I hate rebooting a server to fix a problem, on principle. Usually, if we've got a memory overflow I can still get in as root but it can take a very long time, (10 minutes+ just to get past the login prompt). AIX won't often crash through lack of memory. However, as a pragmatic choice sometimes it's quicker just to knock the server on the head and reboot than to spend ages trying to log in and kill the offending processes. Better for the customer to have the application up and running than to fix it "properly", even if you have to spend a little time on database recovery afterwards.
As I said, I'm mostly dealing with fairly large UNIX servers, so 100MB of memory is beneath my notice.:-)
It's sensible to have some leaway - even to be a bit generous - but all these old rules of thumb - 2x, 3x, whatever - are completely outdated and nosensical.
My own perspective is from UNIX servers. As I keep telling people any use of swap/paging spaces is bad for performance so the ideal solution is to add RAM. That's not always practicable, so the real answer to how much swap space to allocate is "enough".
I still get software suppliers, (mostly SAP AG) moaning that we've got to allocate 3.5xRAM, which is arrant nonsense. It might have been necessary years back when 2GB was a lot of memory. Now I've got servers with 10s of GBs and I really don't want to waste 100s of GBs of disk on swap space which simply isn't going to be used. Sure: disk is cheap but it all adds up. One of the larger servers I support has 128GB of RAM and 32GB of paging space, (only 1% is actually used at the moment). A few servers like that and you're saving TBs of disk space.
Of course, if you're going to keep your swap space to a minimum you need to have good monitoring in place so that you can extend it before it becomes a problem if something unexpected happens, and it's sensible to be a bit generous about it. We do occasionally have problems when processes suddenly start writing vast amounts of data to memory but I doubt that having loads more swap space would help in those cases, as there are usually bugs in the code. Fortunately root can usually still get in, (if you're patient), identify the offending processes and kill them.
It also helps to have an OS that makes effective use of memory. What I know best is AIX and a few years back, (quite a lot of years in IT terms!) the memory allocation processes were changed so that even if you requested an enormous amount of memory it wasn't really allocated until you actually started to use it, (i.e. put some data in there). That made a considerable difference. I would expect any modern and efficient OS to do something similar.
Paging can be dreadful for performance as you get a multiple hit: the process that needs swapped-out pages runs slow as it waits for data to be paged in; your system as a whole also runs slowly as CPU cycles are taken up servicing the paging requests; your I/O subsystem suffers as it spends time reading and writing to/from paging spaces rather than actually doing useful I/O. It's one of the first things I always target when I'm investigating performance problems on a server, just as it was a couple of decades ago when I was doing the same things with MVS.
Letting users install what the hell they want in their own bit of space makes sense ONLY if they are incapable of affecting other users or the system as a whole. With Windows, that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.
As a Windows user - and not a particularly knowlegeable one - I find it inconvenient that I can't install new software at my whim, but accept it because I'm at least a little aware of the security concerns. For me, and most home users I guess, to install new software I have to actually login as an administrator. A lot of people aren't going to want to take that trouble so use an admin account routinely.
It might be possible, (I'm sure it is), to do what I do with UNIX/Linux and simply switch to a root or other privileged account within my normal session, but if so I - and most members of the general public - don't know how.
Don't underestimate how ignorant of Windows admin tasks most PC users are.
Bush seems to justify a lot of things by saying that the USA is at war. But it's not a type of war that anyone even half a century ago would have recognised. It may be that it *is* a war, (of sorts) but if so I see no prospect of it ever ending. Maybe you (and your allies, such as my own green and pleasant land) will acheive victory over Al Qaida et al but I'm sure that there will be more such extremists in the future.
If "war" can be used as a justification for additional powers make no mistake: they will be permenant.
It can be a bit more complicated than that because those 10 issues might not be completely black and white. If politician Y disagrees with me on 8 issues but his/her policies on those are tolerable it might make sense to vote for him/her.
I suspect the real reason, though, is that many of the issues are too complicated or subtle for a lot of people to care about or understand, so they vote based on those issues which are clear cut.
Possibly, though there are a few I use regularly which aren't on that list. Cordura for example, or plasticene. Some of these might not be used in the USA, (although there are several UK-specific entries in the list). Blu-tack they have as an Australian use, but I think it's common over here, too.
(I guess you were looking at the same list as me, on Wikipedia.)
There are also a lot of products in the list which simply aren't commonplace in the UK, like Gatorade or Lysol.
Looking through the list, there are a few things which I wouldn't consider using because they're innacurate, like Gatso, but which I recognise that most people wouldn't care about. (For me, the difference between a Gatso and a Tru-Velo is important, because only one of them can catch a speeding motorbike.:-))
Or Ribena, 'cause none of the generic alternatives taste as nice, (although I guess they rot your teeth just as well).
They have Ethernet in there, too, and I hope that if I was referring to Ethernet it would actually be Ethernet, because usually the difference would be important to my job.
And if I say Phillips Screwdriver I don't usually mean simply a cross-head, because I know they're different.
As someone else pointed out, I think that iPod is becoming quite widely used. Partly because of the wide brand recognition and partly because it's both easier/quicker to say and write, and also less specific. (I could call my little machine an "MP3 player", but what if I'm actually playing some other format?)
Biro is often used to mean any (cheap) ball-point pen.
Jeep often seems to be used as a generic.
There's a lot of this sort of thing covering regional food products in the EU. e.g. Parma Ham may only be produced in Parma, Italy. Cheddar, however, is too ubiquitous and can come from anywhere.
For me, a traditional PDA is of very limited use. All I really want in a package that small is diary and contacts stuff, which is already on my 'phone. (Along with loads of other things I hardly ever use.)
Something like the Vaio is clearly not as useable as a proper laptop or as portable as a PDA but it gives something of both. I can sling my U71 in a briefcase, satchel or whatever and it offers me much, much more than a PDA.
I use it for Internet radio and for taking notes. It's also a good portable library: shift the display to portrait and it'll show a page of a manual quite nicely. You could read a novel on it if you wanted, I guess, though I don't.
This is a machine I can take with me when I'm travelling on business without having to take extra luggage, and still have access to all my personal stuff - email, usenet, banking: things I can't use my company laptop for.
I also use it for RPG stuff, so I can have all my notes in one convenient package.
It serves as a photo album: most of my holiday snaps are on it now so I can show them to my parents without having to cut CDs or worry about storage.
It's powerful enough for use as a workstation but if you were doing that you'd want to hook it up to a proper monitor and keyboard. But that's no different to the way I use my work laptop.
I don't think anyone could say that this - or any of its competitors are cheap, but it does fill an interesting niche. I could live without my U71, but I do enjoy having it.
I've got a U71 and that came with a small, hinged, USB keyboard which I use occasionally. I'm surprised that the UX180 doesn't come with something similar, (or maybe it does and I missed that). The one I have folds to about the same surface area as the Vaio and about 1cm thick.
For people that want that there are a number of portable keyboards around these days. I suspect Sony felt that the built in keyboard was sufficient for mobile use. With my U71 I tend to use the handwriting recognition software when I'm out and about, with the software keyboard for anything where precision is required - passwords, URLs etc. (I wouldn't want to write an important document with it, but the handwriting recognition is fine for taking notes in meetings and doing a bit of email on the move.)
There's nothing to stop you hooking up a full size monitor, keyboard and mouse if you're using it in an office. If I were regularly using it at a desk that's what I'd do.
Where I currently work, giving out your password or in any way aiding/encouraging someone to circumvent security measures would lead to serious disciplinary measures. We even have procedures in place to bypass your normal bosses and colleagues so that you can report concerns anonymously if you desire. Retribution from said bosses towards the whistle-blower is strongly discouraged by the very highest echelons (oops) of management and can (and has) result in dismissal.
I would have expected a government security agency to operate at least as rigorously in defence of their own security.
Of course, it's not my government so I'm not too bothered. I'm sure SOCA would never let anything like that happen.
It's a very tricky problem but it comes down to how you define a human being. Far too complex to go into in much detail here but consider this:
If I suffer a tragic accident - or the attentions of a mad scientist - and most of my brain is physically removed, leaving just the brain stem, can I still be considered a living human being?
How about if my entire head is removed? (Yes: it would probably be impossible to keep the rest of the body "alive", but just for the sake of argument.)
And how about a culture of my liver cells, living in a petri dish?
Or look at it the other way...
What if parts of my body are replaced by prosthetics: does that me make me less human than before? What if *all* of me except my CNS is replaced?
What is it that makes me "me", and makes me human?
Tesco (biggest UK supermarket chain) have introduced self-service checkouts. You scan the bar-codes on your goods, weigh your own fruit and veg and pay by cash or card, (no cheques), with no staff involved.
I guess they have advantages to Tesco: fewer staff required, and those lanes are always open. But as a customer they're really not worth the extra time and hassle unless all the normal checkouts are very busy and you've only got a few items.
They have some weird restrictions, too. In particular, the goods have to go into a bag on a pressure-sensitive plate. All very well if you're using a new carrier bag from the dispenser but a lot of trouble if you're re-using an old bag; even worse if you're putting it in a ruck-sack or satchel. I'm not sure what the point of this is as I can't see how it's to their advantage.
Here in the UK there seem to be several pricing models. Some are billed by usage, some have a flat limit, some have an initial free amount (or rather no extra charge) and bill for anything over that and others are unlimited. Mine is unlimited overnight, then charged by usage above a set amount (1GB) in peak hours. Of course, the more limited you are the cheaper it is, generally.
Clearly if the will is there then teleworkiing can be very secure.
I think that there is a larger problem with more mobile workers. Where the problem comes is if someone is attending a business meeting at a customer or supplier site where they can't be confident of getting a good connection to their own corporate network, or want to work whilst in transit between offices. For convenience it's very tempting to download any information that might be needed onto the laptop.
Things will be easier with increasing use of VPN and the rapid spread of wireless access points. Something which is still missing, IME, is network access from within other companies: my suppliers don't usually give me anything more than a normal 'phone line - if that - which is barely adequate these days.
In my own case, I don't have anything terribly sensitive: mainly just documentation in case the network connection is very slow, (if I've got no network connectin at all I can't do my work). But it's not hard to imagine staff having a lot of customer data, for example a sales manager taking copies of a lot of business-sensite data on the road.
Agreed. We make extensive use of virtualization/partitioning technologies with IBM pSeries hardware, running various versions of AIX. We've also got some interest in virtualization for our Windows servers, but nothing's actually be done in that area so far: something for the future, perhaps.
For us, although there is an additional administrative load that's pretty minor and is vastly outweighed by the increased flexibility: being able to create new virtual servers or change existing ones at very short notice. It depends a bit on exactly what deals you can get, but for us the hardware works out cheaper, too: a couple of dozen really big servers are cheaper than a couple of hundred smaller ones.
People with bad credit have (often) demonstrated an inability to manage their finances effectively. That makes it more likely that they'll overlook strange and unexpected financial transactions, so a fraudster is likely to go undiscovered much longer.
Somebody with an excellent credit rating might be expected to be paying attention.
A job interview really doesn't give an employer a lot to go on. They won't really know how an employee is going to work out until they actually see them on the job for at least a few months. Therefore it's understandable that they'll look for anything which might give a hint as to the prospective emplyee's nature.
Taking some effort with appearance could be taken as being indicative of some attention to detail and a lack of general sloppiness, both characteristics which are valuable in the IS/IT world.
Failing to conform even a little bit to expectations could show an inability to work with people, which almost inevitably must involve compromises of various sorts.
Ultimately, most dress-codes are pretty arbitrary - including jeans and T-shirt - so it's foolish to say that one is better than another. One might make a case for a purely practical and safety-related form of dress but I'm not sure that really applies all that much in the context of the original post, which specifically related to an image presented to the outside world, not people stuck in back-rooms where nobody of importance ever sees them.
Myself, I usually wear a polo shirt and plain, black trousers, with either boots or deck-shoes according to season. If I know I'm going to be scrabbling around under the floor I'll wear jeans, but it's not a big part of my job. For a quick expedition under a desk I find my normal office attire quite acceptable. Anyone who finds that is not the case might like to suggest to their employer that they get some better cleaning staff.
With small-budget films you can afford to take more chances. Sure, you may lose money on it but assuming you know your job you've got a decent chance of making money and could even end up with a surprise hit.
So a guaranteed but proportionately small return on a big budget film, or a risky but proportionately very large gain on several low-budget films. I reckon the smart money could well be going into smaller films soon.
Of course, you can make vast sums on a big-budget production but it could be even riskier than the small films because it's just one roll of the dice rather than three or four.
Trading Standards is not primarily a copyright enforcement agency. Usually, they'd be dealing with things like faulty goods and services. e.g. Mechanic who charges for servicing your car, but doesn't bother to change the oil, or somebody selling you a kettle that doesn't boil water.
They'd also be concerned by people selling pirated films, music and software, which I guess is how they got involved here. But in that case their interest is not because it's pirated, but because the goods are not what they claim to be. i.e. A good quality, legally produced disc.
Usually Trading Standards officers are extremely good; it's unfair to slag them all off because one officer didn't understand copyright and free software.
I tend to agree, (in my inexpert fashion). The reason I said that was that I didn't want to get embroiled in some tedious debate about whether we're the cause or not as it wasn't really relevant to my main point: "it's happening, do something about it".
Where I used to live (Nailsea, just south of Bristol) used to be an island not so long ago. Large parts of Somerset used to be frequently, sometimes permenantly flooded.
Even if things are simply reverting to a previous state, that doesn't mean that the changes will be beneficial to us. If things are changing it makes sense to prepare for them.
Not building new houses on flood-plains would be a good start.
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I hate rebooting a server to fix a problem, on principle. Usually, if we've got a memory overflow I can still get in as root but it can take a very long time, (10 minutes+ just to get past the login prompt). AIX won't often crash through lack of memory. However, as a pragmatic choice sometimes it's quicker just to knock the server on the head and reboot than to spend ages trying to log in and kill the offending processes. Better for the customer to have the application up and running than to fix it "properly", even if you have to spend a little time on database recovery afterwards.
As I said, I'm mostly dealing with fairly large UNIX servers, so 100MB of memory is beneath my notice. :-)
It's sensible to have some leaway - even to be a bit generous - but all these old rules of thumb - 2x, 3x, whatever - are completely outdated and nosensical.
My own perspective is from UNIX servers. As I keep telling people any use of swap/paging spaces is bad for performance so the ideal solution is to add RAM. That's not always practicable, so the real answer to how much swap space to allocate is "enough".
I still get software suppliers, (mostly SAP AG) moaning that we've got to allocate 3.5xRAM, which is arrant nonsense. It might have been necessary years back when 2GB was a lot of memory. Now I've got servers with 10s of GBs and I really don't want to waste 100s of GBs of disk on swap space which simply isn't going to be used. Sure: disk is cheap but it all adds up. One of the larger servers I support has 128GB of RAM and 32GB of paging space, (only 1% is actually used at the moment). A few servers like that and you're saving TBs of disk space.
Of course, if you're going to keep your swap space to a minimum you need to have good monitoring in place so that you can extend it before it becomes a problem if something unexpected happens, and it's sensible to be a bit generous about it. We do occasionally have problems when processes suddenly start writing vast amounts of data to memory but I doubt that having loads more swap space would help in those cases, as there are usually bugs in the code. Fortunately root can usually still get in, (if you're patient), identify the offending processes and kill them.
It also helps to have an OS that makes effective use of memory. What I know best is AIX and a few years back, (quite a lot of years in IT terms!) the memory allocation processes were changed so that even if you requested an enormous amount of memory it wasn't really allocated until you actually started to use it, (i.e. put some data in there). That made a considerable difference. I would expect any modern and efficient OS to do something similar.
Paging can be dreadful for performance as you get a multiple hit: the process that needs swapped-out pages runs slow as it waits for data to be paged in; your system as a whole also runs slowly as CPU cycles are taken up servicing the paging requests; your I/O subsystem suffers as it spends time reading and writing to/from paging spaces rather than actually doing useful I/O. It's one of the first things I always target when I'm investigating performance problems on a server, just as it was a couple of decades ago when I was doing the same things with MVS.
Letting users install what the hell they want in their own bit of space makes sense ONLY if they are incapable of affecting other users or the system as a whole. With Windows, that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.
As a Windows user - and not a particularly knowlegeable one - I find it inconvenient that I can't install new software at my whim, but accept it because I'm at least a little aware of the security concerns. For me, and most home users I guess, to install new software I have to actually login as an administrator. A lot of people aren't going to want to take that trouble so use an admin account routinely.
It might be possible, (I'm sure it is), to do what I do with UNIX/Linux and simply switch to a root or other privileged account within my normal session, but if so I - and most members of the general public - don't know how.
Don't underestimate how ignorant of Windows admin tasks most PC users are.
Bush seems to justify a lot of things by saying that the USA is at war. But it's not a type of war that anyone even half a century ago would have recognised. It may be that it *is* a war, (of sorts) but if so I see no prospect of it ever ending. Maybe you (and your allies, such as my own green and pleasant land) will acheive victory over Al Qaida et al but I'm sure that there will be more such extremists in the future.
If "war" can be used as a justification for additional powers make no mistake: they will be permenant.
It can be a bit more complicated than that because those 10 issues might not be completely black and white. If politician Y disagrees with me on 8 issues but his/her policies on those are tolerable it might make sense to vote for him/her.
I suspect the real reason, though, is that many of the issues are too complicated or subtle for a lot of people to care about or understand, so they vote based on those issues which are clear cut.
Possibly, though there are a few I use regularly which aren't on that list. Cordura for example, or plasticene. Some of these might not be used in the USA, (although there are several UK-specific entries in the list). Blu-tack they have as an Australian use, but I think it's common over here, too.
:-))
(I guess you were looking at the same list as me, on Wikipedia.)
There are also a lot of products in the list which simply aren't commonplace in the UK, like Gatorade or Lysol.
Looking through the list, there are a few things which I wouldn't consider using because they're innacurate, like Gatso, but which I recognise that most people wouldn't care about. (For me, the difference between a Gatso and a Tru-Velo is important, because only one of them can catch a speeding motorbike.
Or Ribena, 'cause none of the generic alternatives taste as nice, (although I guess they rot your teeth just as well).
They have Ethernet in there, too, and I hope that if I was referring to Ethernet it would actually be Ethernet, because usually the difference would be important to my job.
And if I say Phillips Screwdriver I don't usually mean simply a cross-head, because I know they're different.
As someone else pointed out, I think that iPod is becoming quite widely used. Partly because of the wide brand recognition and partly because it's both easier/quicker to say and write, and also less specific. (I could call my little machine an "MP3 player", but what if I'm actually playing some other format?)
Biro is often used to mean any (cheap) ball-point pen.
Jeep often seems to be used as a generic.
There's a lot of this sort of thing covering regional food products in the EU. e.g. Parma Ham may only be produced in Parma, Italy. Cheddar, however, is too ubiquitous and can come from anywhere.
Whilst (mature) red blood corpuscles don't have nuclei, I was under the impression that white blood cells are genuine cells, and do have nucleii.
Given the amount citizens of the USA plough into on-line gambling, I'm not sure it is correct to say it is somthing that society rejects.
For me, a traditional PDA is of very limited use. All I really want in a package that small is diary and contacts stuff, which is already on my 'phone. (Along with loads of other things I hardly ever use.)
Something like the Vaio is clearly not as useable as a proper laptop or as portable as a PDA but it gives something of both. I can sling my U71 in a briefcase, satchel or whatever and it offers me much, much more than a PDA.
I use it for Internet radio and for taking notes. It's also a good portable library: shift the display to portrait and it'll show a page of a manual quite nicely. You could read a novel on it if you wanted, I guess, though I don't.
This is a machine I can take with me when I'm travelling on business without having to take extra luggage, and still have access to all my personal stuff - email, usenet, banking: things I can't use my company laptop for.
I also use it for RPG stuff, so I can have all my notes in one convenient package.
It serves as a photo album: most of my holiday snaps are on it now so I can show them to my parents without having to cut CDs or worry about storage.
It's powerful enough for use as a workstation but if you were doing that you'd want to hook it up to a proper monitor and keyboard. But that's no different to the way I use my work laptop.
I don't think anyone could say that this - or any of its competitors are cheap, but it does fill an interesting niche. I could live without my U71, but I do enjoy having it.
I've got a U71 and that came with a small, hinged, USB keyboard which I use occasionally. I'm surprised that the UX180 doesn't come with something similar, (or maybe it does and I missed that). The one I have folds to about the same surface area as the Vaio and about 1cm thick.
For people that want that there are a number of portable keyboards around these days. I suspect Sony felt that the built in keyboard was sufficient for mobile use. With my U71 I tend to use the handwriting recognition software when I'm out and about, with the software keyboard for anything where precision is required - passwords, URLs etc. (I wouldn't want to write an important document with it, but the handwriting recognition is fine for taking notes in meetings and doing a bit of email on the move.)
There's nothing to stop you hooking up a full size monitor, keyboard and mouse if you're using it in an office. If I were regularly using it at a desk that's what I'd do.
Where I currently work, giving out your password or in any way aiding/encouraging someone to circumvent security measures would lead to serious disciplinary measures. We even have procedures in place to bypass your normal bosses and colleagues so that you can report concerns anonymously if you desire. Retribution from said bosses towards the whistle-blower is strongly discouraged by the very highest echelons (oops) of management and can (and has) result in dismissal.
I would have expected a government security agency to operate at least as rigorously in defence of their own security.
Of course, it's not my government so I'm not too bothered. I'm sure SOCA would never let anything like that happen.
It's a very tricky problem but it comes down to how you define a human being. Far too complex to go into in much detail here but consider this:
If I suffer a tragic accident - or the attentions of a mad scientist - and most of my brain is physically removed, leaving just the brain stem, can I still be considered a living human being?
How about if my entire head is removed? (Yes: it would probably be impossible to keep the rest of the body "alive", but just for the sake of argument.)
And how about a culture of my liver cells, living in a petri dish?
Or look at it the other way...
What if parts of my body are replaced by prosthetics: does that me make me less human than before? What if *all* of me except my CNS is replaced?
What is it that makes me "me", and makes me human?
Tesco (biggest UK supermarket chain) have introduced self-service checkouts. You scan the bar-codes on your goods, weigh your own fruit and veg and pay by cash or card, (no cheques), with no staff involved.
I guess they have advantages to Tesco: fewer staff required, and those lanes are always open. But as a customer they're really not worth the extra time and hassle unless all the normal checkouts are very busy and you've only got a few items.
They have some weird restrictions, too. In particular, the goods have to go into a bag on a pressure-sensitive plate. All very well if you're using a new carrier bag from the dispenser but a lot of trouble if you're re-using an old bag; even worse if you're putting it in a ruck-sack or satchel. I'm not sure what the point of this is as I can't see how it's to their advantage.
Here in the UK there seem to be several pricing models.
Some are billed by usage, some have a flat limit, some have an initial free amount (or rather no extra charge) and bill for anything over that and others are unlimited. Mine is unlimited overnight, then charged by usage above a set amount (1GB) in peak hours.
Of course, the more limited you are the cheaper it is, generally.
Clearly if the will is there then teleworkiing can be very secure.
I think that there is a larger problem with more mobile workers. Where the problem comes is if someone is attending a business meeting at a customer or supplier site where they can't be confident of getting a good connection to their own corporate network, or want to work whilst in transit between offices. For convenience it's very tempting to download any information that might be needed onto the laptop.
Things will be easier with increasing use of VPN and the rapid spread of wireless access points. Something which is still missing, IME, is network access from within other companies: my suppliers don't usually give me anything more than a normal 'phone line - if that - which is barely adequate these days.
In my own case, I don't have anything terribly sensitive: mainly just documentation in case the network connection is very slow, (if I've got no network connectin at all I can't do my work). But it's not hard to imagine staff having a lot of customer data, for example a sales manager taking copies of a lot of business-sensite data on the road.
Agreed. We make extensive use of virtualization/partitioning technologies with IBM pSeries hardware, running various versions of AIX. We've also got some interest in virtualization for our Windows servers, but nothing's actually be done in that area so far: something for the future, perhaps.
For us, although there is an additional administrative load that's pretty minor and is vastly outweighed by the increased flexibility: being able to create new virtual servers or change existing ones at very short notice. It depends a bit on exactly what deals you can get, but for us the hardware works out cheaper, too: a couple of dozen really big servers are cheaper than a couple of hundred smaller ones.
People with bad credit have (often) demonstrated an inability to manage their finances effectively. That makes it more likely that they'll overlook strange and unexpected financial transactions, so a fraudster is likely to go undiscovered much longer.
Somebody with an excellent credit rating might be expected to be paying attention.
A job interview really doesn't give an employer a lot to go on. They won't really know how an employee is going to work out until they actually see them on the job for at least a few months. Therefore it's understandable that they'll look for anything which might give a hint as to the prospective emplyee's nature.
Taking some effort with appearance could be taken as being indicative of some attention to detail and a lack of general sloppiness, both characteristics which are valuable in the IS/IT world.
Failing to conform even a little bit to expectations could show an inability to work with people, which almost inevitably must involve compromises of various sorts.
Ultimately, most dress-codes are pretty arbitrary - including jeans and T-shirt - so it's foolish to say that one is better than another. One might make a case for a purely practical and safety-related form of dress but I'm not sure that really applies all that much in the context of the original post, which specifically related to an image presented to the outside world, not people stuck in back-rooms where nobody of importance ever sees them.
Myself, I usually wear a polo shirt and plain, black trousers, with either boots or deck-shoes according to season. If I know I'm going to be scrabbling around under the floor I'll wear jeans, but it's not a big part of my job. For a quick expedition under a desk I find my normal office attire quite acceptable. Anyone who finds that is not the case might like to suggest to their employer that they get some better cleaning staff.
With small-budget films you can afford to take more chances. Sure, you may lose money on it but assuming you know your job you've got a decent chance of making money and could even end up with a surprise hit.
So a guaranteed but proportionately small return on a big budget film, or a risky but proportionately very large gain on several low-budget films. I reckon the smart money could well be going into smaller films soon.
Of course, you can make vast sums on a big-budget production but it could be even riskier than the small films because it's just one roll of the dice rather than three or four.
Trading Standards is not primarily a copyright enforcement agency. Usually, they'd be dealing with things like faulty goods and services. e.g. Mechanic who charges for servicing your car, but doesn't bother to change the oil, or somebody selling you a kettle that doesn't boil water.
They'd also be concerned by people selling pirated films, music and software, which I guess is how they got involved here. But in that case their interest is not because it's pirated, but because the goods are not what they claim to be. i.e. A good quality, legally produced disc.
Usually Trading Standards officers are extremely good; it's unfair to slag them all off because one officer didn't understand copyright and free software.
I tend to agree, (in my inexpert fashion). The reason I said that was that I didn't want to get embroiled in some tedious debate about whether we're the cause or not as it wasn't really relevant to my main point: "it's happening, do something about it".
Where I used to live (Nailsea, just south of Bristol) used to be an island not so long ago. Large parts of Somerset used to be frequently, sometimes permenantly flooded.
Even if things are simply reverting to a previous state, that doesn't mean that the changes will be beneficial to us. If things are changing it makes sense to prepare for them.
Not building new houses on flood-plains would be a good start.
Several areas of the planet rely on particular climate systems. The Gulf Stream as you mentioned; the monsoons in Sout-East Asia are another good one.
As well as affecting those, higher global temperatures means more energy in the climate system, leading to more extreme weather generally.