unfortunately, once electric cars take off, the demand will actually be higher at night.
Ultracapacators are an option, but are dangerous. More likely, you'll have a battery pack that gets charged and then it charges the car.
However, wind is still going to be cheaper than solar for 15-20 years. Home solar can't even generate 100% utiilization fro most homes today. An enelctic car by itself uses more than whole homes do. Imaging 2-3 electric cars... Even in 30 years scientists don;t expect to have solar cells capable of meeting those demands, let alone all the folks that live in milti-family homes and apartments who can not benefit from solar.
Fact is, we have enough wind alone in America, mostly just in texas and the norther wind corridor, to power the entire hemesphere. Wind is cheap, and reliable. On a nationally scaled system, localized wind drop offs are easily compensated for by the grid. This system is not only affordable, but more profitable than coal poewr, and thus you see the existing and continuing heavy investment.
The power grid overall is being overhauled seperately. Hundreds of billoins have been earmerked to replace our existing national grid with a superconducting system. It's already begun as Long Island's super grid came online months ago. Europe has thousands of miles of this new cabling in place already. We can aford it, we can keep up with demand. Any contrary report is FUD being spread by other industries, or by local power companies who will be forced to lower rates once you can buy power from other places in america to come to your home (decentralized power grid).
First of all, plug in hybrids have ranges in the 300 miles areana. though the volt will only be ably to go about 60 miles on electric alone, Im my choice of job means I have to commute longer than that, and burn 1 gallon of gas to get home, keep in mind this is counter to using 5-6 gallons for the same commute without the electric car, and the electricity is at about 1/3rd the cost per mile driven.
Next, Electricity is not limited to a supply based market. Any company anywhere can put up a power plant (or bgetter yet, a wind farm, the cheapest investment / MWHr). Electricity supply is nearly limitless.
Third, The grid is already being overhauled. The costs to replace our existing national grid infrastructure with superconducting lines is already under way, as it is in Europe, and most of that money has already been earmarked. Wether we want electric cars or not, this overhaul must happen over the next 30 years, and the adoption rates of plug-in cars are expected to be slow enough as to not outpace this process. All new power plants entering the grid will be using new lines only. Small neighborhoods require some new work, but that's done on a demand bases. In California, most of their issues revolve around AC cooling systems, which draw unpredictable power over time. Plug-ins get added to the grid and tend to stay plugged in, making accounting for high use easy compared to AC issues. The other problem in California is simply a lack of sufficient power plants, which more are under construction and that trend will continue.
Fourth, Since anyone can build a power plant, not just big oil, and the supply is competitive in small and large markets alike, the price is extremely stable. Most power is generated by coal today, but wind, water, and nuclear power sources are virtually unlimited, and their costs relatively stable. Solar is not yet competitive, but likely will be in 15 years.
Lastly, Since we're using so much coal, at least for the next 30 years, we might as well take advantage of the waste CO2 produced, which though expensive to simply collect and dispose of could be routed through an alternate process, and actually make a profit for the power plants by sequestering. How? Doty WindFuels. Use waste CO2 plus energy from wind and throw in some water, and you can make ethanol, propanol, jet fuels, lubricants, any hydrocarbons you want... The processes are sound, and have been in use since WWII. Doty Energy has patented about 60 processes that have dramatically improved this technology over the last 15 years, and they can now make gasoline from waste CO2 at about $80/barrel total cost, and a $60 when they have their full size facilities up and running (about 30-50% less than the current costs of oil).
Almost all new energy being added to the grid today is 100% renewable. The amount that isn't is coal plants, but nearly all of them are installing sequestration systems (easy to do for a new plant, hard to do on an existing plant). We have enough wind in america alone that without subtracting farm land, and without forcing people to move, we can power the entire hemeshere.
I don't know what your talking about regarding "poorly maintained" facilities as almost every power plant in America has been continually reducing output, and the government has been continually lowering acceptible air quality metrics. This has even effected us in Rural SC where new contruction of large manufacturing plants is currently blocked due to emissions regulations set by the federal government. We don't even have a coal plant here, we're powered by Nuclear from about 60 miles away.
Every power plant produces energy at about 1/3rd the cost of gasoline, and at about 1/10th the emissions (average including current sequestration combined with clean sources of energy). This trend will contine. Every car that switches from fuel to plug-in will reduce by 8-20 fold it's emissions. The grid CAN support it, we CAN afford it (in fact, we'll be profiting from it, and generating hundreds of tho
The gag order is to prevent an actual hacking event. These machines are in use in places outside NJ. By making this information available to the public prior the the election he'd be virtually ensuring tat there's be a breach, especially if as we suspect it's easy to crack the system.
This has little to do with trade secrets, which are often published, and which are protected by patents.
The report does not say he's not allowing the findings to be used in the court room, he's just making sure the findings are not public record.
It's likely clear that not only a fault was identified, but a relatively easy to exploit one, and in the light of the short time between now and the election, he's basically got to place a gag order to avoid any potential for abuse of the voting systems 4 weeks from now.
He's playing on the right team here. It's far too late to fix it, we have to ride this election through. Preventing this information from getting out, while allowing the court case to continue, is in everone's best interests. He can release the information after NJ has successfully replaced the machines, after the court case is over, after the fine is issued and they have time to fix it.
I don't know where Wiki got this. Li's due age over time, charged or not, and there is some marginal capacity drop (less than 4% anually while holding a 40% charge or more, and its even slower when fully charged). Sure, a completely discharged LI-Ion battery might degrade as fast as 20% in a year just sitting on a shelf, but since charge loss is minimal over time, and batteries are shipped charged, this is highly unlikely. If you completely dischare your laptop by leaving it in sleep mode, then for some reason don't charge it for a year, yes, potentially you could loose 20% capacity. Most batteries in the field loose only a couple of percent, and this loss has nothing to do with charge cycles. A battery is considdered "failed" when it falls below 80% of it's original life. Most last longer than 3 years, some newer types, like those being installed in Prius, are rated for not less than 80% in 10 years, with 1500+ charge cycle life. NiCads are considddered failed when they reach 50%... and many reach this in 3-4 years.
Ni-MH batteries have a memory, and require conditioning. Failure to reoutinely dischare to empty and charge all the way to full dramatically limits the battery's ability to shed energy. This is called battery memory, and a common end to most laptop batteries which are rarely completely discharged when plugged in. Though they don't age on a shelf, under normal use, they have dramatic fall-off unless meticulously cared for. Ni-Cad batteries can loose as much as 20% of the stored charge in a few weeks and the pace quickens as charge level drops. NiMH can loose 30% or more. Li-Ion loose charge at about 4% anually and can keep a charge for several years unused.
In lapotops, or in a car, even a cell phone, rarely do we fully use the battery. Most times we're charging again at 30-50% remaining power. Many laptops rarely fall below 70% charged as they're simply lugged from one outlet to another. This would reduce the efficiency of NiMH by 50% or more, to a level below failure, in less than a year. In cars, this is really bad...
Over 2.5 - 3 years, Lii-Ion will have dramatically more charge life than any other competing battery technology, aside from newer Li-Polymer batteries which use an alternate cathode material which helps prevent this corrosion and loss over time. Li-Tit batteries also exhibit this phenomnenon.
So, yes, if you don;t actually USE your batteries, and leave them in discharged states, the Li-Ion have a flaw. Under normal use however, this degredation is minimal, and charge cycling does not degrade battery performance. NiCads and NiMH get worse with each successive charge, and faster if that charge is not from 0-100. Batteries are intended to be USED, not sitting idle, so drawbakcs caused by ill-utilized charging are not really a considderation.
Pepole generally say "Li-Ion don't die with age" because they're referring to USE as the aging agent. Over time, an ill used li-ion battery might loose 10% over 3 years, less for newer batteries, like the ones in cars and high performance laptops. NiCads get worse over time if you use them, at many times the pace of Li-Ions natural slight degredation. The only way to prevent this is to NOT USE Ni based batteries... ?
I know you can charge to 100% on NiMH. Actually, Li-Ion and Li-Po can as well, the curve is just steeper at the end. The issue is when we approach max charge rates, the heat generated at the higher end of the carge curve becomes difficult to compensate for in Li batteries vs Ni, so Nis typically can full charge along a smoother curve, however, they also can't support the same charge rate over the full curve, nor do they have the same density. Even with trickling the last 5-10%, Li's normally charge faster than similar Ni's, and certainly reach 90% faster. They're also of course have higher energy density and lower weight to charge. Li's are not however as safe, and are subject to cascade failure and otehr nasty issues. Li-Po solves most of this, Li-Tit solves nearly all.
(you seem to know this already, post if for the others).
Rolling back a couple of minutes on our production database would cost thousands of dollars, not to mention the lost transactions impact.
Secondly, you can't VM the workstations. Even thin clients have issues with security, not to mention the added complexity, performance drawbacks, and more. I can't roll back 2500 PCs. Even with our imaging systems and rollout processes being completely automated, there simply isn't enough bandwidth on the LAN, let alone coordinating that effort with dozens of remote sites if the infection cross spread through the MAN.
We do virtualize nearly all the servers. We have real-time backup and replication of critical systems, and even have a complete beta site online and ready to be failed over to if there's an outage in the main building, but even our best DR plans account for a 10-12 hour switch over.
However, NONE of this prevents data security breaches, identity theft, or simply the cost in manpower of having to perform such a recovery rollback. We have 400 servers. At BEST, rolling them all back via snapshots (for the ones that can) would take HOURS if not more than a day. The otehr proprietary systems that can't be virtualized, the mainframes, solaris, AIX, and more, all would need to be rolled back manually. Restoring a 13TB database system from backup, even over direct attached high performance SCSI, would take nearly 2 days. (disk write performance is MUCH slower than tape write performance)
It's not a big deal to filter the net. We're not preventing them from going where they want during downtime, we're just preventing URL typos, phishing tricks, and generally instilling an idea of total security in the minds of all employees.
Trust me, I've interviewed for government defence contract work, been threatened about having my home bugged, my life watched, and every thing I do logged. We don;t operate that way. It;s freedom with limits (no porn, no P2P, and only validated sites). The wite list os over 400,000 sites large (and there are seperate ones for some departments that include additional sub lists covering places general people don't need to go) We only get a couple request a week for new sites to be added. Pretty much everything is already in there that people want.
Again, we're not preventing them from surfing. Business or personal use, it's OK. This is NOT a control measure. They can submit ANY SITE for ANY REASON, and provided it passes simple security rules (it's actually a valid site for a company or individual, it does not use pop-up circumventing techniques, and has no HR banned adult content), it;s approved.
Our employees don;t typically try to connect to port sites (though a lot more than you think try to use our T1s for P2P and trooent downloading) Few are doing anything eilligitimate, and we don;t have employee behavior issues much to speak of. What we DO have is a lot of dumb users who don't properly understand the internet, and who will click on links in phishing e-mails, make typos in URLs and get directed to hackers or phishing sites, and other common IT mistakes that only a white list can protect the company from.
Our employees do not feel this is a control measure, they don;t feel watched at work, and they know that us in IT will never produce a report to HR about which users are using more of less internet that others (each time HR request it, they get a 700+ page flat log dump and a copy of our asset tracking database also dumped to about 200 more pages and we tell them they're welcome to interpret it and hand correlate IPs to Macs, to user accounts... IT doesn't have the time. We're interested in security and stability only. HR needs it own ways to measure productivity. I do not log how many hours people spend at what sites, but I do get alerts if certain machines are being heavily used, or if they repeatedly try to access blocked material or open unaproved ports.
Not being in America, I don't know what your equivolent of STIG is. Here, the general rule is that if they don;t need access to it, it's not to be permitted. Permission by activation, not exclusion. We DO feel that it is business critical for employees to have access to personal information and be able to do things they like on breaks. We do NOT try to prevent that, we just try to make it as safe as possible.
HR typically has a big thing against MySpace, and some companies simply ask that to be blocked. In IT, we don't like it because it's bandwidth heavy, and most sites have automatically activating streaming content.
Really, the FAA was not site blocking? That's funny. I just did a major switch rollout for an international airport in my area. One of the buildings we integrated was the state's FAA building. Their security requirements were even more anal than the airport systems, and they were not only implementing site blocking and finltering between the LAN and world at the gateway, but they were doing inline packet sniffing and theat detection on the LAN segments themselves, and tracking every web site every employee accessed for any reason.
Since the FAA building was an older airport building, the underground fiber infrastructure was shared, and the FAA has several switches connected to airport shitches, and shared their 10Mbit connection. This created numerous hassles for us building and securing that infrastructure, including that there is not a single wireless device on the network (airport wireless for public access is compeltely seperate, and NO airport staff use wireless to connect at all).
Federal laws stack on top of that, and do further define those breaks.
It's entirely possible to abuse this system. companies HAVE been sued and found guilty of it, including Walmart. Something like this: "Well, Johnson is willing to work extra and skip lunch for the company. I can't order you to sign a waiver and do that, it's your right, but you know, reviews are coming in soon. This might effect your raise."
I've even worked places where this was normal, managers pressuring employees to "voluntarily" skip breaks.
Unfortunately, the law does not differentiate. I argued this myself to HR, who produced information about the fines they paid, and allowing this behavior was one of the counts against them. Might be different in your state, but here, I am not allowed to skip breaks to leave early, with or without a written waiver. The sate feels that you could be "pressured" into signing waivers by making statements like "well, Johnson does that, and is willing to saccrifice for the company. Come raise review, that will be important for him..."
The reason 90% is a target for batteries has to do with the input energy required to achive the charge. The higher the existing charge, the more resistance created trying to increase it further. Some of you math nuts out there can help me out and give me the exact equasion, which I have not had enough coffee yet to recall, but there is a scientific reason why we do not simply charge directly to 100%.
1st, charging to 100% vs 90% takes more than 10% more energy. Quite a bit more actually, and is wasteful.
2nd, charging to 100% at the current used to get to 90% fast would cause imense heat.
3rd, the idea here is the fast charge can be done for cars quickly (90 seconds) using extremely high high amperage cables (3 phase 400 amp 22 volt). Houses don't have these typically, but a filling station on a main road could have access to this kind of voltage from the street's main high volt line, and could also have overhead cable supports to assist drivers hefting the thick cable required to safely provide that energy.
At home, a 120 AMP circuit would likely be used, and take 2-3 hours to bring your car to the same 90% charge, but at that rate, likely going all the way to 100% would not be an issue. On a generic household 220volt line, charging would be 7-10 hours.
They specify 90%, because when filling up on the go, you would not want to pay for the excessive cost of that last 10% (20-30% more electricity), nor would you want to wait the extra 10-20 minutes needed to achieve the top off. It's inefficient on 2 counts. They specifiy this to ensure drivers of electric cars on these SCiB (AKA Litium Titranium) batteries know that the max 60 mile range of their car is at 100%, and that quick fill-ups might only get 55 or so.
Of course, Chrysler is talking about new cards with 300 mile electric ranges coming out. I'm assuming this is with onboard gas backup engines, like the Volt, but their information was unclear, and I imagine a caravan does have enough under floor space and undercarrige space to hold 4-5 times the batteris of a Prius...
The benefit of Li-Tit (SCiB) is not density, it's charge time. Li-Tit batteries reach 80+% charge in 90 seconds. Yes, some other batteries hold more charge per volume or charge per weight, but Li-Tit batteries have a MAJOR advantage in automobile use where volume is not as much of an issue as charge time.
The Li-TiT (SCiB) batteries first of all are old news, and I don;t know why this is on/. now. It;s not only old news as far as science, it's old news as in they've been sold on the open market in large volume for over a year!
They were developed primarily with 2 ideas in mind: Being able to be a viable power source for a car (extreme reliability in all temps and a quick charge cycle that's equivolent to the time to fill a conventional gas tank), and for heavy use mobile users who will kill a battery, and although they might have occasional short term access to a power outlet, can't wait an hour to recharge and needed a better option.
Li-Po spinel cells are still Li-Ion technology. The spinel anode can handle high voltage and high temp, allowing larger and fewer cells to deliver the same power. Though this provides slightly better power density, they're costly, subject to overheating (including a much higher probability of causing burns) and are not good in high temp environemtnes (outdoors on summer days). Typically, Spinel based cells also can't replace your existing battery pack as simply replacing the cells is not an option in most notebooks, the batteries have some built in intelligence that helps the notebook use power more eficiently, and without it, even having more power available usually means less battery life.
Yup, you are correct. partial charge = partial cycle. Li-Ion batteries do NOT degrade with age What the poster above was refering to is Ni-Cad battery lifecycle depletion. This does not effect Li-Ion, Li-Po, or thoshibas new batteries (called Li-Tit by some).
I completely agree, but unfortunately the labor department does not.
Before taking a break, and after coming back from a break, you must be on the clock for 1 hour.
This was not intended to prevent you from doing this, but was intended to prevent mamangers from forcing you to skip lunch by saying "you can just leave early".
Unfortunately, there's no clause allowing you to waive this right. In a small company, no one cares. When there's 2500 employees, the labor department loves to hand out multi-millon dollar levys as examples. Walmart, BestBuy, Blue Cross, Target, McDonalds, and more have been hit with fines for this. For Walmart, it was over 400Million, just for failing to follow the l;etter of the law on employee breaks. BestBuy got hit for 300million, but settled for 63. Walmart is still fighting theres, and if they win, you'll get to do what tyou want.
Many days I've myslef noted it was 3PM and I had not had lunch yet, and been forced to go to avoid HR retaliation aven when working on a critical project. Once in a while I do skip lunch. If I do it too often, I get a reprimand. They're NOT going to let themselves be subject to a massive fine because I'm a workaholic. Also, if everyone could skip lunch and go home early, I doublt there's be many people at there desks after 4PM, causing an epidemic in staffing.
CEOs can be fired, but only by the board, and usually at a cost of millions in severance payouts...
For this reason, the CEO has the same restrictions as everyone else in firms I consult for.
However, CEOs and other high ranking employees do regularly need to take their systems with them, and have access to company data where access is not availbale. When they go to conferences, board meetings in foreighn countries, or just a meeting at a coffee shop with other senior staff, they have to have access to this data. They do a lot more working from home and hotels than others need to, and by nature need access to more restrictive data than line level employees. Also, COE e-mail addresses are typically published (by law in some states) and this opens them up to about 30 times more SPAM than others.
I have not had a CEO hacked often, but it has happened. If you have not, you've been lucky.
I've consulted for more than 100 firms since 1992. Maybe 5 of them had a "C level" security issue.
Since the white list is an "accept allways unless deemed unsafe or inapropriate" policy, we've never had a single compaint. Hard core devs have less strict blocking lists and actually we use several, based on employee department or job title. The dev list is loaded with about 50,000 forum sites, preapproved by a 3rd party.
To all you morons out there, a white list employed by a company is not OUR list WE personally picked, it comes from a major security firm, and has hundreds of thousands of pre-approved sites. You can go almost anywhere you like.
We have restrictions like this not so much for preventing employees for having fun (they have all they want until a manager notices, IT has no part in clamping down on staff at all) the plan is to block sites that exploit typos in URLs, and for sites that have inapropriate content or associated advertising (popups that won't go away, etc).
Working for the FCC, a government entity, your actually bound by STIG requirements. Maybe a few years ago some of this was not possible for your environment, besides the fact that part of the FCC it to investigate all those bad sites, which would have been impossible if blocked, but STIG clearly states that users are only to have access to required resources.
Not all of my clients/employers were required to follow STIG, and not all of them use the same tightness in their white lists, but I've never had a single employee ever complain about websites they could not access, with the exception of MySpace which we block for multiple reasons at the insistance of Management and IT alike (mostly for bandwidth hogging, but for an array of HR related worries. Everyone complains about the ban on webmail and open chat programs, but we allow them to connect to any POP account they want provided we set it up through the filters and associate it with their user inbox. They can send and receive mail from anyone on any account anytime, as long as they fill out a simple form. Webmail is unfiltered, so its blocked. It's not about access, they have it, it just takes a day or two to set up. For chat, they have a company program they can use that interfaces with other popular programs, but it logged and file transfers through it are blocked. If they want unblocked access to chat, they can use a cell phone or personal computer on the "public" network anytime they want.
Our engineers and programms all appreciate the policies, and I have worked with some of the most intelligent and creative programmers in the state. They can go anywhere they feel they need to, and they have custom white lists by department and job duties, but they have no issues. As long as the site is safe, and passes a few simple HR restrictions (no porn, no P2P, etc) then it's approved. Simple. No problems, no morale issues. Never had a single person refuse the job after being told about the usabiltiy restrictions. Never had a single employee quit after enabling it (OK, one department manager got pissed and demanded IT unblock his connection. We notified HR and complied, and found he was hitting about 30 different subscription porn sites at work, he got fired.)
See, this isn't about keeping people working so much as it is about keeping the SYSTEMS working. We're not preventing you from going where you want, were just SCREENING those sites and adding them to a safe list. Rarely do we decline a site application and its usually because of unaproved content (like support of javascript popups that are hard to close or adult advertising). If the site passes a simple security test, it's approved, regardless of the reason why.
As for wifi devices, they have to be registerd, and personal devices, to limit bandwidth utilization, are capped at 128K each, 64 in some companies if bandwidth is an issue. These devices have a blacklist filter instead of a whitelist filter, but it's still tracked... If they want to use 3G to surf, they're welcome, if they get a signal in the building (most don't).
But really, not even interested in using web metrics to monitor productivity. We log the data, and I'll ocasionally report an employee for really rediculous use, or fo trying over and over to go to porn sites at work (we log attempts to go to blocked sites), but usually that helps us track down spyware infections the scanners didn't find, not actual employee activity.
HR in some companies, after implementing these systems, have asked me for reports on employee use. I comply by handing them 700 pages of what looks more like code than a rep[ort (raw log dumps) and tell them the software to correlate the data is extra, and costs unfathomable amounts of money, and if they get the beancounters to agree to it, they can have what they're looking for. Not one has a bean counter actually been asked. They have better methods of their own... The logging, sure, I can see what any user is doing at any time. When there's an HR issue, many times I've been asked to present the evidence they already knew existed (when some guy really was goofing off and got caught on his own, I'm often asked to back it up, only sometimes do I for the most aggrevious cases).
Any business that stores credit card information (anyone who sells stuff who doesn't use a 3rd party credit processing company, or who issues their own credit accoutns, or sends out bills for service, including municipal utilities and nearly every large retailer), medical and insurance records (which every HR department has on nearly every employee), anyone who provides services to or for a government agency, and anyone with a large customer base containing address and phone number information. This is just about every large company.
Your a solution designer. Have you actually READ HIPAA, SOX, STIG, the federal red flag regulations regarding personal information leaks, and the other regulations that each industry you work with is subject to??? Do you realize that under red flag regulations, if they hand a project over to you, and you fail to recommend appropriate security, detailing those parts of the regulations your covering, and they get hit with a leak, they could sue your firm for the damages, and potentially, the red flag fines could fall on you instead of them as well?
It's not the norm in average businesses in america, but that's because the average business in america has less than 50 employees, and few of them have a personal copmputer assigned to them. In big businesses, 500+ employees, this is very much the norm. The ones who are doing this in most cases are doing it because they lost a suit against them or were fined. Few do it voluntarily.
Again, if you read my psots, this really isn't about productivity (though that's what most people believe) it;s about protecting overall system reliability, and elinimating downtime. If we get his with a virus or exploit, we could be looking at shutting key sysyems of for days while we're cleaned out, at best 8-10 hours while we simply roll back key systems. That means basically sending everyone home until its fixed. That loss of productivity in a few days is more than we'd loose to casual over surfing in a year.
We're not mean. We let you surf where you want, you just have to get that site on the white list, which happens pretty quick. White lists I've worked with are typically half a million sites of more, and are added to daily. Rarely does a site get bounced.
The lists are to protect from zero day exploit sites, phishing sites, and sites that exploit typos. Black lists are ineffective since it takes too long to get a site blacklisted. White lists are not perfect, as even google's servers could be hacked, but they're better than the other viable options.
We use a lot of metrics to check productivity, but if the employees know they're watched, those other methods are less necessary, and limit the number of managers necessary to watch the floor.
Our employees are generally happy, and they're used to getting what they ask for from IT, which in other more open firms I continually find is not the case and everyone hates IT anyway since the systems are all buggy and slow, or IT refuses to do simple requests.
I'm a contractor. I go from large company to large company as projects are available, and I've worked for all kinds.
Yea, several jobs I had used to let people skip lunch one day, take a longer one another, as long as the work got done and people were happy, who cared wight?
That was until one of the firms I was with got levied a $185K fine for (this is the labor department's words) "not FORCING employees to take their REQUIRED breaks."
Yup, if I choose to skip lunch, employees can actually be fired and companies can be fined. The law is clear. It's not a "you may" it's a "you must" take 1 hour of break. Further you need to be given at least 30 minutes of that in once chunk, and no part of it can be within the first or last hour of your shift.
We fought this, hard.
Wether I'm at work on break or working has no impact on how much time I spend with family, 40 hours is 40 hours. I choose to live where my commute is under 30 minutes to the betterment of my family. It means I make less money working in a smaller city, but I get more time with them.
No one is arguing that family is or is not important. That's completely seperate. I'd actually prefer 10 hour days 4 times a week as this technically gives me more "quality" time with them, since it would give me a whole day around the house while the kids are at school to do crap I normally have to cram into the weekends and evenings, taking even more time away from the family, but try finding an employer willing to go for that... good luck. Everyone operates on a 5 day week.
Actually, I'm a contractor, and work for many companies. And by Call Center, I'm mostly talking about claims processing for insurance, and tech support centers for manufacturers of products. I'm not talking about marketing.
1) has nothing to do with embezling. Your abolutely right, we're looking for a scapegoat, and ifg the logs point to you as the one who caused the breach in security, after IT and HR inseisted you not and documented it, congratulations, you win the prize. 2) Blue screen = hardware or kernel issue. An application in user space can not cause XP or Vista to blue screen... No, not all shops service well, but unless employees file tickets, there's no reliable tracking system for issues. More over, allowing employees to enact changes makes the cause of the issue harder to diagnose. This is a double edged sword. The IT departments doing a better job have tighter controls, and that's most of the reason they're doing so well. All of us have relatively similar diagnostic skills at the enterprise level... (most of us). 3) corporate models have case access triggers. If the case has been opened, as soon as the OS is booted, IT is alerted it has been through a monitoring utility, provided by the manufacvturer. Many systems actually have case locks. This is why IT pros prefer IBM systems and HP business workstations. Dell is far behind in corporate system utilities and system security. Of course, replacing the screws on the case with ones that can not be removed with a common tool also goes a long way. Sure, anyone determined is going to get in, but explain how to do that in a cube without getting noticed, and without leaving physical damage...
Most users actually resent us. We make policy, we enforce policy, mostly policy they don;t understand and feel is restrictive (mostly because it is, but SOX and STIG don't give me much of a choice!), and most importantly then know we get paid a lot more.
Dev macines in our network are segregated, and have far less restriction. They can't access the databases or other company information, but they don;t need to (and when they need to test data, they're working on mock-up databases, or copies not originals).
I can't guarantee I'll catch you, but I'm pretty sue of it. Between the protections in place, continual packet inspoection, and system status monitoring, I usually know there's an issue with a machine before the user does (crashes obviously excluded). It;s pretty damned hard for anyone less than fully determined to bypass the controlls. Those who do don't typically know about network level monitoring on top of that security and as soon as they find a way to bypass some protection, the packet inspector or proxy picks it up and red flags the machine.
As far as someone else doing something on an other employees unlocked workstation: first of all, it;s an open cube floor, no high walls. Second, leaving your system unlocked only works for 60 seconds, and even that is grounds for a write up. Any system that has access to protected data uses a webcam auto-logoff. (if your face moves away from the screen, lockout happens in about 2 seconds).
Someone would have to very maliciously plan to infest the network. I can't prevent that. I can't pretend to. I don;t really care to try. I'm interested in protecting the network from the stupid users (those who open apttachments weithout question, etc). HR honestly weeds out their own productivity problems, I just have the data to back it up with so there are no fights about it when they do get fired for wasting time. I never provide reports to HR about who's using what when (They asked, so I gave them a 700 page print out that looked more like code than a report and they never asked again). I'm not cold hearted, just reasonable, and trying to keep my network operational. If it goes down on my watch, it's probably my ass.
Mac, Linux, unix, Windows, matters not. executable files should be restricted to root/admin permissions only. Line level employees have no purpose installing software or modifying predertermined OS settings. They want it changed, they submit a help ticket. Even admins should not be logged in as admin unless performing a task that requires admin permissions, and one that can't be done by using a Run As, or SU to root to accomplish. It's just bad, lazy, sloppy, whatever you want to call it to do otherwise.
Last I checked, our whitelist had over 400,000 sites. I've never gone to a commercial site, help forum, or community solotion forum that was blocked unless it was associated with warez distribution or something... We get few whitelist requests since almost anywhere the sheep want to go, except myspace and facebook, are actually in the white list... The white list primarily stops links people click on from e-mails, and mispelled URLs that link to phishing sites.
Productivity is measured in many ways. Managers can't allways look over your shoulder. Honestly, I could care less (and most of the managers with me feel the same) if you get your expected allotment of work done in half the time as anouther guy getting paid the same rate. I'm personally far more concerned with having to track down stupid issues because someone screwed up their machine trying to install some crap media player or website plug-in....and I've more than once had my own job on the chopping block because of a system outage or security breach that could have been prevented (and I always saved my ass by pointing to policy I suggested that got turned down that would have prevented the issue).
Mostly, it;s about DOD STIG and SOX though. no choice, have to implement compatible policy.
Hey, I'm not saying we stop the payroll clock if you log out, just that we log how much time you are logged out while on the clock. It;s a poerformance metric.
Most of the firms I've worked for, actually you're expected to spend 30 minutes a day on the clock working on personal projects, which can include blogging, reading the news, resting the brain, whatever.
We're not devils, but if you have no illusion of controll, there's no possibility of it.
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unfortunately, once electric cars take off, the demand will actually be higher at night.
Ultracapacators are an option, but are dangerous. More likely, you'll have a battery pack that gets charged and then it charges the car.
However, wind is still going to be cheaper than solar for 15-20 years. Home solar can't even generate 100% utiilization fro most homes today. An enelctic car by itself uses more than whole homes do. Imaging 2-3 electric cars... Even in 30 years scientists don;t expect to have solar cells capable of meeting those demands, let alone all the folks that live in milti-family homes and apartments who can not benefit from solar.
Fact is, we have enough wind alone in America, mostly just in texas and the norther wind corridor, to power the entire hemesphere. Wind is cheap, and reliable. On a nationally scaled system, localized wind drop offs are easily compensated for by the grid. This system is not only affordable, but more profitable than coal poewr, and thus you see the existing and continuing heavy investment.
The power grid overall is being overhauled seperately. Hundreds of billoins have been earmerked to replace our existing national grid with a superconducting system. It's already begun as Long Island's super grid came online months ago. Europe has thousands of miles of this new cabling in place already. We can aford it, we can keep up with demand. Any contrary report is FUD being spread by other industries, or by local power companies who will be forced to lower rates once you can buy power from other places in america to come to your home (decentralized power grid).
First of all, plug in hybrids have ranges in the 300 miles areana. though the volt will only be ably to go about 60 miles on electric alone, Im my choice of job means I have to commute longer than that, and burn 1 gallon of gas to get home, keep in mind this is counter to using 5-6 gallons for the same commute without the electric car, and the electricity is at about 1/3rd the cost per mile driven.
Next, Electricity is not limited to a supply based market. Any company anywhere can put up a power plant (or bgetter yet, a wind farm, the cheapest investment / MWHr). Electricity supply is nearly limitless.
Third, The grid is already being overhauled. The costs to replace our existing national grid infrastructure with superconducting lines is already under way, as it is in Europe, and most of that money has already been earmarked. Wether we want electric cars or not, this overhaul must happen over the next 30 years, and the adoption rates of plug-in cars are expected to be slow enough as to not outpace this process. All new power plants entering the grid will be using new lines only. Small neighborhoods require some new work, but that's done on a demand bases. In California, most of their issues revolve around AC cooling systems, which draw unpredictable power over time. Plug-ins get added to the grid and tend to stay plugged in, making accounting for high use easy compared to AC issues. The other problem in California is simply a lack of sufficient power plants, which more are under construction and that trend will continue.
Fourth, Since anyone can build a power plant, not just big oil, and the supply is competitive in small and large markets alike, the price is extremely stable. Most power is generated by coal today, but wind, water, and nuclear power sources are virtually unlimited, and their costs relatively stable. Solar is not yet competitive, but likely will be in 15 years.
Lastly, Since we're using so much coal, at least for the next 30 years, we might as well take advantage of the waste CO2 produced, which though expensive to simply collect and dispose of could be routed through an alternate process, and actually make a profit for the power plants by sequestering. How? Doty WindFuels. Use waste CO2 plus energy from wind and throw in some water, and you can make ethanol, propanol, jet fuels, lubricants, any hydrocarbons you want... The processes are sound, and have been in use since WWII. Doty Energy has patented about 60 processes that have dramatically improved this technology over the last 15 years, and they can now make gasoline from waste CO2 at about $80/barrel total cost, and a $60 when they have their full size facilities up and running (about 30-50% less than the current costs of oil).
Almost all new energy being added to the grid today is 100% renewable. The amount that isn't is coal plants, but nearly all of them are installing sequestration systems (easy to do for a new plant, hard to do on an existing plant). We have enough wind in america alone that without subtracting farm land, and without forcing people to move, we can power the entire hemeshere.
I don't know what your talking about regarding "poorly maintained" facilities as almost every power plant in America has been continually reducing output, and the government has been continually lowering acceptible air quality metrics. This has even effected us in Rural SC where new contruction of large manufacturing plants is currently blocked due to emissions regulations set by the federal government. We don't even have a coal plant here, we're powered by Nuclear from about 60 miles away.
Every power plant produces energy at about 1/3rd the cost of gasoline, and at about 1/10th the emissions (average including current sequestration combined with clean sources of energy). This trend will contine. Every car that switches from fuel to plug-in will reduce by 8-20 fold it's emissions. The grid CAN support it, we CAN afford it (in fact, we'll be profiting from it, and generating hundreds of tho
The gag order is to prevent an actual hacking event. These machines are in use in places outside NJ. By making this information available to the public prior the the election he'd be virtually ensuring tat there's be a breach, especially if as we suspect it's easy to crack the system.
This has little to do with trade secrets, which are often published, and which are protected by patents.
The report does not say he's not allowing the findings to be used in the court room, he's just making sure the findings are not public record.
It's likely clear that not only a fault was identified, but a relatively easy to exploit one, and in the light of the short time between now and the election, he's basically got to place a gag order to avoid any potential for abuse of the voting systems 4 weeks from now.
He's playing on the right team here. It's far too late to fix it, we have to ride this election through. Preventing this information from getting out, while allowing the court case to continue, is in everone's best interests. He can release the information after NJ has successfully replaced the machines, after the court case is over, after the fine is issued and they have time to fix it.
I don't know where Wiki got this. Li's due age over time, charged or not, and there is some marginal capacity drop (less than 4% anually while holding a 40% charge or more, and its even slower when fully charged). Sure, a completely discharged LI-Ion battery might degrade as fast as 20% in a year just sitting on a shelf, but since charge loss is minimal over time, and batteries are shipped charged, this is highly unlikely. If you completely dischare your laptop by leaving it in sleep mode, then for some reason don't charge it for a year, yes, potentially you could loose 20% capacity. Most batteries in the field loose only a couple of percent, and this loss has nothing to do with charge cycles. A battery is considdered "failed" when it falls below 80% of it's original life. Most last longer than 3 years, some newer types, like those being installed in Prius, are rated for not less than 80% in 10 years, with 1500+ charge cycle life. NiCads are considddered failed when they reach 50%... and many reach this in 3-4 years.
Ni-MH batteries have a memory, and require conditioning. Failure to reoutinely dischare to empty and charge all the way to full dramatically limits the battery's ability to shed energy. This is called battery memory, and a common end to most laptop batteries which are rarely completely discharged when plugged in. Though they don't age on a shelf, under normal use, they have dramatic fall-off unless meticulously cared for. Ni-Cad batteries can loose as much as 20% of the stored charge in a few weeks and the pace quickens as charge level drops. NiMH can loose 30% or more. Li-Ion loose charge at about 4% anually and can keep a charge for several years unused.
In lapotops, or in a car, even a cell phone, rarely do we fully use the battery. Most times we're charging again at 30-50% remaining power. Many laptops rarely fall below 70% charged as they're simply lugged from one outlet to another. This would reduce the efficiency of NiMH by 50% or more, to a level below failure, in less than a year. In cars, this is really bad...
Over 2.5 - 3 years, Lii-Ion will have dramatically more charge life than any other competing battery technology, aside from newer Li-Polymer batteries which use an alternate cathode material which helps prevent this corrosion and loss over time. Li-Tit batteries also exhibit this phenomnenon.
So, yes, if you don;t actually USE your batteries, and leave them in discharged states, the Li-Ion have a flaw. Under normal use however, this degredation is minimal, and charge cycling does not degrade battery performance. NiCads and NiMH get worse with each successive charge, and faster if that charge is not from 0-100. Batteries are intended to be USED, not sitting idle, so drawbakcs caused by ill-utilized charging are not really a considderation.
Pepole generally say "Li-Ion don't die with age" because they're referring to USE as the aging agent. Over time, an ill used li-ion battery might loose 10% over 3 years, less for newer batteries, like the ones in cars and high performance laptops. NiCads get worse over time if you use them, at many times the pace of Li-Ions natural slight degredation. The only way to prevent this is to NOT USE Ni based batteries... ?
I know you can charge to 100% on NiMH. Actually, Li-Ion and Li-Po can as well, the curve is just steeper at the end. The issue is when we approach max charge rates, the heat generated at the higher end of the carge curve becomes difficult to compensate for in Li batteries vs Ni, so Nis typically can full charge along a smoother curve, however, they also can't support the same charge rate over the full curve, nor do they have the same density. Even with trickling the last 5-10%, Li's normally charge faster than similar Ni's, and certainly reach 90% faster. They're also of course have higher energy density and lower weight to charge. Li's are not however as safe, and are subject to cascade failure and otehr nasty issues. Li-Po solves most of this, Li-Tit solves nearly all.
(you seem to know this already, post if for the others).
Rolling back a couple of minutes on our production database would cost thousands of dollars, not to mention the lost transactions impact.
Secondly, you can't VM the workstations. Even thin clients have issues with security, not to mention the added complexity, performance drawbacks, and more. I can't roll back 2500 PCs. Even with our imaging systems and rollout processes being completely automated, there simply isn't enough bandwidth on the LAN, let alone coordinating that effort with dozens of remote sites if the infection cross spread through the MAN.
We do virtualize nearly all the servers. We have real-time backup and replication of critical systems, and even have a complete beta site online and ready to be failed over to if there's an outage in the main building, but even our best DR plans account for a 10-12 hour switch over.
However, NONE of this prevents data security breaches, identity theft, or simply the cost in manpower of having to perform such a recovery rollback. We have 400 servers. At BEST, rolling them all back via snapshots (for the ones that can) would take HOURS if not more than a day. The otehr proprietary systems that can't be virtualized, the mainframes, solaris, AIX, and more, all would need to be rolled back manually. Restoring a 13TB database system from backup, even over direct attached high performance SCSI, would take nearly 2 days. (disk write performance is MUCH slower than tape write performance)
It's not a big deal to filter the net. We're not preventing them from going where they want during downtime, we're just preventing URL typos, phishing tricks, and generally instilling an idea of total security in the minds of all employees.
Trust me, I've interviewed for government defence contract work, been threatened about having my home bugged, my life watched, and every thing I do logged. We don;t operate that way. It;s freedom with limits (no porn, no P2P, and only validated sites). The wite list os over 400,000 sites large (and there are seperate ones for some departments that include additional sub lists covering places general people don't need to go) We only get a couple request a week for new sites to be added. Pretty much everything is already in there that people want.
Again, we're not preventing them from surfing. Business or personal use, it's OK. This is NOT a control measure. They can submit ANY SITE for ANY REASON, and provided it passes simple security rules (it's actually a valid site for a company or individual, it does not use pop-up circumventing techniques, and has no HR banned adult content), it;s approved.
Our employees don;t typically try to connect to port sites (though a lot more than you think try to use our T1s for P2P and trooent downloading) Few are doing anything eilligitimate, and we don;t have employee behavior issues much to speak of. What we DO have is a lot of dumb users who don't properly understand the internet, and who will click on links in phishing e-mails, make typos in URLs and get directed to hackers or phishing sites, and other common IT mistakes that only a white list can protect the company from.
Our employees do not feel this is a control measure, they don;t feel watched at work, and they know that us in IT will never produce a report to HR about which users are using more of less internet that others (each time HR request it, they get a 700+ page flat log dump and a copy of our asset tracking database also dumped to about 200 more pages and we tell them they're welcome to interpret it and hand correlate IPs to Macs, to user accounts... IT doesn't have the time. We're interested in security and stability only. HR needs it own ways to measure productivity. I do not log how many hours people spend at what sites, but I do get alerts if certain machines are being heavily used, or if they repeatedly try to access blocked material or open unaproved ports.
Not being in America, I don't know what your equivolent of STIG is. Here, the general rule is that if they don;t need access to it, it's not to be permitted. Permission by activation, not exclusion. We DO feel that it is business critical for employees to have access to personal information and be able to do things they like on breaks. We do NOT try to prevent that, we just try to make it as safe as possible.
HR typically has a big thing against MySpace, and some companies simply ask that to be blocked. In IT, we don't like it because it's bandwidth heavy, and most sites have automatically activating streaming content.
Really, the FAA was not site blocking? That's funny. I just did a major switch rollout for an international airport in my area. One of the buildings we integrated was the state's FAA building. Their security requirements were even more anal than the airport systems, and they were not only implementing site blocking and finltering between the LAN and world at the gateway, but they were doing inline packet sniffing and theat detection on the LAN segments themselves, and tracking every web site every employee accessed for any reason.
Since the FAA building was an older airport building, the underground fiber infrastructure was shared, and the FAA has several switches connected to airport shitches, and shared their 10Mbit connection. This created numerous hassles for us building and securing that infrastructure, including that there is not a single wireless device on the network (airport wireless for public access is compeltely seperate, and NO airport staff use wireless to connect at all).
Federal laws stack on top of that, and do further define those breaks.
It's entirely possible to abuse this system. companies HAVE been sued and found guilty of it, including Walmart. Something like this: "Well, Johnson is willing to work extra and skip lunch for the company. I can't order you to sign a waiver and do that, it's your right, but you know, reviews are coming in soon. This might effect your raise."
I've even worked places where this was normal, managers pressuring employees to "voluntarily" skip breaks.
Unfortunately, the law does not differentiate. I argued this myself to HR, who produced information about the fines they paid, and allowing this behavior was one of the counts against them. Might be different in your state, but here, I am not allowed to skip breaks to leave early, with or without a written waiver. The sate feels that you could be "pressured" into signing waivers by making statements like "well, Johnson does that, and is willing to saccrifice for the company. Come raise review, that will be important for him..."
The reason 90% is a target for batteries has to do with the input energy required to achive the charge. The higher the existing charge, the more resistance created trying to increase it further. Some of you math nuts out there can help me out and give me the exact equasion, which I have not had enough coffee yet to recall, but there is a scientific reason why we do not simply charge directly to 100%.
1st, charging to 100% vs 90% takes more than 10% more energy. Quite a bit more actually, and is wasteful.
2nd, charging to 100% at the current used to get to 90% fast would cause imense heat.
3rd, the idea here is the fast charge can be done for cars quickly (90 seconds) using extremely high high amperage cables (3 phase 400 amp 22 volt). Houses don't have these typically, but a filling station on a main road could have access to this kind of voltage from the street's main high volt line, and could also have overhead cable supports to assist drivers hefting the thick cable required to safely provide that energy.
At home, a 120 AMP circuit would likely be used, and take 2-3 hours to bring your car to the same 90% charge, but at that rate, likely going all the way to 100% would not be an issue. On a generic household 220volt line, charging would be 7-10 hours.
They specify 90%, because when filling up on the go, you would not want to pay for the excessive cost of that last 10% (20-30% more electricity), nor would you want to wait the extra 10-20 minutes needed to achieve the top off. It's inefficient on 2 counts. They specifiy this to ensure drivers of electric cars on these SCiB (AKA Litium Titranium) batteries know that the max 60 mile range of their car is at 100%, and that quick fill-ups might only get 55 or so.
Of course, Chrysler is talking about new cards with 300 mile electric ranges coming out. I'm assuming this is with onboard gas backup engines, like the Volt, but their information was unclear, and I imagine a caravan does have enough under floor space and undercarrige space to hold 4-5 times the batteris of a Prius...
The benefit of Li-Tit (SCiB) is not density, it's charge time. Li-Tit batteries reach 80+% charge in 90 seconds. Yes, some other batteries hold more charge per volume or charge per weight, but Li-Tit batteries have a MAJOR advantage in automobile use where volume is not as much of an issue as charge time.
The Li-TiT (SCiB) batteries first of all are old news, and I don;t know why this is on /. now. It;s not only old news as far as science, it's old news as in they've been sold on the open market in large volume for over a year!
They were developed primarily with 2 ideas in mind: Being able to be a viable power source for a car (extreme reliability in all temps and a quick charge cycle that's equivolent to the time to fill a conventional gas tank), and for heavy use mobile users who will kill a battery, and although they might have occasional short term access to a power outlet, can't wait an hour to recharge and needed a better option.
Li-Po spinel cells are still Li-Ion technology. The spinel anode can handle high voltage and high temp, allowing larger and fewer cells to deliver the same power. Though this provides slightly better power density, they're costly, subject to overheating (including a much higher probability of causing burns) and are not good in high temp environemtnes (outdoors on summer days). Typically, Spinel based cells also can't replace your existing battery pack as simply replacing the cells is not an option in most notebooks, the batteries have some built in intelligence that helps the notebook use power more eficiently, and without it, even having more power available usually means less battery life.
Yup, you are correct. partial charge = partial cycle. Li-Ion batteries do NOT degrade with age What the poster above was refering to is Ni-Cad battery lifecycle depletion. This does not effect Li-Ion, Li-Po, or thoshibas new batteries (called Li-Tit by some).
I completely agree, but unfortunately the labor department does not.
Before taking a break, and after coming back from a break, you must be on the clock for 1 hour.
This was not intended to prevent you from doing this, but was intended to prevent mamangers from forcing you to skip lunch by saying "you can just leave early".
Unfortunately, there's no clause allowing you to waive this right. In a small company, no one cares. When there's 2500 employees, the labor department loves to hand out multi-millon dollar levys as examples. Walmart, BestBuy, Blue Cross, Target, McDonalds, and more have been hit with fines for this. For Walmart, it was over 400Million, just for failing to follow the l;etter of the law on employee breaks. BestBuy got hit for 300million, but settled for 63. Walmart is still fighting theres, and if they win, you'll get to do what tyou want.
Many days I've myslef noted it was 3PM and I had not had lunch yet, and been forced to go to avoid HR retaliation aven when working on a critical project. Once in a while I do skip lunch. If I do it too often, I get a reprimand. They're NOT going to let themselves be subject to a massive fine because I'm a workaholic. Also, if everyone could skip lunch and go home early, I doublt there's be many people at there desks after 4PM, causing an epidemic in staffing.
CEOs can be fired, but only by the board, and usually at a cost of millions in severance payouts...
For this reason, the CEO has the same restrictions as everyone else in firms I consult for.
However, CEOs and other high ranking employees do regularly need to take their systems with them, and have access to company data where access is not availbale. When they go to conferences, board meetings in foreighn countries, or just a meeting at a coffee shop with other senior staff, they have to have access to this data. They do a lot more working from home and hotels than others need to, and by nature need access to more restrictive data than line level employees. Also, COE e-mail addresses are typically published (by law in some states) and this opens them up to about 30 times more SPAM than others.
I have not had a CEO hacked often, but it has happened. If you have not, you've been lucky.
I've consulted for more than 100 firms since 1992. Maybe 5 of them had a "C level" security issue.
Since the white list is an "accept allways unless deemed unsafe or inapropriate" policy, we've never had a single compaint. Hard core devs have less strict blocking lists and actually we use several, based on employee department or job title. The dev list is loaded with about 50,000 forum sites, preapproved by a 3rd party.
To all you morons out there, a white list employed by a company is not OUR list WE personally picked, it comes from a major security firm, and has hundreds of thousands of pre-approved sites. You can go almost anywhere you like.
We have restrictions like this not so much for preventing employees for having fun (they have all they want until a manager notices, IT has no part in clamping down on staff at all) the plan is to block sites that exploit typos in URLs, and for sites that have inapropriate content or associated advertising (popups that won't go away, etc).
Working for the FCC, a government entity, your actually bound by STIG requirements. Maybe a few years ago some of this was not possible for your environment, besides the fact that part of the FCC it to investigate all those bad sites, which would have been impossible if blocked, but STIG clearly states that users are only to have access to required resources.
Not all of my clients/employers were required to follow STIG, and not all of them use the same tightness in their white lists, but I've never had a single employee ever complain about websites they could not access, with the exception of MySpace which we block for multiple reasons at the insistance of Management and IT alike (mostly for bandwidth hogging, but for an array of HR related worries. Everyone complains about the ban on webmail and open chat programs, but we allow them to connect to any POP account they want provided we set it up through the filters and associate it with their user inbox. They can send and receive mail from anyone on any account anytime, as long as they fill out a simple form. Webmail is unfiltered, so its blocked. It's not about access, they have it, it just takes a day or two to set up. For chat, they have a company program they can use that interfaces with other popular programs, but it logged and file transfers through it are blocked. If they want unblocked access to chat, they can use a cell phone or personal computer on the "public" network anytime they want.
Our engineers and programms all appreciate the policies, and I have worked with some of the most intelligent and creative programmers in the state. They can go anywhere they feel they need to, and they have custom white lists by department and job duties, but they have no issues. As long as the site is safe, and passes a few simple HR restrictions (no porn, no P2P, etc) then it's approved. Simple. No problems, no morale issues. Never had a single person refuse the job after being told about the usabiltiy restrictions. Never had a single employee quit after enabling it (OK, one department manager got pissed and demanded IT unblock his connection. We notified HR and complied, and found he was hitting about 30 different subscription porn sites at work, he got fired.)
See, this isn't about keeping people working so much as it is about keeping the SYSTEMS working. We're not preventing you from going where you want, were just SCREENING those sites and adding them to a safe list. Rarely do we decline a site application and its usually because of unaproved content (like support of javascript popups that are hard to close or adult advertising). If the site passes a simple security test, it's approved, regardless of the reason why.
As for wifi devices, they have to be registerd, and personal devices, to limit bandwidth utilization, are capped at 128K each, 64 in some companies if bandwidth is an issue. These devices have a blacklist filter instead of a whitelist filter, but it's still tracked... If they want to use 3G to surf, they're welcome, if they get a signal in the building (most don't).
But really, not even interested in using web metrics to monitor productivity. We log the data, and I'll ocasionally report an employee for really rediculous use, or fo trying over and over to go to porn sites at work (we log attempts to go to blocked sites), but usually that helps us track down spyware infections the scanners didn't find, not actual employee activity.
HR in some companies, after implementing these systems, have asked me for reports on employee use. I comply by handing them 700 pages of what looks more like code than a rep[ort (raw log dumps) and tell them the software to correlate the data is extra, and costs unfathomable amounts of money, and if they get the beancounters to agree to it, they can have what they're looking for. Not one has a bean counter actually been asked. They have better methods of their own... The logging, sure, I can see what any user is doing at any time. When there's an HR issue, many times I've been asked to present the evidence they already knew existed (when some guy really was goofing off and got caught on his own, I'm often asked to back it up, only sometimes do I for the most aggrevious cases).
Any business that stores credit card information (anyone who sells stuff who doesn't use a 3rd party credit processing company, or who issues their own credit accoutns, or sends out bills for service, including municipal utilities and nearly every large retailer), medical and insurance records (which every HR department has on nearly every employee), anyone who provides services to or for a government agency, and anyone with a large customer base containing address and phone number information. This is just about every large company.
Your a solution designer. Have you actually READ HIPAA, SOX, STIG, the federal red flag regulations regarding personal information leaks, and the other regulations that each industry you work with is subject to??? Do you realize that under red flag regulations, if they hand a project over to you, and you fail to recommend appropriate security, detailing those parts of the regulations your covering, and they get hit with a leak, they could sue your firm for the damages, and potentially, the red flag fines could fall on you instead of them as well?
It's not the norm in average businesses in america, but that's because the average business in america has less than 50 employees, and few of them have a personal copmputer assigned to them. In big businesses, 500+ employees, this is very much the norm. The ones who are doing this in most cases are doing it because they lost a suit against them or were fined. Few do it voluntarily.
Again, if you read my psots, this really isn't about productivity (though that's what most people believe) it;s about protecting overall system reliability, and elinimating downtime. If we get his with a virus or exploit, we could be looking at shutting key sysyems of for days while we're cleaned out, at best 8-10 hours while we simply roll back key systems. That means basically sending everyone home until its fixed. That loss of productivity in a few days is more than we'd loose to casual over surfing in a year.
We're not mean. We let you surf where you want, you just have to get that site on the white list, which happens pretty quick. White lists I've worked with are typically half a million sites of more, and are added to daily. Rarely does a site get bounced.
The lists are to protect from zero day exploit sites, phishing sites, and sites that exploit typos. Black lists are ineffective since it takes too long to get a site blacklisted. White lists are not perfect, as even google's servers could be hacked, but they're better than the other viable options.
We use a lot of metrics to check productivity, but if the employees know they're watched, those other methods are less necessary, and limit the number of managers necessary to watch the floor.
Our employees are generally happy, and they're used to getting what they ask for from IT, which in other more open firms I continually find is not the case and everyone hates IT anyway since the systems are all buggy and slow, or IT refuses to do simple requests.
I'm a contractor. I go from large company to large company as projects are available, and I've worked for all kinds.
Yea, several jobs I had used to let people skip lunch one day, take a longer one another, as long as the work got done and people were happy, who cared wight?
That was until one of the firms I was with got levied a $185K fine for (this is the labor department's words) "not FORCING employees to take their REQUIRED breaks."
Yup, if I choose to skip lunch, employees can actually be fired and companies can be fined. The law is clear. It's not a "you may" it's a "you must" take 1 hour of break. Further you need to be given at least 30 minutes of that in once chunk, and no part of it can be within the first or last hour of your shift.
We fought this, hard.
Wether I'm at work on break or working has no impact on how much time I spend with family, 40 hours is 40 hours. I choose to live where my commute is under 30 minutes to the betterment of my family. It means I make less money working in a smaller city, but I get more time with them.
No one is arguing that family is or is not important. That's completely seperate. I'd actually prefer 10 hour days 4 times a week as this technically gives me more "quality" time with them, since it would give me a whole day around the house while the kids are at school to do crap I normally have to cram into the weekends and evenings, taking even more time away from the family, but try finding an employer willing to go for that... good luck. Everyone operates on a 5 day week.
Actually, I'm a contractor, and work for many companies. And by Call Center, I'm mostly talking about claims processing for insurance, and tech support centers for manufacturers of products. I'm not talking about marketing.
1) has nothing to do with embezling. Your abolutely right, we're looking for a scapegoat, and ifg the logs point to you as the one who caused the breach in security, after IT and HR inseisted you not and documented it, congratulations, you win the prize.
2) Blue screen = hardware or kernel issue. An application in user space can not cause XP or Vista to blue screen... No, not all shops service well, but unless employees file tickets, there's no reliable tracking system for issues. More over, allowing employees to enact changes makes the cause of the issue harder to diagnose. This is a double edged sword. The IT departments doing a better job have tighter controls, and that's most of the reason they're doing so well. All of us have relatively similar diagnostic skills at the enterprise level... (most of us).
3) corporate models have case access triggers. If the case has been opened, as soon as the OS is booted, IT is alerted it has been through a monitoring utility, provided by the manufacvturer. Many systems actually have case locks. This is why IT pros prefer IBM systems and HP business workstations. Dell is far behind in corporate system utilities and system security. Of course, replacing the screws on the case with ones that can not be removed with a common tool also goes a long way. Sure, anyone determined is going to get in, but explain how to do that in a cube without getting noticed, and without leaving physical damage...
Most users actually resent us. We make policy, we enforce policy, mostly policy they don;t understand and feel is restrictive (mostly because it is, but SOX and STIG don't give me much of a choice!), and most importantly then know we get paid a lot more.
Dev macines in our network are segregated, and have far less restriction. They can't access the databases or other company information, but they don;t need to (and when they need to test data, they're working on mock-up databases, or copies not originals).
I can't guarantee I'll catch you, but I'm pretty sue of it. Between the protections in place, continual packet inspoection, and system status monitoring, I usually know there's an issue with a machine before the user does (crashes obviously excluded). It;s pretty damned hard for anyone less than fully determined to bypass the controlls. Those who do don't typically know about network level monitoring on top of that security and as soon as they find a way to bypass some protection, the packet inspector or proxy picks it up and red flags the machine.
As far as someone else doing something on an other employees unlocked workstation: first of all, it;s an open cube floor, no high walls. Second, leaving your system unlocked only works for 60 seconds, and even that is grounds for a write up. Any system that has access to protected data uses a webcam auto-logoff. (if your face moves away from the screen, lockout happens in about 2 seconds).
Someone would have to very maliciously plan to infest the network. I can't prevent that. I can't pretend to. I don;t really care to try. I'm interested in protecting the network from the stupid users (those who open apttachments weithout question, etc). HR honestly weeds out their own productivity problems, I just have the data to back it up with so there are no fights about it when they do get fired for wasting time. I never provide reports to HR about who's using what when (They asked, so I gave them a 700 page print out that looked more like code than a report and they never asked again). I'm not cold hearted, just reasonable, and trying to keep my network operational. If it goes down on my watch, it's probably my ass.
Mac, Linux, unix, Windows, matters not. executable files should be restricted to root/admin permissions only. Line level employees have no purpose installing software or modifying predertermined OS settings. They want it changed, they submit a help ticket. Even admins should not be logged in as admin unless performing a task that requires admin permissions, and one that can't be done by using a Run As, or SU to root to accomplish. It's just bad, lazy, sloppy, whatever you want to call it to do otherwise.
Last I checked, our whitelist had over 400,000 sites. I've never gone to a commercial site, help forum, or community solotion forum that was blocked unless it was associated with warez distribution or something... We get few whitelist requests since almost anywhere the sheep want to go, except myspace and facebook, are actually in the white list... The white list primarily stops links people click on from e-mails, and mispelled URLs that link to phishing sites.
Productivity is measured in many ways. Managers can't allways look over your shoulder. Honestly, I could care less (and most of the managers with me feel the same) if you get your expected allotment of work done in half the time as anouther guy getting paid the same rate. I'm personally far more concerned with having to track down stupid issues because someone screwed up their machine trying to install some crap media player or website plug-in. ...and I've more than once had my own job on the chopping block because of a system outage or security breach that could have been prevented (and I always saved my ass by pointing to policy I suggested that got turned down that would have prevented the issue).
Mostly, it;s about DOD STIG and SOX though. no choice, have to implement compatible policy.
Funny.
Hey, I'm not saying we stop the payroll clock if you log out, just that we log how much time you are logged out while on the clock. It;s a poerformance metric.
Most of the firms I've worked for, actually you're expected to spend 30 minutes a day on the clock working on personal projects, which can include blogging, reading the news, resting the brain, whatever.
We're not devils, but if you have no illusion of controll, there's no possibility of it.