And as for your contention that you can't hide your asshole-itude in the House... Senators average roughly 3,000,000 persons per seat. House members "only" average just under 700,000 persons per seat. Are you seriously suggesting that a ratio of 1:700,000 is sufficient to overcome all the ways that mass media can be used to completely snow the public?
I don't know, I haven't watch TV in 7 years. I read. Mass media has never bought or influenced my decision making as I was trained in school to question everything from every source. I read the papers the news columns quote and found that the truth in every day life is nothing like the news. The MEDIA serves no purpose except to offer a lie that I can reasearch and disprove.
I read the transcripts of a canidates speech and research it. The next campaign stop I challenge them openly on it. My decision is made up, but with 200 people present they may change their mind.
The key is you have to decide which is more important, playing for 2 hours on the PS3 or spending 2 hours researching the truth.
I compromise, 1 hour research, 1 hour LEFT FOR DEAD!!! MUAHAHHAHA LOVE BEING THE SMOKER!!!! I YELL "GET OVER HERE" every time....:)
That is a problem with the people, not the incumbent. If you are willing to have your votes bought by advertising, don't question those that you elect, then collectively, as always, we get what we deserve.
Incumbents don't have an advantage when things are really bad.
Incumbents stay in power because people are complacent. I blame public schools for this as complaceny is core to their methodology.
Personally, I've voted for someone new just because I hated the incumbent so much and I wanted them to realize that if you suck you will be voted out. Sadly, I have as yet to have seen someone other than the incumbent win in any of my local elections
Why do you assume you are special? Don't you think most people think like you and do the same? If not then there must be a reason they voted for the incumbent.
There hasn't been any power grabs that I have seen. In fact I haven't seen any new executive powers added that weren't there already. The last "Power Grab" that I can remember in history was Theodor Rosevelt.
Actually we found in the 1990s an automated phone recording system that kicked in based on key words. It was in a lab at a college and the little recorder worked well. We figured that the goverment had asked for it. We plugged it in (not able to figure out what triggered it) and found that talking about the movie Air Force One with Harrison Ford triggered the little bastard.
So if you want to piss off the goverment and waste taxpayer money try the following sentence:
"Hey did you catch that movie AIR FORCE ONE?! Yeah what a total BOMB and the TERRORIST in the movie was total crap. I liked the beating the PRESIDENT took. All that movie needed was a NUCLEAR WEAPON ABORD THE PLANE and a DOUBLE AGENT WORKING AS A SECRET SERVICE AGENT to really push the movie over the top. Yeah but no CHUCK NORRIS in the film really made me want to go to LANGLEY and ask if STEVEN SEGAL could DIE in the film as an homage to UNDER SEIGE. Wasn't that filmed near DENVER COLORADO? No but I think the ship was in NORFOLK VIRGINIA."
Then continue your normal boring conversation. Nothing like that hitting some operative's inbox along with 5000 other tapes he has to review...
Thank you for exposing the real debate behind abortion, Judicial Legislation. I hope to see in my lifetime that crap ruling overturned so the debate gets back to those who should be debating it. Now only if we can get private property rights back...
The real issue that needs to be addressed in this case is damages. If a song sells for 99 cents on ITunes then that maximum damages should be scaled to it's retail value.
Even is she bootlegged 24 songs, lets just round to $1 for eash math we are look at $24 in damages and lost sales.
Even if 100 people downloaded each song then we are look at $2400 in damages. Tops.
Lets event dole out triple damages as a deterrent we are only at $7200 in damages.
Now if 5000 people downloaded via bitorrent several slices then we can prorate out $1 based on what percentages of the song they farmed out and how many people downloaded.
No matter how you spin it, I cannot see how a judge can ignore the retail value of a song in awarding damages.
$1 on iTunes = $250,000 max per infraction doesn't make ANY sense at all. Even with the RIAA's reasoning then, her damages should technically be IN THE BILLIONS based on number of downloaders (per infraction since hosting it on Kazaa makes every Kazaa users capable of downloading with several million users, you get the point). The fact they know the judge would find BILLION dollar awards against an individual comical, how damages in excess of 10k isn't comical I'll never understand I guess...
Never in a presidental election in my lifetime has turnout gone below 35% of the population and as far as 1960 goes has averaged around 44%. Over the whole history of the nation I would wager it has only averaged 50% at best.
A goverment is hardly illegitimate if people don't vote, that is their right not to vote. As long as someone gains a majority of either popular votes, or electoral votes (in the case of the Office of President) in contrast to the other canidates, they win.
Defining a majority is a problem in politics and elections in general. LEGITIMACY is subjective at best.
You could say that only a canidate that gets 50+% of the popular vote wins but you might never have an effective election. This is problematic for single office elections like the Office of President.
While represenative elections for things like parlament may work for some countries, we just don't have that big of a problem at the House level here in the USA.
The senate can't function that way due to the 2 seats per state but the House could be reworked as you suggest but I doubt you would see a change, we already get a decent mix of conservatives, liberals, and moderates in the house based on the state.
I live in Minnesota a rather Left\Democrat leaning state and we still field Conservative\Republican and Moderate\Independents in the House.
Bills originate in the House of Represenatives which doesn't involve an electoral college. The US President cannot do a whole lot in actually drafting laws, more so the power of veto is part of the checks and balances in that interplay.
Since the seats in the House are by district there is substantially more control over who is elected due to the local level. Money can't hide the fact your an asshole in politics at that ground level where as in the senate you can pretty much BS your way into office with enough money.
Why do I cring every time I hear people use terms like Tenfold and order of magnatitude....
From what I gather the whole 10 Fold, 3 Fold, was more about the progressive thickness of cloth in relation to the number of folds back in the war when we made planes out of canvas.
1mm thick material when increase 3 fold is
1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 8 mm thick. Ten fold would then be 512 mm thick...
Why are we talking about folding stuff? Where are the protients... WHa? I DON'T WANT TO TAKE THE PILLS! WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE! LEAVE ME ALONE!
With that much data we might finally have enough information to generate a singular point of reference in space and time so we can retrofit a poorly designed all stainless steel car and travel back in time 200 years and not find out selves drifting in the middle of nowhere since 200 years ago, relative to some unknown non-moving reference point, our planet, solar system, and galaxy is probably no where near where it was 200 years ago!
That is no more effective then trying to stop drug crime by say "Stop Buying Drugs" or stopping poor education by saying "Stop Failing Tests".
Even if 1/2 the people stopped voting for democrats or republicans those same democrats and republicans would still win, by a larger magin in fact due to fragmentation between Libitarians, Consitutional, Socialist, Communists, Green, and Independent canidates.
The way to stop it is to PARTICIPATE in the political system rather then just voting or not voting which is the last, and minor step in a long political process.
Voting is just crossing the finish line in the marathon of politics. You wouldn't say that someone who drove to the finish line, got out, and crossed the finish line "participated" in the marathon, no more then someone voting participates in an election.
Get into a party, be active in it, and:
"Be the change you demand rather then hoping for change in others."
That's why I retired from IT. I'd rather saw off my own arm or starve to death then ever set foot back in the techie world. That's why I took up painting. Relaxing and peaceful.
The metric is valid when looking at the model where you have INCIDENT MANAGEMENT versus PROBLEM MANAGEMENT.
That first line of call-in is about making sure the human caller gets to a human as quickly as possible. Within 15 minutes flipping that call should be done OR escalated to PROBLEM MANAGEMENT. The reasoning is while you are talking with somone there is another caller trying to get a hold of someone.
Turn Around time is relevant to INCIDENT MANAGEMENT versus PROBLEM MANAGEMENT. The problem is when there is not a clear difference between incident and problem management groups.
Three metrics that are needed: Caller Hold Time Call Turn Over Time Ticket Resolve Time
Hold time is the customer's experience in getting thier problem addressed. Not neccessarily resolved, but addressed.
Call Turn Over Time is key on hinting at the type of problems. If 90% of your calls are resolved in under 5 minutes, you more then likely have training issues. If 50% are resolved in the first 5 minutes and 25% are escalated to PROBLEM MANAGEMENT then you may have a process failure or technical issue.
Ticket resolve time is over all the volume of touble you have in regards to the severity of the problem. Logging 1200 hours a week of SEV1 tickets tells of serious problems verus 1200 hours a week of SEV3 or 4 problems.
Mostly management uses those metric for determining what areas need to be addressed. They are not performance metrics on their own, in fact useless for measuring performance. You would need at least the % of tickets escalated to even start determining performance.
This of couse is under the assumption of a split between INCIDENT and PROBLEM management.
The data is purged after 11 years by federal requirements for financial transactions from online systems (usually). Some institutions retain hard copies stored in abandoned salt mines until they run out of room. I found a check register from 1808 once at a bank I worked for many years ago prepping hard copy boxes for shipping.
The data has to be online though for the expert system to determine fraud. Normally data though is "need to know" to a system. I couldn't for instance get your Social Security number via the expert system for fraud. It isn't needed for the behavior modelling. I would just get a unique HASH for you, cash amounts, locations as a hash, and product codes as a hash (not even what you buy but catagories like, CANDY, ELECTRONICS, etc.) That is all that is exposed in the interface. I may know that you spend $324.76 at location 0E31341341 and it is an item type of 55TT512330. But I'll never know what location that is nor what type of item that is (the hashes are tied to your account so Target for me may show up as 55456456 and as ee40343639 for you.)
This is important because if an alert is found then a report is generated that goes to a different department and all they'll ever get is something to the effect of
YOUR NAME, CONTACT #, THE TRANSACTION #, AMOUNT, LOCATION (NON-HASH), CARD NUMBER (Last 4 digits).
They can't even get your address depending on how the report is written.
As far as stealing a server, They would have to steal a 300 lbs computer that is likely bolted to the floor in a bomb proof room. Yes, I have worked in 4 data centers for financial institutions that are designed to take an atmospheric nuke as close as 1 mile. (The buildings are engineered to collapse around the data center sealing the servers away until they can be recovered. One of them even had 6 months of food and water in a storage room in case someone was in there at the time!) P.S. There are two in down town Minneapolis that I know of. 1 in Saint Paul.
For web sites and hosting servers the simplest thing I have seen is ISCSI and even ISATA drives that are encrypted. Because a physical intruder doesn't know which SAN box is hosting the drives for an application server, this forces them to have to try and steal damn near the entire data center.
Also I have seen a growing trend in keeping the application center separate from the data center. Thus your SAN machines are not in the same room that the application servers are in (Different Floors for instance). Steal the app server, you have no data.
Data is not normally store in the format of:
john doe, 123-45-6789, ACCT: 0101015A6, etc...
It is partitioned normally:
ACCOUNT: ACCT #, BANK, LOCATION, DATE OPENED, etc...
CUSTOMER: NAME, SOCIAL, BLAH, LIST OF ACCOUNTS
TRANSACTIONS: ACCT #, AMOUNT, TYPE, etc...
So gaining access to one part doesn't give you everything. All the data in a financial institution is kinda chopped up for not only performance reasons, but security. Most even have PER FIELD permissions. This is why newer folks are suprised to see in some databases a
FIRSTNAME FIRSTINITIAL LAST NAME LAST INITAL FIRSTLAST MIDDLENAME MIDDLEINITIAL
Seems inefficent until you realize there are different permissions on each field. (Obviously you can also do this via permissions on querys but I am not a DBA so I can't speak to the performance issues)
Retail locations get into trouble because of their POS (point of sale) databases that have the CC number and the transaction together in the data. Evening batches draw up all the stores into a big database initally then farmed out to sub systems and archived. While this activity is going on you have "all your eggs in one basket."
There really is no logical way to avoid this phase. You need all the data in one table to look at certain things before they get parsed out to various groups within the enterprise (supply chain, financing, executive reports, marketing, etc...)
Thou shall upon calling someone for the purposes of solicitation declair immediately, "This call is a solicitation."
Upon that declariation thou shall speak unto the individual thou hast called the source from which ye came about the person you have called.
Once declaired thou shalt state the full legal business name thou doth represent along with your full legal name. If thou is not apt to divulge you full legal name then thou hast no business in calling complete strangers.
Once thou hast declair all of that you may then ask the called person if they are busy and if you can have a moment of their time.
If the individual you have called says yes you may proceed.
If not, or at the end of the call thou shall ask if the person you have called would like to remain on your list and if not be removed immediately with a letter, hand signed and dated by the caller indicating that the person who hast been called has been removed from the calling list.
Let it be know that under no circumstance, save goverment use for emergency purposes only, shall a pre-recorded message be used.
If thou fails in this creed let ye be gutted and left for the vultures or any other carnivorious scavangers that be appropriate to ye homeland! AS well as a fine of no less then $141,391,222 USD per incident (We are using RIAA calculations based on the average length of a song compared to a solicitation call time.) or $4000 per second, which ever is greater.
I see rationalization for government and business intrusion into private lives. 90% of the information requested and/or demanded by any given government agency or business is totally unnecessary. It is none of my phone company's business how many people live in the house, or might use the phone. It is none of my ISP's business how many computers I own, or how many of them might connect through the gateway, or even HOW they might connect. The government's preoccupation with the precise identification leads to requirements for fingerprints, DNA samples, and more. I once ordered a pizza, in person, with cash in hand, and the cashier insisted that she needed my phone number and address!! The stupid broad doesn't even need to know my NAME to trade a pizza for a twenty dollar bill!
In the article, a baker was entrusted with financial information of her clients. HOW FREAKING BOGUS!! To bake a wedding cake does NOT require storing my credit card information, or any other personal details.
Totally unnecessary information is harvested for the most trivial dealings. And, it's WRONG.
No government agency, and no business should request information that is not absolutely essential to perform the business at hand. Nor should they request any more information than they are willing and capable of storing in a SECURE manner. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to safeguard that information, it isn't some "expense", or an "option", it shouldn't be considered a "burden". If and when safeguarding information becomes an "expense", then it should be obvious that they are collecting unnecessary and trivial information.
TFA is bogus rationalization, and an attempt to get people to sympathize with some perceived need to dump privacy laws. Forbes and Lee Gomes should be slapped silly for even writing and printing the article.
Nonsense. They need to show the credit card company due dilligence that they protected customer's credit card payment. In the event of fraud they must produce a record of when the card was used, where it was used, and who took the card.
Without evidence you are not getting a conviction. No data retention, no evidence.
Unfortunately, depending on the nature of the business you have to collect it.
If you charge a $60 meal at a resturant you would probably like to know which resturant, when, and for how much. We then also need to tie that to an account at a bank in which the funds are drawn against.
Same for if you buy something at new egg. The IP is recorded and the geolocation of that IP is also stored. In the event of fraud an actioning system can track the fact that you live in say, New York and all of a sudden a $5000.00 purchase originates from Tokyo. Your bank, the POS (point of sale) must record that for fraud protection.
Otherwise the first time you are on the recieving end of that fraud the first thing they ask is, "What did you do to try and prevent this?"
You cannot prevent activities you have no record of.
Per your example of registering, it keeps spammer off forums, ensures a resonable count of members, and lowers the number of automated scripts that can tie up the system so people like you can actually listen to the bird calls rather then sit watching the web browser load until it times out.
I remember the early versions of forums before registation and having 40000+ users like se894gkgh posting 400 pr0n listings an hour was pretty bad....
1: I would never hire a graduate at 40k. Are you daft? If he's a Harvary\Berkley\Princeton graduate maybe. And that is a big maybe. These are programmers not mechanical engineers. Code jockeys! Software engineers spend their time on UML documents not code. You over pay for your programmers. Starting, tops, 25k a year. It's a global economy and american labor is over-paid. At 80k through promotions and years of service I get, "Someone who actually answers their pager in emergencies", shows up to work on time and leaves on time, can work with the other 1200 other project participants; and can wash their hair and keep the number of extra holes in their head to a minimum so when you are sitting down with clients wanting to sign a 20 million dollar, 8 year contract, your senior programmer doesn't look like a homeless beatnik or reject from a stage production of Dracula.
I have two guys in Moscow that clear 75k and they can actually get to a meeting at 3AM for architecture reviews with 2 in Italy, 1 in Hong Kong, and 12 coders in Seattle. (I'm in Central time). I can't even get this crap they graduate out of bed to attend a meeting, hell I'd be happy if the crap they hand me could get to work before 10 AM. Not everyone is a Silicon Valley genius, Most a mediocre at best.
2: You need vendor risk assesment in place. Risk mitigation allows the vendor to bear the expense of a missed deadline, not my budget. If it is a low skill task farm it out and let the high skilled people focus on core objectives that can't be delegated. First Rule: Screen your vendors. Make sure you do vendor credit reviews.
3: Are you implying people with experience are stupid? I've seen 20 year Cobol programmers go to Java bootcamp and come back better then that excrement the U of M puts out after 4 years. Experienced programmers learn new skills far better because they can apply their experience in the real world to the learning process without getting distracted by frat nonsense and teachers who are too busy trying to get their students to vote for X,Y, and Z. A new programmer learns quicker? Nonsense. Your implying that older programmers learn slower.
The capacity to learn is a quality of the individual and how they apply their education and life experiences. I've dealt with that nonsense in the late 90s. I have zero faith in public education (I don't hire public educated people. Ever. You'd be amazed how that fixes a lot of problems.) and even less year after year in US education. Eastern Europe is where the hot talent is developing these days.
As far as the PS part, you miss a deadline, there is no "another time". You don't miss deadlines, that's why their called deadlines. If meeting them were optional they'd be more of suggestions then deadlines. You miss a deadline, you are transfered to the unemployment department.
But all that aside I am now a soft cuddly retired geek spending his days as a nobody in a cube helping out some friends. But at least I can look back at my tech days and say, "Never over budget. Never missed a deadline. And shit worked the first time."
I don't assume experience means less mistakes, just quicker to find the mistake and quicker to fix it.
Don't get me wrong, what you say sounds nice but sure as hell in the years I worked my employers over the years have no tolerance for failure unlike the public sector where failure is the norm.
And I am easy to work with, not easy to get hired by. I tend to hire former Military (Hard to go wrong there as long as they pass the psychologist's twice-over) and those who have a solid portfolio of work. I'm even kind enough if a canidate catches my eye to let him\her complete a few sample programs before I made a decision to give them the chance (and have a portfolio in the future. My favorite is to sort an arbitrary sized text file with variable number of threads)
I just have a zero bullshit tolerance anymore. No employer has ever paid me to be nice that's for sure. But my coworkers and peers like me at least. I do think the wife just tolerates me though at times.... Whatever...
Ehh I'm tired but that's my 2 cents. The world I live in is a lot harder then yours it appears.
SOX killed a lot of smaller corporations due to the cost of compliance.
[citation needed]
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1222/028.html and the other million plus hits your lazy smug ass could find if you just went to google. You could also pay attention when SOX went live and MSNBC, CBS, CNN, and about 20 other news networks cover the nationwide bitch fest for 2 years.
Thank you for sleeping through that part of history. Get off your lazy ass and google it and wipe the smug shit eating grin off your face you brat.
Slashdot Mirror
And as for your contention that you can't hide your asshole-itude in the House... Senators average roughly 3,000,000 persons per seat. House members "only" average just under 700,000 persons per seat. Are you seriously suggesting that a ratio of 1:700,000 is sufficient to overcome all the ways that mass media can be used to completely snow the public?
I don't know, I haven't watch TV in 7 years. I read. Mass media has never bought or influenced my decision making as I was trained in school to question everything from every source. I read the papers the news columns quote and found that the truth in every day life is nothing like the news. The MEDIA serves no purpose except to offer a lie that I can reasearch and disprove.
I read the transcripts of a canidates speech and research it. The next campaign stop I challenge them openly on it. My decision is made up, but with 200 people present they may change their mind.
The key is you have to decide which is more important, playing for 2 hours on the PS3 or spending 2 hours researching the truth.
I compromise, 1 hour research, 1 hour LEFT FOR DEAD!!! MUAHAHHAHA LOVE BEING THE SMOKER!!!! I YELL "GET OVER HERE" every time.... :)
That is a problem with the people, not the incumbent. If you are willing to have your votes bought by advertising, don't question those that you elect, then collectively, as always, we get what we deserve.
Incumbents don't have an advantage when things are really bad.
Incumbents stay in power because people are complacent. I blame public schools for this as complaceny is core to their methodology.
Personally, I've voted for someone new just because I hated the incumbent so much and I wanted them to realize that if you suck you will be voted out. Sadly, I have as yet to have seen someone other than the incumbent win in any of my local elections
Why do you assume you are special? Don't you think most people think like you and do the same? If not then there must be a reason they voted for the incumbent.
There hasn't been any power grabs that I have seen. In fact I haven't seen any new executive powers added that weren't there already. The last "Power Grab" that I can remember in history was Theodor Rosevelt.
Actually we found in the 1990s an automated phone recording system that kicked in based on key words. It was in a lab at a college and the little recorder worked well. We figured that the goverment had asked for it. We plugged it in (not able to figure out what triggered it) and found that talking about the movie Air Force One with Harrison Ford triggered the little bastard.
So if you want to piss off the goverment and waste taxpayer money try the following sentence:
"Hey did you catch that movie AIR FORCE ONE?! Yeah what a total BOMB and the TERRORIST in the movie was total crap. I liked the beating the PRESIDENT took. All that movie needed was a NUCLEAR WEAPON ABORD THE PLANE and a DOUBLE AGENT WORKING AS A SECRET SERVICE AGENT to really push the movie over the top. Yeah but no CHUCK NORRIS in the film really made me want to go to LANGLEY and ask if STEVEN SEGAL could DIE in the film as an homage to UNDER SEIGE. Wasn't that filmed near DENVER COLORADO? No but I think the ship was in NORFOLK VIRGINIA."
Then continue your normal boring conversation. Nothing like that hitting some operative's inbox along with 5000 other tapes he has to review...
Thank you for exposing the real debate behind abortion, Judicial Legislation. I hope to see in my lifetime that crap ruling overturned so the debate gets back to those who should be debating it. Now only if we can get private property rights back...
The real issue that needs to be addressed in this case is damages. If a song sells for 99 cents on ITunes then that maximum damages should be scaled to it's retail value.
Even is she bootlegged 24 songs, lets just round to $1 for eash math we are look at $24 in damages and lost sales.
Even if 100 people downloaded each song then we are look at $2400 in damages. Tops.
Lets event dole out triple damages as a deterrent we are only at $7200 in damages.
Now if 5000 people downloaded via bitorrent several slices then we can prorate out $1 based on what percentages of the song they farmed out and how many people downloaded.
No matter how you spin it, I cannot see how a judge can ignore the retail value of a song in awarding damages.
$1 on iTunes = $250,000 max per infraction doesn't make ANY sense at all. Even with the RIAA's reasoning then, her damages should technically be IN THE BILLIONS based on number of downloaders (per infraction since hosting it on Kazaa makes every Kazaa users capable of downloading with several million users, you get the point). The fact they know the judge would find BILLION dollar awards against an individual comical, how damages in excess of 10k isn't comical I'll never understand I guess...
Never in a presidental election in my lifetime has turnout gone below 35% of the population and as far as 1960 goes has averaged around 44%. Over the whole history of the nation I would wager it has only averaged 50% at best.
year, voters, registerations, voter turnout, %
2008* 231,229,580 NA 132,618,580* 56.8%
2006 220,600,000 135,889,600 80,588,000 37.1%
2004 221,256,931 174,800,000 122,294,978 55.3
2002 215,473,000 150,990,598 79,830,119 37.0
2000 205,815,000 156,421,311 105,586,274 51.3
1998 200,929,000 141,850,558 73,117,022 36.4
1996 196,511,000 146,211,960 96,456,345 49.1
1994 193,650,000 130,292,822 75,105,860 38.8
1992 189,529,000 133,821,178 104,405,155 55.1
1990 185,812,000 121,105,630 67,859,189 36.5
1988 182,778,000 126,379,628 91,594,693 50.1
1986 178,566,000 118,399,984 64,991,128 36.4
1984 174,466,000 124,150,614 92,652,680 53.1
1982 169,938,000 110,671,225 67,615,576 39.8
1980 164,597,000 113,043,734 86,515,221 52.6
1978 158,373,000 103,291,265 58,917,938 37.2
1976 152,309,190 105,037,986 81,555,789 53.6
1974 146,336,000 96,199,0201 55,943,834 38.2
1972 140,776,000 97,328,541 77,718,554 55.2
1970 124,498,000 82,496,7472 58,014,338 46.6
1968 120,328,186 81,658,180 73,211,875 60.8
1966 116,132,000 76,288,2833 56,188,046 48.4
1964 114,090,000 73,715,818 70,644,592 61.9
1962 112,423,000 65,393,7514 53,141,227 47.3
1960 109,159,000 64,833,0965 68,838,204 63.1
A goverment is hardly illegitimate if people don't vote, that is their right not to vote. As long as someone gains a majority of either popular votes, or electoral votes (in the case of the Office of President) in contrast to the other canidates, they win.
What you could debate is what is a majority.
Canidate A: 40%
Canidate B: 30%
Canidate C: 20%
Canidate D: 10%
Who got the majority? A Got 40%, but that also means that 60% didn't vote for A. Legitimate Win?
Same scenario:
Canidate A: 43% ...
Canidate B: 20%
Canidate C: 17%
Is canidate A more legitimate then B now?
Defining a majority is a problem in politics and elections in general. LEGITIMACY is subjective at best.
You could say that only a canidate that gets 50+% of the popular vote wins but you might never have an effective election. This is problematic for single office elections like the Office of President.
While represenative elections for things like parlament may work for some countries, we just don't have that big of a problem at the House level here in the USA.
The senate can't function that way due to the 2 seats per state but the House could be reworked as you suggest but I doubt you would see a change, we already get a decent mix of conservatives, liberals, and moderates in the house based on the state.
I live in Minnesota a rather Left\Democrat leaning state and we still field Conservative\Republican and Moderate\Independents in the House.
Bills originate in the House of Represenatives which doesn't involve an electoral college. The US President cannot do a whole lot in actually drafting laws, more so the power of veto is part of the checks and balances in that interplay.
Since the seats in the House are by district there is substantially more control over who is elected due to the local level. Money can't hide the fact your an asshole in politics at that ground level where as in the senate you can pretty much BS your way into office with enough money.
"Old Man Rant"
Why do I cring every time I hear people use terms like Tenfold and order of magnatitude....
From what I gather the whole 10 Fold, 3 Fold, was more about the progressive thickness of cloth in relation to the number of folds back in the war when we made planes out of canvas.
1mm thick material when increase 3 fold is
1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 8 mm thick. Ten fold would then be 512 mm thick...
Why are we talking about folding stuff? Where are the protients... WHa? I DON'T WANT TO TAKE THE PILLS! WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE! LEAVE ME ALONE!
I'M NOT DOING ANY LAUNDRY! ;)
With that much data we might finally have enough information to generate a singular point of reference in space and time so we can retrofit a poorly designed all stainless steel car and travel back in time 200 years and not find out selves drifting in the middle of nowhere since 200 years ago, relative to some unknown non-moving reference point, our planet, solar system, and galaxy is probably no where near where it was 200 years ago!
FLUX CAPACITOR FTW!
Stop voting for them.
That is no more effective then trying to stop drug crime by say "Stop Buying Drugs" or stopping poor education by saying "Stop Failing Tests".
Even if 1/2 the people stopped voting for democrats or republicans those same democrats and republicans would still win, by a larger magin in fact due to fragmentation between Libitarians, Consitutional, Socialist, Communists, Green, and Independent canidates.
The way to stop it is to PARTICIPATE in the political system rather then just voting or not voting which is the last, and minor step in a long political process.
Voting is just crossing the finish line in the marathon of politics. You wouldn't say that someone who drove to the finish line, got out, and crossed the finish line "participated" in the marathon, no more then someone voting participates in an election.
Get into a party, be active in it, and:
"Be the change you demand rather then hoping for change in others."
It'll still tangle into a bucky-knot the moment it leaves your eyesight.
And with diamond hard strength I'd wager I can cut it with a scissors....
Walls on my part. I paint minatures for rec. Head to Deviantart.com. Great place to start up with your inner artist.
That's why I retired from IT. I'd rather saw off my own arm or starve to death then ever set foot back in the techie world. That's why I took up painting. Relaxing and peaceful.
So can I get some cheap fishing line that doesn't break now?
I guess they'll actually have to cut back on giving out free money to people that don't earn it in order to free up money...
The metric is valid when looking at the model where you have INCIDENT MANAGEMENT versus PROBLEM MANAGEMENT.
That first line of call-in is about making sure the human caller gets to a human as quickly as possible. Within 15 minutes flipping that call should be done OR escalated to PROBLEM MANAGEMENT. The reasoning is while you are talking with somone there is another caller trying to get a hold of someone.
Turn Around time is relevant to INCIDENT MANAGEMENT versus PROBLEM MANAGEMENT. The problem is when there is not a clear difference between incident and problem management groups.
Three metrics that are needed:
Caller Hold Time
Call Turn Over Time
Ticket Resolve Time
Hold time is the customer's experience in getting thier problem addressed. Not neccessarily resolved, but addressed.
Call Turn Over Time is key on hinting at the type of problems. If 90% of your calls are resolved in under 5 minutes, you more then likely have training issues. If 50% are resolved in the first 5 minutes and 25% are escalated to PROBLEM MANAGEMENT then you may have a process failure or technical issue.
Ticket resolve time is over all the volume of touble you have in regards to the severity of the problem. Logging 1200 hours a week of SEV1 tickets tells of serious problems verus 1200 hours a week of SEV3 or 4 problems.
Mostly management uses those metric for determining what areas need to be addressed. They are not performance metrics on their own, in fact useless for measuring performance. You would need at least the % of tickets escalated to even start determining performance.
This of couse is under the assumption of a split between INCIDENT and PROBLEM management.
The data is purged after 11 years by federal requirements for financial transactions from online systems (usually). Some institutions retain hard copies stored in abandoned salt mines until they run out of room. I found a check register from 1808 once at a bank I worked for many years ago prepping hard copy boxes for shipping.
The data has to be online though for the expert system to determine fraud. Normally data though is "need to know" to a system. I couldn't for instance get your Social Security number via the expert system for fraud. It isn't needed for the behavior modelling. I would just get a unique HASH for you, cash amounts, locations as a hash, and product codes as a hash (not even what you buy but catagories like, CANDY, ELECTRONICS, etc.) That is all that is exposed in the interface. I may know that you spend $324.76 at location 0E31341341 and it is an item type of 55TT512330. But I'll never know what location that is nor what type of item that is (the hashes are tied to your account so Target for me may show up as 55456456 and as ee40343639 for you.)
This is important because if an alert is found then a report is generated that goes to a different department and all they'll ever get is something to the effect of
YOUR NAME, CONTACT #, THE TRANSACTION #, AMOUNT, LOCATION (NON-HASH), CARD NUMBER (Last 4 digits).
They can't even get your address depending on how the report is written.
As far as stealing a server, They would have to steal a 300 lbs computer that is likely bolted to the floor in a bomb proof room. Yes, I have worked in 4 data centers for financial institutions that are designed to take an atmospheric nuke as close as 1 mile. (The buildings are engineered to collapse around the data center sealing the servers away until they can be recovered. One of them even had 6 months of food and water in a storage room in case someone was in there at the time!) P.S. There are two in down town Minneapolis that I know of. 1 in Saint Paul.
For web sites and hosting servers the simplest thing I have seen is ISCSI and even ISATA drives that are encrypted. Because a physical intruder doesn't know which SAN box is hosting the drives for an application server, this forces them to have to try and steal damn near the entire data center.
Also I have seen a growing trend in keeping the application center separate from the data center. Thus your SAN machines are not in the same room that the application servers are in (Different Floors for instance). Steal the app server, you have no data.
Data is not normally store in the format of:
john doe, 123-45-6789, ACCT: 0101015A6, etc...
It is partitioned normally:
ACCOUNT:
ACCT #, BANK, LOCATION, DATE OPENED, etc...
CUSTOMER:
NAME, SOCIAL, BLAH, LIST OF ACCOUNTS
TRANSACTIONS:
ACCT #, AMOUNT, TYPE, etc...
So gaining access to one part doesn't give you everything. All the data in a financial institution is kinda chopped up for not only performance reasons, but security. Most even have PER FIELD permissions. This is why newer folks are suprised to see in some databases a
FIRSTNAME
FIRSTINITIAL
LAST NAME
LAST INITAL
FIRSTLAST
MIDDLENAME
MIDDLEINITIAL
Seems inefficent until you realize there are different permissions on each field. (Obviously you can also do this via permissions on querys but I am not a DBA so I can't speak to the performance issues)
Retail locations get into trouble because of their POS (point of sale) databases that have the CC number and the transaction together in the data. Evening batches draw up all the stores into a big database initally then farmed out to sub systems and archived. While this activity is going on you have "all your eggs in one basket."
There really is no logical way to avoid this phase. You need all the data in one table to look at certain things before they get parsed out to various groups within the enterprise (supply chain, financing, executive reports, marketing, etc...)
Once your past that inital
Thou shall upon calling someone for the purposes of solicitation declair immediately, "This call is a solicitation."
Upon that declariation thou shall speak unto the individual thou hast called the source from which ye came about the person you have called.
Once declaired thou shalt state the full legal business name thou doth represent along with your full legal name. If thou is not apt to divulge you full legal name then thou hast no business in calling complete strangers.
Once thou hast declair all of that you may then ask the called person if they are busy and if you can have a moment of their time.
If the individual you have called says yes you may proceed.
If not, or at the end of the call thou shall ask if the person you have called would like to remain on your list and if not be removed immediately with a letter, hand signed and dated by the caller indicating that the person who hast been called has been removed from the calling list.
Let it be know that under no circumstance, save goverment use for emergency purposes only, shall a pre-recorded message be used.
If thou fails in this creed let ye be gutted and left for the vultures or any other carnivorious scavangers that be appropriate to ye homeland! AS well as a fine of no less then $141,391,222 USD per incident (We are using RIAA calculations based on the average length of a song compared to a solicitation call time.) or $4000 per second, which ever is greater.
A classic from nearly 100 years ago:
"If you want privacy, pay cash. If you want good privacy, pay with dirty cash." - Wilton.
I have no idea who Wilton is, I got the plaque at a garage sale for 50 cents and the date on the back was 1909.
I see rationalization for government and business intrusion into private lives. 90% of the information requested and/or demanded by any given government agency or business is totally unnecessary. It is none of my phone company's business how many people live in the house, or might use the phone. It is none of my ISP's business how many computers I own, or how many of them might connect through the gateway, or even HOW they might connect. The government's preoccupation with the precise identification leads to requirements for fingerprints, DNA samples, and more. I once ordered a pizza, in person, with cash in hand, and the cashier insisted that she needed my phone number and address!! The stupid broad doesn't even need to know my NAME to trade a pizza for a twenty dollar bill!
In the article, a baker was entrusted with financial information of her clients. HOW FREAKING BOGUS!! To bake a wedding cake does NOT require storing my credit card information, or any other personal details.
Totally unnecessary information is harvested for the most trivial dealings. And, it's WRONG.
No government agency, and no business should request information that is not absolutely essential to perform the business at hand. Nor should they request any more information than they are willing and capable of storing in a SECURE manner. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to safeguard that information, it isn't some "expense", or an "option", it shouldn't be considered a "burden". If and when safeguarding information becomes an "expense", then it should be obvious that they are collecting unnecessary and trivial information.
TFA is bogus rationalization, and an attempt to get people to sympathize with some perceived need to dump privacy laws. Forbes and Lee Gomes should be slapped silly for even writing and printing the article.
Nonsense. They need to show the credit card company due dilligence that they protected customer's credit card payment. In the event of fraud they must produce a record of when the card was used, where it was used, and who took the card.
Without evidence you are not getting a conviction. No data retention, no evidence.
Unfortunately, depending on the nature of the business you have to collect it.
If you charge a $60 meal at a resturant you would probably like to know which resturant, when, and for how much. We then also need to tie that to an account at a bank in which the funds are drawn against.
Same for if you buy something at new egg. The IP is recorded and the geolocation of that IP is also stored. In the event of fraud an actioning system can track the fact that you live in say, New York and all of a sudden a $5000.00 purchase originates from Tokyo. Your bank, the POS (point of sale) must record that for fraud protection.
Otherwise the first time you are on the recieving end of that fraud the first thing they ask is, "What did you do to try and prevent this?"
You cannot prevent activities you have no record of.
Per your example of registering, it keeps spammer off forums, ensures a resonable count of members, and lowers the number of automated scripts that can tie up the system so people like you can actually listen to the bird calls rather then sit watching the web browser load until it times out.
I remember the early versions of forums before registation and having 40000+ users like se894gkgh posting 400 pr0n listings an hour was pretty bad....
1: I would never hire a graduate at 40k. Are you daft? If he's a Harvary\Berkley\Princeton graduate maybe. And that is a big maybe. These are programmers not mechanical engineers. Code jockeys! Software engineers spend their time on UML documents not code. You over pay for your programmers. Starting, tops, 25k a year. It's a global economy and american labor is over-paid. At 80k through promotions and years of service I get, "Someone who actually answers their pager in emergencies", shows up to work on time and leaves on time, can work with the other 1200 other project participants; and can wash their hair and keep the number of extra holes in their head to a minimum so when you are sitting down with clients wanting to sign a 20 million dollar, 8 year contract, your senior programmer doesn't look like a homeless beatnik or reject from a stage production of Dracula.
I have two guys in Moscow that clear 75k and they can actually get to a meeting at 3AM for architecture reviews with 2 in Italy, 1 in Hong Kong, and 12 coders in Seattle. (I'm in Central time). I can't even get this crap they graduate out of bed to attend a meeting, hell I'd be happy if the crap they hand me could get to work before 10 AM. Not everyone is a Silicon Valley genius, Most a mediocre at best.
2: You need vendor risk assesment in place. Risk mitigation allows the vendor to bear the expense of a missed deadline, not my budget. If it is a low skill task farm it out and let the high skilled people focus on core objectives that can't be delegated. First Rule: Screen your vendors. Make sure you do vendor credit reviews.
3: Are you implying people with experience are stupid? I've seen 20 year Cobol programmers go to Java bootcamp and come back better then that excrement the U of M puts out after 4 years. Experienced programmers learn new skills far better because they can apply their experience in the real world to the learning process without getting distracted by frat nonsense and teachers who are too busy trying to get their students to vote for X,Y, and Z. A new programmer learns quicker? Nonsense. Your implying that older programmers learn slower.
The capacity to learn is a quality of the individual and how they apply their education and life experiences. I've dealt with that nonsense in the late 90s. I have zero faith in public education (I don't hire public educated people. Ever. You'd be amazed how that fixes a lot of problems.) and even less year after year in US education. Eastern Europe is where the hot talent is developing these days.
As far as the PS part, you miss a deadline, there is no "another time". You don't miss deadlines, that's why their called deadlines. If meeting them were optional they'd be more of suggestions then deadlines. You miss a deadline, you are transfered to the unemployment department.
But all that aside I am now a soft cuddly retired geek spending his days as a nobody in a cube helping out some friends. But at least I can look back at my tech days and say, "Never over budget. Never missed a deadline. And shit worked the first time."
I don't assume experience means less mistakes, just quicker to find the mistake and quicker to fix it.
Don't get me wrong, what you say sounds nice but sure as hell in the years I worked my employers over the years have no tolerance for failure unlike the public sector where failure is the norm.
And I am easy to work with, not easy to get hired by. I tend to hire former Military (Hard to go wrong there as long as they pass the psychologist's twice-over) and those who have a solid portfolio of work. I'm even kind enough if a canidate catches my eye to let him\her complete a few sample programs before I made a decision to give them the chance (and have a portfolio in the future. My favorite is to sort an arbitrary sized text file with variable number of threads)
I just have a zero bullshit tolerance anymore. No employer has ever paid me to be nice that's for sure. But my coworkers and peers like me at least. I do think the wife just tolerates me though at times.... Whatever...
Ehh I'm tired but that's my 2 cents. The world I live in is a lot harder then yours it appears.
I could see magnesium but I would expect more of a sparkler like effect rather then wafting flames.
[citation needed]
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1222/028.html and the other million plus hits your lazy smug ass could find if you just went to google. You could also pay attention when SOX went live and MSNBC, CBS, CNN, and about 20 other news networks cover the nationwide bitch fest for 2 years.
Thank you for sleeping through that part of history. Get off your lazy ass and google it and wipe the smug shit eating grin off your face you brat.