The West is strong. One bad decision will not bring it down. The USA was not brought to halt by Trump's presidency, but it definitely got weakened. Likewise the UK will not crumble after Brexit, but it definitely will be (negatively) affected. As the proverb says: one can die of a 1000 papercuts, but that takes time...
I think the main problem nowadays is that people forget how bad things were in the past, and they take the benefits of EU membership as granted. Like free movement, free trade, prosperity, political prestige, or really simple things like being able to register an.eu domain...
Brexiters are right in at least one thing: the benefits of the EU do not come for free. They come at a price of loosing some sovereignty. This is nothing unexpected: being part of an alliance means you lost some freedom. On other levels of society (below EU), I loose some sovereignty by being a citizen in my country, but I also get the benefits of citizenship. I loose some sovereignty to my municipality (like I need to trim my hedge even if I do not want to), but I get the benefits of good location and OKish roads...
The UK made their decision weighting the benefits against the price, and found it did not worth it. This decision IMO was uninformed as the British people did not consider carefully what they get from the EU, only concentrated on the price they pay for it.
They will leave now, but they should know, that they can not take all the benefits with them, as they were never free, and came only at the price of membership.
All banks with domestic branch must participate. Guarantied 5 sec processing time, average 1-2 secs (according to the design). Secondary IDs baked in: people can send me money only knowing my email address or phone number. Also provides an API to companies outside of the bank sector, so they can start/receive payments going around banks if they meet the criteria of participating in the system. (Think of utility company sending you a payment advice directly only knowing your secondary ID, and you can fulfill automatically or by manual approval)
If manufacturing+research is $600 assuming sales doubled, then they'd make two times $0 instead of $1400 once.
(assumption was: sales doubles with the price cut)
In Turkey, you can be in-prisoned as a citizen for speaking up against the president. Does this happen in the US? In Hungary you can loose your job or loose your small enterprise for not supporting the current government. Does that happen in the US? In Russia you can suffer an unfortunate accident if you are a journalist, and get shot on the birthday of the president if you dig too deep. Does that happen in the US? In China Winnie-the-Pooh is banned as someone started a meme representing the president as Winnie.
My point, is that there is a HUGE difference between different systems, especially in how they treat THEIR OWN citizens.
Even if you are really mainly exploited by the ones "who Have", there is an important choice that you should make: Do you prefer to be an average citizen in
the western world, or your preference goes somewhere along the lines of China, Russia, Turkey, Azerbajan, Türkmenistan? Do you support the "dying liberal democracies", or the emerging fresh charismatic dictators who kill and enprison their opponents?
I think already made my mind.
Based on this, I can make my decision what *countries* I support. Then, -as a separate issue- we can push for a more equal society in our own respective countries.
Well, when I get a passport my fingerprint is taken (-->my government has it).
I am pretty sure other countries also have "biometric" passports already as it seems to be the norm nowdays.
Then, I travel to the US, where my fingerprint AND my retina-scan is taken (--> the US has it)
Then, I use a smartphone (--> who knows who has my fingerprint & retina data).
Then, I log in to my laptop with a finger swipe (--> only god knows who has that data)
I think we are all way past the point where our biometric data is not shared with governments, businesses, or the neighbor's cat. When you try to avoid the "possible issues", you are already having all the possible bad consequences while missing out on the good ones.
I think you are right in that having paper based processes is harder to disrupt. My point, is that there are hardly any "pure" paper based processes left (1), and that the economy (outside of government) depends on information processing systems anyway (2).
Short unavailability of government services is acceptable (as the benchmark paper processes rarely give real-time results anyway.) A sustained DoS on the other hand will harm the operation of the government also in the current case, as most of the time the information I provide on forms ends up in a government database already... The paperwork is mostly just an "input/output queue". As the queues fill up, the machine will halt.
Putting data on a private network, with TLS, with known certificates (i.e. no easy man-in-the-middle), and then putting further encrypted data on it with private/public encryption sounds pretty solid to me... Certainly more dependable than some corporations I've seen.
Also, AFAIK Estonia has a longer track-record of doing this, gradually adding more-and-more functionality to an existing system.
What happens in case of a wide scale denial of service is an interesting question. Probably they have thought about this. As we depend on network infrastructure more-and-mode with our economies, I think generally all countries should be prepared for such an event.
Yes, private companies can be sometimes predatory.
However the Hungarian state is still allowed to run its own payment processor (only the monopoly part was ruled illegal). It is also allowed to use other fair legislature to regulate mobile payments. This two (according to my view) should be enough, and strict state monopoly is not required.
Also note, that "offline" cash that you mention is not a state monopoly either. Creating forint bank notes is with the national bank, but "money" is created by several business entities. Paying with this cash is definitely free for all, not a state monopoly.
No. Hungary is allowed to run a mobile payment service, but Hungary is not allowed to forbid private companies from doing the same. It is not allowed to require by law that all mobile payments go through the state operated mobile payment processor.
The government is a big enough buyer to by from MS directly, there is no need for middle-men.
This was about corruption, rather than usual business business.
It seems the corruption scheme was organized by high ranking government officials (who probably purchased much more licences than needed), and the middle-men where paying kickbacks to these officials.
It seems MS Hungary leadership also knew about the sales being a fraud, as the (at the time) CEO of MS Hungary was quickly fired by the mother company. After leaving MS Hungary, he got a high ranking job in the Ministry that organized the license purchases...
Depending on what you want to achieve, I think the article has some points.
In my experience physicists are very-very smart people who are used to tackle hard problems, where also a partial solution is a celebrated result. This can be good, or bad. If you mainly solve one-time problems with software (i.e. your IT system is a concrete tool with a relatively limited feature set, restrained deployment and lifespan), then these traits are beneficial. It takes a shorter time from problem statement to results, and honestly a 99.5% solution at quarter of the price is quite a good deal.
However, if you plan to produce something that is developed, maintained, upgraded at several thousands of customers for at least 5, but rather 10+ years (i.e. your software/system is a product, and not a tool) suddenly the rigorous discipline (that was considered nitpicking by the management) pays off. Just chain 10 of the 99.5% solutions together, and let them run each hour of the day. The result is ~30% reliability at a single deployment! Suddenly the statement that someone is more interested in the correctness of the software rather then the results does not seem so bad right?
According to my limited experience, the solution is banal: mixed teams from different disciplines and backgrounds, CS majors included!
That is because US companies have a habit of breaking EU laws and believing they should get away with it in Europe because, well, they get away with it in the US.
My answer:
First, i doubt your claim. [...]
Second, i doubt misbehaviour is a specialty of US companies. [...]
You are debating something I never said, and is actually irrelevant to the original point.
First, i doubt your claim. Multi national companies are quite good at assessing risks and adopting to different markets.
Second, i doubt misbehaviour is a specialty of US companies. Just think of how Volkswagen (and pretty much every other European manufacturer) cheated on the US/EU emission tests...
I do not see anything bad with that sentence. Time is a finite resource, and doing things requires time.
Also: he put "better" in quotes. To me that seems like an acknowledgement that better is not an absolute term.
This is language dependent. As long as you fit into latin-1 you are OK.
You can argue, that this is an English language site, but I, as a Hungarian writing English faced this issue sometimes when I tried to write names/places...
Last time I checked, the generated JS looked quite good and readable.
TS and JS are not too far, so the generated JS looks similar, and preserves the structure of the TS code.
In case of an incompatible or nasty change, I can always go on with the output JS.
Meanwhile, I get extra nice compile time type checks, and even opt in NULL checks. It is amazing how many bugs were caught by the TS compiler that would have been a hard to find runtime error...
I think your judgement of what matters and what does not matter is overshadowed by your personal worldview.
People are just people. They will always make mistakes, illogical statements, draw wrong conclusions. What matters the more: if they make a mistake, are they willing to correct it or not.
Sorry, but the discussion linked does not add to this last question.
Slashdot Mirror
The West is strong. One bad decision will not bring it down. The USA was not brought to halt by Trump's presidency, but it definitely got weakened. Likewise the UK will not crumble after Brexit, but it definitely will be (negatively) affected. As the proverb says: one can die of a 1000 papercuts, but that takes time...
I think the main problem nowadays is that people forget how bad things were in the past, and they take the benefits of EU membership as granted. Like free movement, free trade, prosperity, political prestige, or really simple things like being able to register an .eu domain...
Brexiters are right in at least one thing: the benefits of the EU do not come for free. They come at a price of loosing some sovereignty. This is nothing unexpected: being part of an alliance means you lost some freedom. On other levels of society (below EU), I loose some sovereignty by being a citizen in my country, but I also get the benefits of citizenship. I loose some sovereignty to my municipality (like I need to trim my hedge even if I do not want to), but I get the benefits of good location and OKish roads...
The UK made their decision weighting the benefits against the price, and found it did not worth it. This decision IMO was uninformed as the British people did not consider carefully what they get from the EU, only concentrated on the price they pay for it.
They will leave now, but they should know, that they can not take all the benefits with them, as they were never free, and came only at the price of membership.
Google or Amazon could end you.
Not just them, but also enhanced bank transfer techs.
Hungary is rarely a good example for progress, but this one is good:
Hungary's banks start testing instant-payments system
All banks with domestic branch must participate. Guarantied 5 sec processing time, average 1-2 secs (according to the design). Secondary IDs baked in: people can send me money only knowing my email address or phone number. Also provides an API to companies outside of the bank sector, so they can start/receive payments going around banks if they meet the criteria of participating in the system. (Think of utility company sending you a payment advice directly only knowing your secondary ID, and you can fulfill automatically or by manual approval)
If manufacturing+research is $600 assuming sales doubled, then they'd make two times $0 instead of $1400 once. (assumption was: sales doubles with the price cut)
In Turkey, you can be in-prisoned as a citizen for speaking up against the president. Does this happen in the US? In Hungary you can loose your job or loose your small enterprise for not supporting the current government. Does that happen in the US? In Russia you can suffer an unfortunate accident if you are a journalist, and get shot on the birthday of the president if you dig too deep. Does that happen in the US? In China Winnie-the-Pooh is banned as someone started a meme representing the president as Winnie.
My point, is that there is a HUGE difference between different systems, especially in how they treat THEIR OWN citizens.
Even if you are really mainly exploited by the ones "who Have", there is an important choice that you should make: Do you prefer to be an average citizen in the western world, or your preference goes somewhere along the lines of China, Russia, Turkey, Azerbajan, Türkmenistan? Do you support the "dying liberal democracies", or the emerging fresh charismatic dictators who kill and enprison their opponents?
I think already made my mind.
Based on this, I can make my decision what *countries* I support. Then, -as a separate issue- we can push for a more equal society in our own respective countries.
Their neighbours wouldn't be my first choice.
Except for one, I think they are okey.
Well, when I get a passport my fingerprint is taken (-->my government has it). I am pretty sure other countries also have "biometric" passports already as it seems to be the norm nowdays.
Then, I travel to the US, where my fingerprint AND my retina-scan is taken (--> the US has it)
Then, I use a smartphone (--> who knows who has my fingerprint & retina data).
Then, I log in to my laptop with a finger swipe (--> only god knows who has that data)
I think we are all way past the point where our biometric data is not shared with governments, businesses, or the neighbor's cat. When you try to avoid the "possible issues", you are already having all the possible bad consequences while missing out on the good ones.
I think you are right in that having paper based processes is harder to disrupt. My point, is that there are hardly any "pure" paper based processes left (1), and that the economy (outside of government) depends on information processing systems anyway (2).
Short unavailability of government services is acceptable (as the benchmark paper processes rarely give real-time results anyway.) A sustained DoS on the other hand will harm the operation of the government also in the current case, as most of the time the information I provide on forms ends up in a government database already... The paperwork is mostly just an "input/output queue". As the queues fill up, the machine will halt.
That is Elbonia.
Other than its climate, Estonia is a pretty nice place...
I don't know...
Putting data on a private network, with TLS, with known certificates (i.e. no easy man-in-the-middle), and then putting further encrypted data on it with private/public encryption sounds pretty solid to me... Certainly more dependable than some corporations I've seen.
Also, AFAIK Estonia has a longer track-record of doing this, gradually adding more-and-more functionality to an existing system.
What happens in case of a wide scale denial of service is an interesting question. Probably they have thought about this. As we depend on network infrastructure more-and-mode with our economies, I think generally all countries should be prepared for such an event.
Yes, private companies can be sometimes predatory.
However the Hungarian state is still allowed to run its own payment processor (only the monopoly part was ruled illegal). It is also allowed to use other fair legislature to regulate mobile payments. This two (according to my view) should be enough, and strict state monopoly is not required.
Also note, that "offline" cash that you mention is not a state monopoly either. Creating forint bank notes is with the national bank, but "money" is created by several business entities. Paying with this cash is definitely free for all, not a state monopoly.
No. Hungary is allowed to run a mobile payment service, but Hungary is not allowed to forbid private companies from doing the same. It is not allowed to require by law that all mobile payments go through the state operated mobile payment processor.
Do you think it is a good idea that ALL mobile payments by law must go through a state operated company?
The government is a big enough buyer to by from MS directly, there is no need for middle-men.
This was about corruption, rather than usual business business. It seems the corruption scheme was organized by high ranking government officials (who probably purchased much more licences than needed), and the middle-men where paying kickbacks to these officials.
It seems MS Hungary leadership also knew about the sales being a fraud, as the (at the time) CEO of MS Hungary was quickly fired by the mother company. After leaving MS Hungary, he got a high ranking job in the Ministry that organized the license purchases...
Depending on what you want to achieve, I think the article has some points.
In my experience physicists are very-very smart people who are used to tackle hard problems, where also a partial solution is a celebrated result. This can be good, or bad. If you mainly solve one-time problems with software (i.e. your IT system is a concrete tool with a relatively limited feature set, restrained deployment and lifespan), then these traits are beneficial. It takes a shorter time from problem statement to results, and honestly a 99.5% solution at quarter of the price is quite a good deal.
However, if you plan to produce something that is developed, maintained, upgraded at several thousands of customers for at least 5, but rather 10+ years (i.e. your software/system is a product, and not a tool) suddenly the rigorous discipline (that was considered nitpicking by the management) pays off. Just chain 10 of the 99.5% solutions together, and let them run each hour of the day. The result is ~30% reliability at a single deployment! Suddenly the statement that someone is more interested in the correctness of the software rather then the results does not seem so bad right?
According to my limited experience, the solution is banal: mixed teams from different disciplines and backgrounds, CS majors included!
That is because US companies have a habit of breaking EU laws and believing they should get away with it in Europe because, well, they get away with it in the US.
My answer:
First, i doubt your claim. [...]
Second, i doubt misbehaviour is a specialty of US companies. [...]
You are debating something I never said, and is actually irrelevant to the original point.
No, I meant BMW, Mercedes, Volvo, Peugeot, Citroen, Renault and many others.
I understand that all these companies are multi-national, but they are definitely considered "European" brands primarily.
Wikipedia link
First, i doubt your claim. Multi national companies are quite good at assessing risks and adopting to different markets.
Second, i doubt misbehaviour is a specialty of US companies. Just think of how Volkswagen (and pretty much every other European manufacturer) cheated on the US/EU emission tests...
I do not see anything bad with that sentence. Time is a finite resource, and doing things requires time. Also: he put "better" in quotes. To me that seems like an acknowledgement that better is not an absolute term.
It is more like: there is now a racoon in the free park that you also frequent, and other visitors seemed to like it.
Are you talking about the project, or the operational use?
Why? If the employer allows, then why not? Most people do not want to carry two phones...
This is language dependent. As long as you fit into latin-1 you are OK. You can argue, that this is an English language site, but I, as a Hungarian writing English faced this issue sometimes when I tried to write names/places...
Last time I checked, the generated JS looked quite good and readable. TS and JS are not too far, so the generated JS looks similar, and preserves the structure of the TS code. In case of an incompatible or nasty change, I can always go on with the output JS.
Meanwhile, I get extra nice compile time type checks, and even opt in NULL checks. It is amazing how many bugs were caught by the TS compiler that would have been a hard to find runtime error...
I think your judgement of what matters and what does not matter is overshadowed by your personal worldview.
People are just people. They will always make mistakes, illogical statements, draw wrong conclusions. What matters the more: if they make a mistake, are they willing to correct it or not.
Sorry, but the discussion linked does not add to this last question.