That's one percent of the population. It's not that phone theft happens, it's whether it happens often enough to warrant this solution. I'm thinking no, it doesn't.
In a country this big, just about everything happens somewhere. But the smart effort is to fix the things that happen often, not the edge cases.
In point of fact, I think one could argue that vehicles (your example) are stolen much more often than smartphones. Not to mention that vehicles are generally worth more, and stolen vehicles are more likely to be used in the commission of a crime than stolen smartphones. Yet, the call for vehicle kill switches, although it exists, is not nearly as loud as the call for cell phone kill switches. I wonder why that is. I don't really wonder -- controlling movement is a good way to control a population, but to control information, in this day and age, is a lot more important.
4%, four out of 100, of very young people were victims of phone theft last year. With no knowledge of how many of these were teens losing their phones and telling their parents they were stolen, to save face. How is this a legitimate, pervasive problem? Compared to, oh let's go with, 20% of women getting raped on campus?
I hit send too soon. The point isn't even whether this is a problem or not, the point is that articles like TFA are using a standard ruse (percentage increase without context) to sell us on necessity. You don't find that at all suspicious?
Do you live under a rock? It's a pretty big deal in most large cities.
Is it really? Do you have statistics? My family were early adopters of smartphones (I used to work for a carrier) and none of us ever got one stolen, not even my daughter, who got her first one (a blackberry) at twelve years old. (It helped me keep track of her.) Since the turn of the century I've worked in a group which, being on call, were entitled to a company phone (iphone, samsung or until recently blackberry). You'd think in a moderately big city when you have to carry your phone all the time, we'd occasionally lose one to theft. But it's never happened. I know many instances where a phone was broken, but none, zero, of a phone actually being stolen.
So, maybe my experience has been extremely unusual (someone has to be at the end of the curve) and it's coloring my judgement. But I don't think so.
How does stealing smartphones relate to other types of crime? Is it really a thing at all? TFA gives percentage increases but no way to relate that to number of consumers, or actual monetary impact, so there's no way to tell if this is significant, or if it's a problem the average person is likely to run into.
People being hit by falling pianos up 100% this year!
It seems pretty obvious that this is being pursued because it gives the semblance of government helping consumers while at the same time giving government one more tool they can use to control the population. Because gee, that's never happened before...
> Are you suggesting that the car manufacturer would not want to get that markup themselves?
Of course not. Some, almost certainly. But what is Tesla's goal? Really?? It's to drive everyone else out of business. And the way to do it is to lowball the price. And the reason they can do that is that they don't have to pay for dealers. This is not rocket science.
Every company has overhead. But there's a significant difference between paying one company's overhead, and two company's overhead. (Which is why, incidentally, outsourcing fails. The only question is by how much.)
'Everyone' hates the car dealership, and I do too. But, in my recent, personal experience, they have provided me the benefit of price competition. I needed to lease a car and found the lowest price I could find. I then simply called the 'Internet Department' at each of the local dealerships for this particular model, and just asked if they could beat that price. One guy said he could, and I went to him. I don't know if this is possible with purchasing a Tesla. Can different dealerships set their own prices, or, since the dealership is the manufacturer, is the price the same across any 'dealership' within a given geographical area?
The problem is, all the different prices you got were different amounts of markup from the manufacturer's price. You settled for the least amount of markup you could find. I suspect that all of them would be more expensive than buying directly from the manufacturer, which in the case of Tesla, you essentially are.
It only seems like a good deal in comparison to worse deals, not because it's actually a good deal.
"You paid WHAT!!" "But it's ok honey, it was 50% off! Think of the money we saved!"
Yes, in this case it would be retail, by definition. I think we're getting tied up in terminology. It's only called wholesale with other car companies because consumers can't buy from the company directly -- the purchase must be done from a middleman, at a brick and mortar store, with usually a pretty large number of employees. All that ultimately adds overhead costs plus dealer profit margin, which is why the car costs more than if you (could) buy it from the manufacturer.
In the case of Tesla, you *are* buying from the manufacturer. Without dealer overhead (and profit), all other things being equal (which they never are, but bear with me), wouldn't this result in cheaper prices to consumers? I chose to call it "buying wholesale", but I suppose the terminology depends on your point of view.
Yes. I was specifically thinking of earthquakes. If you live in an area prone to earthquakes, try to have a set of backups in an area not prone to earthquakes. (Even if it's prone to some other, unrelated type of disaster.)
> "Wireless is different... it is dependent on finite spectrum,"
um, ok. I suspect she means by this that for a given area, there is finite data carrying capacity to cellular phones.
Ok. Name the network that doesn't have a finite data carrying capacity. Of course it might be more than the capacity of a cell tower, but in no cases is it not finite.
Probably it would have been more correct to say "the maximum data carrying capacity of wireless is significantly less than traditional network connections" but I'm not even sure that's true.
That's a very strange definition of backup. Sounds more like you're talking about an offline backup. Typically backup systems are connected to the system that made them so they can be restored easily.
An effective backup system must have both online and offline backups. Having all of your backups online violates the "integrity" part of basic security (confidentiality, integrity, availability) as you can't guarantee integrity if all data sets are subject to attack from a single source.
Even when "backing up" your PC at home to another disk drive, you aren't safe until you disconnect the drive. And that's only a little bit safe. Safer is to put it in a different room. Even safer, a different house. (This is what I do.) Safest of all, a different geological area.
a difficult strategy to implement with cloud services.
Any competent hosting provider has a TCP/IP KVM in their datacenter. They hook it up, give you a password and the IP address and you have console access $500 worth of hardware, money well spent, I'd say
That really depends on the implementation. It's my understanding that cloud hosting leans heavily on VM, meaning your actual servers are unlikely to be physical. What the "console" means in this case could be problematic, as the "console" is not physical and is generally available in some fashion over the network. The cloud service is unlikely to give you direct access to the host machine's console, because the machine may be (probably is) hosting for several unrelated customers.
What you're describing is what's used in small current installations (smaller than the huge datacenters typical of cloud services) or really old machine rooms. A competent hosting provider wouldn't be pushing a crash cart around -- they would have built "console" access into the infrastructure; using a hardware or software solution as appropriate.
The point being, if the owner could get to the machine's console from the outside, so, potentially, could the perp. Again, depending on implementation.
Someone else mentioned having offline backups, so I won't belabor that. But once they knew they were compromised, perhaps a smarter thing to do would have been to contact the service provider and take countermeasures (ask for a snapshot of the site as it was, examine and disable accounts, change admin passwords, perhaps contact authorities) before reaching out to the perp. I'm not sure reaching out to the perp was a good idea in any case.
For awhile I hosted a number of websites from a rental space, and I did get compromised once. (security hole in a popular web admin tool) As soon as I detected it, I drove to the physical site, unplugged the server from the internet, and worked from the console. It occurs to me that this might be a difficult strategy to implement with cloud services.
Daughter graduated from high school two years ago. She took darkroom, created pinhole cameras, and later got a Holga. It's called Lomography, and it's become quite popular. Just recently she acquired a very old twin lens reflex and is experimenting with that.
One of the advantages is that old school cameras use 120 and 220 film, a format that's still being propped up by the wedding photography industry. So film and developing are readily available, at least for now.
One issue is that old passive handheld light meters degrade over time, and new handheld meters are kinda expensive. You almost need a modern camera to take light readings in order to accurately set up the retro camera.
I see this as the photography equivalent of the resurgence of LP records.
Yes, but... he still has a point. If the "computer crashed" story doesn't fly for whatever reason, they might throw a local sysadmin under the bus for "implementing a typical industry email purge policy, not realizing that it's illegal for a federal entity to do so". Watch for that story.
Yes, of course they do. And they do regular backups. This story only flies with people who are not knowledgeable about computers in a business environment. Apparently the IRS thought there were enough of those that the people crying bullshit could be made to seem like right wing loonies.
But this isn't a right wing vs left wing issue -- whatever the current administration gets away with, will be fair game for the next administration, regardless of party.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one percent of the population. It's not that phone theft happens, it's whether it happens often enough to warrant this solution. I'm thinking no, it doesn't.
In a country this big, just about everything happens somewhere. But the smart effort is to fix the things that happen often, not the edge cases.
In point of fact, I think one could argue that vehicles (your example) are stolen much more often than smartphones. Not to mention that vehicles are generally worth more, and stolen vehicles are more likely to be used in the commission of a crime than stolen smartphones. Yet, the call for vehicle kill switches, although it exists, is not nearly as loud as the call for cell phone kill switches. I wonder why that is. I don't really wonder -- controlling movement is a good way to control a population, but to control information, in this day and age, is a lot more important.
4%, four out of 100, of very young people were victims of phone theft last year. With no knowledge of how many of these were teens losing their phones and telling their parents they were stolen, to save face. How is this a legitimate, pervasive problem? Compared to, oh let's go with, 20% of women getting raped on campus?
I hit send too soon. The point isn't even whether this is a problem or not, the point is that articles like TFA are using a standard ruse (percentage increase without context) to sell us on necessity. You don't find that at all suspicious?
Is it really a thing at all?
Do you live under a rock? It's a pretty big deal in most large cities.
Is it really? Do you have statistics? My family were early adopters of smartphones (I used to work for a carrier) and none of us ever got one stolen, not even my daughter, who got her first one (a blackberry) at twelve years old. (It helped me keep track of her.) Since the turn of the century I've worked in a group which, being on call, were entitled to a company phone (iphone, samsung or until recently blackberry). You'd think in a moderately big city when you have to carry your phone all the time, we'd occasionally lose one to theft. But it's never happened. I know many instances where a phone was broken, but none, zero, of a phone actually being stolen.
So, maybe my experience has been extremely unusual (someone has to be at the end of the curve) and it's coloring my judgement. But I don't think so.
How does stealing smartphones relate to other types of crime? Is it really a thing at all? TFA gives percentage increases but no way to relate that to number of consumers, or actual monetary impact, so there's no way to tell if this is significant, or if it's a problem the average person is likely to run into.
People being hit by falling pianos up 100% this year!
It seems pretty obvious that this is being pursued because it gives the semblance of government helping consumers while at the same time giving government one more tool they can use to control the population. Because gee, that's never happened before...
I dunno, maybe I'm old, but "microchip" doesn't seem all that wacky to me.
> Are you suggesting that the car manufacturer would not want to get that markup themselves?
Of course not. Some, almost certainly. But what is Tesla's goal? Really?? It's to drive everyone else out of business. And the way to do it is to lowball the price. And the reason they can do that is that they don't have to pay for dealers. This is not rocket science.
Every company has overhead. But there's a significant difference between paying one company's overhead, and two company's overhead. (Which is why, incidentally, outsourcing fails. The only question is by how much.)
'Everyone' hates the car dealership, and I do too. But, in my recent, personal experience, they have provided me the benefit of price competition. I needed to lease a car and found the lowest price I could find. I then simply called the 'Internet Department' at each of the local dealerships for this particular model, and just asked if they could beat that price. One guy said he could, and I went to him. I don't know if this is possible with purchasing a Tesla. Can different dealerships set their own prices, or, since the dealership is the manufacturer, is the price the same across any 'dealership' within a given geographical area?
The problem is, all the different prices you got were different amounts of markup from the manufacturer's price. You settled for the least amount of markup you could find. I suspect that all of them would be more expensive than buying directly from the manufacturer, which in the case of Tesla, you essentially are.
It only seems like a good deal in comparison to worse deals, not because it's actually a good deal.
"You paid WHAT!!" "But it's ok honey, it was 50% off! Think of the money we saved!"
Yes, in this case it would be retail, by definition. I think we're getting tied up in terminology. It's only called wholesale with other car companies because consumers can't buy from the company directly -- the purchase must be done from a middleman, at a brick and mortar store, with usually a pretty large number of employees. All that ultimately adds overhead costs plus dealer profit margin, which is why the car costs more than if you (could) buy it from the manufacturer.
In the case of Tesla, you *are* buying from the manufacturer. Without dealer overhead (and profit), all other things being equal (which they never are, but bear with me), wouldn't this result in cheaper prices to consumers? I chose to call it "buying wholesale", but I suppose the terminology depends on your point of view.
I'd say, if it's from 1958, it's ok to call it a microchip.
Isn't price competition based on who has the lowest dealer markup?
Doesn't eliminating the dealer franchise also eliminate dealer markup?
Wouldn't we all be buying the same wholesale price?
That being the case, how is price competition (in this case!) a good thing?
Some would argue that Dallas Cowboys is not in use...
I vote for the Washington Inoffensives. But I thought the Bullets should be renamed the Fluffy Bunnies. Nobody pays attention to me.
Yes. I was specifically thinking of earthquakes. If you live in an area prone to earthquakes, try to have a set of backups in an area not prone to earthquakes. (Even if it's prone to some other, unrelated type of disaster.)
> "Wireless is different ... it is dependent on finite spectrum,"
um, ok. I suspect she means by this that for a given area, there is finite data carrying capacity to cellular phones.
Ok. Name the network that doesn't have a finite data carrying capacity. Of course it might be more than the capacity of a cell tower, but in no cases is it not finite.
Probably it would have been more correct to say "the maximum data carrying capacity of wireless is significantly less than traditional network connections" but I'm not even sure that's true.
That's a very strange definition of backup. Sounds more like you're talking about an offline backup. Typically backup systems are connected to the system that made them so they can be restored easily.
An effective backup system must have both online and offline backups. Having all of your backups online violates the "integrity" part of basic security (confidentiality, integrity, availability) as you can't guarantee integrity if all data sets are subject to attack from a single source.
Even when "backing up" your PC at home to another disk drive, you aren't safe until you disconnect the drive. And that's only a little bit safe. Safer is to put it in a different room. Even safer, a different house. (This is what I do.) Safest of all, a different geological area.
a difficult strategy to implement with cloud services.
Any competent hosting provider has a TCP/IP KVM in their datacenter. They hook it up, give you a password and the IP address and you have console access $500 worth of hardware, money well spent, I'd say
That really depends on the implementation. It's my understanding that cloud hosting leans heavily on VM, meaning your actual servers are unlikely to be physical. What the "console" means in this case could be problematic, as the "console" is not physical and is generally available in some fashion over the network. The cloud service is unlikely to give you direct access to the host machine's console, because the machine may be (probably is) hosting for several unrelated customers.
What you're describing is what's used in small current installations (smaller than the huge datacenters typical of cloud services) or really old machine rooms. A competent hosting provider wouldn't be pushing a crash cart around -- they would have built "console" access into the infrastructure; using a hardware or software solution as appropriate.
The point being, if the owner could get to the machine's console from the outside, so, potentially, could the perp. Again, depending on implementation.
Someone else mentioned having offline backups, so I won't belabor that. But once they knew they were compromised, perhaps a smarter thing to do would have been to contact the service provider and take countermeasures (ask for a snapshot of the site as it was, examine and disable accounts, change admin passwords, perhaps contact authorities) before reaching out to the perp. I'm not sure reaching out to the perp was a good idea in any case.
For awhile I hosted a number of websites from a rental space, and I did get compromised once. (security hole in a popular web admin tool) As soon as I detected it, I drove to the physical site, unplugged the server from the internet, and worked from the console. It occurs to me that this might be a difficult strategy to implement with cloud services.
Good thing people hosted their stuff on the cloud...
No kidding. Their backups also, apparently.
That would have a lot more impact if you were a real person. As it is, it reads ironic.
There are specific Fed regs for email. In fact, a hard copy is required. This is a blatant sham.
Agreed.
It's retro. Retro is big right now.
Daughter graduated from high school two years ago. She took darkroom, created pinhole cameras, and later got a Holga. It's called Lomography, and it's become quite popular. Just recently she acquired a very old twin lens reflex and is experimenting with that.
One of the advantages is that old school cameras use 120 and 220 film, a format that's still being propped up by the wedding photography industry. So film and developing are readily available, at least for now.
One issue is that old passive handheld light meters degrade over time, and new handheld meters are kinda expensive. You almost need a modern camera to take light readings in order to accurately set up the retro camera.
I see this as the photography equivalent of the resurgence of LP records.
Yes, but... he still has a point. If the "computer crashed" story doesn't fly for whatever reason, they might throw a local sysadmin under the bus for "implementing a typical industry email purge policy, not realizing that it's illegal for a federal entity to do so". Watch for that story.
Yes, of course they do. And they do regular backups. This story only flies with people who are not knowledgeable about computers in a business environment. Apparently the IRS thought there were enough of those that the people crying bullshit could be made to seem like right wing loonies.
But this isn't a right wing vs left wing issue -- whatever the current administration gets away with, will be fair game for the next administration, regardless of party.