Even if you did read it, if the previous company had an effective monopoly on a service essential to your business, your choice may be to sign or close your business.
Even the courts recognize that sometimes terms of a contract are unconcionable, especially when the contract is signed out of necessity/effectively under duress.
There's the marginal cost of each additional request.
There's the cost of keeping it up and running, which is usually based on predicted demand. If you plan for staffing and computer capacity for N1 requests a day with a peak of N2 requests per second during periods of high demand, you'll be paying for a large chuck of that whether the demand is there or not.
There's the amortized capital cost of the initial investment. That's the cost of computers, one-time software license fees, one-time consulting fees, etc. that you pay before and during initial rollout.
Someone has to pay for this.
Do you have the taxpayer pay, or the user pay?
Back in the "paper and photocopier days" many courthouses charged a fee that supposedly covered the cost of photocopying and the cost of incremental labor to make the photocopy, but the taxpayers covered the cost of keeping the courthouse open to the public, which was not small.
In the modern era, it makes sense for the taxpayers to pay for the costs of keeping the system up and running up to a reasonable capacity, but to charge users an incremental cost, which is probably a fraction of a cent per page/per MB, plus a fraction of a cent per individual request.
On the other hand, at some point, the cost of charging greatly exceeds the fee for service. At that point, just say "forget it, the taxpayers will absorb the entire cost."
To prevent overtaxing the system, limit the speed at which data can be retrieved, but provide a for-fee bulk-data-access system for large law firms, data brokers, news outlets, and anyone else willing to fork over a fee to cover the costs of providing fast access to bulk data.
We have a lot more data and we have a lot better understanding of the correlation betweeen past and present conditions around the world and future contitions at any given spot than we did 40 years ago.
If you are victim of this kind of extortion, file a police report, contact YouTube asking for the strikes to be canceled, and if they don't, go public and shame them into doing it.
Since filing a false police report is a crime by itself in most if not all US jurisdictions, you are basically daring YouTube to call you a lying criminal by their continuing to honor the false strike made by the criminal doing the extortion.
Under emergency situations, like a war or natural disaster that prevents people from meeting in D.C. or any other single location, it's generally far better to have "virtual attendance" than not be allowed to be there to debate or vote at all, even if things like access to the press and the public were not the same as it is in Washington. In a war situation, you do need to have a check-and-balance to make sure none of the "remote" representatives have been captured or are otherwise under duress.
I can also see this if a particular Congressmen has a health or other emergency that prevents him from being in his office in D.C., such as was the case with Sen. John McCain during the last few months of his life. Of course, this opens the door to people voting while too sick or too heavily medicated to make decisions.
Under normal times - and yes, I consider the current artificial crisis "normal times" for this purpose - virtual decision-making on substantive matters should be discouraged. When used outside of an extraordinary emergency, it should be allowed but only with strong safeguards to make sure the public really has "access" to their representatives.
At a minimum, the public servant should be in a place that is at least as public as Congress itself. I'm thinking a large conference room big enough for dozens of people if not hundreds, not a small office that only fits him and his staff.
Early cell phones did not and they worked just fine. The "Jitterbug" series that's marketed at "old people" (it's a valid niche market, but way overpriced for what you get).
There are other niche markets for a screen-less phones and camera-less phones.
Blind people don't need a screen, so why bake that into the cost? They do need a camera for things like "what is this?" apps.
In some high-security environments you need a phone but you need to prohibit cameras.
Personally, I'd like to have the phone/computer in my pocket or someplace hard(er) to steal from than my hand, with a generic interchangeable "user interface box" that has the screen, mic, speaker, camera, and buttons. If I dropped my "user interface box" and it broke, I could just buy another one or borrow one while mine got repaired.
I would have a college- and living-expenses fund for myself so I could get a respected degree college- or graduate-level certificate.
That way when I'm interviewed I can talk like I've been in school recently - because it will be true.
If I get lucky and stay employed until I retire, that means I'll be able to enjoy my retirement a bit more.
Note to anyone under 30: PLAN on taking 2-3 years out of your life after age 50 to get more schooling. This means setting aside money for not just tuition but your "adult level" cost of living.
makes traditional cable TV packages look better with
How about over-the-air TV?
ONE BILL
$0 every month
ONE SET OF RULES
Almost: Ignoring "pay/scrambled broadcast channels" there are only two "rules" - "broadcast copy-protection flag is set, or it's not" - and it's easy to defeat anyways if you don't mind using the "analog hole."
ONE UI
Your TV or tuner determines your UI.
EASY MULTI ROOM with no real limits.
Antenna-splitter does the trick.
DOES NOT COUNT AS PART OF YOUR CAP!
Watch or record as many channels as you have tuners, all day, every day. Internet sold separately.
The more clumsy it is for me to legally watch a show/movie, the more likely it is for me to pirate it. Steam/Google Music/Spotify have entirely stopped my music and game piracy. Video is the only thing I still go torrenting for.
The more clumsy it is for me to legally and cheaply watch a show/movie, the more likely it is for me to NOT watch it, NOT care about spinoffs and merchandising, and NOT spend any time or energy recommending it to others.
When contracts come up for renewal, insurance company liability will be spelled out and priced in.
Company seeking renewal: What's this clause about not covering cyber events?
Insurance agent: On that's standard now. However, if you want coverage, we'll be glad to sell you a rider, for $MUCHMORETHANYOUPLANNEDFOR.
Company seeking renewal, after shopping around and finding all financially-sound insurance companies are either not covering cyber events or charging a lot to cover them: Um.....
The vast majority of IP addresses can be traced to either a relatively small space - a dot on map surrounded by an uncertainty radius - or a fixed "shape" such as a country or ISP service area, perhaps surrounded by its own "radius of uncertainty" around that area if the IP address is mobile.
MaxMind, one of the companies in the story, already takes the first approach.
Adding links to computer-readable map data of political entities and ISP service areas along with a "boundary of uncertainty" and providing these instead of an actual latitude and longitude is a good next step.
For IP addresses that are known to be proxy addresses - think companies that funnel all outbound web searches through their corporate firewall on one hand and consumer VPN, TOR exit nodes, and related services on the other - explicitly flag them as such so people know that any geolocation efforts are unreliable.
The major selling point of optical was cheap distribution of read-only data like music and video CDs, DVDs, and Blue-Ray.
Streaming makes this much less important. Sure, it would be ncie to have a consumer-priced "super blue ray" reader that could store a full-length 3D 8K movie but when most people would rather stream it, do I really want to spend the money to develop such a device?
Yes, there are still two important reasons for optical media that will keep the market alive for at least another decade or two, but they aren't the "huge" market that drives fast innovation:
* Video collectors, who still want a "factory made" medium like a DVD to put on their bookshelves. For music, Vinyl serves a similar purpose. * Archivist, who need the long-term storage provided by "1000 year" (note the quotation marks) metallic-dye optical media that will probably last at least 50 years under archival conditions.
If the law requires you to collect data that you don't need for business purposes, don't store it on a connected computer.
Scan the passport with a non-networked scanner but store the image on the scanner itself or offline for as long as the law requires, then delete it.
Make sure that the scans are encrypted and that they can only be decrypted with a key held off-site by corporate security. That way a clerk can't bulk-copy the scans that are stored on-site.
There is still one hole that can't be fixed: Any clerk that handles a particular passport can make a surreptitious copy for his own use using his own camera. If he has a photographic memory, he can just memorize it. The damage from this method is a lot less than a bulk-data-compromise.
I'm not sure I buy the "95%" number, but your point is valid.
If we could group applicants into 3 groups:
1) A group in which each student has a 90% or better likelihood of graduating within 150% of the time it normally takes to graduate 2) A group in which each student has a less than 10% likelihood of graduating within 150% of the time it normally takes to graduate 3) everyone else
you are talking about the "everyone else" group.
If you exclude very rigorous programs and very easy programs, I'd say the "everyone else" group at most schools is probably closer to 30-60%, not 95%.
Slashdot Mirror
Or never sign a contract without reading it.
Even if you did read it, if the previous company had an effective monopoly on a service essential to your business, your choice may be to sign or close your business.
Even the courts recognize that sometimes terms of a contract are unconcionable, especially when the contract is signed out of necessity/effectively under duress.
Well, you can read the front page at least.
If you will betray your past employer, how can I ever trust you with my secrets?
There's the marginal cost of each additional request.
There's the cost of keeping it up and running, which is usually based on predicted demand. If you plan for staffing and computer capacity for N1 requests a day with a peak of N2 requests per second during periods of high demand, you'll be paying for a large chuck of that whether the demand is there or not.
There's the amortized capital cost of the initial investment. That's the cost of computers, one-time software license fees, one-time consulting fees, etc. that you pay before and during initial rollout.
Someone has to pay for this.
Do you have the taxpayer pay, or the user pay?
Back in the "paper and photocopier days" many courthouses charged a fee that supposedly covered the cost of photocopying and the cost of incremental labor to make the photocopy, but the taxpayers covered the cost of keeping the courthouse open to the public, which was not small.
In the modern era, it makes sense for the taxpayers to pay for the costs of keeping the system up and running up to a reasonable capacity, but to charge users an incremental cost, which is probably a fraction of a cent per page/per MB, plus a fraction of a cent per individual request.
On the other hand, at some point, the cost of charging greatly exceeds the fee for service. At that point, just say "forget it, the taxpayers will absorb the entire cost."
To prevent overtaxing the system, limit the speed at which data can be retrieved, but provide a for-fee bulk-data-access system for large law firms, data brokers, news outlets, and anyone else willing to fork over a fee to cover the costs of providing fast access to bulk data.
We have a lot more data and we have a lot better understanding of the correlation betweeen past and present conditions around the world and future contitions at any given spot than we did 40 years ago.
Yes, there has been a huge improvement.
No, I am not surprised.
If you are victim of this kind of extortion, file a police report, contact YouTube asking for the strikes to be canceled, and if they don't, go public and shame them into doing it.
Since filing a false police report is a crime by itself in most if not all US jurisdictions, you are basically daring YouTube to call you a lying criminal by their continuing to honor the false strike made by the criminal doing the extortion.
"Would you like to play a game"
So far, we haven't had machines start global thermonuclear war. So far.
Under emergency situations, like a war or natural disaster that prevents people from meeting in D.C. or any other single location, it's generally far better to have "virtual attendance" than not be allowed to be there to debate or vote at all, even if things like access to the press and the public were not the same as it is in Washington. In a war situation, you do need to have a check-and-balance to make sure none of the "remote" representatives have been captured or are otherwise under duress.
I can also see this if a particular Congressmen has a health or other emergency that prevents him from being in his office in D.C., such as was the case with Sen. John McCain during the last few months of his life. Of course, this opens the door to people voting while too sick or too heavily medicated to make decisions.
Under normal times - and yes, I consider the current artificial crisis "normal times" for this purpose - virtual decision-making on substantive matters should be discouraged. When used outside of an extraordinary emergency, it should be allowed but only with strong safeguards to make sure the public really has "access" to their representatives.
At a minimum, the public servant should be in a place that is at least as public as Congress itself. I'm thinking a large conference room big enough for dozens of people if not hundreds, not a small office that only fits him and his staff.
Early cell phones did not and they worked just fine. The "Jitterbug" series that's marketed at "old people" (it's a valid niche market, but way overpriced for what you get).
There are other niche markets for a screen-less phones and camera-less phones.
Blind people don't need a screen, so why bake that into the cost? They do need a camera for things like "what is this?" apps.
In some high-security environments you need a phone but you need to prohibit cameras.
Personally, I'd like to have the phone/computer in my pocket or someplace hard(er) to steal from than my hand, with a generic interchangeable "user interface box" that has the screen, mic, speaker, camera, and buttons. If I dropped my "user interface box" and it broke, I could just buy another one or borrow one while mine got repaired.
I would have a college- and living-expenses fund for myself so I could get a respected degree college- or graduate-level certificate.
That way when I'm interviewed I can talk like I've been in school recently - because it will be true.
If I get lucky and stay employed until I retire, that means I'll be able to enjoy my retirement a bit more.
Note to anyone under 30: PLAN on taking 2-3 years out of your life after age 50 to get more schooling. This means setting aside money for not just tuition but your "adult level" cost of living.
If the police put you under surveillance, it's likely they will see you unlock your phone at least a few times.
If they can catch you doing it from different angles, they can probably figure out what the passcode is.
Once they do that, execute the warrant, seize the phone, unlock the phone, then declare victory.
I've simply stopped consuming most TV and I feel my life has improved as a result
THIS!
Make something "indispensable" hard to use and people will figure out just how dispensable it really is.
makes traditional cable TV packages look better with
How about over-the-air TV?
ONE BILL
$0 every month
ONE SET OF RULES
Almost: Ignoring "pay/scrambled broadcast channels" there are only two "rules" - "broadcast copy-protection flag is set, or it's not" - and it's easy to defeat anyways if you don't mind using the "analog hole."
ONE UI
Your TV or tuner determines your UI.
EASY MULTI ROOM with no real limits.
Antenna-splitter does the trick.
DOES NOT COUNT AS PART OF YOUR CAP!
Watch or record as many channels as you have tuners, all day, every day. Internet sold separately.
The more clumsy it is for me to legally watch a show/movie, the more likely it is for me to pirate it. Steam/Google Music/Spotify have entirely stopped my music and game piracy. Video is the only thing I still go torrenting for.
The more clumsy it is for me to legally and cheaply watch a show/movie, the more likely it is for me to NOT watch it, NOT care about spinoffs and merchandising, and NOT spend any time or energy recommending it to others.
When contracts come up for renewal, insurance company liability will be spelled out and priced in.
Company seeking renewal: What's this clause about not covering cyber events?
Insurance agent: On that's standard now. However, if you want coverage, we'll be glad to sell you a rider, for $MUCHMORETHANYOUPLANNEDFOR.
Company seeking renewal, after shopping around and finding all financially-sound insurance companies are either not covering cyber events or charging a lot to cover them: Um.....
The vast majority of IP addresses can be traced to either a relatively small space - a dot on map surrounded by an uncertainty radius - or a fixed "shape" such as a country or ISP service area, perhaps surrounded by its own "radius of uncertainty" around that area if the IP address is mobile.
MaxMind, one of the companies in the story, already takes the first approach.
Adding links to computer-readable map data of political entities and ISP service areas along with a "boundary of uncertainty" and providing these instead of an actual latitude and longitude is a good next step.
For IP addresses that are known to be proxy addresses - think companies that funnel all outbound web searches through their corporate firewall on one hand and consumer VPN, TOR exit nodes, and related services on the other - explicitly flag them as such so people know that any geolocation efforts are unreliable.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Or in the case of hard disks, a few terabytes.
Or, "640K ought to be enough for anybody, for a sufficiently large value of K."
The major selling point of optical was cheap distribution of read-only data like music and video CDs, DVDs, and Blue-Ray.
Streaming makes this much less important. Sure, it would be ncie to have a consumer-priced "super blue ray" reader that could store a full-length 3D 8K movie but when most people would rather stream it, do I really want to spend the money to develop such a device?
Yes, there are still two important reasons for optical media that will keep the market alive for at least another decade or two, but they aren't the "huge" market that drives fast innovation:
* Video collectors, who still want a "factory made" medium like a DVD to put on their bookshelves. For music, Vinyl serves a similar purpose.
* Archivist, who need the long-term storage provided by "1000 year" (note the quotation marks) metallic-dye optical media that will probably last at least 50 years under archival conditions.
literally.
If the law requires you to collect data that you don't need for business purposes, don't store it on a connected computer.
Scan the passport with a non-networked scanner but store the image on the scanner itself or offline for as long as the law requires, then delete it.
Make sure that the scans are encrypted and that they can only be decrypted with a key held off-site by corporate security. That way a clerk can't bulk-copy the scans that are stored on-site.
There is still one hole that can't be fixed: Any clerk that handles a particular passport can make a surreptitious copy for his own use using his own camera. If he has a photographic memory, he can just memorize it. The damage from this method is a lot less than a bulk-data-compromise.
Tell them up front "after X years you won't get bug fixes and you will be vulnerable to zero-days."
As far as the corporate world is concerned, that's tantamount to setting an expiration date.
Sure, they may look to Android, but there aren't many Android vendors promising 5+ year bug-fix support either.
Granted, a factory reset would make things like Computrace impossible, but it will mean you can be confident you are back in a known good state.
I'm not sure I buy the "95%" number, but your point is valid.
If we could group applicants into 3 groups:
1) A group in which each student has a 90% or better likelihood of graduating within 150% of the time it normally takes to graduate
2) A group in which each student has a less than 10% likelihood of graduating within 150% of the time it normally takes to graduate
3) everyone else
you are talking about the "everyone else" group.
If you exclude very rigorous programs and very easy programs, I'd say the "everyone else" group at most schools is probably closer to 30-60%, not 95%.
You CAN have not enough bureaucracy.
You can also have too much.
What might be too much for one institution can also be not enough. Every institution is different.
Everyone with a fixed "residence" - even if it's not on any road - has an ICBM address, even if they don't know it.
They also have other "your location is your address" addresses.