Even more epic fail, I've worked on the MS campus a lot, and in fact installed much of the security hardware. I take them on a mental tour of the campus, trying to get them to tell me what building they're supposedly working in, ask them whether the Ms Pacman machine is still in that stairwell, etc. It can be fun.
One would think that when I tell them that I've done server and desktop support for close to two decades it should scare them off, but it doesn't seem to. The ones that I've gotten have a script, and they'll follow it off the edge of the Earth. I've kept them on the line for up to 23 minutes, and even then I only hung up because it was time to throw things in the wok and I needed both hands.
It's what you learn on. I learned on Windows, when I use a Mac I'm utterly lost and think "Why did Apple make it so hard to find anything?"
I'll guarantee that if you and I spend the same amount of money on a Windows and Apple boxes that I *will* get superior hardware, but that yours is tested by Apple to be compatible with their OS. We'll both get operating systems that we understand where all the moving parts are and will both think that we got the better deal. If MS were to have full testing and approval of every piece of hardware and software and all drivers ever installed on every Windows workstation since the beginning of time it would be known for its stability as well. Instead MS went for maximum flexibility, with the result that their software is installed on most of the desktop computers and around half the servers on the entire planet.
We can only hope. It's not an easy job, and the pay/benefits tend to dissuade those most capable of doing it well. Application and network security get all the attention and all the budget, but what good are they if someone can just walk up to the server, download the database to an external drive, and walk out?
We've never had any problem, but we don't move money around beyond buying a piece of property or building a house. We just leave our money in US accounts and withdraw it wherever we are. For sending money to family we just leave one of our ATM cards with my brother-in-law, and he does the withdrawals for us. $3 per withdrawal, plus another $1.50 fee from his bank, and happens instantly. (We used to do money transfers, which cost $40, plus $10 in Peru, plus 1% of the amount withdrawn, and would take anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks to arrive.)
Friends of ours have a business cleaning corporate offices. Twice they have been offered money to plug a netbook into a network port in an unoccupied cubicle, leave it for a few days, and then bring it back. They didn't of course, but it must have been tempting.
I can pretty much guarantee that the reason for this is the difficulty hiring competent guard staff in the SFO area. Silicon Valley salaries have have inflated the local pay scale enough that security companies are having trouble finding people willing to work for crap wages and still have an IQ above room temperature. The way contracts for the really large companies are generally done is the security vendor will offer to cover staffing for all their sites throughout the country for a certain price. Too many management types will automatically go for the lowest bidder, and competition for the major contracts is fierce. Of course the salescritters will always low-ball the price, so the local security managers are stuck trying to pinch pennies while providing the staffing levels contracted for. Apple and Google are going to skim off the cream of the available guard staff, leaving the dregs for the security contractors to dispatch to their other customers.
I'm a US citizen living abroad with a dual-citizen son. I can tell you that there are advantages and disadvantages. The benefits are that they can travel freely to the US and live and work in the US without having to obtain a green card. Also they can travel on either of their pasports largely depending on which country they travel to and they will qualify to receive assistance from any US consulate or embassy when overseas. They will be legally entitled to vote in any federal elections in the US when they turn 18, although if they have never actually lived in the US in practice they can't because no state will allow them to register to vote in that particular state.
The disadvantages are that when they start working they will always have to file a tax return in the US, regardless of where they actually live. For the most part they will receive an exemption for US taxes for any income they receive while working overseas with the exception of self-employment income, if they are legally self-employed then they will have to pay self-employment tax in the US in addition to any tax they pay overseas (some, but not all foreign countries have a self-employment double-tax agreement with the US, though which mitigates this). For me to avoid this tax I had to form a foreign corporation and work for that corporation so I'm not legally self-employed.
Another disadvantage is that they will be required to register for the US selective service when they turn 18 (the draft). There has not actually been a draft since the Vietnam war, though, so this is not likely to become an issue, but it is certainly something to consider.
As stated by the parent they can always renounce citizenship later and avoid the tax and selective service issues, but this is expensive (about $2500USD).
Also speaking of expense, having to file two tax returns means additional accountants fees and additional paperwork, especially if the country you live in has a different tax year than the US (which is very common). Having to maintain two passports is another extra cost as well, but not very expensive when you spread the fees out over the life of the passport.
All of the above said, I made an informed decision to register my own son as a US citizen and I do agree that the benefits outweigh the down sides, but it's certainly not a "nothing to loose" situation, there are downsides and it pays to make an informed decision with full knowledge of them.
My wife is dual Peruvian/US citizen, and has passports from each country. Because traveling as a Peruvian generally means getting a visa beforehand her Peruvian passport remains unused. When we went to the college one of the first things that she did after getting her legal residency was to establish her legal residency in the town where we lived so that she could pay local tuition rather than the much higher out-of-town tuition or the obscenely expensive foreign student tuition. Working here in the US is also a royal pain, should your kids ever wish/need to do so, for a non-citizen.
BTW, I lived in Peru for three years, never filed to pay taxes during that time, and when I moved back to the US just filed them as "late" and paid a very minor fine. This was two decades ago though, so that might have changed.
On one episode they pulled up an image from the reflection on someone's eyeball in an old photo. Apparently the word "Enhance" has some magical power over image software.
The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.
That must be why Dick Cheney ($100 million in bribes laundered through NY banks to bribe Nigerian officials while he was CEO of Halliburton), Robert Rubin (folded BanaMex's drug lord clients into his CityCorp 'private banking' division), and Richard Grasso (NYSE CEO who did sales calls to the Colombian jungle offering their services to the FARC, retiring with the largest bonus of any NYSE executive in history) are serving long jail sentences. Oh, that's right, they're **NOT**.
Governments hate money laundering the way DEA agents hate drug lords; with their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Weak central government has been tried hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of civilization. It doesn't work. I'm old enough to have seen the Cuyahoga River burning, from back in the days of weak central government control of environmental issues. Unfortunately Libertarians tend to be the most historically illiterate people around (which is probably why they believe in their central doctrines). Even Adam Smith was in favor of a strong central government to control abuse of the markets.
The person most frequently pointed at as the likely creator of bitcoin is a CIA contractor, it would not surprise me at all to eventually learn that this was a CIA/DARPA project in experimental economics. What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.
That's called "money laundering" in the real world, and CityCorp, BoA, Credit Suisse/First Boston, etc. make $50-$100 billion dollars a year doing it. It's so profitable that US Treasury Secretaries retire from "public service" to head these companies' "private banking" operations. If you want a way to deal with stolen bitcoins you're going to need to get the big money laundries involved to get the process legalized.
The Maya and other peoples in this region did not have domesticated livestock, at least as we think of them. They raised domesticated ducks (and apparently chickens brought from China) but other than that their only animals were dogs and pets such as monkeys and parrots. This area is a thousand or more kilometers from the Amazon, which your link refers to.
In the last '90s I worked as System Operator for a company which sent several thousand automated account renewals to credit card companies each month. We had been sending 9-track tapes via Fed Ex, and I was tasked with converting all these to digital transfers. We ended up with a mish-mash of different methods, dialup modem, encrypted email attachments, etc. but American Express had a rather unique approach.
They had us FTP an unencrypted, unzipped text file to a folder with our account number on their ftp site. Logged in as anonymous. With full access to all the other folders showing all their other customers' data transfers. They didn't clean up the folders either, so some of the other customers had a year's-worth of data transfers piled up. We couldn't believe it.
Wow, hard to believe that this still happens. First encountered this when I opened my first (and only) online banking account at SeaFirst bank in the late '90s. When I realized that in order to get into someone else's account all I had to do was change the account number in the URL I took some screen shots and sent it off to their webmaster. It was told that it was fixed within a couple of weeks, but I was so appalled that it was even possible that I had them delete my online profile and lock my account from changes made from an online account. Have never signed up for online banking since because every few years there's another of these stories appearing, I think the most recent was Chase just two years ago.
This is the inevitable result of outsourcing all your IT work to the lowest bidder.
no solid proof on the existence of any kind of god.
There seems to be some liquid proof though, at least according to Benjamin Franklin who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
One of the more amusing aspects of astrology is that the tables that they use were not accurate to start with, and didn't allow for precession, stellar movement, etc. Now 800 years later when "Jupiter is in Orion" according to their charts it probably isn't actually anywhere near it.
It's like we found the dumbest guy in the country and elected him president or something.
We in the US have a head start, we elected Reagan in 1980. His wife Nancy's astrologer seems to have had a say in a number of policy decisions, especially later in his second term when the Alzheimers was setting in.
Horsepucky. Most allergic reactions are non-fatal, some are almost unnoticeable. Ever get a mosquito bite? That itching is your body's allergic reaction to the bug's saliva.
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Even more epic fail, I've worked on the MS campus a lot, and in fact installed much of the security hardware. I take them on a mental tour of the campus, trying to get them to tell me what building they're supposedly working in, ask them whether the Ms Pacman machine is still in that stairwell, etc. It can be fun.
One would think that when I tell them that I've done server and desktop support for close to two decades it should scare them off, but it doesn't seem to. The ones that I've gotten have a script, and they'll follow it off the edge of the Earth. I've kept them on the line for up to 23 minutes, and even then I only hung up because it was time to throw things in the wok and I needed both hands.
why "Windows makes it so hard to do stuff"
It's what you learn on. I learned on Windows, when I use a Mac I'm utterly lost and think "Why did Apple make it so hard to find anything?"
I'll guarantee that if you and I spend the same amount of money on a Windows and Apple boxes that I *will* get superior hardware, but that yours is tested by Apple to be compatible with their OS. We'll both get operating systems that we understand where all the moving parts are and will both think that we got the better deal. If MS were to have full testing and approval of every piece of hardware and software and all drivers ever installed on every Windows workstation since the beginning of time it would be known for its stability as well. Instead MS went for maximum flexibility, with the result that their software is installed on most of the desktop computers and around half the servers on the entire planet.
We can only hope. It's not an easy job, and the pay/benefits tend to dissuade those most capable of doing it well. Application and network security get all the attention and all the budget, but what good are they if someone can just walk up to the server, download the database to an external drive, and walk out?
We've never had any problem, but we don't move money around beyond buying a piece of property or building a house. We just leave our money in US accounts and withdraw it wherever we are. For sending money to family we just leave one of our ATM cards with my brother-in-law, and he does the withdrawals for us. $3 per withdrawal, plus another $1.50 fee from his bank, and happens instantly. (We used to do money transfers, which cost $40, plus $10 in Peru, plus 1% of the amount withdrawn, and would take anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks to arrive.)
Friends of ours have a business cleaning corporate offices. Twice they have been offered money to plug a netbook into a network port in an unoccupied cubicle, leave it for a few days, and then bring it back. They didn't of course, but it must have been tempting.
I can pretty much guarantee that the reason for this is the difficulty hiring competent guard staff in the SFO area. Silicon Valley salaries have have inflated the local pay scale enough that security companies are having trouble finding people willing to work for crap wages and still have an IQ above room temperature. The way contracts for the really large companies are generally done is the security vendor will offer to cover staffing for all their sites throughout the country for a certain price. Too many management types will automatically go for the lowest bidder, and competition for the major contracts is fierce. Of course the salescritters will always low-ball the price, so the local security managers are stuck trying to pinch pennies while providing the staffing levels contracted for. Apple and Google are going to skim off the cream of the available guard staff, leaving the dregs for the security contractors to dispatch to their other customers.
I'm a US citizen living abroad with a dual-citizen son. I can tell you that there are advantages and disadvantages. The benefits are that they can travel freely to the US and live and work in the US without having to obtain a green card. Also they can travel on either of their pasports largely depending on which country they travel to and they will qualify to receive assistance from any US consulate or embassy when overseas. They will be legally entitled to vote in any federal elections in the US when they turn 18, although if they have never actually lived in the US in practice they can't because no state will allow them to register to vote in that particular state.
The disadvantages are that when they start working they will always have to file a tax return in the US, regardless of where they actually live. For the most part they will receive an exemption for US taxes for any income they receive while working overseas with the exception of self-employment income, if they are legally self-employed then they will have to pay self-employment tax in the US in addition to any tax they pay overseas (some, but not all foreign countries have a self-employment double-tax agreement with the US, though which mitigates this). For me to avoid this tax I had to form a foreign corporation and work for that corporation so I'm not legally self-employed.
Another disadvantage is that they will be required to register for the US selective service when they turn 18 (the draft). There has not actually been a draft since the Vietnam war, though, so this is not likely to become an issue, but it is certainly something to consider.
As stated by the parent they can always renounce citizenship later and avoid the tax and selective service issues, but this is expensive (about $2500USD).
Also speaking of expense, having to file two tax returns means additional accountants fees and additional paperwork, especially if the country you live in has a different tax year than the US (which is very common). Having to maintain two passports is another extra cost as well, but not very expensive when you spread the fees out over the life of the passport.
All of the above said, I made an informed decision to register my own son as a US citizen and I do agree that the benefits outweigh the down sides, but it's certainly not a "nothing to loose" situation, there are downsides and it pays to make an informed decision with full knowledge of them.
My wife is dual Peruvian/US citizen, and has passports from each country. Because traveling as a Peruvian generally means getting a visa beforehand her Peruvian passport remains unused. When we went to the college one of the first things that she did after getting her legal residency was to establish her legal residency in the town where we lived so that she could pay local tuition rather than the much higher out-of-town tuition or the obscenely expensive foreign student tuition. Working here in the US is also a royal pain, should your kids ever wish/need to do so, for a non-citizen.
BTW, I lived in Peru for three years, never filed to pay taxes during that time, and when I moved back to the US just filed them as "late" and paid a very minor fine. This was two decades ago though, so that might have changed.
On one episode they pulled up an image from the reflection on someone's eyeball in an old photo. Apparently the word "Enhance" has some magical power over image software.
The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.
That must be why Dick Cheney ($100 million in bribes laundered through NY banks to bribe Nigerian officials while he was CEO of Halliburton), Robert Rubin (folded BanaMex's drug lord clients into his CityCorp 'private banking' division), and Richard Grasso (NYSE CEO who did sales calls to the Colombian jungle offering their services to the FARC, retiring with the largest bonus of any NYSE executive in history) are serving long jail sentences. Oh, that's right, they're **NOT**.
Governments hate money laundering the way DEA agents hate drug lords; with their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Weak central government has been tried hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of civilization. It doesn't work. I'm old enough to have seen the Cuyahoga River burning, from back in the days of weak central government control of environmental issues. Unfortunately Libertarians tend to be the most historically illiterate people around (which is probably why they believe in their central doctrines). Even Adam Smith was in favor of a strong central government to control abuse of the markets.
The person most frequently pointed at as the likely creator of bitcoin is a CIA contractor, it would not surprise me at all to eventually learn that this was a CIA/DARPA project in experimental economics. What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.
That's called "money laundering" in the real world, and CityCorp, BoA, Credit Suisse/First Boston, etc. make $50-$100 billion dollars a year doing it. It's so profitable that US Treasury Secretaries retire from "public service" to head these companies' "private banking" operations. If you want a way to deal with stolen bitcoins you're going to need to get the big money laundries involved to get the process legalized.
the building up of human and livestock waste
The Maya and other peoples in this region did not have domesticated livestock, at least as we think of them. They raised domesticated ducks (and apparently chickens brought from China) but other than that their only animals were dogs and pets such as monkeys and parrots. This area is a thousand or more kilometers from the Amazon, which your link refers to.
In the last '90s I worked as System Operator for a company which sent several thousand automated account renewals to credit card companies each month. We had been sending 9-track tapes via Fed Ex, and I was tasked with converting all these to digital transfers. We ended up with a mish-mash of different methods, dialup modem, encrypted email attachments, etc. but American Express had a rather unique approach.
They had us FTP an unencrypted, unzipped text file to a folder with our account number on their ftp site. Logged in as anonymous. With full access to all the other folders showing all their other customers' data transfers. They didn't clean up the folders either, so some of the other customers had a year's-worth of data transfers piled up. We couldn't believe it.
Wow, hard to believe that this still happens. First encountered this when I opened my first (and only) online banking account at SeaFirst bank in the late '90s. When I realized that in order to get into someone else's account all I had to do was change the account number in the URL I took some screen shots and sent it off to their webmaster. It was told that it was fixed within a couple of weeks, but I was so appalled that it was even possible that I had them delete my online profile and lock my account from changes made from an online account. Have never signed up for online banking since because every few years there's another of these stories appearing, I think the most recent was Chase just two years ago.
This is the inevitable result of outsourcing all your IT work to the lowest bidder.
no solid proof on the existence of any kind of god.
There seems to be some liquid proof though, at least according to Benjamin Franklin who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
Atheist != anti-theist. An atheist is simply someone who doesn't believe in religion, not necessarily someone who believes there isn't a god.
Oh, damn, and I've already commented so I can't mod this up.
"You can't fix stupid." - Ron White
And more importantly, a command and control structure, generally hierarchical. What use is a religion if you can't control anyone/anything with it?
One of the more amusing aspects of astrology is that the tables that they use were not accurate to start with, and didn't allow for precession, stellar movement, etc. Now 800 years later when "Jupiter is in Orion" according to their charts it probably isn't actually anywhere near it.
It's like we found the dumbest guy in the country and elected him president or something.
We in the US have a head start, we elected Reagan in 1980. His wife Nancy's astrologer seems to have had a say in a number of policy decisions, especially later in his second term when the Alzheimers was setting in.
It seems as though the quality of ACs has been deteriorating the last few years, while the number of them rises. It's too bad.
Horsepucky. Most allergic reactions are non-fatal, some are almost unnoticeable. Ever get a mosquito bite? That itching is your body's allergic reaction to the bug's saliva.