I have never understood that. Some people seem to reach a point in their professional lives where they stop bothering to learn new stuff and just expect to allowed to vegetate away in their jobs for the last 15-20 years until retirement. I've been coding since around the time than many of the younger developers I work with were still a twinkle in their father's eyes and I still manage to keep up with new developments.
I know it's an old cliche, but you'll understand why as you get older.
As you age, learning new things becomes harder and harder, even if you're highly motivated you still find you're not learning as fast in your 30's as you did in your 20's. A lot of your pathways and habits are set.
Also as others have pointed out, you have more responsibilities. Not just work, but mortgages, kids and other family commitments. You'll find your parents are getting on a bit and you actualy have to spend time helping them.
Software development is particularly bad as they seem to change the development flavour of the week more often than their underpants.
The problem with the B52 is that it's incredibly easy to shoot down, this makes it pretty useless as a strategic bomber unless you try going back to WWII tactics where you use massive wings and lose 1 in every 3 bombers.
The last time the B52 was used to fight an enemy that could possibly fight back was Vietnam and even while the Russians wouldn't give the North Vietnamese guided missiles they could still shoot down B52's.
The B52 sounds great on paper but it's more of a symbol than an effective weapon, its only practical use is on countries that have no air force or anti-air defences. In this sense, it's not very cost effective at all because you need to pay for all the F22/35 and ground forces to clear out defences before you can send the bombers in.
The requirement is for a strategic bomber that can penetrate protected territory. Here they need stealth and a bit of speed. An upscaled F35 with an internal bomb bay or maybe a long range drone carrier (I.E. a B777/A330 class aircraft that could launch short/medium range drones at extreme ranges, outside the range of enemy air defences. Drone recover can be optional, 4 or 5 could do the same damage as 10-20 bombers with minimal risk to air crews... Wait, strike that, too forward thinking for the Chair Force).
if chevy sells a car to a dealer for $16000 and the dealer after haggling and whatnot sell the car to me for $17600 then the dealer made their 10% profit.
If they buy a car for $16,000 and sell it for $17,600 they dont make 10% profit because they have overheads, in fact having run my own business I'd bet they'd barely be making 1% profit off of that with rents, utilities, wages and what not... then you've got to pay tax on that 1%.
Cut out the dealer and buy from the manufacturer and they will just sell me the car direct for $17600. It is foolish to think anything else would happen.
This.
First off, products are not priced to be the lowest they can be, they are priced at what the market will bear.
Secondly, selling direct to the public has a great deal of overheads that you don't get when you're just wholesale. Not just in showrooms and staff, but after sales service as well. Not only are they unwilling to lower the price, but they also wont be able to lower it by much.
I've seen this many times before, particularly with taxes. A government cuts a tax on something as a vote winning tactic and all that happens is the companies adsorb the difference into their profit margin.
You are *always* getting screwed on your trade-in, *always*.
Advice: never bring a car to trade it. But then it's a colossal PITA to do a private party car sale... so YMMV.
You could always auction. Less effort but you wont get as much as a private sale.
But dealers don't make money in new car sales any more. They barely even make money in used car sales as most dealers auction off their trades or have a separate dealer network who deals in used cars. Dealers make money on finance, services and a little on options. This is why dealers try to rope you into servicing with them using dubious terms in the warranty (in Australia it's illegal for a dealer or manufacturer to force you to service with them, using any accredited mechanic will not void the warranty). Services are where all the fat is, they pay peanuts to monkeys to change your oil.
Anyone who has taken a product sans pseudoephedrine already knows they don't work.
This, I always avoid phenylephrine products because they simply don't work. Fortunately here in Australia all you need to do to get pseudoephedrine over the counter is show your drivers license. That is enough to stop the meth cooks from buying enough to make a kitchen viable.
Its the same with Codeine, fantastic stuff for those of us who use it properly (I.E. rarely) but many of the same countries who banned OTC pseudoephidrine have also banned OTC codeine. This is why when I travel I usually buy a box of pain killers in Australia.
Instead of getting snarky, why don't you do a bit of research? Google is your friend.
Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger and stock manipulator. President Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission to crack down on stock cheats because Kennedy knew all about cheating.
Now look at the context in which GP's post appears - former gang members becoming accountants? Sure, it worked for Kennedy.
He is still right, although has a very bad analogy.
Prohibition demonstrated that fact.
If Marijuana is made legal, cartels wont be shipping it over the border from Mexico any more because everyone will be able to get a legal, legitimately grown and transported product grown elsewhere. The huge logistics of running a private military to sell drugs will become a cost that a legitimate farmer in America doesn't have to deal with. They simply wont be able to offer the product at the same price.
Same with Cocaine, even if Colombia cant do anything about the revolutionaries (both FARC and AUC use drugs to fund their activities), decriminalisation will allow it's neighbours to capitalise on production which will squeeze the revolutionaries out of the market.
Whilst I don't agree with flat out legalisation, a lot of the problems with drugs will be solved if we (and by this, I mean the US) would stop spending so much time and money trying to fight them.
Try buying actual "food" at the grocery store rather than prepackaged boxes of chemicals.
Vegetables have shockingly low amounts of sugar. Similarly with flour, eggs, rice, beans, meat, etc.
Whilst I'm a fan of buying fresh (I.E. I go to a greengrocer and a butcher rather than a supermarket for foods) I generally prefer not sounding like a crazy hippy when pointing it out.
But I digress
Flour is basically all carbohydrates. Sugar is basically a complex carbohydrate.
That isn't to say it's inherently bad for you per se, but modern diets tend to contain far too much carbohydrates and we generally should cut down on carbs in favour of meats, fruits and vegetables.
Back to the bit where I don't want to sound like a batshit insane hippy... maaaaaan, but people tend to go to extremes when %AUTHORITY% says %FOOD THING% is bad. People tend to try to cut it out completely rather than just cut down to normal levels with it. Salt is a good example as many western nations are now having widespread iodine deficiencies because they've cut out their main source of iodine, which was iodised (table) salt. The thing is, our bodies do require and benefit from a small quantity of these "bad" foods, we need a little sugar, a little salt and a few carbs. We just don't need them in the quantities we currently take them in.
Healthy eating advice hasn't changed much in the last few decades, things like soda, crisps, chips, fries et al. are in the eat less category. Lean meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes et al. are in the eat more categories. The only things that are in the eat never category are things like drain cleaner and candy you find on the ground. So to say maybe you should drink water instead of a soda doesn't mean you can never have a soda, rather it means you probably shouldn't have that second soda.
How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?
People like yourself who seem to think that Linux has to be hard to use or else it's not cool.
I'm a sysadmin who manages over 100 RHEL servers (186 to be exact) many without GUI's at all and I use Linux Mint precisely because it isn't hard to use.
That being said, RHEL's GUI tools have become pretty damn good over the last few versions, especially in the most recent release (RHEL7). It's almost to the point where you rarely have to use the command line if you don't want to. Speaking of the command line, I haven't used the CLI in Mint for ages, but then again Mint is a desktop distro so I use it in the same way I'd use a Windows desktop (email, youtube/netflix, browsing the interwebs).
I think the only thing that's hard to do in RHEL's GUI is LVM (setting it up for VMWare so it's easy to expand disks) but I haven't looked at RHEL 7 in this regard yet.
What's easier, teaching somebody who isn't tech savvy: A) how to use KeePass X or some other offline password manager; or B) to manually compose a bundle of strong, memorable passwords, to change them at least once a year, but not to re-use them, not to use them on any computer that could keylog them, and not to write them down or save them in plaintext?
The answer seems pretty obvious to me.
Tech savvy people get passwords wrong as often as non-tech savvy people.
This is because passwords aren't about technology in as much as they are about risk and I've met a lot of very tech savvy people who know nothing about managing risk.
When it comes to risk, you have to quantify the risk and then classify it. What is the risk of this password being comprimised, what are the potential results of it being compromised, so on and so forth. A lot of people never think about these things.
To me, I've got various levels of security. Things that represent a real problem if they become compromised like my bank or work account are high risk, therefore high security. For these sites I use unique passwords, change them regularly and all the other cliche's, above all else I never save or write down these passwords. Then there are the moderate security accounts, things that dont represent a financial risk but would still be a huge PITA if comprimised like my Gmail account, these have a unique password but I rarely change them. I also save the passwords on what I consider a secure device. Finally there are low security things like forums where I just dont give a shit. I have a few generic passwords that fit varying levels of complexity requirements.
Personally I'd never use a password manager for a variety of reasons.
1. It's a single point of failure, if you lose it you're fucked.
2. It's a single point of failure, if it gets compromised you're doubly fucked.
3. Its a single point of failure, if you forget your password manager password... well you get the picture.
4. You need to keep it synced across all your devices, given that I have Windows, Linux and Android devices this is a pretty tall order to do securely. I imagine IOS would make it even harder
5. Password managers in various browsers are good enough for low security applications and dont require a different application installed.
6. Changing forgotten passwords are simple enough. The fact is we don't do this often however when we do it's usually annoying because it's when we're trying to do something.
I'd also recommend against others, especially the non-tech savvy from using password managers. Its better in the long run to teach them about security and techniques on how to deal with it. Sure it's harder, but realistically all other methods are flawed shortcuts.
Govenments CAN be beneficial for those who lack power if, and only if, the government itself does not ally itself with those in power. Then it is at best useless. At worst compounding the problem.
An absence of government creates a power vacuum that will instantly be filled by whoever has the most power. In our world this essentially means that the entity with the most money will rule. And of course abuse its power to suppress anyone wanting to either rise to power himself or to force those lacking the ability to defend themselves against it to bend to his interests. In short, that "rich" entity will force the "poor" ones to work against their own interest and for his.
Any government that supports such a system can as well be considered failed because it serves no purpose. This is the state a society would assume anyway without government.
Basically governments are not evil. They're inanimate and natively without anthropomorphic characteristics. Its the people in government that determines if it is good or evil.
What we have now does not really work ; it's a pricing mechanism of deterring excessive use, but it doesn't assign prices correctly, it just bills your bandwidth use at a flat rate.
This is why I prefer using pre-paid/pay as you go plans. They literally cant charge you more than what you've already paid.
Bandwidth that is uncontested should be cheap, or free. Bandwidth that is contested should cost more.
This would be a fairer and more accurate system but it will never happen because:
1. It's too complex to explain to the average iphone using simpleton.
2. It's too complex to explain to the average iphone using simpleton. I know this is technically only one point but it's big enough to mention twice.
3. It would require telco's to dynamically adjust pricing based on current bandwidth at the tower. I doubt they could do this competently, I have no doubt they will never do it honestly.
4. It wouldn't help much. Data usage on mobile devices is usually dictated by their current location. Towers out in the middle of nowhere will never be busy, but towers in the middle of the CBD are going to be busy all day.
Men's hand size vary quite a bit. If you look on male dominated gun forums there is tons of discussion about customizing for this.
Shhhhh, dont interupt his merit-less, sexist rant disguised as a diatribe against political correctness (which really is just a fancy way of saying "something I don't like").
Its not just male hands that vary greatly in size, female hands do as well. It's almost as if we're a very diverse species.
The idea behind free market has always been that whenever there is a buck to be made somebody will endeavor to make it
However, the reality that we live in doesn't work like that --- your exmple of Verizon's acquisition of Alltel which puts further burdens on the consumer, and TFA's WD gobbling up SanDisk are but two of the many examples of how the big corps are fucking up the market place and nobody can do anything about it!
The idea behind the free market is that there are no artificial barriers to entry.
Free Marketeers have always concentrated on government created barriers and ignored those created by private entities to prevent competition. Because of this, the free market in purity has never worked.
Bits of the free market work when applied correctly, the same with regulation, the same with capitalism and the same with socialism. However all of these ideologies fail horribly when they're applied to the extreme.
A few years back, someone tried to set up a "Galt's Gulch" in Chile but somehow never bothered to ask anyone who's actually lived in a developing nation what would happen. Around 2013 it fell apart because none of the brilliant libertarian businessgeniuses who invested in it realised that a 3rd world government is going to fleece them for all their worth. Something even the most dim witted, perpetually drunk, ex-pat living in Thailand or the Philippines could have told them in 2 minutes flat.
It occurs to me this problem could go away if Paris had reliable power.
Hospitals store about the same amount of fuel, have similar chiller requirements, and periodically fire up their backup generators to ensure functionality.
Doesn't matter how reliable your power is, you still need to keep a reliable generator and supply of fuel at a datacentre.
My city hasn't had a brown or blackout in 20 years that wasn't caused by a natural disaster (mostly trees falling on power lines but the odd storm has taken out power to a significant portion of the city) but a significant number of services and businesses need to keep generators due to those natural disasters
It's not the cost I have the issue with. It is the 100 different interfaces. It's the "is this on Netflix? Hulu? HBO? Damn I can't remember."
Yeah, is that on channel 9 or 10 or Fox 8 or Disney or whatever.
Much like TV, this will be sorted out in time when someone builds a search aggregator for the various providers.
The biggest problem they have is the fact that Hulu, HBO and others aren't offered in countries where there's a lot of people who write very good software just for fun in their spare time.
The question is: Does Google have enough money / clout to piss off its main source of revenue? Are advertisers still its main source of revenue?
When advertisers do nothing, Google could (theoretically) say "follow our new standards or you are banned from our ad network". I mean, that's the obvious thing they "could" do. Whether or not they have the ability to get away with that, that's another thing.
The thing is, it isn't the customers driving the bad habits in advertising. Those who buy advertising want it to be effective, but aren't really too well clued in as to how this happens. Of course the best advertising campaigns are the ones that are inoffensive but to be inoffensive and effective is hard to do so most advertisers deliberately be offensive in order to be noticed. Google needs to target the advertising providers, not the advertising buyers. Very few companies will say "give me an annoying banner ad with viruses and malware that pops up over the content people are trying to see and is near impossible to remove" because they know this will piss people off. What companies say is "we need more customers" and the advertising agency says "we will bring you more customers" without being specific and the company doesn't give a shit about the specifics as long as money is being made.
In fact, I'd bet its the companies that do give a shit about their advertising that produce the least offensive advertising.
As Google derives much of it's revenue from advertisers and is smart enough to realise that advertising offensiveness is the reason that ad blockers are becoming more and more common, so they have a vested interest in changing the industry.
Finally, for Australians playing along at home, a good example of inoffensive and effective are the Bunnings ads, 20 years on the same format speaks for itself (inevitably though, there is bound to be someone who hates them).
It is worse than that, because after they were shown that it could be done, they did nothing about it until this latest exploit threatened to make their failure general knowledge.
Why is it that the stupidest people always seem to be the ones making the decisions in matters of security?
Because making the right decision on security will affect convenience, if you affect convenience people will stop using credit cards and start using cash again. If people started using cash again, credit card companies cant charge merchant service fees to merchants (as a side effect, merchants will be able to drop prices whilst increasing profit). Fewer merchants paying fees means less profit for banks.
So they are happily sacrificing security because its cheaper than the profit they'd lose.
Besides, the only reason this attack is highly improbable is the fact there is a much easier vector to attack. NFC, every NFC enabled card (PayPass/PayWave branding) transmits the card number, name and expiry date, which is all you need to start making online transactions, in very weak encryption to any device that asks for it. You don't need a large laptop with specialised software, I've got an app on my phone that does it. So a Raspberry Pi sized device would be way too large for this purpose.
All you'd have to do is place a small device under a card terminal, near an ATM or just walk around a crowded shopping mall (no-one will question what a man with a high visibility vest and antenna is doing).
In Europe and Australia, no-one bothers using cloned cards because shopping online with stolen details is easier and cloned cards are far too easy for the banks and authorities to trace, thus they never bother gathering the info needed to clone EMV/Chip and PIN cards. All they want is the card number, name and expiry date (even the CVV/CVC number is just a bonus). Every new card issued in Australia in the last several years has NFC.
or, you know, google could pay a living wage.
Time to unionize, boys!
Or you could get rid of the concept of indebting people for getting an education. There are a variety of ways to do this from offering zero interest loan to paying universities out of the budget.
Seems the big problem in the article is the fact that the guy started his working life owing a huge, interest accruing debt over the cost of accommodation.
Also, is there a law against permanent residency in a caravan or campervan? Seems a smarter idea than a retrofitted lorry as you can get caravans with showers, kitchens and other amenities. Not sure about the US, but in Australia we have places to park them (called caravan parks) which have powered sites and even plumbed sanitation at the site in some cases.
Your $83 per month is nothing to a multi-billion dollar business...
Conversely, your 23gb of data should really be 'nothing' to a company that moves exabytes.
I agree here. Mostly.
My telco gave me a "free" 1 GB of data with my pre-paid recharge this month. I have no illusions that the data has a much lower actual cost than they're claiming.
However the problem isn't the data volume, it's bandwidth that's limited. Volume is just the way telco's regulate it. If everyone had unlimited caps, a small number of people will just stream and download constantly. Given that mobile connections have extremely limited bandwidth (5-20 MHz) to be shared (time and frequency division) amongst many subscribers it doesn't take much to saturate a connection.
Of course the fairer system would be to give people unlimited data usage but filter speed based on current load, so you could go mad at 3 AM in the suburbs but you would also be restrained at 1PM in the CBD. This will never happen because:
1. It would be far too difficult to explain to the average mobile user.
2. It would be far too difficult to explain to the average mobile user. I know this is technically only one point, it's just so big I thought I'd mention it twice.
3. It would be expensive for the telco's to implement and police.
4. Users will complain (see points 1 and 2).
So I understand why telco's are metering data, unmetered data made sense back in the old days of GPRS and EDGE where data speeds maxed out at 256 KB/s but not now where we have LTE and soon, LTE Advanced. I also understand that they're taking the piss with low data limits in some countries (most notably Australia).
Also telco's can't simply just build more towers. This is limited first by economics, then by physics.
Slashdot Mirror
...old talent doesn't understand the new stuff."
I have never understood that. Some people seem to reach a point in their professional lives where they stop bothering to learn new stuff and just expect to allowed to vegetate away in their jobs for the last 15-20 years until retirement. I've been coding since around the time than many of the younger developers I work with were still a twinkle in their father's eyes and I still manage to keep up with new developments.
I know it's an old cliche, but you'll understand why as you get older.
As you age, learning new things becomes harder and harder, even if you're highly motivated you still find you're not learning as fast in your 30's as you did in your 20's. A lot of your pathways and habits are set.
Also as others have pointed out, you have more responsibilities. Not just work, but mortgages, kids and other family commitments. You'll find your parents are getting on a bit and you actualy have to spend time helping them.
Software development is particularly bad as they seem to change the development flavour of the week more often than their underpants.
The headline is certainly prescient: This may indeed be the plane that will bomb the next generation
Not if Captain Picard gets wind of it.
The problem with the B52 is that it's incredibly easy to shoot down, this makes it pretty useless as a strategic bomber unless you try going back to WWII tactics where you use massive wings and lose 1 in every 3 bombers.
The last time the B52 was used to fight an enemy that could possibly fight back was Vietnam and even while the Russians wouldn't give the North Vietnamese guided missiles they could still shoot down B52's.
The B52 sounds great on paper but it's more of a symbol than an effective weapon, its only practical use is on countries that have no air force or anti-air defences. In this sense, it's not very cost effective at all because you need to pay for all the F22/35 and ground forces to clear out defences before you can send the bombers in.
The requirement is for a strategic bomber that can penetrate protected territory. Here they need stealth and a bit of speed. An upscaled F35 with an internal bomb bay or maybe a long range drone carrier (I.E. a B777/A330 class aircraft that could launch short/medium range drones at extreme ranges, outside the range of enemy air defences. Drone recover can be optional, 4 or 5 could do the same damage as 10-20 bombers with minimal risk to air crews... Wait, strike that, too forward thinking for the Chair Force).
if chevy sells a car to a dealer for $16000 and the dealer after haggling and whatnot sell the car to me for $17600 then the dealer made their 10% profit.
If they buy a car for $16,000 and sell it for $17,600 they dont make 10% profit because they have overheads, in fact having run my own business I'd bet they'd barely be making 1% profit off of that with rents, utilities, wages and what not... then you've got to pay tax on that 1%.
Cut out the dealer and buy from the manufacturer and they will just sell me the car direct for $17600. It is foolish to think anything else would happen.
This.
First off, products are not priced to be the lowest they can be, they are priced at what the market will bear.
Secondly, selling direct to the public has a great deal of overheads that you don't get when you're just wholesale. Not just in showrooms and staff, but after sales service as well. Not only are they unwilling to lower the price, but they also wont be able to lower it by much.
I've seen this many times before, particularly with taxes. A government cuts a tax on something as a vote winning tactic and all that happens is the companies adsorb the difference into their profit margin.
You are *always* getting screwed on your trade-in, *always*. ... so YMMV.
Advice: never bring a car to trade it. But then it's a colossal PITA to do a private party car sale
You could always auction. Less effort but you wont get as much as a private sale.
But dealers don't make money in new car sales any more. They barely even make money in used car sales as most dealers auction off their trades or have a separate dealer network who deals in used cars. Dealers make money on finance, services and a little on options. This is why dealers try to rope you into servicing with them using dubious terms in the warranty (in Australia it's illegal for a dealer or manufacturer to force you to service with them, using any accredited mechanic will not void the warranty). Services are where all the fat is, they pay peanuts to monkeys to change your oil.
Anyone who has taken a product sans pseudoephedrine already knows they don't work.
This, I always avoid phenylephrine products because they simply don't work. Fortunately here in Australia all you need to do to get pseudoephedrine over the counter is show your drivers license. That is enough to stop the meth cooks from buying enough to make a kitchen viable. Its the same with Codeine, fantastic stuff for those of us who use it properly (I.E. rarely) but many of the same countries who banned OTC pseudoephidrine have also banned OTC codeine. This is why when I travel I usually buy a box of pain killers in Australia.
Instead of getting snarky, why don't you do a bit of research? Google is your friend.
Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger and stock manipulator. President Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission to crack down on stock cheats because Kennedy knew all about cheating.
Now look at the context in which GP's post appears - former gang members becoming accountants? Sure, it worked for Kennedy.
He is still right, although has a very bad analogy.
Prohibition demonstrated that fact.
If Marijuana is made legal, cartels wont be shipping it over the border from Mexico any more because everyone will be able to get a legal, legitimately grown and transported product grown elsewhere. The huge logistics of running a private military to sell drugs will become a cost that a legitimate farmer in America doesn't have to deal with. They simply wont be able to offer the product at the same price.
Same with Cocaine, even if Colombia cant do anything about the revolutionaries (both FARC and AUC use drugs to fund their activities), decriminalisation will allow it's neighbours to capitalise on production which will squeeze the revolutionaries out of the market.
Whilst I don't agree with flat out legalisation, a lot of the problems with drugs will be solved if we (and by this, I mean the US) would stop spending so much time and money trying to fight them.
Try buying actual "food" at the grocery store rather than prepackaged boxes of chemicals.
Vegetables have shockingly low amounts of sugar. Similarly with flour, eggs, rice, beans, meat, etc.
Whilst I'm a fan of buying fresh (I.E. I go to a greengrocer and a butcher rather than a supermarket for foods) I generally prefer not sounding like a crazy hippy when pointing it out.
But I digress
Flour is basically all carbohydrates. Sugar is basically a complex carbohydrate.
That isn't to say it's inherently bad for you per se, but modern diets tend to contain far too much carbohydrates and we generally should cut down on carbs in favour of meats, fruits and vegetables.
Back to the bit where I don't want to sound like a batshit insane hippy... maaaaaan, but people tend to go to extremes when %AUTHORITY% says %FOOD THING% is bad. People tend to try to cut it out completely rather than just cut down to normal levels with it. Salt is a good example as many western nations are now having widespread iodine deficiencies because they've cut out their main source of iodine, which was iodised (table) salt. The thing is, our bodies do require and benefit from a small quantity of these "bad" foods, we need a little sugar, a little salt and a few carbs. We just don't need them in the quantities we currently take them in.
Healthy eating advice hasn't changed much in the last few decades, things like soda, crisps, chips, fries et al. are in the eat less category. Lean meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes et al. are in the eat more categories. The only things that are in the eat never category are things like drain cleaner and candy you find on the ground. So to say maybe you should drink water instead of a soda doesn't mean you can never have a soda, rather it means you probably shouldn't have that second soda.
You don't need a system to detect "High-Tech Sharks"...
Yes, you should just look towards the las.... AAARGH, my eye.
How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?
People like yourself who seem to think that Linux has to be hard to use or else it's not cool.
I'm a sysadmin who manages over 100 RHEL servers (186 to be exact) many without GUI's at all and I use Linux Mint precisely because it isn't hard to use.
That being said, RHEL's GUI tools have become pretty damn good over the last few versions, especially in the most recent release (RHEL7). It's almost to the point where you rarely have to use the command line if you don't want to. Speaking of the command line, I haven't used the CLI in Mint for ages, but then again Mint is a desktop distro so I use it in the same way I'd use a Windows desktop (email, youtube/netflix, browsing the interwebs).
I think the only thing that's hard to do in RHEL's GUI is LVM (setting it up for VMWare so it's easy to expand disks) but I haven't looked at RHEL 7 in this regard yet.
What's easier, teaching somebody who isn't tech savvy: A) how to use KeePass X or some other offline password manager; or B) to manually compose a bundle of strong, memorable passwords, to change them at least once a year, but not to re-use them, not to use them on any computer that could keylog them, and not to write them down or save them in plaintext?
The answer seems pretty obvious to me.
Tech savvy people get passwords wrong as often as non-tech savvy people.
This is because passwords aren't about technology in as much as they are about risk and I've met a lot of very tech savvy people who know nothing about managing risk.
When it comes to risk, you have to quantify the risk and then classify it. What is the risk of this password being comprimised, what are the potential results of it being compromised, so on and so forth. A lot of people never think about these things.
To me, I've got various levels of security. Things that represent a real problem if they become compromised like my bank or work account are high risk, therefore high security. For these sites I use unique passwords, change them regularly and all the other cliche's, above all else I never save or write down these passwords. Then there are the moderate security accounts, things that dont represent a financial risk but would still be a huge PITA if comprimised like my Gmail account, these have a unique password but I rarely change them. I also save the passwords on what I consider a secure device. Finally there are low security things like forums where I just dont give a shit. I have a few generic passwords that fit varying levels of complexity requirements.
Personally I'd never use a password manager for a variety of reasons.
1. It's a single point of failure, if you lose it you're fucked.
2. It's a single point of failure, if it gets compromised you're doubly fucked.
3. Its a single point of failure, if you forget your password manager password... well you get the picture.
4. You need to keep it synced across all your devices, given that I have Windows, Linux and Android devices this is a pretty tall order to do securely. I imagine IOS would make it even harder
5. Password managers in various browsers are good enough for low security applications and dont require a different application installed.
6. Changing forgotten passwords are simple enough. The fact is we don't do this often however when we do it's usually annoying because it's when we're trying to do something.
I'd also recommend against others, especially the non-tech savvy from using password managers. Its better in the long run to teach them about security and techniques on how to deal with it. Sure it's harder, but realistically all other methods are flawed shortcuts.
various studies have found that they make users choose better passwords.
By better do you mean harder for computers to guess or easier for users to remember and not have to write down?
Yes.
Govenments CAN be beneficial for those who lack power if, and only if, the government itself does not ally itself with those in power. Then it is at best useless. At worst compounding the problem.
An absence of government creates a power vacuum that will instantly be filled by whoever has the most power. In our world this essentially means that the entity with the most money will rule. And of course abuse its power to suppress anyone wanting to either rise to power himself or to force those lacking the ability to defend themselves against it to bend to his interests. In short, that "rich" entity will force the "poor" ones to work against their own interest and for his.
Any government that supports such a system can as well be considered failed because it serves no purpose. This is the state a society would assume anyway without government.
Basically governments are not evil. They're inanimate and natively without anthropomorphic characteristics. Its the people in government that determines if it is good or evil.
What we have now does not really work ; it's a pricing mechanism of deterring excessive use, but it doesn't assign prices correctly, it just bills your bandwidth use at a flat rate.
This is why I prefer using pre-paid/pay as you go plans. They literally cant charge you more than what you've already paid.
Bandwidth that is uncontested should be cheap, or free. Bandwidth that is contested should cost more.
This would be a fairer and more accurate system but it will never happen because:
1. It's too complex to explain to the average iphone using simpleton.
2. It's too complex to explain to the average iphone using simpleton. I know this is technically only one point but it's big enough to mention twice.
3. It would require telco's to dynamically adjust pricing based on current bandwidth at the tower. I doubt they could do this competently, I have no doubt they will never do it honestly.
4. It wouldn't help much. Data usage on mobile devices is usually dictated by their current location. Towers out in the middle of nowhere will never be busy, but towers in the middle of the CBD are going to be busy all day.
Metered plan is such a nice term for what these providers do.
Why not something more accurate, like "data rape" or "wallet diddle" plan?
Entitlement Complex Enrager plan?
Men's hand size vary quite a bit. If you look on male dominated gun forums there is tons of discussion about customizing for this.
Shhhhh, dont interupt his merit-less, sexist rant disguised as a diatribe against political correctness (which really is just a fancy way of saying "something I don't like").
Its not just male hands that vary greatly in size, female hands do as well. It's almost as if we're a very diverse species.
The idea behind free market has always been that whenever there is a buck to be made somebody will endeavor to make it
However, the reality that we live in doesn't work like that --- your exmple of Verizon's acquisition of Alltel which puts further burdens on the consumer, and TFA's WD gobbling up SanDisk are but two of the many examples of how the big corps are fucking up the market place and nobody can do anything about it!
The idea behind the free market is that there are no artificial barriers to entry.
Free Marketeers have always concentrated on government created barriers and ignored those created by private entities to prevent competition. Because of this, the free market in purity has never worked.
Bits of the free market work when applied correctly, the same with regulation, the same with capitalism and the same with socialism. However all of these ideologies fail horribly when they're applied to the extreme.
A few years back, someone tried to set up a "Galt's Gulch" in Chile but somehow never bothered to ask anyone who's actually lived in a developing nation what would happen. Around 2013 it fell apart because none of the brilliant libertarian businessgeniuses who invested in it realised that a 3rd world government is going to fleece them for all their worth. Something even the most dim witted, perpetually drunk, ex-pat living in Thailand or the Philippines could have told them in 2 minutes flat.
It occurs to me this problem could go away if Paris had reliable power.
Hospitals store about the same amount of fuel, have similar chiller requirements, and periodically fire up their backup generators to ensure functionality.
Doesn't matter how reliable your power is, you still need to keep a reliable generator and supply of fuel at a datacentre.
My city hasn't had a brown or blackout in 20 years that wasn't caused by a natural disaster (mostly trees falling on power lines but the odd storm has taken out power to a significant portion of the city) but a significant number of services and businesses need to keep generators due to those natural disasters
It's not the cost I have the issue with. It is the 100 different interfaces. It's the "is this on Netflix? Hulu? HBO? Damn I can't remember."
Yeah, is that on channel 9 or 10 or Fox 8 or Disney or whatever.
Much like TV, this will be sorted out in time when someone builds a search aggregator for the various providers.
The biggest problem they have is the fact that Hulu, HBO and others aren't offered in countries where there's a lot of people who write very good software just for fun in their spare time.
The question is: Does Google have enough money / clout to piss off its main source of revenue? Are advertisers still its main source of revenue?
When advertisers do nothing, Google could (theoretically) say "follow our new standards or you are banned from our ad network". I mean, that's the obvious thing they "could" do. Whether or not they have the ability to get away with that, that's another thing.
The thing is, it isn't the customers driving the bad habits in advertising. Those who buy advertising want it to be effective, but aren't really too well clued in as to how this happens. Of course the best advertising campaigns are the ones that are inoffensive but to be inoffensive and effective is hard to do so most advertisers deliberately be offensive in order to be noticed. Google needs to target the advertising providers, not the advertising buyers. Very few companies will say "give me an annoying banner ad with viruses and malware that pops up over the content people are trying to see and is near impossible to remove" because they know this will piss people off. What companies say is "we need more customers" and the advertising agency says "we will bring you more customers" without being specific and the company doesn't give a shit about the specifics as long as money is being made.
In fact, I'd bet its the companies that do give a shit about their advertising that produce the least offensive advertising.
As Google derives much of it's revenue from advertisers and is smart enough to realise that advertising offensiveness is the reason that ad blockers are becoming more and more common, so they have a vested interest in changing the industry.
Finally, for Australians playing along at home, a good example of inoffensive and effective are the Bunnings ads, 20 years on the same format speaks for itself (inevitably though, there is bound to be someone who hates them).
It is worse than that, because after they were shown that it could be done, they did nothing about it until this latest exploit threatened to make their failure general knowledge.
Why is it that the stupidest people always seem to be the ones making the decisions in matters of security?
Because making the right decision on security will affect convenience, if you affect convenience people will stop using credit cards and start using cash again. If people started using cash again, credit card companies cant charge merchant service fees to merchants (as a side effect, merchants will be able to drop prices whilst increasing profit). Fewer merchants paying fees means less profit for banks.
So they are happily sacrificing security because its cheaper than the profit they'd lose.
Besides, the only reason this attack is highly improbable is the fact there is a much easier vector to attack. NFC, every NFC enabled card (PayPass/PayWave branding) transmits the card number, name and expiry date, which is all you need to start making online transactions, in very weak encryption to any device that asks for it. You don't need a large laptop with specialised software, I've got an app on my phone that does it. So a Raspberry Pi sized device would be way too large for this purpose.
All you'd have to do is place a small device under a card terminal, near an ATM or just walk around a crowded shopping mall (no-one will question what a man with a high visibility vest and antenna is doing).
In Europe and Australia, no-one bothers using cloned cards because shopping online with stolen details is easier and cloned cards are far too easy for the banks and authorities to trace, thus they never bother gathering the info needed to clone EMV/Chip and PIN cards. All they want is the card number, name and expiry date (even the CVV/CVC number is just a bonus). Every new card issued in Australia in the last several years has NFC.
or, you know, google could pay a living wage.
Time to unionize, boys!
Or you could get rid of the concept of indebting people for getting an education. There are a variety of ways to do this from offering zero interest loan to paying universities out of the budget.
Seems the big problem in the article is the fact that the guy started his working life owing a huge, interest accruing debt over the cost of accommodation.
Also, is there a law against permanent residency in a caravan or campervan? Seems a smarter idea than a retrofitted lorry as you can get caravans with showers, kitchens and other amenities. Not sure about the US, but in Australia we have places to park them (called caravan parks) which have powered sites and even plumbed sanitation at the site in some cases.
I meant real newspapers, not tabloids :-)
The closest thing we have to a real newspaper these days are organisations like the BBC and AFAIK the Beeb has never been in print.
Posting from Australia.
Your $83 per month is nothing to a multi-billion dollar business...
Conversely, your 23gb of data should really be 'nothing' to a company that moves exabytes.
I agree here. Mostly.
My telco gave me a "free" 1 GB of data with my pre-paid recharge this month. I have no illusions that the data has a much lower actual cost than they're claiming.
However the problem isn't the data volume, it's bandwidth that's limited. Volume is just the way telco's regulate it. If everyone had unlimited caps, a small number of people will just stream and download constantly. Given that mobile connections have extremely limited bandwidth (5-20 MHz) to be shared (time and frequency division) amongst many subscribers it doesn't take much to saturate a connection.
Of course the fairer system would be to give people unlimited data usage but filter speed based on current load, so you could go mad at 3 AM in the suburbs but you would also be restrained at 1PM in the CBD. This will never happen because:
1. It would be far too difficult to explain to the average mobile user.
2. It would be far too difficult to explain to the average mobile user. I know this is technically only one point, it's just so big I thought I'd mention it twice.
3. It would be expensive for the telco's to implement and police.
4. Users will complain (see points 1 and 2).
So I understand why telco's are metering data, unmetered data made sense back in the old days of GPRS and EDGE where data speeds maxed out at 256 KB/s but not now where we have LTE and soon, LTE Advanced. I also understand that they're taking the piss with low data limits in some countries (most notably Australia).
Also telco's can't simply just build more towers. This is limited first by economics, then by physics.