Apple most certainly does NOT have leading support on the enterprise level. I know this from direct, personal experience. "That's how it's meant to work" and "We will probably fix that in the next release (date unknown)" are both considered perfectly acceptable answers by Apple Enterprise Support.

Oh...unless you're a 100% Apple shop and already have in-house Linux/Unix guru's who can do an end-run around the limitations in OSX.

Every other enterprise vendor has a roadmap and beta products/releases they share (at least under NDA) so related vendors can prepare their software/hardware. Apple releases the next OSX and major software vendors (PGP, Symantec, etc.) take months to release compatible software.

This isn't Apple bashing, just the state of things and it sucks. I actually like most of their hardware and OS implementation but some parts make want to pull my hair out...which is awkward since I have none.

The problem is the vast majority of people sending things aren't interacting with UPS or FedEx other than selecting shipping speed through xyzshopping.com

They were told 'last day to order for xmas eve delivery is 11:59PM on Dec 23rd (or whatever) by the retailer.

Last second shopping? Go to a freaking store people. :)

So just to use your own point...if emergency rooms (i.e. critically necessary medical services largely funded by the gov't) can't provide capacity necessary for the exception-circumstance...how is it reasonable to expect FedEx or UPS to do even more? Getting a beanie boo before xmas isn't quite as important as pushing saline for a trauma victim with low BP. (though if you read the FB page for FedEx or UPS you might get the impression otherwise)

I think the vendors deserve much of the blame here if the delivery companies were communicating with them. Heck, if Amazon posted that orders are surging this year and deliveries may be delayed for last second orders...so order RIGHT NOW. just like they do with the silly (but effective) timer for when you can last order something to get it by X day.

What I find truly ironic - people are blaming FedEx and UPS for 'failing to plan ahead properly' when *they're* the ones ordering things at the very last second. UPS should include a small, complimentary mirror with each of these delayed packages when they're delivered.

Retail and almost any large scale enterprise are going to have many things in common. At the end of the day it's large-scale, lowest-cost that affords security. Add in senior management having 'great ideas' or a vendor selling some 'amazing product' ... you get the idea. The store manager insists on using an XYZ tablet instead of his company issues 'portable desktop' so he gets an exclusion from half the security measures. And of course forgets the tablet almost every time he walks through the store...etc. etc. etc.

I've yet to work on a network that I couldn't bypass security or had an available means to do so. In some cases it's utterly trivial, others it takes some limited insider knowledge and a techie background.

Most managers and 'important people' assume security doesn't apply to them and that getting their job done is WAY more important. IT and InfoSec people can be the worst in that group from personal experience.

FBI will do the actual investigating here. The po-po are just the unwitting hacks who get face time.

Protip: your information is always at risk. Social engineering, datamining, and a myriad of other techniques make it all out in the open. What you can do is try to *limit* that risk. Credit protection or locking your credit checks is one. Unique passwords is another. A really helpful thing is watching how you answer security questions - never use REAL information. I hope everyone realizes how easy it is to figure out someone's mother's maiden name these days. Favorite food? If not pizza or lobster just check facebook. Honeymoon spot? First job? More of the same.

These attacks target the least common denominator (in this case retail POS) so try not to be that group. Use one card for retail shopping...ideally one that's NOT a debit card tied to your bank account. That way you're liable for, at most, 50 bucks. Try getting money back into your checking account...you can...but until then you're out that $.

girlintraining has a lot of interesting information...it'd be fun to pick his/her brain one day. I've similar experiences though not centered in retail.

MAC ACLs are like the TSA groping grandma. Looks good to those up top but only annoys the people who aren't doing anything wrong...while doing little to stop anyone with ill intent.

802.1x is a big improvement but still leaves a lot to be desired in most implementations.

Sure but even that's not 100% secure by any means.

I wrote a whole long rant about all the holes I've personally seen and then thought better of posting it. Many of them are possible with limited technical knowledge and minimal understanding of the target (ahem).

Anyone who thinks this was a 100% outsider attack is sadly mistaken. It doesn't even need to be someone in a position of power or great access...just some basic knowledge and perhaps a few others to do some unwitting testing (mind you retail hires troves of temp workers ahead of black friday) is more than enough to allow an experienced person to pull this off.

Usually it goes one of two ways ... the culprit is obvious/stupid and caught quickly which is touted as a great investigative success ... or the news moves on, the company licks it's wounds, the FBI gives up, and life goes on. It's not like the movies

That's just it...if you make it a law then it's legal. Then you challenge the law and get it overturned...then they write a new one permitting whatever was used to overturn the old one ad infinitum until you get a constitutional challenge which this won't rise to.

I agree though it's a brazen, monopolistic power grab by the dealers. Remind you of the MPAA and RIAA? Their business model gets challenged by...reality and life...so they fight for laws and sue sue sue. All to the detriment of their customers.

I can see why they're bent out of shape...they're used to a locked in business model that basically guarantees profits. Unfortunately buying votes indirectly is still ridiculously easy as is adding things to unrelated bills about to be passed into law. I can only see that trend getting worse...here's a bill to explicitly outlaw shooting infants in a stand your ground state. Rider to it also prohibits you from selling books not approved by the writers guild. Just you wait...

Very true. Talk to people in the healthcare field and they'll be able to list tons of examples of wasted money. Any patient on medicaid/medicare gets more treatments, pills, devices, etc. because the hospital, dr, or specialist can bill for it.

Example: 80-something comatose man in the final stages of lung cancer being given a colonoscopy ... just in case he might have ass cancer too. Seriously.

Healthcare is for-profit and must-CYA. Those are the two primary factors 90+% of the time. That's not to say there aren't doctors who care. Many do. But they're stuck working in a system that leaves them little choice but to go along if they want to continue practicing medicine (and paying off their insane student loans).

And given her a gov't office position...or possible put her in charge of the TSA.

Yes and no.

Drug testing addresses the last 3-30 (up to 90) days of an individuals life. It has NOTHING to do with them doing drugs ON THE JOB. Also will point out that things like coke and meth clear your system FAR faster than THC. Go figure.

Taking it a step further, someone who parties friday night can be 100% fine to drive your precious cargo. Can 'bad' behavior spill over? Yep. But a bus driver can also show up drunk to work.

Plenty of people use drugs and simply stop when they know they're changing jobs. It's basically a joke. Many drug testing facilities have lots of strict rules that they rarely or unequally enforce.

At the end of the day, you want someone sober while performing their job. Fine. 110% fine and understandable. I totally agree. Even random/regular drug tests (which are extremely rare) won't differentiate. Most of the time it's just a game of beating one test per job and then going on your merry way.

But we can do it FOR THE CHILDREN.

Beyond that...the 'peak' keeps moving as technology progresses.

We were 'practically out' of oil a few years back according to the news. New technologies like horizontal drilling, fracking, etc. have opened up huge new reserves that were always there...just inaccessible at reasonable cost.

And then there's 'reasonable' cost. Tar fields are useless when oil is $35/bbl because it costs more than that to extract it. If oil is $100 a barrel it starts to make sense. At $200 suddenly there's another bajillion available barrels of oil

Yes we will run out. No it won't be soon...especially if we develop nuclear and large-scale renewable.

No no no... Obama needed it!

Imagine what the kid could have done with a million bucks? (hint: probably exactly what he's doing now but sooner)

Granted this type of engineering works on a minor to small scale and includes some significant dangers (refer to pictures of him standing on the windmill platform) but it does provide a step in the right direction. At the same time, with a 20kw genset and some diesel you could provide a whole town with minimal power, basic facilities, and the ability to do things like drill wells, pump water, irrigate and tend fields. The cost for this vs. flying in tons of food year after year makes for an interesting comparison.

Some days I don't think we want to help these countries become self sufficient - we simply want to make outselves feel better by giving handouts.

What part of wind power is changing so quickly? It's a freaking propeller driving a generator at the end of the day. Yes there have been some novel developments in ways to catch the wind but what part of that is so vastly changing the cost?

Energy storage (i.e. battery banks, etc.) are moving incrementally forward. Despite a dozen or two "breakthroughs" in the lab over the last 2-3 years nothing has increased energy storage density by the promised 10-100x at similar or lower cost - and THAT is what's needed to make wind power practical.

Datacenters and big box stores run on "renewable" power because they get tax incentives and green stickers they can plaster all over their company. At the same time you need to understand what 'buying renewable energy' means in reality. Say power company X generates 365MWh of renewable energy a year and some incremental higher cost than their regular generation capacity. Some days they make 0 and others they make 2 so it *averages* to 1MWh/day. ...So they sell 365MWh of cost increment to companies who want the green stickers. However that power is NOT directly routed to those customers. That power goes into the grid, combines with the baseload generators (nuclear, coal, gas, etc.) and THAT powers the datacenter. On days when renewable is making more power they throttle back some gas generators.

Solar and wind cannot, today, effectively provide baseline power generation.

Not necessarily.

Back in the 90's there were several competing office suites. MS Office was one of the easiest to 'steal' (111-1111111 if anyone remembers) which led to a massive piracy^^^^^^adoption by home users. MS cut breaks for businesses on top of that so businesses adopted it...soon enough it was just the go-to standard. Everyone had a bootleg copy and that's what they knew.

Piracy drove adoption and sales. MS Office is still MS's biggest cash cow afaik.

Let Apple do the same ... some people are going to pirate anyhow so you might as well count their numbers towards your total installs and derive benefit from it. Then you can also keep them up to date, patched, and offer related sales (here's the cool plugin for xyz software - only $1.99). It makes total sense on a macro scale. I'm not a huge apple fan but it's nice to see one software company not looking at the micro scale and chasing 'pirates' who don't even have a bird on their shoulder.

For the record I have an actual parrot on my shoulder at this very moment.