Actually, IMO, most of the caps ARE carefully calculated to be unfair. Look at the plans for data and txt usage. They almost ALWAYS break down to these options: 1. cheap plan with a limit lower than what 95% of people need, with insane overage charges 2. expensive plan with a limit way higher than what 95% of people need, with insane overage charges 3. "unlimited" plan for a few $ more than #2
Basically #1 doesn't work for anyone, so they're forced to spend way more than they need on #2, because there are no other options. (and most probably just go with #3, because it's only a few $ more, and they don't have to worry about the insane scary per txt/MB charges)
To put it another way, I have never met a person who was highly competent with using Windows and also highly competent with using a Unix-like OS (Linux, *BSD, etc) who still preferred Windows. I'm sure someone will pipe up now that I've posted this but the point remains, such people are quite rare. Your preference for one thing is meaningless if you are not at least as familiar with an alternative.
OK, I'll bite:)
Most people that are competent couldn't answer the question "Do you prefer Linux (etc.) or Windows?" (unless the answer is "both"). It begs the question, prefer it for *what* exactly? At work, I have both Windows 7 and Ubuntu systems at my desk running Synergy. I use whichever one happens to be best suited for my current task. Same at home, except that the Linux box has been decapitated and shoved in a closet. I prefer windows (7) on the computer I sit at at home, because in my experience, I spend far less time screwing with it trying to get stuff to work (Mac might be an option, if it wasn't for games).
I've seen some rather creatively disguised ground-level heat exchangers/vents in downtown Dallas.
Walk past some architectural element or modern-looking "sculpture," wonder where that muffled fan noise is coming from, look up, and depending on the weather, you may or may not be able to see the heat exchanger exhaust coming out the top.
I'm sure they try to avoid pumping all that water to the roof, if possible.
Huh? Exposing the breaches of trust should help the institution as a whole be *more* trustworthy.
Most people accept that "the police" is made up of individuals, and some of them are going to be bad, in spite of the best efforts at vetting them. Exposing abuses helps weed the bad apples out, and should improve the overall trustworthiness.
I've read or heard a lot of cops answer the "what do you do if someone is recording you?" question, and almost universally, their answer is "let them." This usually only changes if the person doing the recording starts interfering with what the officer is doing. It seems like the people that are complaining are the elected/appointed higher-ups that don't want to look bad or deal with negative publicity.
Hopefully some enterprising Google Maps developer will add a feature where you can have such warnings, in their entirety, attached to every single driving direction step, as well as in callouts all over your route map, then call it "Rosenberg Mode".
Someone that stupid deserves to be mocked. (although I'm sure she'll get a settlement just to avoid a suit, so "complete ass" might be more appropriate than "stupid."
I have a police/fire scanner, and I regularly hear them talking about "pinging" cell phones, and "Unit XYZ, welfare concern, stage 2 cell phone hang up in the area of blah blah blah...", etc.
The issues you bring up and others are why I think it would be better for the signals to simply provide "time till green" information, and information that helps the car determine how far back in the queue it is, and then let the car & driver decide how to proceed.
A huge V12 might decide that 15-20 seconds of "off" is beneficial for it, while smaller 4-banger wouldn't get a benefit and decide not to bother.
Overall, though, I think hybrid drivetrains and engines that dynamically fire cylinders or not based on load would be a much better solution with far fewer potential problems and complicated what-ifs.
Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.
In any case, an economist denigrating a history major is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.
Of course it's difficult to know that in advance. I've always said that university right after high school is a bad idea. In my case, I ended up going to UT right after HS, but I only stayed two years. After working for a few years, I had a *much* better idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up," and was able to target the completion of a 4-year degree much more accurately. Plus, when you do finish the degree, you have a degree AND experience.
It's already getting to where the "game" is just an engine or stub... If you actually want CONTENT (God forbid), you have to pay extra on top of the full price you paid for the engine.
When my sister and I were ready to buy houses, we arranged the mortgages with him. He was able to take some of his "safe" retirement funds (which of course were earning crap returns, as most "safe" investments do), and for little or no increase in risk, quintuple the return, while at the same time, we got really good interest rates. Plus it's not so bad making that payment every month when it stays in the family. So, he now has a nice $1300/mo income as long as we own our houses.
Obviously this only works if you don't need the principle right away.
Well, *technically* electricity is just the power transmission mechanism. Using an electric motor just means you're free to power it via coal, natural gas, oil, wind, solar, your hamster running in its wheel, or whatever else you can connect the other end of the charging cable to.
So really coal would probably be the number two competitor at the moment in the US.
(You could make a similar argument about gas/ethanol/diesel being supplied by various means, but your choices are severely limited in that case)
I would think enforcing strict policies like that on a university campus would be like herding cats. Yes for the Administration system it should be a piece of cake but what about systems in research labs?
Sometimes it's best to let the cats herd themselves.
I used to support a school full computers a few years ago. While a much smaller environment than a Uni, the faculty still talk to each other. One of the first things I did was set up imaging and easy network storage for the faculty. At first it was like herding cats - impossible to get them to take the time to make sure their important stuff was on the network storage. It took only two HD failures to change everyone's behavior. The first one, the teacher *wasn't* storing stuff on the network, and of course her tales of woe spread far and wide. I just made sure everyone knew why everything was lost.
The second, the teacher *was* storing everything on her network drive, and when her HD failed, she was up and running by her next break, with everything intact, and she spread her tales of joy far and wide. I just had to put in a little extra effort so that everyone knew why it was so easy. Mysteriously, everyone was suddenly making sure all of their important stuff ended up on their network drive.
Yeah... the government. Here was my first thought when reading the "wirelessly" bit.
I do a lot of volunteer work with the local PD, and recently bought a scanner. I quickly realized that these would make great ID theft tools, because when they're checking someone that might have warrants, they verify all sorts of stuff to make sure they don't arrest the wrong person.
So, by recording the audio of the NCIC channel, or just jotting stuff down, I could get: Name Address Previous/other addresses DL # & state SSN birthdate Car type & tag #/state identifying marks (tattoos/scars, etc.)
If you have a common name, this could be you!
So, I suppose every city, state, and county will now have to install expensive encrypted radio systems, just in case they pull over someone from MA... My city (of about 250k) is in the process of spending $20M to upgrade to a digital P25 system, and that's still not encrypted.
Hell, here in TX, even if there isn't anyone home, you're liable to be shot by a *neighbor*. It's happened, and as I recall, the grand jury no-billed the homicide as justified.
Personally (even though I'm one of those that carries a firearm on my person almost all the time), I think the above situation is really stretching it, though.
Really? I've only ever known *one* person to ever have hundreds on a regular basis, and that was only because he didn't have a bank account and had to go straight from paycheck to cash.
Everyone I know carries minimal cash (which comes out of an ATM in $20s - I'd have to spend extra effort to get $100s) and uses a check or credit/debit card for everything over about $3. I can sometimes go 3-6 months on $100 in cash.
This is the same sort of logic I use to justify the death penalty for these asshats that steal/cause to disappear billions of dollars.
How many people, working for an average wage 24/7 for their entire life would it take to replace the amount of money that, say, Madoff stole? He's essentially "taken" that many lives.
I don't think that having more network or firewall knowledge would really help with what the story submitter is really after. As someone who's part of a team that manages firewalls with 3k+ rule bases, I can say that it doesn't take a networking genius to configure a new rule for someone, and it really doesn't matter what interface you use (CheckPoint GUI, PIX/ASA command line, etc.). Well, sometimes it does... we have some environments that are so arcane/legacy/"hysterical reasons" that it's not funny any more.
The hardest part is managing the mess that's generated when you have 5 requests for changes per day, every day. You can't just put in new rules for every request, because then you have so many rules that the firewall can't keep up. When you start piggy-backing off of existing rules, it makes it hard to remove access when it's no longer needed (in the extremely rare case that someone even tells you they don't need it any more).
What we'd really like to see is a way that we can take a specific requests for access (Bob Smith's app server x.x.x.x needs SFTP access to to vendor Y's servers at y.y.y.y and z.z.z.z) and compile them into an optimized rule base (using traffic/usage stats to order the rules). That way, when Bob comes back and says he doesn't need SFTP (or we look at old stuff and ask if he still needs it), we can just remove his request from the source, and recompile the rule base, and know that it won't disturb anyone else's access. That way, your "source" rule base is basically an actual picture of what's needed in a business sense, rather than what the firewall is doing to implement it.
If we could integrate such a system into our process management tools, so that a firewall engineer only has to verify a request and schedule it for an appropriate change window to be automatically added, that would be even better.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, Foo is a pretty name for a girl!
You're right... it goes well with "Quit yo' jibba jabba, Foo!" :)
ha... They're probably secret because "handle" just means "keep the gov't safe and operating." And fsck the rest of you.
Actually, IMO, most of the caps ARE carefully calculated to be unfair. Look at the plans for data and txt usage. They almost ALWAYS break down to these options:
1. cheap plan with a limit lower than what 95% of people need, with insane overage charges
2. expensive plan with a limit way higher than what 95% of people need, with insane overage charges
3. "unlimited" plan for a few $ more than #2
Basically #1 doesn't work for anyone, so they're forced to spend way more than they need on #2, because there are no other options. (and most probably just go with #3, because it's only a few $ more, and they don't have to worry about the insane scary per txt/MB charges)
To put it another way, I have never met a person who was highly competent with using Windows and also highly competent with using a Unix-like OS (Linux, *BSD, etc) who still preferred Windows. I'm sure someone will pipe up now that I've posted this but the point remains, such people are quite rare. Your preference for one thing is meaningless if you are not at least as familiar with an alternative.
OK, I'll bite :)
Most people that are competent couldn't answer the question "Do you prefer Linux (etc.) or Windows?" (unless the answer is "both"). It begs the question, prefer it for *what* exactly? At work, I have both Windows 7 and Ubuntu systems at my desk running Synergy. I use whichever one happens to be best suited for my current task. Same at home, except that the Linux box has been decapitated and shoved in a closet. I prefer windows (7) on the computer I sit at at home, because in my experience, I spend far less time screwing with it trying to get stuff to work (Mac might be an option, if it wasn't for games).
If we're lucky, someone at Google will give them those for free
I've seen some rather creatively disguised ground-level heat exchangers/vents in downtown Dallas.
Walk past some architectural element or modern-looking "sculpture," wonder where that muffled fan noise is coming from, look up, and depending on the weather, you may or may not be able to see the heat exchanger exhaust coming out the top.
I'm sure they try to avoid pumping all that water to the roof, if possible.
Huh? Exposing the breaches of trust should help the institution as a whole be *more* trustworthy.
Most people accept that "the police" is made up of individuals, and some of them are going to be bad, in spite of the best efforts at vetting them. Exposing abuses helps weed the bad apples out, and should improve the overall trustworthiness.
I've read or heard a lot of cops answer the "what do you do if someone is recording you?" question, and almost universally, their answer is "let them." This usually only changes if the person doing the recording starts interfering with what the officer is doing. It seems like the people that are complaining are the elected/appointed higher-ups that don't want to look bad or deal with negative publicity.
Maybe so, but I'm guessing an insurance company wouldn't waste resources trying to add Google to the suit.
Hopefully some enterprising Google Maps developer will add a feature where you can have such warnings, in their entirety, attached to every single driving direction step, as well as in callouts all over your route map, then call it "Rosenberg Mode".
Someone that stupid deserves to be mocked. (although I'm sure she'll get a settlement just to avoid a suit, so "complete ass" might be more appropriate than "stupid."
It's too late.
I have a police/fire scanner, and I regularly hear them talking about "pinging" cell phones, and "Unit XYZ, welfare concern, stage 2 cell phone hang up in the area of blah blah blah...", etc.
The issues you bring up and others are why I think it would be better for the signals to simply provide "time till green" information, and information that helps the car determine how far back in the queue it is, and then let the car & driver decide how to proceed.
A huge V12 might decide that 15-20 seconds of "off" is beneficial for it, while smaller 4-banger wouldn't get a benefit and decide not to bother.
Overall, though, I think hybrid drivetrains and engines that dynamically fire cylinders or not based on load would be a much better solution with far fewer potential problems and complicated what-ifs.
Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.
In any case, an economist denigrating a history major is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.
Of course it's difficult to know that in advance. I've always said that university right after high school is a bad idea. In my case, I ended up going to UT right after HS, but I only stayed two years. After working for a few years, I had a *much* better idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up," and was able to target the completion of a 4-year degree much more accurately. Plus, when you do finish the degree, you have a degree AND experience.
FInally! They've pissed off someone who can actually nuke them from orbit and be sure!
I nominate "-1 Inciteful" to replace the "-1 Troll" mod option...
It's already getting to where the "game" is just an engine or stub... If you actually want CONTENT (God forbid), you have to pay extra on top of the full price you paid for the engine.
In which case the appropriate punishment would be to spend an afternoon scrubbing gum off of school furniture, not a week's detention.
Or do what my dad did:
When my sister and I were ready to buy houses, we arranged the mortgages with him. He was able to take some of his "safe" retirement funds (which of course were earning crap returns, as most "safe" investments do), and for little or no increase in risk, quintuple the return, while at the same time, we got really good interest rates. Plus it's not so bad making that payment every month when it stays in the family. So, he now has a nice $1300/mo income as long as we own our houses.
Obviously this only works if you don't need the principle right away.
Well, *technically* electricity is just the power transmission mechanism. Using an electric motor just means you're free to power it via coal, natural gas, oil, wind, solar, your hamster running in its wheel, or whatever else you can connect the other end of the charging cable to.
So really coal would probably be the number two competitor at the moment in the US.
(You could make a similar argument about gas/ethanol/diesel being supplied by various means, but your choices are severely limited in that case)
I would think enforcing strict policies like that on a university campus would be like herding cats. Yes for the Administration system it should be a piece of cake but what about systems in research labs?
Sometimes it's best to let the cats herd themselves.
I used to support a school full computers a few years ago. While a much smaller environment than a Uni, the faculty still talk to each other. One of the first things I did was set up imaging and easy network storage for the faculty. At first it was like herding cats - impossible to get them to take the time to make sure their important stuff was on the network storage. It took only two HD failures to change everyone's behavior. The first one, the teacher *wasn't* storing stuff on the network, and of course her tales of woe spread far and wide. I just made sure everyone knew why everything was lost.
The second, the teacher *was* storing everything on her network drive, and when her HD failed, she was up and running by her next break, with everything intact, and she spread her tales of joy far and wide. I just had to put in a little extra effort so that everyone knew why it was so easy. Mysteriously, everyone was suddenly making sure all of their important stuff ended up on their network drive.
Yeah... the government. Here was my first thought when reading the "wirelessly" bit.
I do a lot of volunteer work with the local PD, and recently bought a scanner. I quickly realized that these would make great ID theft tools, because when they're checking someone that might have warrants, they verify all sorts of stuff to make sure they don't arrest the wrong person.
So, by recording the audio of the NCIC channel, or just jotting stuff down, I could get:
Name
Address
Previous/other addresses
DL # & state
SSN
birthdate
Car type & tag #/state
identifying marks (tattoos/scars, etc.)
If you have a common name, this could be you!
So, I suppose every city, state, and county will now have to install expensive encrypted radio systems, just in case they pull over someone from MA... My city (of about 250k) is in the process of spending $20M to upgrade to a digital P25 system, and that's still not encrypted.
Hell, here in TX, even if there isn't anyone home, you're liable to be shot by a *neighbor*. It's happened, and as I recall, the grand jury no-billed the homicide as justified.
Personally (even though I'm one of those that carries a firearm on my person almost all the time), I think the above situation is really stretching it, though.
Really? I've only ever known *one* person to ever have hundreds on a regular basis, and that was only because he didn't have a bank account and had to go straight from paycheck to cash.
Everyone I know carries minimal cash (which comes out of an ATM in $20s - I'd have to spend extra effort to get $100s) and uses a check or credit/debit card for everything over about $3. I can sometimes go 3-6 months on $100 in cash.
This is the same sort of logic I use to justify the death penalty for these asshats that steal/cause to disappear billions of dollars.
How many people, working for an average wage 24/7 for their entire life would it take to replace the amount of money that, say, Madoff stole? He's essentially "taken" that many lives.
I don't think that having more network or firewall knowledge would really help with what the story submitter is really after. As someone who's part of a team that manages firewalls with 3k+ rule bases, I can say that it doesn't take a networking genius to configure a new rule for someone, and it really doesn't matter what interface you use (CheckPoint GUI, PIX/ASA command line, etc.). Well, sometimes it does... we have some environments that are so arcane/legacy/"hysterical reasons" that it's not funny any more.
The hardest part is managing the mess that's generated when you have 5 requests for changes per day, every day. You can't just put in new rules for every request, because then you have so many rules that the firewall can't keep up. When you start piggy-backing off of existing rules, it makes it hard to remove access when it's no longer needed (in the extremely rare case that someone even tells you they don't need it any more).
What we'd really like to see is a way that we can take a specific requests for access (Bob Smith's app server x.x.x.x needs SFTP access to to vendor Y's servers at y.y.y.y and z.z.z.z) and compile them into an optimized rule base (using traffic/usage stats to order the rules). That way, when Bob comes back and says he doesn't need SFTP (or we look at old stuff and ask if he still needs it), we can just remove his request from the source, and recompile the rule base, and know that it won't disturb anyone else's access. That way, your "source" rule base is basically an actual picture of what's needed in a business sense, rather than what the firewall is doing to implement it.
If we could integrate such a system into our process management tools, so that a firewall engineer only has to verify a request and schedule it for an appropriate change window to be automatically added, that would be even better.
...which resulted in the dist bowl in the 1930s...
Dist Bowl? Is that what happens to a hard drive when you install too many versions of Linux?