I blame airline consolidation.

Fewer airlines, each hiding out in their fortified monopoly hub airports, means less gate competition and less gate competition means airports can probably charge less for gate access. It's probably even worse, because with fewer airlines overall a lot of airports worry about losing their hub status and probably charge even less to the big carrier left providing service or provide other accommodations which save the hub carrier money.

This revenue pinch causes them to turn to commercial providers to install and run their wifi networks or if they run their own, to charge for service.

Flying sucks.

An economist who studies the commercial pollination market hasn't seen any real impact from the bee crisis.

Wally Thurman on Bees, Beekeeping, and Coase

Yeah. I mean, there should be, just purely from an economic perspective you should see evidence of this. So we started looking. And surprisingly enough, as I speak here today, in 2013, we have more bees in America than we did in 2007, before Colony Collapse Disorder was observed and named. There is virtually no effect--there has probably been some effect on the price of pollination services, but it's not dramatic. And it's probably only for almonds, the only early-season crop that is pollinated. Not for the other crops pollinated the rest of the year. And this is surprising, given all the discussions of CCD and honeybee health.

We've found there's been no effect of Colony Collapse Disorder on the prices of queens.

It does make a person wonder how many university organic chem labs churn out drugs on the side, even if its only for self-consumption.

I would imagine by now that the precursor chemicals for relatively easy synthesis are controlled, but I would think a good PhD in organic chemistry would merely take that as a challenge and attempt a more complex synthesis which made the precursors.

Hell, if they were clever they may even be able to some of it (or even all of it) as a legitimate project if it somehow advanced the synthesis know-how. I think I've read that the total synthesis of morphine is ridiculously complex but that it would be highly desirable to develop a synthesis that avoided any kind of opium base.

... the cost of breaking corporate software with an update (they just took out our scheduling program for 4 days) is very measurable and affects everyone in the company, ...

Where are your test systems and test cases?

If you want to win these fights, you have to present defensible numbers in units that the PHB's understand: Dollars or Euro.

And the core problem with estimating losses is that you are now trying to play in the realm of the PHB. You will always lose. That is because while you are spending time on productive work they are spending time on personal relationships and politics.

Any time they do not follow your advice and a disaster does NOT strike ... well it is obvious that they were right and you were wrong. So they SAVED/EARNED the company money by being more "productive". Those IT people are all "the sky is falling". Ha ha.

Right up until the systems are cracked and then they're going to blame you any way because it was your job.

NOT training users not to download suspicious executables or engage in fantastic feats of memory regarding passwords.

Don't depend upon a user's memory. Tell them that it is GOOD to write down their passwords AS LONG AS THEY STORE THEM WITH THEIR CREDIT CARDS.

The solution, which security people hate to hear, is to get better at installing and maintaining multiple levels of firewall, application sandboxing and/or streaming applications for all office applications, improving intrusion detection and dynamic virus removal in real time.

The REAL problem with security is that the VENDORS do not place a priority on it.

It isn't that we hate to hear that.

We're already DOING that. But it doesn't help much when a CxO installs some infected software on his laptop (which he can because he is so important that he NEEDS admin-level access) and then brings it into the most firewalled section of the network.

Right now I'm focusing on knowing when a site is compromised rather than trying to get EVERYONE to follow the best practices EVERY TIME on EVERY SYSTEM.

It's what collection agencies do with lawsuits and what many mortgage holders have done when going after homeowners.

The collection companies have gotten bad press from filing bogus lawsuits with inadequate documentation. Like sending summonses for their suits to the wrong address, resulting in bench warrants being issued to people who never got the notices and ignored the default judgements that resulted. I don't think most county level civil courts did much about it, though.

The mortgage industry I think earned more heat from bankruptcy courts when they showed up with bad documentation that basically couldn't prove they owned the mortgages. I think some judges got annoyed with the mass litigation many engaged in and started discharging the mortgages unless they could provide accurate documentation, but I think it only happened after a few savvy defense attorneys began to understand the maze of paperwork and lack of legal documents (ie, pen and paper notarized paperwork) that actually proved the plaintiffs owned the mortgages.

IMHO, there ought to be a set of steep progressive penalties imposed on both counsel and plaintiff who file serial/mass litigation with flimsy or substantively inaccurate documentation. Like the first one is a slap on the wrist, the second within some window of the first is a $10,000 fine and the third in the same window is a $100k fine, risk of disbarment to counsel and perjury charges to the plaintiff. You need these kinds of penalties to restrain counsel and clients.

from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

If they want an easy, comfortable patient relationship they should have gone into dermatology, not oncology. Dying and cancer go hand in hand, and I would expect such a profession to be better skilled at handing those issues than the general public. As a medical practice, they should be willing to engage allied professionals like psychologists or social workers to promote more realistic goals.

By the time we had that meeting with the oncologist, the suffering of my mom was was really evident. I didn't think she had much of a chance of recovery and another round of chemo would have been very difficult for her and difficult for us.

This is a larger topic, but the US doesn't do dying well and it costs all of us dearly in desperation measures. The patients and their families pay in pain, heartache and treasure and the rest of pay in treasure. Recognizing a point when recovery or meaningful life extension isn't possible and switching to palliative care makes so much sense. Plus it often gives patents and their families some time to use the the health/energy they have left for living versus making them sicker from treatment before they ultimately die.

I don't think volume explains it completely. The most expensive components in an IP camera (camera, network, controller) are mass produced in incredible quantities already, whether it's for smartphones or dashcams or Gopros or point and shoot cameras, and stuff like smartphones with far more technology included (super hi res touchscreen, LTE modem, battery, flash, vastly more complex software) are cheaper than all but the junkiest 720p IP cameras.

*Components* isn't the reason, the components are dirt cheap. I don't even think assembly is a big reason -- security cameras are ubiquitous, so assembly, case parts, etc. should be widely available, too.

Really the closest you come is game cameras, which mostly are missing the networking part but kind of make up for it in complexity with motion sensing.

IP cams' web interfaces are one of the few places, though, where it's nearly ubiquitious.

I'd say it has more to do with junk Chinese electronics compaies all buying the same core tech package and minimally changing it to suit their branding.

What's truly obnoxious are the perfectly usable cameras which haven't upgraded their firmware to ditch activex for javascript.

Actually, there is a problem. Which is why the schools with less money do worse on standardized tests than schools with more money.

And the problem is that the tests are written to a specific curriculum that is clearly identified in the text books associated with those tests.

So even if a student knows MORE about a subject than is taught in a specific text book, that student can still FAIL the standardized test because s/he does not provide the answer identified in the text book.

Such as ... what are the 3 main reasons for X.

In math it is more about how the word problems are written. If the student is familiar with the way the problems are phrased it is easier for him/her to get a higher score.

I think there's a ton of money being dumped into the walking dead.

When my mom was at stage 4 of metastasized breast cancer, we had a family meeting with the oncologist to discuss my mom's situation. When asked what -- if any -- chances she had for life extension (not a cure, but more than 12 months) he was totally equivocal about it and was basically looking to start another round of chemotherapy. I felt like he was just looking for another round of payments before she died. They give you the thinnest hope to try to get you to keep using their services.

I've heard similar stories before from other people with older relatives, very sick and unlikely to every recover in any meaningful sense of the word yet the doctors insist on expensive and invasive treatments. The only explanation I can think of is that it's good business for them.

So when this trusted friend claims the $14m and then decides to keep it all, what do you do then? Hey, he's not sharing the money from the scheme I rigged?

It sounds like the perfect crime...from the trusted friend's perspective.

...relative to when you used it?

I had to use a DOS 3.3 PC off and on in a "production" capacity, but this was in 1992 when it was only 5 years old. My desktop PC at home is Server 2008r2 and it least in simple terms, it's actually older technology.

I still run into Windows 2000, which is like 15 years old but doesn't seem old.