This is nothing new. Several years ago, a local electronics junk store got in a bunch of Blackberries of various models (probably a company going out of business) and were selling them for something like $5 apiece. Daughter was a major texter at the time, and liked the retro look and superior keyboard, so we bought several different models so she could switch between them as her mood took her.
We discovered that all but one of them had not been wiped. Appointments, phone numbers, baby pictures, still intact. No sexting, fortunately, but probably only because these phones had been corporate owned. (Which isn't a guarantee, now that I think about it. Maybe we got lucky.) [1]
People either don't understand or don't care about wiping their data. Even the ones that do make an effort often don't understand that deleting the files just deletes the directory entries, not the data itself. Utilities that truly wipe the data from cards (and drives and anything else that potentially holds personal data) are known to tech geeks and privacy geeks but not to Fred and Ethyl User.
[1] Thinking further about it, the last time I "participated" in a layoff, a bunch of us were called to a meeting and told to surrender our badges and phones immediately. I have no idea whether whomever was in charge wiped the phones. Or just sold them on ebay.
Then take the contract you have with them to court and get your effing money back. What? No contract? You deserve what you get.
Good point. Let's say you do have a contract. Let's say that the vendor is clearly in default. Let's say you tell the vendor they're in default and you want your money back including very real damages to your company. Tell them you will sue if necessary to make this happen.
Real response in a real case like the above: (This is an exact quote.) "Feel free. We have more lawyers than you have employees."
(And yes, if you have no contract you deserve what you get. But even having a contract doesn't necessarily help.)
Sorry, all of that is horseshit. Google is the one making the mistakes here, not the people who took them at their word that they offered robust professional services.
Ok. We can say that, but your business is still down. Saying Google is the one who screwed up is cold comfort when your wheels come off. The objective, in my mind, is not assigning blame after the event, but making some reasonable assurance that it doesn't happen in the first place.
This is generally true for outsourcing of any vital component and/or personnel. There are salespeople who's job it is to sell you the service. It's your job to decide whether you should buy it. There are companies (who will remain nameless because I'm not posting anonymously) who will gleefully sell you a really lousy service in a contract that's very difficult to get out of. They're not going to say up front "oh and this will cause difficulty with your customers and damage your reputation".
I think the issue is that the accountability of the service provider (if any) is not equal to the amount of damage to the company caused by an arbitrary outage. I've seen this over and over -- a service and/or personnel provider does something you didn't ask for, or does something you *did* ask for incorrectly, which causes a major extended outage. When you take this up to them you get "--shrug--".
And yes, the penalty is and should be to fire the people involved. But firing a service provider who's providing a major part of your infrastructure is a difficult thing. Not just contractually, but tactically. Moving to another provider, or insourcing, is a complicated, difficult, expensive, risky task, even if you could reasonably get out of the contract. The service provider *knows* that, and they know how to play the game -- offer you better reliability at a higher price, for instance, and you end up with just as much risk to your business at higher and higher costs for the sake of bullet points to show in overheads to board members.
As if servers doing down can't happen if you host it yourself.
But then you're in control, instead of having to rely on some amorphous, anonymous monster that only allows communication via automated email.
Exactly if/when mistakes are made, your organization made them, you have better transparency on what actually happened, and you have a better chance of affecting the root cause. The cloud is... a cloud. Automatic processes can arbitrarily shut your business down (which, sounds like, happened in this case) and you can't get hold of a human to remedy.
Mind you, there's lots of ways to fail, if you host or cloud, but at least, when you host, they're your own failures.
Ubuntu 18.04 has those same issues. you know Mint doesn't make those video drivers or VLC, right? of course they are dependent on upstream for any solutions to those problems. of course they won't say they'll fix it, how could they?
Why would the average user know any of that? If it comes as part of Linux Mint then it could be a packaging bug. It could be an outdated version. Even if it's a valid upstream bug the user shouldn't have to know where all the thousands of packages come from and what their bug reporting process is.
That may be the case, but I'm not sure what the solution might be. It seems the average user is in the same boat with Winders.
Thanks for the tip. I'm still on 17 and was going to jump right on this, reformat and start fresh, as soon as it came out. But I agree, that breaks Rule One of OS Upgrades: Always wait for the.1 release.
Besides this gives me time to scrap all to pr0n to an external drive.
And ironically, a lot of the customer base for the fast food industry are minimum wage folks, who won't have money to spend there anymore if automation takes their jobs. When your employees are your customers, you really need to think twice before getting rid of them.
If so, things should work out on their own. The fast food industry will transition to an all-mechanized low-labor business model, and then quietly go out of business.
But I'm not sure how "your employees are your customers" is supposed to work, as a practical matter. That ultimately sounds like you're selling your product to yourself at a markup, losing money on every transaction. And then what, make it up in volume?
The one advantage I see for now is that the cost of running the machine (once capital expenditure is made) is unlikely to rise as quickly as minimum wage. Especially in San Francisco.
Advantage for who? The people not getting a job because the robot is working?
Your comment seems to imply that a higher minimum wage is a bad thing.
Advantage to the owner of the business, of course. Added bonus, (again, to the owner) this is a capital-heavy investment, (cost of the machine) that's DL-lite. (Cost of workers.) And capital expenditures are tax deductible. Even in California.
I don't have an opinion for or against a higher minimum wage. I observe that a higher minimum wage appears to be one of the driving factors for automation designed to eliminate minimum wage jobs. For which, "fast food burger flipper" has long been considered the epitome.
Depends. A penalty shouldn't be based on how much you hate a company, it is proportional to damage done. I can't work out the detail, but TFA implies there were 5000 customers affected which means the penalty is about the price of two new iPhones per customer,
This seems appropriate to me.
And I'm sure it's just part of the cost of doing business for Apple.
Cheaper for now...once any issues with the robot are worked out and enough are starting to be manufactured for economies of scale to kick in I'm guessing that won't be the case. Also, don't assume savings will be passed onto the customer...maybe it is a lot cheaper than teenagers, but the owner thinks the market will support the price so he can pocket the difference.
The one advantage I see for now is that the cost of running the machine (once capital expenditure is made) is unlikely to rise as quickly as minimum wage. Especially in San Francisco.
Slashdot Mirror
Pr0n has led the way for most media storage and presentation technologies over the years.
From what I've seen personally, it may start out with janitors being escorted, but over time that tends to fall by the wayside.
Janitors have keys to *everything*.
"It looks like you're trying to steal classified information! Would you like some help?"
Toss memory cards in fire. Don't breathe the fumes.
A sledgehammer for the HD. It's not enough to mangle the logic board, stepper and heads, you have to destroy the discs.
On selling devices, you're right, but I don't think regular people know enough, and there's few around willing to tell them.
At first glance I though, oh wow, Microsoft finally getting serious about privacy. Then I saw it was just another desktop theme. Figures.
This is nothing new. Several years ago, a local electronics junk store got in a bunch of Blackberries of various models (probably a company going out of business) and were selling them for something like $5 apiece. Daughter was a major texter at the time, and liked the retro look and superior keyboard, so we bought several different models so she could switch between them as her mood took her.
We discovered that all but one of them had not been wiped. Appointments, phone numbers, baby pictures, still intact. No sexting, fortunately, but probably only because these phones had been corporate owned. (Which isn't a guarantee, now that I think about it. Maybe we got lucky.) [1]
People either don't understand or don't care about wiping their data. Even the ones that do make an effort often don't understand that deleting the files just deletes the directory entries, not the data itself. Utilities that truly wipe the data from cards (and drives and anything else that potentially holds personal data) are known to tech geeks and privacy geeks but not to Fred and Ethyl User.
[1] Thinking further about it, the last time I "participated" in a layoff, a bunch of us were called to a meeting and told to surrender our badges and phones immediately. I have no idea whether whomever was in charge wiped the phones. Or just sold them on ebay.
But as someone else said, don't google "plugspreading" at work. Or anywhere.
Then take the contract you have with them to court and get your effing money back. What? No contract? You deserve what you get.
Good point. Let's say you do have a contract. Let's say that the vendor is clearly in default. Let's say you tell the vendor they're in default and you want your money back including very real damages to your company. Tell them you will sue if necessary to make this happen.
Real response in a real case like the above: (This is an exact quote.) "Feel free. We have more lawyers than you have employees."
(And yes, if you have no contract you deserve what you get. But even having a contract doesn't necessarily help.)
Sorry, all of that is horseshit. Google is the one making the mistakes here, not the people who took them at their word that they offered robust professional services.
Ok. We can say that, but your business is still down. Saying Google is the one who screwed up is cold comfort when your wheels come off. The objective, in my mind, is not assigning blame after the event, but making some reasonable assurance that it doesn't happen in the first place.
This is generally true for outsourcing of any vital component and/or personnel. There are salespeople who's job it is to sell you the service. It's your job to decide whether you should buy it. There are companies (who will remain nameless because I'm not posting anonymously) who will gleefully sell you a really lousy service in a contract that's very difficult to get out of. They're not going to say up front "oh and this will cause difficulty with your customers and damage your reputation".
I think the issue is that the accountability of the service provider (if any) is not equal to the amount of damage to the company caused by an arbitrary outage. I've seen this over and over -- a service and/or personnel provider does something you didn't ask for, or does something you *did* ask for incorrectly, which causes a major extended outage. When you take this up to them you get "--shrug--".
And yes, the penalty is and should be to fire the people involved. But firing a service provider who's providing a major part of your infrastructure is a difficult thing. Not just contractually, but tactically. Moving to another provider, or insourcing, is a complicated, difficult, expensive, risky task, even if you could reasonably get out of the contract. The service provider *knows* that, and they know how to play the game -- offer you better reliability at a higher price, for instance, and you end up with just as much risk to your business at higher and higher costs for the sake of bullet points to show in overheads to board members.
As if servers doing down can't happen if you host it yourself.
But then you're in control, instead of having to rely on some amorphous, anonymous monster that only allows communication via automated email.
Exactly if/when mistakes are made, your organization made them, you have better transparency on what actually happened, and you have a better chance of affecting the root cause. The cloud is... a cloud. Automatic processes can arbitrarily shut your business down (which, sounds like, happened in this case) and you can't get hold of a human to remedy.
Mind you, there's lots of ways to fail, if you host or cloud, but at least, when you host, they're your own failures.
Year of the Linux Desktop?
It is at my house, and probably yours as well. What else matters?
Ubuntu 18.04 has those same issues. you know Mint doesn't make those video drivers or VLC, right? of course they are dependent on upstream for any solutions to those problems. of course they won't say they'll fix it, how could they?
Why would the average user know any of that? If it comes as part of Linux Mint then it could be a packaging bug. It could be an outdated version. Even if it's a valid upstream bug the user shouldn't have to know where all the thousands of packages come from and what their bug reporting process is.
That may be the case, but I'm not sure what the solution might be. It seems the average user is in the same boat with Winders.
Thanks for the tip. I'm still on 17 and was going to jump right on this, reformat and start fresh, as soon as it came out. But I agree, that breaks Rule One of OS Upgrades: Always wait for the .1 release.
Besides this gives me time to scrap all to pr0n to an external drive.
Wait, did I say that out loud?
And ironically, a lot of the customer base for the fast food industry are minimum wage folks, who won't have money to spend there anymore if automation takes their jobs. When your employees are your customers, you really need to think twice before getting rid of them.
If so, things should work out on their own. The fast food industry will transition to an all-mechanized low-labor business model, and then quietly go out of business.
But I'm not sure how "your employees are your customers" is supposed to work, as a practical matter. That ultimately sounds like you're selling your product to yourself at a markup, losing money on every transaction. And then what, make it up in volume?
Advantage for who? The people not getting a job because the robot is working?
Your comment seems to imply that a higher minimum wage is a bad thing.
Advantage to the owner of the business, of course. Added bonus, (again, to the owner) this is a capital-heavy investment, (cost of the machine) that's DL-lite. (Cost of workers.) And capital expenditures are tax deductible. Even in California.
I don't have an opinion for or against a higher minimum wage. I observe that a higher minimum wage appears to be one of the driving factors for automation designed to eliminate minimum wage jobs. For which, "fast food burger flipper" has long been considered the epitome.
Depends. A penalty shouldn't be based on how much you hate a company, it is proportional to damage done. I can't work out the detail, but TFA implies there were 5000 customers affected which means the penalty is about the price of two new iPhones per customer,
This seems appropriate to me.
And I'm sure it's just part of the cost of doing business for Apple.
Cheaper for now...once any issues with the robot are worked out and enough are starting to be manufactured for economies of scale to kick in I'm guessing that won't be the case. Also, don't assume savings will be passed onto the customer...maybe it is a lot cheaper than teenagers, but the owner thinks the market will support the price so he can pocket the difference.
The one advantage I see for now is that the cost of running the machine (once capital expenditure is made) is unlikely to rise as quickly as minimum wage. Especially in San Francisco.
Teenagers *are* cheaper than robots. At least for now.
I suspect they're spitting on your hamburger because you're calling them illiterate border crossers.
I vote for Musée Mécanique in San Francisco.
Which lizard *did* get elected? They all look alike...
Wow, my kind of place.
Film at 11.