It is as simple as "put stamps on it". We currently put Made In China cause its easy and its a place we don't hate enough not to. The "Made in" tag has been long turned by US marketing. China is also an assembler, as is Taiwan, Japan, etc. Now a simple middleman shipping point can be the tag.
As for the free market, chasing the lowest bidder is NOT what screwed up the US. Its forgetting the true value of goods (widgets and services) and not verifying the value of said goods. This actually comes from an OLD American ideology that true quality control is a cost addition rather than a cost reducer. That one's business responsibility should somehow be passed onto another party (manifested in our current CYA culture). That's why so much of the US's business is about sugar coating the rough spots of the real world.
The funny thing is that an American came up with the opposite (Deming) but it took Japan to prove it. (you can argue the current situation with Toyota, but compare that to the _entire_ US auto industry that nearly went bankrupt due to producing products whose primary value addition was "patriotism").
The core problem with the US is that we are a country that will pay someone else every night to go check the closet for the boogie-man, while we smoke in bed.
Yeah, I know MC has something similar, but it is actually optional. The Visa one was advertised as optional, but not in the strictest sense. Visa had it for a very long time too, but I guess not too many people were signing up so they decided to push it a bit. I fear MC will do the same and when they do, I will drop them. I already messaged a thank you to them twice for not going the Visa route; here's hoping they read and care about them.
No, here is the crux, they go out of business over time. Because someone else set up a business that sells to both sides, gets better economies of scale, and either lowers the price or just buys the other via higher profits.
Chips are harder, but still hardly difficult to clone. In general, time and access is inversely linked to security. Chips have both working against them, just like mag strips, but a very dynamic pin greatly reduces both. So far, the cost-benefit analysis seems to speak for chips, but that's only because the fraud so far has been small time with small costs. The second chips (in their current form) become much more wide spread, you can bet the bigger players will get involved.
Checks (US) have always been risky. The verification system is OLD and slow and stupid. Even the fraud constructs are old and stupid. The banks compensated by off loading as much risk as possible to the originator via high fees and being a PITA. The system is inefficient and also expensive to maintain. The later, is probably more a reason why the UK is scrubbing them out.
But the least corrupt governments are just entities with massive costs and power that are mostly controlled by special interest groups and.... companies. I mean, forget foreign corrupt governments, just look at most of the bills that get passed around our US government. They are titled one thing, but in the "fine print" intend something else, many times, the opposite.
I am a long time credit card user (don't believe in cash). I ran into this a few months back with Walmart online. It actually looked like a scam. And you are right about the security aspect, just an offloading of (increased) risk. It pops out of no where and the new page's instructions clearly said it was optional and I can hit cancel. BUT, there was no cancel button, I even looked in the source code. So I closed the browser.
This was considered _fraudulent_activity_ and locked my card for a while (automatic, no warning). I basically had to tell them: I don't want to sign up for the "optional feature" and I leave it to you if you want to keep my card locked. I just started using my MC. A Visa card that used to get charged 2-3k a month in business charges now gets about $50. I think Visa completely, utterly screwed up with not only the idea, but the implementation, and the very approach of presenting the system. A colossal failure for Visa and a big win for MC. If MC starts it, rest assured, I will move to Discover and so on with Paypal at the end.
A credit card is supposed to provide you with security and convenience. This system gives you neither! Now, you basically have the risk of a TON of cash sitting behind yet another password only _you_ are supposed to know. There are better ways to provide FAR more security with a negligible loss of convenience at a slightly higher price (ex: personal and one time pins), but I guess Visa just wanted to waste money tricking its customers into accepting a lot of the merchant's and Visa's risk.
For end users? Limit their permissions, force complex passwords, but don't require them to change frequently (*maybe* once every 2 years). Tell them to go ahead and write the passwords down
This is where auditors will fail your computer security policies. And they would love the 2 factor auth. As a former IT auditor, I get what you are saying and I agree. But almost all auditing is "I see no evil...: so no one is even allowed to think of the secondary effects of having the 2 factor with nothing but "can't write this anywhere..." policy.
I don't think you understand how it works in the US. Let me clarify:
Major Industry Association Lobbyists Rich People Big Business Dept. of Justice Politicians President Foreign Nations & Laws Law Enforcement Law Stupid Rich People Really poor People Small Business Everyone else. Piece of Dog Poo YOU reading this.
No, that won't work. Imagine that tomorrow the US government just says to Microsoft to hand over all their user information for the purpose of filtering for terrorists. Here we have the whole IP, human rights, private industry lobbying and psychology efforts to stop that. BUT in China, Google doesn't have any of that with any real power. They would need to fall back on the US government and we know how far back it is willing to bend for a lender (foreign or domestic).
It's actually a pretty scary idea that google thinks it has enough power to change the governing policy of one of the biggest countries in the world.
Come on, is it really that scary? I mean we got the farm, auto, finance, telco, and security industries doing this every day over here and we are more scared of the mythical terrorist. Its about time one of our industries (search) starts poking at someone else left with a spine... even if they end up losing a finger.
I think we are all making this seem FAR bigger than it actually is. A company has reassessed the risk profile of an environment and found it to be not suitable to justify continuing operations. Said company is looking at mitigating some of the risk. If it doesn't work out, the company will revisit the _idea_ of discontinuing operations. Losing China will not be that big a deal to Google as the environment was against it in the first place.
I thought Mirror's Edge SUCKED. The concept was new (over say Prince of Persia) only in the fluidity it provided, but that was it. That game should have been 3 times longer, almost no load screens, and actually have some of the moves presented in the load screens. I basically felt like a mouse in a maze designed for 2 yr olds. Not to mention that game seemed entirely unfinished. A college friend of mine basically designed something similar using the unreal engine on a 3d map of downtown Atlanta. It took _him_ 6 months.
Dragon Age: Origins sucks too. Its a poorly thought out game in terms of player interaction and field layout (I don't like having entrances 1/2 mile away from a village that I just world mapped to). It was also _pointlessly_ complicated to remove value from the actual game play. I don't want to play D&D with 10 times more crap. Lets not even start on the "Just wait here while I go <Download New Content>." That's just a few, there are tons of crap in most EA games.
Here is what's common among EA games: Art, Marketing, DLC, Prices, and Bugs. EA games belong in a Museum of Art, cause that is what they are... NOT games. EA Marketing is the perfect case study for any marketing class in the world. EA has made DLC mean secondary charges to your CC and the equivalent of SP1 & SP2 for Windows. Prices & Bugs.... nuff said.
No they haven't. I knew a couple of friends who used to get in and out of theme parks (Six Flags) quite easily during our teen years. They did beef up since then, but not enough to totally prevent the current generation.
Of course when it does happen, and the rare times the park catches them, the park doesn't go nuts over it. They do a simple benefit analysis and determine that its not worth the additional costs. Who cares if one or two people out of thousands cheat the system.
I traveled atleast every 2 weeks for the past 2-3 years around the southern-mid and eastern part of the US and the ONLY downside for me in traveling were the security checks. I got used to the checks, I could get through them in less than 10-15 minutes.
Not really a big deal in terms of time, but it was VERY irritating. To me it seemed very much like "security theater." I like being mildly efficient, but what I saw was anything but. So things like airport security really get to me, especially the TSA people (not all, about 1 in every 5 or so) who are TOTAL retarts!!! They are basically poorly programmed robots who have no clue what they are doing. They get orders, or what appear to be orders, and they try to follow them to the letter. The actual "security" aspect of their job seems to be missing.
I used to take flights all the time, to go almost anywhere before 9/11, but today I drive anything under 6 hours. Even did a 10 hour drive once instead of a flight (mostly due to cost and last minute), and ended up getting there sooner than a few of my coworkers (oddly less stressed than one or two of them).
Even the company and my coworkers have changed their behavior over this time. If we got far off places, we stay the weekend with a rental rather than fly back every weekend. Or we drive to the 5-6 hour clients. Or we telecommute (crappiest option), or in rare cases, we don't take on the client. I know people who quit because of the required travel (when noone wants to, the low level grunts have to).
Its not all bad in the US, yet, but we are (IMHO) definitely going in the wrong direction. Probably won't get bad enough for me to leave anytime soon, but it is irritating enough that I daydream of expatriate positions, and am seriously considering dropping consulting.
I second this. And you do see it in some nations. When I traveled to India the interaction with people was a lot different from my last visit (2000).
Before, they were very curious about us, thought we were very rich, land of opportunity, and so on. The younger crowd was of the opinion, that they would like to _live_ in the US or atleast work for a US company. The older crowd felt like they were constantly defending themselves and their ways.
Today, they see us as just normal regular people with some really odd belief systems (not talking about religion). And they all have a certain level of distrust in us. The younger crowd would much rather travel to Singapore, UK, Thailand, Japan, or Australia (a place where they seem to be having heavy cultural clashes) than the US. Also, many already have traveled to these easily accessible places. The US is now seen as a high profit place to do a quick business deal, or short term contract. Thou even that has changed recently with the H1-Bs becoming harder to get. As for the older crowd, they aren't defensive like before, but rather offensive in questioning the US's policies and actions. Although I think they are wrong in their policy beliefs, it has been a viewpoint shift that is very hard to miss.
Even on the education front, it used to be "Wow, living in the US, American educated..." now has become "So, my _____ has gone to IIT" (or UK, or Australia of all places). In the last 9 years, our image has taken some serious beating.
You aren't the only one. There were two of my clients who are international businesses that used to have their annual and bi-annual upper management meetings in random semi-scenic venues across the world. But for the last 2 years, they went out of country, and later decided to just cross the US off their list (thou Hawaii is still there).
I thought it was because the US was just more expensive. But the CFO for one said the VPs and such in the other nations don't like the hassle in the US. Even in the past, some uppers went to other places that were cheaper and video conferenced in. With the recession, the extern auditors are now video conferenced in from the US office.:(
We just need others like China, India, and France to do the same. Then the airlines themselves will give the US the finger and move out.
I REALLY love to travel, go places, meet new people, and work all over. But for my next job, I am seriously considering not looking at consulting, but rather a simple 8-5 office job. Every once in a while, the security theater, the mass hysteria/fear, and the sheer inefficient cost of it all drives me to the point where I want to leave the country, and relinquish my citizenship JUST to stop funding it all.
... sophisticated mobile interception technology — limited to governments and intelligence agencies — within the reach of any reasonable well-funded criminal organization.
I hate it when I hear this crap from the "good guys"! Why do so many people assume the bad guys are always dumber than them, and have the same moral & legal limits? This is rarely true no matter how many PR guys you send out and how many laws you make. Seriously, this isn't rocket science. Stop thinking it is and patting yourself on your back for figuring it out while assuming that no one else will.
We could also turn over the network to a LOT of companies, put down regulations on frequency usages and open networks. Then we separate out the bandwidth and network maintenance provider from the service provider. Worst case, we have to have the government run the network cause it isn't profitable for the private sector.
Slashdot Mirror
It is as simple as "put stamps on it". We currently put Made In China cause its easy and its a place we don't hate enough not to. The "Made in" tag has been long turned by US marketing. China is also an assembler, as is Taiwan, Japan, etc. Now a simple middleman shipping point can be the tag.
As for the free market, chasing the lowest bidder is NOT what screwed up the US. Its forgetting the true value of goods (widgets and services) and not verifying the value of said goods. This actually comes from an OLD American ideology that true quality control is a cost addition rather than a cost reducer. That one's business responsibility should somehow be passed onto another party (manifested in our current CYA culture). That's why so much of the US's business is about sugar coating the rough spots of the real world.
The funny thing is that an American came up with the opposite (Deming) but it took Japan to prove it. (you can argue the current situation with Toyota, but compare that to the _entire_ US auto industry that nearly went bankrupt due to producing products whose primary value addition was "patriotism").
The core problem with the US is that we are a country that will pay someone else every night to go check the closet for the boogie-man, while we smoke in bed.
I think all lawyers should be disbarred, but that's another topic for another time.
Yeah, I know MC has something similar, but it is actually optional. The Visa one was advertised as optional, but not in the strictest sense. Visa had it for a very long time too, but I guess not too many people were signing up so they decided to push it a bit. I fear MC will do the same and when they do, I will drop them. I already messaged a thank you to them twice for not going the Visa route; here's hoping they read and care about them.
No, here is the crux, they go out of business over time. Because someone else set up a business that sells to both sides, gets better economies of scale, and either lowers the price or just buys the other via higher profits.
Chips are harder, but still hardly difficult to clone. In general, time and access is inversely linked to security. Chips have both working against them, just like mag strips, but a very dynamic pin greatly reduces both. So far, the cost-benefit analysis seems to speak for chips, but that's only because the fraud so far has been small time with small costs. The second chips (in their current form) become much more wide spread, you can bet the bigger players will get involved.
Checks (US) have always been risky. The verification system is OLD and slow and stupid. Even the fraud constructs are old and stupid. The banks compensated by off loading as much risk as possible to the originator via high fees and being a PITA. The system is inefficient and also expensive to maintain. The later, is probably more a reason why the UK is scrubbing them out.
But the least corrupt governments are just entities with massive costs and power that are mostly controlled by special interest groups and .... companies. I mean, forget foreign corrupt governments, just look at most of the bills that get passed around our US government. They are titled one thing, but in the "fine print" intend something else, many times, the opposite.
I am a long time credit card user (don't believe in cash). I ran into this a few months back with Walmart online. It actually looked like a scam. And you are right about the security aspect, just an offloading of (increased) risk. It pops out of no where and the new page's instructions clearly said it was optional and I can hit cancel. BUT, there was no cancel button, I even looked in the source code. So I closed the browser.
This was considered _fraudulent_activity_ and locked my card for a while (automatic, no warning). I basically had to tell them: I don't want to sign up for the "optional feature" and I leave it to you if you want to keep my card locked. I just started using my MC. A Visa card that used to get charged 2-3k a month in business charges now gets about $50. I think Visa completely, utterly screwed up with not only the idea, but the implementation, and the very approach of presenting the system. A colossal failure for Visa and a big win for MC. If MC starts it, rest assured, I will move to Discover and so on with Paypal at the end.
A credit card is supposed to provide you with security and convenience. This system gives you neither! Now, you basically have the risk of a TON of cash sitting behind yet another password only _you_ are supposed to know. There are better ways to provide FAR more security with a negligible loss of convenience at a slightly higher price (ex: personal and one time pins), but I guess Visa just wanted to waste money tricking its customers into accepting a lot of the merchant's and Visa's risk.
For end users? Limit their permissions, force complex passwords, but don't require them to change frequently (*maybe* once every 2 years). Tell them to go ahead and write the passwords down
This is where auditors will fail your computer security policies. And they would love the 2 factor auth. As a former IT auditor, I get what you are saying and I agree. But almost all auditing is "I see no evil...: so no one is even allowed to think of the secondary effects of having the 2 factor with nothing but "can't write this anywhere..." policy.
Law enforcement thinks they're above the law
I don't think you understand how it works in the US. Let me clarify:
Major Industry Association
Lobbyists
Rich People
Big Business
Dept. of Justice
Politicians
President
Foreign Nations & Laws
Law Enforcement
Law
Stupid Rich People
Really poor People
Small Business
Everyone else.
Piece of Dog Poo
YOU reading this.
See? Now what did you learn? Ans: Don't look up!
No, that won't work. Imagine that tomorrow the US government just says to Microsoft to hand over all their user information for the purpose of filtering for terrorists. Here we have the whole IP, human rights, private industry lobbying and psychology efforts to stop that. BUT in China, Google doesn't have any of that with any real power. They would need to fall back on the US government and we know how far back it is willing to bend for a lender (foreign or domestic).
It's actually a pretty scary idea that google thinks it has enough power to change the governing policy of one of the biggest countries in the world.
Come on, is it really that scary? I mean we got the farm, auto, finance, telco, and security industries doing this every day over here and we are more scared of the mythical terrorist. Its about time one of our industries (search) starts poking at someone else left with a spine... even if they end up losing a finger.
I think we are all making this seem FAR bigger than it actually is. A company has reassessed the risk profile of an environment and found it to be not suitable to justify continuing operations. Said company is looking at mitigating some of the risk. If it doesn't work out, the company will revisit the _idea_ of discontinuing operations. Losing China will not be that big a deal to Google as the environment was against it in the first place.
...also unelected and corrupt Chinese officials.
Who apparently are far far worse than unelected and corrupt TSA, FBI, and boarder crossing personnel.
I thought Mirror's Edge SUCKED. The concept was new (over say Prince of Persia) only in the fluidity it provided, but that was it. That game should have been 3 times longer, almost no load screens, and actually have some of the moves presented in the load screens. I basically felt like a mouse in a maze designed for 2 yr olds. Not to mention that game seemed entirely unfinished. A college friend of mine basically designed something similar using the unreal engine on a 3d map of downtown Atlanta. It took _him_ 6 months.
Dragon Age: Origins sucks too. Its a poorly thought out game in terms of player interaction and field layout (I don't like having entrances 1/2 mile away from a village that I just world mapped to). It was also _pointlessly_ complicated to remove value from the actual game play. I don't want to play D&D with 10 times more crap. Lets not even start on the "Just wait here while I go <Download New Content>." That's just a few, there are tons of crap in most EA games.
Here is what's common among EA games: Art, Marketing, DLC, Prices, and Bugs. EA games belong in a Museum of Art, cause that is what they are... NOT games. EA Marketing is the perfect case study for any marketing class in the world. EA has made DLC mean secondary charges to your CC and the equivalent of SP1 & SP2 for Windows. Prices & Bugs.... nuff said.
Numbers don't matter for nerds, one ring is all it takes to rule them all.
No they haven't. I knew a couple of friends who used to get in and out of theme parks (Six Flags) quite easily during our teen years. They did beef up since then, but not enough to totally prevent the current generation.
Of course when it does happen, and the rare times the park catches them, the park doesn't go nuts over it. They do a simple benefit analysis and determine that its not worth the additional costs. Who cares if one or two people out of thousands cheat the system.
I traveled atleast every 2 weeks for the past 2-3 years around the southern-mid and eastern part of the US and the ONLY downside for me in traveling were the security checks. I got used to the checks, I could get through them in less than 10-15 minutes.
Not really a big deal in terms of time, but it was VERY irritating. To me it seemed very much like "security theater." I like being mildly efficient, but what I saw was anything but. So things like airport security really get to me, especially the TSA people (not all, about 1 in every 5 or so) who are TOTAL retarts!!! They are basically poorly programmed robots who have no clue what they are doing. They get orders, or what appear to be orders, and they try to follow them to the letter. The actual "security" aspect of their job seems to be missing.
I used to take flights all the time, to go almost anywhere before 9/11, but today I drive anything under 6 hours. Even did a 10 hour drive once instead of a flight (mostly due to cost and last minute), and ended up getting there sooner than a few of my coworkers (oddly less stressed than one or two of them).
Even the company and my coworkers have changed their behavior over this time. If we got far off places, we stay the weekend with a rental rather than fly back every weekend. Or we drive to the 5-6 hour clients. Or we telecommute (crappiest option), or in rare cases, we don't take on the client. I know people who quit because of the required travel (when noone wants to, the low level grunts have to).
Its not all bad in the US, yet, but we are (IMHO) definitely going in the wrong direction. Probably won't get bad enough for me to leave anytime soon, but it is irritating enough that I daydream of expatriate positions, and am seriously considering dropping consulting.
I second this. And you do see it in some nations. When I traveled to India the interaction with people was a lot different from my last visit (2000).
Before, they were very curious about us, thought we were very rich, land of opportunity, and so on. The younger crowd was of the opinion, that they would like to _live_ in the US or atleast work for a US company. The older crowd felt like they were constantly defending themselves and their ways.
Today, they see us as just normal regular people with some really odd belief systems (not talking about religion). And they all have a certain level of distrust in us. The younger crowd would much rather travel to Singapore, UK, Thailand, Japan, or Australia (a place where they seem to be having heavy cultural clashes) than the US. Also, many already have traveled to these easily accessible places. The US is now seen as a high profit place to do a quick business deal, or short term contract. Thou even that has changed recently with the H1-Bs becoming harder to get. As for the older crowd, they aren't defensive like before, but rather offensive in questioning the US's policies and actions. Although I think they are wrong in their policy beliefs, it has been a viewpoint shift that is very hard to miss.
Even on the education front, it used to be "Wow, living in the US, American educated..." now has become "So, my _____ has gone to IIT" (or UK, or Australia of all places). In the last 9 years, our image has taken some serious beating.
You aren't the only one. There were two of my clients who are international businesses that used to have their annual and bi-annual upper management meetings in random semi-scenic venues across the world. But for the last 2 years, they went out of country, and later decided to just cross the US off their list (thou Hawaii is still there).
I thought it was because the US was just more expensive. But the CFO for one said the VPs and such in the other nations don't like the hassle in the US. Even in the past, some uppers went to other places that were cheaper and video conferenced in. With the recession, the extern auditors are now video conferenced in from the US office. :(
Good for Brazil! Hope more countries have the guts to do this.
We just need others like China, India, and France to do the same. Then the airlines themselves will give the US the finger and move out.
I REALLY love to travel, go places, meet new people, and work all over. But for my next job, I am seriously considering not looking at consulting, but rather a simple 8-5 office job. Every once in a while, the security theater, the mass hysteria/fear, and the sheer inefficient cost of it all drives me to the point where I want to leave the country, and relinquish my citizenship JUST to stop funding it all.
Morons: 0
> 1 Braincell Persons: +1
... sophisticated mobile interception technology — limited to governments and intelligence agencies — within the reach of any reasonable well-funded criminal organization.
I hate it when I hear this crap from the "good guys"! Why do so many people assume the bad guys are always dumber than them, and have the same moral & legal limits? This is rarely true no matter how many PR guys you send out and how many laws you make. Seriously, this isn't rocket science. Stop thinking it is and patting yourself on your back for figuring it out while assuming that no one else will.
We could also turn over the network to a LOT of companies, put down regulations on frequency usages and open networks. Then we separate out the bandwidth and network maintenance provider from the service provider. Worst case, we have to have the government run the network cause it isn't profitable for the private sector.
12 hours, 24 hours - talk about having too much time on your hand.
Ah yes! The cowards that always have 2 cents to dispose of.