There are plenty of good reasons for encrypting data on a work machine. The first one that comes to mind is personal data stored on the machine, such as tax returns, or scanned copies of ID and credit cards for emergency use. Sure, people really should keep it on personal machines and not work machines, but that isn't always practical.
Companies with "Big Brother" policies also come to mind. Things like your personal resume (which we should always keep up to date), or contact lists might be construed as someone job-shopping and lead to retribution. Seen it happen.
Lastly, there is the legitimate issue of controlling data access at a more granular level. All kinds of HR information need to be eyes-only, and not subject to the SysAdmin's probing eyes. One old job, the system administrator found the spreadsheet with everyone in the company's salary, coming bonus (2 months), and raise (3 months out) information. This led to several people jumping ship or demanding more money, and created a lack of trust of management. Personnel disciplinary letters should also be protected in some organizations.
Without the facility, many of these documents become "sneaker-netted", which doesn't help the organization any.
It is a little awkward, but you can release it from Parallels by clicking on the bottom-right corner of the screen- CD and USB icons.
My personal preference is to run XP completely sandboxed- no access to the network and limited access to real hardware. For that application, I wish Parallels didn't try to gain control as default.
Got Dengue Fever over christmas. That was when I threw out the last DEET replacement (the new OFF). DEET is nasty stuff, but it does work better than anything else (swat) (swat).
We also have a tennis-racket bug zapper, but that doesn't work so well...
The Dengue mosquitoes are about the size of a 747... don't know what these Athenean mosquitoes can hold to them!
The integrated graphics requires matched DIMMs. You have to give up something to save money. The smart upgrade to 2x512's out the door is $90. You still keep it under $1k.
Apple actually has enough market strength to be a monopoly in the "portable music player" business without factoring in ITMS; since they sell so many more units than their rivals, it is easier for them to secure components.
France should have stuck to the original intent of the law and banned DRM. Allow content providers to watermark files if they wish (and it doesn't degrade quality).
It would be a watermark, and granted with enough copies of the file downloaded to different users in different places you should be able to make the watermark ineffective by having the copies "vote" on each bit, without understanding exactly how the watermark works. Unfortunately, there are counter-measures for this that would make the process much more hardware intensive... but it can still be done if there is enough incentive.
It goes back to the whole idea that the terms of a sale are changed after the sale.
When you bought the software, you had a reasonable expectation that it is "free of bugs," and that any problems with the software will be fixed by the company at no additional cost to you, for the life of the product.
It is generally only a problem for people that are in fact pushing the edge of what the vendor intended it to be used for. This edge might be clearly prohibited in the EULA, but that was not a reasonable expectation at the time of sale. Common example would be the desktop/laptop computer issue that people with multiple computers run into, upgraded computers (including full replacement).
I fail to understand how EULAs can possibly be legal, where the vendor has the right to change the terms of the license at any time after the sale.
Slashdot editors haven't changed at all in the past eight years... haven't you caught on by now? There have always been dupes, inaccurate summaries, ad-whoring story links. The only thing that seems to have gone are the pump-and-dump storylines for stock manipulation. (aaah, Corel and the.) Sensationalistic... well, sure, maybe.
BUT, the sensationalism is what makes it worthwhile to actually read comments. Browsing at 4+ might still make the actual article 20% the size of the slashdot commentary, but you just might get something interesting out of the comments.
As for the story, while the (arguably) sensationalism component regarding completely banning P2P might be there, the real news in my book was that they actually pulled off a tax on blank media at the same time! (Sure, that info was a dupe, but it has interesting meaning when you look at it now.)
Compare reading slashdot to reading an article on news.google: Do you ever find the actual article completely missing out on key elements that you want to understand? Do you ever find yourself clicking on multiple stories that are grouped together in order to try and find out the real story? Slashdot gives people (with time) a chance to get more information and be involved in a discussion about a topic that few other forums actually are able to rival.
I'm all for competition, and do try and read other sites for different kinds of information, but for many of the things that interest me, slashdot can't be beat.
Hopefully they don't stop with eBay... start competing with Visa and MasterCard! The fees are getting insane! I pay up to 3% for transactions in another currency; with all the fees the CC company starts to make a better markup than the merchant!
If it is advertised this way, it is reasonably fair. The reality will be that the service is 256k UP, 5M DOWN, and 20M "Preferred Partner" access. As long as your needs fit in the 256/5 area, the 20M is just a bonus... a legitimate "value add." This is a speculative service that the telco provides, and is subsidized by their partners.
Unfortunately, the telcos need you to consume all of that 5M before the 20M has any value... Unless... they play with QOS and add latency to the 5M side, and maybe even limit that 5M by specific ports. Then, your games won't work on the 5M side, and maybe your company's VPN starts to act strange. Past experience suggests that the telcos will mess with the "common carrier" portion to create a need for the "preferred partner" portion.
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the wrong approach. Your action acknowledges that it is your responsibility to police the actions of other parties as it relates to information that you do not control either the content of or access to. The more people that take this approach, the more it will become the established practice.
Use the lawyers against these guys instead. Go for a class-action lawsuit against the bureaus, the credit issuer, and anybody that leaked data. The problem won't be solved until the cost of not solving it is prohibitive. Even if no money comes out of it, the bad press should help stirr up something.
By subsidizing the cost of their inaction, you make it harder to fix the problem.
The SkySeer would also be a helpful tool to nab burglary suspects on rooftops and to chase down suspects fleeing on foot. The drone comes equipped with low-light and infrared capabilities and can fly at speeds up to 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour for 70 minutes.
The plane collapses and can fit into a shoulder pack smaller than a golf bag. Its portability and ease of assembly could be a big advantage for law enforcement.
"It's basically a high-tech kite that field officers could set up in a matter of minutes," said Heal.
It's a frigging model airplane! It is a neat concept from the standpoint of something that can be deployed easily when needs dictate. It has to be thrown into the air! It runs on a battery... these things aren't staying in the air for hours at a time.
While I worry about the next generation, and getting proper procedures into place now given limited ability, SkyNet it aint!
Here, here! Despite being a big apple fan, my wife and I have only bought a handful of "impulse" tracks off of iTunes.
Why? Because the quality is less than ripping from CD, and the DRM is a hassle in the long-run.
As long as non-DRM media with equal or better quality is available at an equal price, it is easy to avoid DRM.
The consumer advocacy groups should be going after the copy-protected CDs and help to define fair use in more general terms, rather than specifically focusing on iTunes.
All DRM is equally evil, even if some of it is more palatable than others.
I actually used to work at the Concord Tech Center for BofA. Eight years ago, before they were bought by Nation's Bank, it was a posterchild for innovation and development in banking IT. Since then, the senior management has really had it in for that place and the people that work there. It was made clear to many of the people that if you wanted a job, you were going to need to move to Richmond or Charlotte. The initial cost cutting was to move jobs to these places, and the next round was offshoring them.
Happy to have no relationship with the place or the Bank now. But, if you are in the market for a data center, they have about 300,000 square fteet of raised floor space in addition to about 700,000 square feet of office space.
It's incredibly uninformed to talk of costs in terms of total dollars!
The old metric was in $/sq. ft., and today it is better to talk in terms of $/kW given higher densities.
For a wide range of data centers, the building shell cost is around $100-250/sq. ft. An enterprise (EIA 692 "Tier 4") data center costs about $22k/kW, plus the high end of the building shell cost. A "Tier 3" data center is closer to $20k/kW and $200/sq. ft. When you drop to Tier 2, you cut the cost in about half, at $12k/kW.
The only costs that have risen dramatically recently are generators and copper, which have a one-year lead time for big engines typically used (1.5-2+ MW) for the generetor, and about triple the cost three years ago for copper-- maybe a 15% premium maximum for a large data center.
Costs get much more complicated when you talk about provisions for future expansion and site constraints.
As for energy costs, yes, cheaper electricity is good for a data center. A 2MW data center will save about $350k/year if they can drop their electricity cost by $0.01 per kWh!
While telemetry packages are available from the cell providers now to send back data to a server, there are applications where the need for a server complicates matters.
Having a built-in webserver is a lot like just having a personal web server on your pc-- sans pc.
It's great for grassroots or short-life projects. It's also a way for Nokia to sell more phones and the carriers to move more data...
Net neutrality has two simple issues that need to be resolved:
Common Carrier status.. If the telcos want to control content, make them give up common carrier status. 90% Of problems solved!
Content Provider Chokepoints.. If there really is a limit in upstream capacity, give content providers access to a less congested segment by purchasing bandwidth to different points on their network. This can even be a wholesale backbone for high-bandwidth needs.
By going this route, you solve the problems in-kind.
Step one: find out what services your company uses.
It isn't that hard in many industries to determine who an anonymous resume is from- just listing your alma matter/year and experience can give away a lot of information.
I was amazed to have an hr person identify three people in my company that were actively looking for jobs. The resumes looked good- like they had relevant experience. There wasn't any stand-out information, but just from school, employment dates, and cities they knew exactly who it was!
The same often works for employers trying to hide their identities...
2. Copy and paste shortcuts are the same- they just have different meanings for ctrl.
3. Macs do need to improve keyboard shortcuts. It drives me batty doing keyboard shortcuts the mac way! There are keyboard shortcuts for menu options, but you use twice as many keys!
Promotional fees are already taken out of the payments for the royalty - the artist is only getting 4.5c to pay back the labels for bribes and promotion!
They are using VRLA batteries, so if they last through four years of deep-cycling you would be lucky.
Since the article is so lacking in details, based on the footprint, I would assume they have a 10kW inverter and 16-22 hours of battery run-time. This isn't bad, and I can imagine coming close to getting a payback with it, although once you replace the batteries you start the payback cycle all over again.
Also, variable pricing offers a discount at periods of low demand not becuase of the idea of supply and demand, but because the most efficient generation capacity likes nice, level loads. If the utility's demand profile was perfectly flat, they wouldn't need any of the oil-fired peaking plants which are cheap to build, but expensive to operate. There "should" be a net savings to the consumer if load profiles are flattened.
The other potential cost savings is in reducing peak demand charges. If the system can share load with the utility, it would be possible to constrain your peak demand. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like it is designed that way. Since peak demand charges are in effect for a year, being able to drop 5-10% for the peak period can translate to real savings. (Most of this is done demand-side today-- letting the Air Con setpoints drift higher, dropping lighting levels, etc.)
I would guess that most businesses would be better off putting PV panels on the roof with a net-metering agreement so they don't have the hassles of batteries. You could combine the two...
Slashdot Mirror
It is possible that the facility has outlived its infrastructure. Even a government building needs a lot of work after 50 years to meet with change.
I would expect it to be either an upgrade underway, or a new facility is already online somewhere else with more robust capabilities...
There are plenty of good reasons for encrypting data on a work machine. The first one that comes to mind is personal data stored on the machine, such as tax returns, or scanned copies of ID and credit cards for emergency use. Sure, people really should keep it on personal machines and not work machines, but that isn't always practical.
Companies with "Big Brother" policies also come to mind. Things like your personal resume (which we should always keep up to date), or contact lists might be construed as someone job-shopping and lead to retribution. Seen it happen.
Lastly, there is the legitimate issue of controlling data access at a more granular level. All kinds of HR information need to be eyes-only, and not subject to the SysAdmin's probing eyes. One old job, the system administrator found the spreadsheet with everyone in the company's salary, coming bonus (2 months), and raise (3 months out) information. This led to several people jumping ship or demanding more money, and created a lack of trust of management. Personnel disciplinary letters should also be protected in some organizations.
Without the facility, many of these documents become "sneaker-netted", which doesn't help the organization any.
It is a little awkward, but you can release it from Parallels by clicking on the bottom-right corner of the screen- CD and USB icons.
My personal preference is to run XP completely sandboxed- no access to the network and limited access to real hardware. For that application, I wish Parallels didn't try to gain control as default.
Got Dengue Fever over christmas. That was when I threw out the last DEET replacement (the new OFF). DEET is nasty stuff, but it does work better than anything else (swat) (swat).
We also have a tennis-racket bug zapper, but that doesn't work so well...
The Dengue mosquitoes are about the size of a 747... don't know what these Athenean mosquitoes can hold to them!
The integrated graphics requires matched DIMMs. You have to give up something to save money. The smart upgrade to 2x512's out the door is $90. You still keep it under $1k.
Apple actually has enough market strength to be a monopoly in the "portable music player" business without factoring in ITMS; since they sell so many more units than their rivals, it is easier for them to secure components.
France should have stuck to the original intent of the law and banned DRM. Allow content providers to watermark files if they wish (and it doesn't degrade quality).
It would be a watermark, and granted with enough copies of the file downloaded to different users in different places you should be able to make the watermark ineffective by having the copies "vote" on each bit, without understanding exactly how the watermark works. Unfortunately, there are counter-measures for this that would make the process much more hardware intensive... but it can still be done if there is enough incentive.
It goes back to the whole idea that the terms of a sale are changed after the sale.
When you bought the software, you had a reasonable expectation that it is "free of bugs," and that any problems with the software will be fixed by the company at no additional cost to you, for the life of the product.
It is generally only a problem for people that are in fact pushing the edge of what the vendor intended it to be used for. This edge might be clearly prohibited in the EULA, but that was not a reasonable expectation at the time of sale. Common example would be the desktop/laptop computer issue that people with multiple computers run into, upgraded computers (including full replacement).
I fail to understand how EULAs can possibly be legal, where the vendor has the right to change the terms of the license at any time after the sale.
Slashdot editors haven't changed at all in the past eight years... haven't you caught on by now? There have always been dupes, inaccurate summaries, ad-whoring story links. The only thing that seems to have gone are the pump-and-dump storylines for stock manipulation. (aaah, Corel and the .) Sensationalistic... well, sure, maybe.
BUT, the sensationalism is what makes it worthwhile to actually read comments. Browsing at 4+ might still make the actual article 20% the size of the slashdot commentary, but you just might get something interesting out of the comments.
As for the story, while the (arguably) sensationalism component regarding completely banning P2P might be there, the real news in my book was that they actually pulled off a tax on blank media at the same time! (Sure, that info was a dupe, but it has interesting meaning when you look at it now.)
Compare reading slashdot to reading an article on news.google: Do you ever find the actual article completely missing out on key elements that you want to understand? Do you ever find yourself clicking on multiple stories that are grouped together in order to try and find out the real story? Slashdot gives people (with time) a chance to get more information and be involved in a discussion about a topic that few other forums actually are able to rival.
I'm all for competition, and do try and read other sites for different kinds of information, but for many of the things that interest me, slashdot can't be beat.
Hopefully they don't stop with eBay... start competing with Visa and MasterCard! The fees are getting insane! I pay up to 3% for transactions in another currency; with all the fees the CC company starts to make a better markup than the merchant!
Nail on the Head. It's a case of "if we just had $x, we could do a better job than the banks, telcos..."
Also, they do things to set information free.
Google isn't a monopoly, just a big conglomerate filled with a bunch of really small lab projects... some of which may make a profit someday.
If it is advertised this way, it is reasonably fair. The reality will be that the service is 256k UP, 5M DOWN, and 20M "Preferred Partner" access. As long as your needs fit in the 256/5 area, the 20M is just a bonus... a legitimate "value add." This is a speculative service that the telco provides, and is subsidized by their partners.
Unfortunately, the telcos need you to consume all of that 5M before the 20M has any value... Unless... they play with QOS and add latency to the 5M side, and maybe even limit that 5M by specific ports. Then, your games won't work on the 5M side, and maybe your company's VPN starts to act strange. Past experience suggests that the telcos will mess with the "common carrier" portion to create a need for the "preferred partner" portion.
Better Partner Up!
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the wrong approach. Your action acknowledges that it is your responsibility to police the actions of other parties as it relates to information that you do not control either the content of or access to. The more people that take this approach, the more it will become the established practice.
Use the lawyers against these guys instead. Go for a class-action lawsuit against the bureaus, the credit issuer, and anybody that leaked data. The problem won't be solved until the cost of not solving it is prohibitive. Even if no money comes out of it, the bad press should help stirr up something.
By subsidizing the cost of their inaction, you make it harder to fix the problem.
...And that would help Mexico HOW?! A one-time capital investment that quickly prices locals out of the market?!
It's a frigging model airplane! It is a neat concept from the standpoint of something that can be deployed easily when needs dictate. It has to be thrown into the air! It runs on a battery... these things aren't staying in the air for hours at a time.
While I worry about the next generation, and getting proper procedures into place now given limited ability, SkyNet it aint!
Here, here! Despite being a big apple fan, my wife and I have only bought a handful of "impulse" tracks off of iTunes.
Why? Because the quality is less than ripping from CD, and the DRM is a hassle in the long-run.
As long as non-DRM media with equal or better quality is available at an equal price, it is easy to avoid DRM.
The consumer advocacy groups should be going after the copy-protected CDs and help to define fair use in more general terms, rather than specifically focusing on iTunes.
All DRM is equally evil, even if some of it is more palatable than others.
I actually used to work at the Concord Tech Center for BofA. Eight years ago, before they were bought by Nation's Bank, it was a posterchild for innovation and development in banking IT. Since then, the senior management has really had it in for that place and the people that work there. It was made clear to many of the people that if you wanted a job, you were going to need to move to Richmond or Charlotte. The initial cost cutting was to move jobs to these places, and the next round was offshoring them.
Happy to have no relationship with the place or the Bank now. But, if you are in the market for a data center, they have about 300,000 square fteet of raised floor space in addition to about 700,000 square feet of office space.
It's incredibly uninformed to talk of costs in terms of total dollars!
The old metric was in $/sq. ft., and today it is better to talk in terms of $/kW given higher densities.
For a wide range of data centers, the building shell cost is around $100-250/sq. ft. An enterprise (EIA 692 "Tier 4") data center costs about $22k/kW, plus the high end of the building shell cost. A "Tier 3" data center is closer to $20k/kW and $200/sq. ft. When you drop to Tier 2, you cut the cost in about half, at $12k/kW.
The only costs that have risen dramatically recently are generators and copper, which have a one-year lead time for big engines typically used (1.5-2+ MW) for the generetor, and about triple the cost three years ago for copper-- maybe a 15% premium maximum for a large data center.
Costs get much more complicated when you talk about provisions for future expansion and site constraints.
As for energy costs, yes, cheaper electricity is good for a data center. A 2MW data center will save about $350k/year if they can drop their electricity cost by $0.01 per kWh!
While telemetry packages are available from the cell providers now to send back data to a server, there are applications where the need for a server complicates matters.
Having a built-in webserver is a lot like just having a personal web server on your pc-- sans pc.
It's great for grassroots or short-life projects. It's also a way for Nokia to sell more phones and the carriers to move more data...
By going this route, you solve the problems in-kind.
Step one: find out what services your company uses.
It isn't that hard in many industries to determine who an anonymous resume is from- just listing your alma matter/year and experience can give away a lot of information.
I was amazed to have an hr person identify three people in my company that were actively looking for jobs. The resumes looked good- like they had relevant experience. There wasn't any stand-out information, but just from school, employment dates, and cities they knew exactly who it was!
The same often works for employers trying to hide their identities...
1. Get a two-button mouse. It's the same then.
2. Copy and paste shortcuts are the same- they just have different meanings for ctrl.
3. Macs do need to improve keyboard shortcuts. It drives me batty doing keyboard shortcuts the mac way! There are keyboard shortcuts for menu options, but you use twice as many keys!
Ghost is a program to duplicate hard drives so you don't have to install all apps on each computer.
I thought the macs actually had something easier than this over the betwork, but don't know the details.
Promotional fees are already taken out of the payments for the royalty - the artist is only getting 4.5c to pay back the labels for bribes and promotion!
They are using VRLA batteries, so if they last through four years of deep-cycling you would be lucky.
Since the article is so lacking in details, based on the footprint, I would assume they have a 10kW inverter and 16-22 hours of battery run-time. This isn't bad, and I can imagine coming close to getting a payback with it, although once you replace the batteries you start the payback cycle all over again.
Also, variable pricing offers a discount at periods of low demand not becuase of the idea of supply and demand, but because the most efficient generation capacity likes nice, level loads. If the utility's demand profile was perfectly flat, they wouldn't need any of the oil-fired peaking plants which are cheap to build, but expensive to operate. There "should" be a net savings to the consumer if load profiles are flattened.
The other potential cost savings is in reducing peak demand charges. If the system can share load with the utility, it would be possible to constrain your peak demand. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like it is designed that way. Since peak demand charges are in effect for a year, being able to drop 5-10% for the peak period can translate to real savings. (Most of this is done demand-side today-- letting the Air Con setpoints drift higher, dropping lighting levels, etc.)
I would guess that most businesses would be better off putting PV panels on the roof with a net-metering agreement so they don't have the hassles of batteries. You could combine the two...