All I can hear is the sound of propaganda against a rival economy - there seems to be a steady stream of these negative stories aiming to support a narrative that China is somehow worse than all other big countries, and not a good place to do business.
We went to China on holiday in September, cruised down the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) through the 3 gorges visited Chengdu and ChongQing. I can tell you this is a modern, prosperous country with friendly people, a long fascinating history - and a great future ahead.
We used Wechat, etc etc without problems, and I have little doubt that many different countries (and some companies) have full access to everything on our accounts. I do doubt that anyone is combing through the material to find reasons to arrest tourists. If anyone has a list of actual arrests, please share it . . . .
I hate to say it but this article reads like a PR/awareness campaign from some environmental group.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the need to recycle, and the fact that bottled water is a ripoff, but there is no consumer backlash, and no crisis. But the article doesnt add any factual information and I cant see any content about the consumer view of plastic. These problems have been growing slowly for years, and most consumers have just gone with the flow.
We were down in South Georgia a couple of years ago and the locals were talking about the various eradication programs.
Some time ago, reindeer were introduced in an attempt to create some sort of farming/hunting but of course the reindeer denuded the local grasses to the detriment of indigenous creatures. Culling the reindeer is a sight easier than culling rats, just needs a couple of guys with rifles.
We actually saw the last of a small reindeer herd in one of the bays, peacefully grazing.
I think the "warranty voided" argument is a bit of a myth.
In the US, this situation has come up many times, and if a vendor offers a warranty it has to meet the legal standards of the Magnusonâ"Moss Warranty Act.
For example, the vendor has to prove that user mods actually caused a problem.
For banks it is actually a bit more than just a need to log important stuff.
The regulator demands that there is a record of ALL messaging interaction with functions like trading. This is important if they need to track down collusion as happened in the LIBOR situation.
DB were heavily criticized (and fined) for not fully logging all such traffic. If the other bank does produce a record of messages and you dont, then you really are in trouble.
Well he had already done a lot of work on parallax measurements for astronomical objects. So when the supernova appeared, and showed no parallax against the moon . . . he was on pretty firm ground stating that the moon was closer to earth than the supernova.
Ok so you can totally rewrite the software in a couple of months. Lets say you budget for 1 man year of coding.
Now you have software that works but you don't have a product you can sell. Expect to spend a further man year of effort "productising" the software. You need to make the thing bullet proof enough that someone who was not part of the development team can use the thing.
Now you have a piece of equipment that ordinary people can use, but you still won't sell much. Expect to spend a further 3 man years on the service side so that business folk can rely on your company and product.
Pretty much you can expect 6 times as much investment as you spend coding.
Oh and did I talk about timescales and cash flow?
These calculations are why early service/consultancy revenue is so important, and sadly why sales and marketing folk do what they do, and act like they do.
There are quite a few reasons to think that paper ballots are being sabotaged. The favoured techniques include siting of the least efficient equipment in the poorest districts, thus creating more spoiled "Democrat" ballots which can be thrown away.
The more control one party has over the voting process, the more likely it is that voting fraud takes place.
By all accounts the anomalies in 2004 for Black and Hispanic votes were quite substantial.
The biggest problem in the last few US elections has been the blocking of votes cast by those likely to vote Democrat.
This can happen by denying registration, or deregistering anyone with the "wrong" profile, or by selectively locating low quality voting machines in districts that are likely to vote the "wrong" way.
From Everquest days, when you were fighting like crazy, and it was touch and go whether the Mob went down first . . .
Dying was like the opening scene in Terminator where they arrive in the present day, naked, kneeling and the first thing you did was look round to see your team respawning around you having all met the same fate.
The release of the tension followed by the inevitable thoughts about how to retrieve the corpses was all part of the game.
Thats a great eye catching image (1.8Mb) but the notes on the website are sketchy. Does anyone know more about what to look for? Is there any kind of annotated image labelling the key parts and giving more info on why they are important?
The government department has the responsibility for making sure the systems are secure enough for the data they are processing. That includes providing encryption on laptops that process privileged data.
If the employee turns encryption off, or uses a bog standard laptop for convenience when they should have used an approved hardened laptop, then the employee should face the consequences. Too many times employees put their own convenience above the public, or try to say they are too busy to find out what kind of obligations they have when handling confidential data.
In fact da Vinci and all the artists of the time were well aware of the effects of aging on their work and took account of it.
Their patrons wanted work that would remain interesting over several generations, so there are usually a lot of "subtexts" in the picture that will only be revealed by repeated viewing.
Artist knew that the colours and varnishes they used would not finally "set" for some months or years so they had in mind a finished look that would not be achieved on day 1.
The artists themselves were fascinated by the way the paintings would look under different lighting conditions and took advantage to make their works "living".
Of course they didnt always get it right, and sometimes used experimental materials that did not last: The Last Supper degraded a lot during da Vinci's own lifetime.
The article actually says that the airships are to crack down on crime.
The Slashdot summary talks about keeping tabs on local populace.
The Slashdot comments talk about Chevez and Bush politics.
It seems like everyone has their preconceived views on Venezuela and puts their own spin on the story. Is Slashdot so set in its thinking?
3 airships is hardly likely to change the social fabric of Caracas. Most police forces have helicopters to chase criminals and I would think the UK has many more than 3 available, without anyone talking about overtones of surveillance society.
C'mon lets see moderators pick out the interesting comments about this story, not the precanned predecided views on Venezuela.
Surely the main reason to celebrate is that obvious patents can and will be struck down.
If my business plan is to register a load of bogus patents and hope that some will stick and make money, the last thing I want is to invest time and money only to see the community shoot me down.
A relatively small number of wins like this will kill off a lot of small to medium operators.
I am not a meteorologist, but I have worked with them a few times.
Generally the competing weather models will show a range of possible outcomes with various probabilities. You can average across all scenarios and come up with a 60% probability of rain, but the more days out you go more the scenarios diverge, so the less useful a single average will be.
Most people would not find it useful to hear that "there will be probably be thunder on Wednesday if it remains hot enough, but if it cools down on Tuesday then the thunderstorm will be off to the north somewhere"
Additionally, a lot of weather conditions are influenced by thin layers of cloud high up, so thin that precise measurements are critical so precise forecasts in one location more than 3 days out are difficult.
It always amazes me that the States get by with so little vacation.
Currently, here in London I have 29 days per year (it starts at 25 and goes up 1 day for each year of service). Very occasionally I have gone 3 months without using any holiday, and I really feel my motivation and productivity going down. A weeks holiday makes a big difference
Maybe 29 days is a little high, but the new job I just accepted offers a base of 23 days a year, and you can "buy" more days by taking fewer other benefits.
Do people in the US really work that hard or are there other ways the batteries get recharged?
At my old company you could always tell when someone was a blackberry user.
An email summarising some problem would go out to the team and within seconds back would come a one line response from some manager. At first I thought this was great, instant responsiveness and would fire off my own contribution, only to receive another one liner in reply.
It rapidly became clear that the blackberry user was skimming through the emails and not really taking it all in before replying. Several times a veritable shower of one liners would fill my in box as various useless comments were passed and rebutted.
I pretty soon learned to ignore these minimal contributions.
If I am a road haulage firm in Europe, can I charge a different price to move a tonne of steel from London to Paris compared to a tonne of copper? What if the two loads are in sealed standard containers?
If I run a toll bridge somewhere en route, can I charge a different price for the same weight?
I beleive Common Market rules say such differential pricing is barred, and the situation should be the same for the Internet.
In the real world the only way that a haulier (or toll bridge owner) could get away with such differential pricing is if they have a monopoly and that is exactly the case where rules are required to prevent abuses.
The third party is being paid to spot holes. If they are worth the money they will do more than just a Nessus scan ie they will look at the how the vulnerability might be exploited, and what kind of impact an exploit could have.
Whatever they do, they will not have much info on the real impact on your company of any security breach, nor will they have any clue as to your company priorities. This can only come from inside your company. Some would call this "putting a spin" on the report, but in reality all you are doing is adding the extra columns to the report:
Likelihood of an exploit of this vulnerability
Impact of a successful exploit
Cost to fix
If you can't put numbers to these things then just say Low/Medium/High.
Undoubtedly there will be some things that really do need fixing, but for the low priority items maybe you can batch them together into a work packet and get budget or resource to tackle them properly. Better you guys do this and make sure there are no deleterious effects on live systems than some contractor is pulled in to do it blindly.
Slashdot Mirror
All I can hear is the sound of propaganda against a rival economy - there seems to be a steady stream of these negative stories aiming to support a narrative that China is somehow worse than all other big countries, and not a good place to do business.
We went to China on holiday in September, cruised down the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) through the 3 gorges visited Chengdu and ChongQing. I can tell you this is a modern, prosperous country with friendly people, a long fascinating history - and a great future ahead.
We used Wechat, etc etc without problems, and I have little doubt that many different countries (and some companies) have full access to everything on our accounts. I do doubt that anyone is combing through the material to find reasons to arrest tourists. If anyone has a list of actual arrests, please share it . . . .
I hate to say it but this article reads like a PR/awareness campaign from some environmental group.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the need to recycle, and the fact that bottled water is a ripoff, but there is no consumer backlash, and no crisis. But the article doesnt add any factual information and I cant see any content about the consumer view of plastic. These problems have been growing slowly for years, and most consumers have just gone with the flow.
Oh look - whats this? https://www.aol.com/2011/02/03...
We were down in South Georgia a couple of years ago and the locals were talking about the various eradication programs.
Some time ago, reindeer were introduced in an attempt to create some sort of farming/hunting but of course the reindeer denuded the local grasses to the detriment of indigenous creatures. Culling the reindeer is a sight easier than culling rats, just needs a couple of guys with rifles.
We actually saw the last of a small reindeer herd in one of the bays, peacefully grazing.
As of 18th May there are strong limits on slurping up data without explicit buy in from the subject.
I think the "warranty voided" argument is a bit of a myth.
In the US, this situation has come up many times, and if a vendor offers a warranty it has to meet the legal standards of the Magnusonâ"Moss Warranty Act.
For example, the vendor has to prove that user mods actually caused a problem.
For banks it is actually a bit more than just a need to log important stuff.
The regulator demands that there is a record of ALL messaging interaction with functions like trading. This is important if they need to track down collusion as happened in the LIBOR situation.
DB were heavily criticized (and fined) for not fully logging all such traffic. If the other bank does produce a record of messages and you dont, then you really are in trouble.
Sure, and put lots of local stores around town so that you don't need to drive to some out-of-town megastore.
Maybe even some cycle lanes so that people can get some exercise.
Actually most UK cities do have endless free parking outside the city with a park and ride service to the centre.
Socialism huh?
Working from home, on telecons 5 hours a day, on an international project in banking.
Why would I print anything?
I can zoom and search on a big HDPI screen.
If the power goes off (or Skype for Business drops a call - which is 5 times a day) I cant really work and paper would not help
Everything is filed online, so you just have to get used to searching for docs in sharepoints, or mail folders.
If I go into the central office for client meetings, I dont even know where the printers are located
Well he had already done a lot of work on parallax measurements for astronomical objects. So when the supernova appeared, and showed no parallax against the moon . . . he was on pretty firm ground stating that the moon was closer to earth than the supernova.
More details in Wikipedia.
Ok so you can totally rewrite the software in a couple of months. Lets say you budget for 1 man year of coding.
Now you have software that works but you don't have a product you can sell. Expect to spend a further man year of effort "productising" the software. You need to make the thing bullet proof enough that someone who was not part of the development team can use the thing.
Now you have a piece of equipment that ordinary people can use, but you still won't sell much. Expect to spend a further 3 man years on the service side so that business folk can rely on your company and product.
Pretty much you can expect 6 times as much investment as you spend coding.
Oh and did I talk about timescales and cash flow?
These calculations are why early service/consultancy revenue is so important, and sadly why sales and marketing folk do what they do, and act like they do.
Some DOS attack on Slashdot in progress?
There are quite a few reasons to think that paper ballots are being sabotaged. The favoured techniques include siting of the least efficient equipment in the poorest districts, thus creating more spoiled "Democrat" ballots which can be thrown away.
The more control one party has over the voting process, the more likely it is that voting fraud takes place.
By all accounts the anomalies in 2004 for Black and Hispanic votes were quite substantial.
The biggest problem in the last few US elections has been the blocking of votes cast by those likely to vote Democrat.
This can happen by denying registration, or deregistering anyone with the "wrong" profile, or by selectively locating low quality voting machines in districts that are likely to vote the "wrong" way.
From Everquest days, when you were fighting like crazy, and it was touch and go whether the Mob went down first . . .
Dying was like the opening scene in Terminator where they arrive in the present day, naked, kneeling and the first thing you did was look round to see your team respawning around you having all met the same fate.
The release of the tension followed by the inevitable thoughts about how to retrieve the corpses was all part of the game.
IMHO
http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~nwright/iphas/rosette_dustlanes.jpg
Thats a great eye catching image (1.8Mb) but the notes on the website are sketchy. Does anyone know more about what to look for? Is there any kind of annotated image labelling the key parts and giving more info on why they are important?
I disagree.
The government department has the responsibility for making sure the systems are secure enough for the data they are processing. That includes providing encryption on laptops that process privileged data.
If the employee turns encryption off, or uses a bog standard laptop for convenience when they should have used an approved hardened laptop, then the employee should face the consequences. Too many times employees put their own convenience above the public, or try to say they are too busy to find out what kind of obligations they have when handling confidential data.
In fact da Vinci and all the artists of the time were well aware of the effects of aging on their work and took account of it.
Their patrons wanted work that would remain interesting over several generations, so there are usually a lot of "subtexts" in the picture that will only be revealed by repeated viewing.
Artist knew that the colours and varnishes they used would not finally "set" for some months or years so they had in mind a finished look that would not be achieved on day 1.
The artists themselves were fascinated by the way the paintings would look under different lighting conditions and took advantage to make their works "living".
Of course they didnt always get it right, and sometimes used experimental materials that did not last: The Last Supper degraded a lot during da Vinci's own lifetime.
The article actually says that the airships are to crack down on crime.
The Slashdot summary talks about keeping tabs on local populace.
The Slashdot comments talk about Chevez and Bush politics.
It seems like everyone has their preconceived views on Venezuela and puts their own spin on the story. Is Slashdot so set in its thinking?
3 airships is hardly likely to change the social fabric of Caracas. Most police forces have helicopters to chase criminals and I would think the UK has many more than 3 available, without anyone talking about overtones of surveillance society.
C'mon lets see moderators pick out the interesting comments about this story, not the precanned predecided views on Venezuela.
Surely the main reason to celebrate is that obvious patents can and will be struck down.
If my business plan is to register a load of bogus patents and hope that some will stick and make money, the last thing I want is to invest time and money only to see the community shoot me down.
A relatively small number of wins like this will kill off a lot of small to medium operators.
I am not a meteorologist, but I have worked with them a few times.
Generally the competing weather models will show a range of possible outcomes with various probabilities. You can average across all scenarios and come up with a 60% probability of rain, but the more days out you go more the scenarios diverge, so the less useful a single average will be.
Most people would not find it useful to hear that "there will be probably be thunder on Wednesday if it remains hot enough, but if it cools down on Tuesday then the thunderstorm will be off to the north somewhere"
Additionally, a lot of weather conditions are influenced by thin layers of cloud high up, so thin that precise measurements are critical so precise forecasts in one location more than 3 days out are difficult.
It always amazes me that the States get by with so little vacation.
Currently, here in London I have 29 days per year (it starts at 25 and goes up 1 day for each year of service). Very occasionally I have gone 3 months without using any holiday, and I really feel my motivation and productivity going down. A weeks holiday makes a big difference
Maybe 29 days is a little high, but the new job I just accepted offers a base of 23 days a year, and you can "buy" more days by taking fewer other benefits.
Do people in the US really work that hard or are there other ways the batteries get recharged?
At my old company you could always tell when someone was a blackberry user.
An email summarising some problem would go out to the team and within seconds back would come a one line response from some manager. At first I thought this was great, instant responsiveness and would fire off my own contribution, only to receive another one liner in reply.
It rapidly became clear that the blackberry user was skimming through the emails and not really taking it all in before replying. Several times a veritable shower of one liners would fill my in box as various useless comments were passed and rebutted.
I pretty soon learned to ignore these minimal contributions.
If I am a road haulage firm in Europe, can I charge a different price to move a tonne of steel from London to Paris compared to a tonne of copper? What if the two loads are in sealed standard containers?
If I run a toll bridge somewhere en route, can I charge a different price for the same weight?
I beleive Common Market rules say such differential pricing is barred, and the situation should be the same for the Internet.
In the real world the only way that a haulier (or toll bridge owner) could get away with such differential pricing is if they have a monopoly and that is exactly the case where rules are required to prevent abuses.
test to see what karma does, sorry
The third party is being paid to spot holes. If they are worth the money they will do more than just a Nessus scan ie they will look at the how the vulnerability might be exploited, and what kind of impact an exploit could have.
Whatever they do, they will not have much info on the real impact on your company of any security breach, nor will they have any clue as to your company priorities. This can only come from inside your company. Some would call this "putting a spin" on the report, but in reality all you are doing is adding the extra columns to the report:
Likelihood of an exploit of this vulnerability
Impact of a successful exploit
Cost to fix
If you can't put numbers to these things then just say Low/Medium/High.
Undoubtedly there will be some things that really do need fixing, but for the low priority items maybe you can batch them together into a work packet and get budget or resource to tackle them properly. Better you guys do this and make sure there are no deleterious effects on live systems than some contractor is pulled in to do it blindly.