American socialism? That's a great talking point.... Until you look at the numbers.
America's wealthiest have gotten that way by indexing wages to inflation for the last few decades and then collecting the fruits of our enormous economic growth.
It also doesn't hurt that they've been bribing^W lobbying for rules in their favor since the Great Depression kicked off strong reforms.
Seriously, go back and read what the founding fathers had to say and look hard at what they did. They understood that creating a monied aristocracy was a terrible thing and their taxation policies and ideologies reflected that.
Additional items that are definitely worth the money, but don't have any geek shininess to them: Spray foam insulation. If you have the walls open anyway, put in spray foam. at 7.5 inches thick (exterior wall), the stuff has an R value of around 50, and unlike all other forms of insulation, it wont degrade over time. I have several rooms in my house that you can heat with a candle. My total heating bill is less than the cost of running the household appliances, even in the dead of winter.
I'm pretty sure with 7.5 inches of foam, you won't have any problems, but for everyone else: Spray foam can lead to moisture & mold problems if not done the right way.
If you don't have enough foam, it can lead to condensation and mold in the walls. Or you can have the right amount of foam, but on the wrong side of a vapor barrier... you get condensation and mold.
As a related but separate issue, individual rooms that are too tightly sealed will have higher humidity... leading to mold. Central air is almost mandatory if you want to seal up your house this tightly, just to circulate the air and prevent mold. Old drafty houses don't have this problem, because they breathe (too much), and moisture takes care of itself.
States have never been able to handle their data security, the Federal Government has done slightly better, and private business has done the worst job of all because they just don't disclose anything unless required to by law.
The guard does not make the policy; management does. If the guard does not enforce the management policy they will be fired for cause.
More often than not, the people responsible for enforcing [policy] are undertrained and do not fully understand how they are supposed to be enforcing [policy]. And sometimes, not even the management understands how a policy should be implemented within the bounds of the law.
This is not an "I was just following orders" as used in the Munich trials; no one was killed.
Is it okay to assault people as long as no one is killed? Is it okay to infringe upon their civil liberties, as long as no one is killed? WTF kind of specious argument is that?
1. Obviously the concerned/.er should wait until his business relationship with that company is ended.
2. A cease and desist letter means fuck all. It's a statement of intent, designed to intimidate, and should be treated with all the respect that type of behavior deserves. The threat of C&D letters are a big part of the reason that so many advocate full disclosure.
3. It isn't likely that a C&D would be granted by a court. Many have made the threat, but few go through the courthouse doors, because it is textbook free speech they are trying to suppress.
4. If C&Ds were handed out like candy, the security research industry would have died off years ago, which is why I suggested (s)he passes off the exploit to someone with standing in the security research community.
If the OP seriously thinks the webhost are the C&D types, then he should go through TOR and post everything to a security mailing list, . The webhost can go fuck itself if they refuse to respond in a responsible fashion.
Tell the webhost they have XYZ days to fix the problem before you publish the exploit.
https://forms.us-cert.gov/report/ is also a good place to report exploits. But if you're shy, I'd also consider forwarding the details to a reputable security research company, so that maybe they can alert others with misconfigured systems and CERT.
Why do we need "next generation" satellites? Why not build more of the same, which apparently have worked adequately for quite a while?
Car Analogy Warning: When fuel is your biggest cost, the price difference between launching a Model-T into orbit isn't really that relevant compared to launching a ferrari.
There's also the whole "technology improving" thing. Imagine the current state of science if we were only using microscopes that "have worked adequately for quite a while" Heck, feel free to compare and contrast a 1999 cell phone with one made in 2010.
The wages dropping has nothing to do with people coming to America to work, and everything with moving jobs out of America to countries with much cheaper labor.
The wages dropping has nothing to do with people coming to America to work, and everything with businesses not increasing wages.
TLDNR: Massive amounts of wealth have been generated and almost none of it has trickled down to the working class.
*Be careful which graphs you look at, not all of them are created equal. **You can look up the S&P 500 if you prefer, they're the other market index that's existed before the 60s
The markup is large but I suspect it is no where near that by the time you add in advertising (print, TV, cold/warm calls), collections activities, billing legal etc.
Companies wouldn't pay for any of those things (other than legal) if they didn't provide a positive return on investment. Most bad bills get sold off to a debt collection agency for pennies on the dollar, because trying to collect directly would cost far too much. Billing, even though it's the way they make money, has been heavily computerized in order to cut costs. Advertising... why are we even talking about this?
Is post-geek a label? As in, one who used to pay attention to the excessive details of digging deep into how something works, but now has graduated into the realization that one can do whatever one needs to do with just about any tools or platform or system and no longer has a need to scrutinize so strongly because one's skills are good enough to weather any circumstances regardless of the technological changes?
Trusted computing has a needlessly bad rap because of kneejerk reactions like this one. In fact it's a flexible and general tool that can be used for many purposes.
Because I'm lazy, I'll just copy and paste a comment I made in another thread about TPM
Ever since TPM was created, we're always just a few bits and bytes away from having it leveraged against us, by them. And by "us" I mean "the computer users." By "them" I mean "the hardware manufacturers and software/media companies."
Example: The newest motherboards don't *need* the ability to disable trusted boot. Heck, it'd have been easier to not include it! We're more or less at the mercy of a small number of companies and their design decisions.
If there were a fundamental difference in the parties, it would be reflected in their rhetoric on things like the [...], the huge abuses of the financial industry in the U.S., etc. But both parties are CONSPICUOUSLY SILENT on all these issues.
Are you serious? Democrats have been pushing regulation since the financial collapse. Republicans have been trying to water down, roll back, or obstruct as much as they can.
Romney has repeatedly said he'd repeal Dodd-Frank, and Republicans fought like hell to prevent anyone from being nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which came out of Dodd-Frank).
I could keep giving examples until hitting/.'s text limit. There are issues where both parties agree (like leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, warantless wiretaps, drone strikes, etc) but the financial abuses are an issue where both parties have taken clear and opposing positions.
I was truly saddened when I first saw him going onto opinion shows and rabidly spouting talking points. Now he's doing a mix of "Top 10 reasons not to re-elect Obama, Part 1" and "Chuck Norris takes on toxic suds in baby shampoo"
In addition, the settlement bars misrepresentations about the companyâ(TM)s privacy and data security practices and requires that it implement a comprehensive information security program with independent third-party audits every two years for 20 years.
There's more to the proposed settlement than just "a little money"
That said, what judge would approve $10,000 for the plaintiffs and $500,000 for the lawyers? That'd be completely fucked if it gets approved.
Long term studies of children perscribed stimulant medication shows two things 1. Through their teens, they're less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol compared to their peers 2. As adults, their rates of drug/alcohol abuse are neither higher nor lower than is normal for their age group.
/Caffeine might as well be apple juice compared to amphetamines
It seems like Amazon's weakest link is Virginia. I recall from the last Amazon outage thread on/. that Virginia seems to be the epicenter for epic fail.
problem with 60GHz: it has an effective range of about seven inches.
Says who?
You can get 1.25 gigbits and five-9s availability at 1 mile range. The range can be pushed out a couple more miles, but even with extra error correction, your availability will drop to three-9s purely because of atmospheric conditions.
The 70, 80, and 90 GHz licensed spectrums have even longer ranges and are even more directional.
I'm not an electrical/radio engineer, but I could have designed a better standard...blindfolded.
I'd like to see you and I'm sure there are multinational corporations that would pay you megabucks to make it happen. The problem isn't the standard, it's the amount of unlicensed spectrum available at 2.4 GHz
The unlicensed 2.4 GHz has 84.5 MHz of bandwidth. The unlicensed 5.8 GHz has 125 MHz of bandwidth. The unlicensed 60 GHz has 7 GHz of bandwidth from 57GHz to 64GHz
Just make it totally impossible to ever register a stolen serial number for new service and this should slow way down.
You'll stop the idiots who steal phones and keep them for personal use. Everything else will just end up overseas. End result: thieves will make a little bit less money selling to the black market, in order to cover the overhead from exporting the phones.
Slashdot Mirror
American socialism?
That's a great talking point.... Until you look at the numbers.
America's wealthiest have gotten that way by indexing wages to inflation for the last few decades and then collecting the fruits of our enormous economic growth.
It also doesn't hurt that they've been bribing^W lobbying for rules in their favor since the Great Depression kicked off strong reforms.
Seriously, go back and read what the founding fathers had to say and look hard at what they did.
They understood that creating a monied aristocracy was a terrible thing and their taxation policies and ideologies reflected that.
Additional items that are definitely worth the money, but don't have any geek shininess to them: Spray foam insulation. If you have the walls open anyway, put in spray foam. at 7.5 inches thick (exterior wall), the stuff has an R value of around 50, and unlike all other forms of insulation, it wont degrade over time. I have several rooms in my house that you can heat with a candle. My total heating bill is less than the cost of running the household appliances, even in the dead of winter.
I'm pretty sure with 7.5 inches of foam, you won't have any problems, but for everyone else:
Spray foam can lead to moisture & mold problems if not done the right way.
If you don't have enough foam, it can lead to condensation and mold in the walls.
Or you can have the right amount of foam, but on the wrong side of a vapor barrier... you get condensation and mold.
As a related but separate issue, individual rooms that are too tightly sealed will have higher humidity... leading to mold.
Central air is almost mandatory if you want to seal up your house this tightly, just to circulate the air and prevent mold.
Old drafty houses don't have this problem, because they breathe (too much), and moisture takes care of itself.
States have never been able to handle their data security, the Federal Government has done slightly better,
and private business has done the worst job of all because they just don't disclose anything unless required to by law.
The guard does not make the policy; management does. If the guard does not enforce the management policy they will be fired for cause.
More often than not, the people responsible for enforcing [policy] are undertrained and do not fully understand how they are supposed to be enforcing [policy].
And sometimes, not even the management understands how a policy should be implemented within the bounds of the law.
This is not an "I was just following orders" as used in the Munich trials; no one was killed.
Is it okay to assault people as long as no one is killed?
Is it okay to infringe upon their civil liberties, as long as no one is killed?
WTF kind of specious argument is that?
1. Obviously the concerned /.er should wait until his business relationship with that company is ended.
2. A cease and desist letter means fuck all.
It's a statement of intent, designed to intimidate, and should be treated with all the respect that type of behavior deserves.
The threat of C&D letters are a big part of the reason that so many advocate full disclosure.
3. It isn't likely that a C&D would be granted by a court. Many have made the threat, but few go through the courthouse doors, because it is textbook free speech they are trying to suppress.
4. If C&Ds were handed out like candy, the security research industry would have died off years ago, which is why I suggested (s)he passes off the exploit to someone with standing in the security research community.
If the OP seriously thinks the webhost are the C&D types, then he should go through TOR and post everything to a security mailing list, .
The webhost can go fuck itself if they refuse to respond in a responsible fashion.
Tell the webhost they have XYZ days to fix the problem before you publish the exploit.
https://forms.us-cert.gov/report/ is also a good place to report exploits.
But if you're shy, I'd also consider forwarding the details to a reputable security research company,
so that maybe they can alert others with misconfigured systems and CERT.
Why do we need "next generation" satellites? Why not build more of the same, which apparently have worked adequately for quite a while?
Car Analogy Warning: When fuel is your biggest cost, the price difference between launching a Model-T into orbit isn't really that relevant compared to launching a ferrari.
There's also the whole "technology improving" thing.
Imagine the current state of science if we were only using microscopes that "have worked adequately for quite a while"
Heck, feel free to compare and contrast a 1999 cell phone with one made in 2010.
Lies! I haven't received any free coasters from them for years now.
That's how they saved the company!
You wouldn't believe how much they were spending to press & mail out those CDs.
The wages dropping has nothing to do with people coming to America to work, and everything with moving jobs out of America to countries with much cheaper labor.
The wages dropping has nothing to do with people coming to America to work, and everything with businesses not increasing wages.
Over the last 40 years, the average inflation-adjusted wage has barely increased.*
The current $7.25/hour minimum wage is actually less than the average wage of 40 years ago.
And yet, in that same period of time, the Dow Jones avg went from ~735 to ~13,500**
(actually, it peaked at 14,100 in late 2007. Then crashed to 6,500 in 2009 and recovered extremely rapidly)
TLDNR: Massive amounts of wealth have been generated and almost none of it has trickled down to the working class.
*Be careful which graphs you look at, not all of them are created equal.
**You can look up the S&P 500 if you prefer, they're the other market index that's existed before the 60s
The markup is large but I suspect it is no where near that by the time you add in advertising (print, TV, cold/warm calls), collections activities, billing legal etc.
Companies wouldn't pay for any of those things (other than legal) if they didn't provide a positive return on investment.
Most bad bills get sold off to a debt collection agency for pennies on the dollar, because trying to collect directly would cost far too much.
Billing, even though it's the way they make money, has been heavily computerized in order to cut costs.
Advertising... why are we even talking about this?
Is post-geek a label? As in, one who used to pay attention to the excessive details of digging deep into how something works, but now has graduated into the realization that one can do whatever one needs to do with just about any tools or platform or system and no longer has a need to scrutinize so strongly because one's skills are good enough to weather any circumstances regardless of the technological changes?
Not everyone's skills are good enough.
But TWX (665546), you're not alone.
There is hope and there is help: Ask Slashdot: Rectifying Nerd Arrogance?
Trusted computing has a needlessly bad rap because of kneejerk reactions like this one. In fact it's a flexible and general tool that can be used for many purposes.
Because I'm lazy, I'll just copy and paste a comment I made in another thread about TPM
Ever since TPM was created, we're always just a few bits and bytes away from having it leveraged against us, by them.
And by "us" I mean "the computer users."
By "them" I mean "the hardware manufacturers and software/media companies."
Example: The newest motherboards don't *need* the ability to disable trusted boot. Heck, it'd have been easier to not include it!
We're more or less at the mercy of a small number of companies and their design decisions.
If you can afford a specialty hunting rifle, you can probably afford to have one made or modified for a left handed grip.
If there were a fundamental difference in the parties, it would be reflected in their rhetoric on things like the [...], the huge abuses of the financial industry in the U.S., etc. But both parties are CONSPICUOUSLY SILENT on all these issues.
Are you serious?
Democrats have been pushing regulation since the financial collapse.
Republicans have been trying to water down, roll back, or obstruct as much as they can.
Romney has repeatedly said he'd repeal Dodd-Frank, and Republicans fought like hell to prevent anyone from being nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which came out of Dodd-Frank).
I could keep giving examples until hitting /.'s text limit.
There are issues where both parties agree (like leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, warantless wiretaps, drone strikes, etc)
but the financial abuses are an issue where both parties have taken clear and opposing positions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Chuck Norris: http://www.wnd.com/author/cnorris/
I was truly saddened when I first saw him going onto opinion shows and rabidly spouting talking points.
Now he's doing a mix of "Top 10 reasons not to re-elect Obama, Part 1" and "Chuck Norris takes on toxic suds in baby shampoo"
I feel like you're missing a key issue in the discussion.
China controls ~90% of the rare earth refining capacity.
That's what's being reduced.
Why would the US want to sell or produce rare earths?
So that the USA isn't beholden to China's monopoly on refined rare earths.
Was that a trick question
I was randomly selected for the SSS tag on my boarding pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Selection
You sure there wasn't a fourth "S" on your ticket?
In addition, the settlement bars misrepresentations about the companyâ(TM)s privacy and data security practices and requires that it implement a comprehensive information security program with independent third-party audits every two years for 20 years.
There's more to the proposed settlement than just "a little money"
That said, what judge would approve $10,000 for the plaintiffs and $500,000 for the lawyers?
That'd be completely fucked if it gets approved.
For various definitions of "distribute"
Your mileage may vary
Long term studies of children perscribed stimulant medication shows two things
1. Through their teens, they're less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol compared to their peers
2. As adults, their rates of drug/alcohol abuse are neither higher nor lower than is normal for their age group.
/Caffeine might as well be apple juice compared to amphetamines
Your SLA is only as good as your weakest link.
It seems like Amazon's weakest link is Virginia. /. that Virginia seems to be the epicenter for epic fail.
I recall from the last Amazon outage thread on
Not to mention that weird "all your data goes to our servers in Canada first" thing.
Maybe it'd help if you think of it as "all your data goes to our servers in a-country-that-respects-privacy first"
problem with 60GHz: it has an effective range of about seven inches.
Says who?
You can get 1.25 gigbits and five-9s availability at 1 mile range.
The range can be pushed out a couple more miles, but even with extra error correction,
your availability will drop to three-9s purely because of atmospheric conditions.
The 70, 80, and 90 GHz licensed spectrums have even longer ranges and are even more directional.
I'm not an electrical/radio engineer, but I could have designed a better standard...blindfolded.
I'd like to see you and I'm sure there are multinational corporations that would pay you megabucks to make it happen.
The problem isn't the standard, it's the amount of unlicensed spectrum available at 2.4 GHz
The unlicensed 2.4 GHz has 84.5 MHz of bandwidth.
The unlicensed 5.8 GHz has 125 MHz of bandwidth.
The unlicensed 60 GHz has 7 GHz of bandwidth from 57GHz to 64GHz
Just make it totally impossible to ever register a stolen serial number for new service and this should slow way down.
You'll stop the idiots who steal phones and keep them for personal use.
Everything else will just end up overseas.
End result: thieves will make a little bit less money selling to the black market, in order to cover the overhead from exporting the phones.