorate their cube with.
I wouldn't discount anyone with a degree, but if I'm presented with someone who has 4 years of job experience, versus someone with a 4 year degree AND 4 years of job experience, they'd be equal until we carefully reviewed their practical experience. I haven't had a candidate for a position with me that has been able to show any sort of better ability with their degree.
It seems that advanced education is a babysitter for 19 to 22 year old kids. Their parents are more than happy to let them go off to school, because they'll be out of the house. Even at that, it isn't terribly successful, unless your goal was to teach them how to drink, and do other things that the parents would not approve of.
I believed the same thing, which is why it was included in my experiments. For my purpose, a mixed gas output was my intended result.
That isn't what I observed. At 120VAC 60Hz, I observed temperature changes in the water. I could see the layers of warm water rising.
From there, I put a full-wave bridge rectifier in, so it became a fairly lumpy but DC voltage. Turning the unit back on, the electrolysis occurred exactly as expected.
If you were to slow the frequency down, it could possibly work. Even with DC, you'll see there is a ramp up period. It's not instantaneous. It's pretty quick, but not 1/60 second. That's also partially why the fictitious pulsing doesn't really work. You can't shake the molecules apart, like it or not.
My observations were that the higher the voltage, and the more constant the power supply, the larger yield. Tests ran from under 1VDC to 30,000VDC. Frequencies ran from 1hz to about 20Khz, and many stepped frequencies per "researcher" suggestions online and patent information. any break in the DC current resulted in a lower yield.
But hey, if you don't believe me, Google around for it a little bit. Anyone who's tried will describe either heat or sparks and blown circuit breakers (hopefully). ... and I strongly (STRONGLY) suggest that people don't try this, unless you really know what you're doing, and you've taken a lot of precautions. You're working with a deadly voltage. You are also creating a fire and explosion hazard without the appropriate precautions. I had DPST cutoff switch, inline breaker, and isolation of the test environment so no one could contact the equipment while it was operating, and sufficient protection in case of explosion. Yup, if you do produce a nice hydrogen/oxygen mixture, and there's a short, it'll make a very unpleasant explosion if you aren't expecting it.
This just proves that the study is inherently flawed, and therefore had a flawed conclusion.
More people have and are using cell phones and texting than 30 years ago.
More accidents have happened while people were texting or holding a cell phone.
Therefore, more accidents have happened because of the cell phone. Wrong.
How about this...
More cars come with leather seats now, where they may have had vinyl seats 30 years ago.
More accidents have happened while the driver was sitting in a leather seat.
Therefore, more accidents have happened because of leather seat. Wrong again.
This same argument could be applied to a whole bunch of unrelated facts. Maybe the reduction of cars being sold in "burnt orange" color has increased the number of accidents. Just like the presumption that red cars get more tickets, or owners of red cars drive faster, or.. or.. or.. or..
There was absolutely no reason to outlaw driving while holding a cell phone, or texting, or girls doing their makeup. These are already covered under "driving while distracted", or whatever it may be called in your jurisdiction. A cell phone conversation can be as heated as an in-person conversation in the car. It's all covered already. Lawmakers just like making new laws to cover previously covered ground. Everyone else loves jumping on it like it's something new and amazing.
Most cars are made to travel approx 300 to 400 miles per tank of gas at their expected operating speeds.
As far as operating at 100mph, that's dependent on not just aerodynamics, but the available power and effective gear ratio. Most gas automobile engines are most efficient between 1700 to 2200 RPM.
For example, a lot of cars are already running at 3,000 RPM at 70mph. That would put them at at about 4,500 RPM at 100mph.
My car (and ones like it) are an exception. 90mph is about 2200 RPM in 6th gear. I track my mileage especially on long trips where I can burn through a tank of gas without too many changes in speed. The mileage goes something like this.
65 mph = 25mpg
75 mph = 26mpg
85 mph = 27mpg
In areas where I could cruise at 85mph, I would plan my next fuel stop for approx 380 miles. That allowed for about 50 miles of extra fuel.
As you said, tickets not withstanding. Even in the middle of nowhere, you're bound to find at least one patrol car in a 400 mile stretch, who would love to grab someone at 100mph.
Ha ha ha.
oh. You were serious.
You know, just because he got a patent on it doesn't mean it really worked as advertised.
And, no, that wasn't AC power. It was pulsed DC at a specific frequency (or pattern actually). AC would just give you warm water. :) Been there, done that, have the lab notes to go with it. The "mystery" frequency doesn't exist anywhere but in fantasies and stories.
Well, you have a few mistakes here.
*I* had nothing to do with the decision to ask him to move out. I was 2,500 miles away.
I happened to fly out for a visit with my mother-in-law, who told me her computer was running slow, so I rectified that situation. I had not intentionally done anything to cause the inability to recover deleted data. I was simply doing what any good repair shop would do, without the cost or upsells.
He, on the other hand, had other factors.
He was a substitute high school teacher.
He was photographing girls in class on a less than casual basis.
He had a prior record of inappropriate activities with underage girls in other school districts, which this school district hadn't found in a background check. He had simply managed to not get charged with crimes. This was found by the law enforcement investigators, and would not have normally been released to other schools or companies managing background checks.
He had solicited underage girls for photoshoots, without their parents consent, at locations other than home, school, or the childs residence. It wasn't disclosed to what those locations would be.
He was not a professional, or even practicing amateur photographer. He was a guy with a point and shoot camera trying to solicit young girls for special "photoshoots".
The intent was clearly there. Unfortunately, the word of several unrelated (different classes, ages, and even school districts) underage girls versus an adult, and the lack of any physical evidence, let him walk.
Because of this investigation, he was terminated, and forbidden from working with that district's school system. His file was also red-flagged, so any future school districts who may contact for a work history would be aware.
Basically, he is a predator, but they simply were unable to find enough evidence for a conviction. It isn't a matter of if he's guilty or not, it's a matter of when he's caught.
I honestly hope that this was enough to scare the shit out of him, but knowing how most criminal minds work, he'll just try harder next time to not get caught. Unfortunately, that means there will be more victims, and the crimes may go beyond just photographs.
4.
Our brains are the randomizer. It's just an illusion that there's some sort of organization to the chaos. :)
Depending on where you are (and how well your lawyer will argue for you), evidence of prior crimes may not be admissible for a current case.
Say I was a bank robber. I robbed 2 banks in the past. A new bank was robbed. I was found with one bill stolen in the crime. That doesn't prove I robbed the 3rd bank, it simply proves that through some sort of chance I ended up with the bill. That could have happened all kinds of different perfectly legal ways. For example, the thief could have used it at a store where I then purchased something and received the bill as change.
Now, in this case seems different. It seems that he legitimately was looking for that kind of material and between the time he refused to turn over the computer and the time he finally did, he had an intention to remove evidence, which he did poorly. If I read the article correctly, it wasn't a single cartoon image that got him in trouble again, it was quite a few that they recovered from the Windows recycle bin. In the previous example, that would be like me seeing that the cops were pursuing me, so I tossed the duffel bag with the stolen cash in a dumpster, and then got arrested standing beside the dumpster and trying to deny any association to it.
I know there would still be a chance of recovering stuff. It's just less likely than if it had just happened and not much else had happened.
That's really sad. They sat on the evidence for a year before processing it.
I guess what would be worse would be if they confiscated someone's equipment, sat on it for a year, and found nothing. I'd be a bit pissed if my computers were taken for a year before they found that I had nothing illegal.
My mother-in-law's computer was taken as evidence in a case where a roommate may have used her computer in relation to child porn. They imaged the drive and gave it back the next day. I assume a block by block copy of the drive, so they could try to recover any deleted information. Needless to say, he was quickly invited to not be a roommate any more. This may have been because she wasn't a suspect, but they needed her assistance to look for further information.
Her case turned out out to be nothing except a lapse in judgement that didn't quite cross any legal boundaries (but came very close), and he did nothing on her computer. From what I knew of the case from the investigator and my mother-in-law, the police were perfectly justified in their pursuit of evidence. I had worked on her computer between the time he used it, and the time they collected it to process, so I gave a detailed report of what I had done. Unfortunately, that had been clearing the browser cache and history, scanned for viruses, did some housekeeping, updated a few things, and defragged the drive. They may have been able to recover some things, but it was less likely after my cleanup. I wish they had called a few days earlier, and they may have found something more.
If/when a true AI exists, it will need some randomization to make it curious. Sure, you can chart point A to B to C, but what if randomly it skews off to somewhere just west of point Z enroute, and observes.
That doesn't have to be a physical route. It could be as simple as taking a random word from a dictionary, searching that on your favorite search engine, taking a random result from there, and then following the result from another random word. An unpredictable path, but that's what brings any of us to enlightenment. If you just went from home to work and back every day, and never turned down the wrong road, just to see where it goes, you'll never discover what is really out there. What is your universe? I've known so many people who only know points A and B, and never even considered point C, much less all the wonderful things to experience in between or beyond.
There's really nothing to keep an employer from being vindictive. Sure, go back to court and say They aren't playing nice with me." If a company really felt they had to keep you, they may just do something like open a site in the Antarctic, with just one machine and one employee, and you would be in charge of the site.
It's not like that ever happens though.
Hey, it'd be a high seniority position. Site manager is much more important that code monkey, right? :) Of course, it's a long walk home after they notify you that they've decided to terminate services there. "Promotions" aren't always what they seem.
I was reading about someone who did win the case against their employer. They were given a very nice office, a big title, and a secretary. They had absolutely no responsibilities, and no work to do. He was being paid to warm his chair from 9am to 5pm. He did that for a decade, and admitted that he was bored out of his skull. They didn't like him working there, but didn't want to end up in court again if they tried to terminate him again. Because the level of distrust was there, they couldn't assign him any work.
Paper trail. It's the most important thing to remember. Tape recordings are fine and dandy, if you don't mind spooling through hours of tape to try to find one conversation, which may or may not be legal where you are. Sometimes it takes one person being aware that a recording is being made. Sometimes it requires both parties.
If you document every request and response, even if it's just email, then you have a record of what's been happening. Don't say anything, because it's left to the witnesses to testify to what they heard. Even if you have a tape recording saying one thing, they could simply say "But I told him something contrary in a later conversation."
Be consistent with your paper trail too. Ask for every request to be made via email, or after a conversation ask, "can you please send that to me in an email?" Besides saving you in future proceedings, it will also help you document other things that happened. "Do you remember when we made this change?" "Sure, it's in my email. December 4th 2001, you requested it, and December 5th 2001 I finished it.
Keep your paper trail off site somewhere, that you have exclusive access to, like your home computer.
It may be advantageous to have a policy for retention. If you get called into court years later regarding an incident, no matter how innocent it seemed at the time, you may simply be lacking the trail. "No, I only retain those documents for 2 years. I have no records related to your case." Be honest though. If you say you don't have it, but your equipment is subpoenaed and it's found, then you're in trouble.