I've both installed and maintained these systems, and did some schlepping of tapes for clients. Fortunately, I don't any more, too many times I found the vault open since some co-workers were inconvenienced to actually pull the handle and dial in the combination. But yes, I always assumed the external sites were elsewhere and secured, but shooting the first copy didn't preclude online redundancy nor even different media for archiving.

All of which is different than the business need for continuous operation, DR, etc.

Appreciate the clarification. Where I work now I'm far away from that, and we cannot think of anything but 24x7x365 ops, so restore is a euphemism for failure.

The bottom line in managing long-term archiving (5+ years) is that you need to both refresh and verify you storage, at several different levels.

1. Shoot the initial copy.
2. Copy this asap. "Copy1"
3. Stash both in disparate locations.
4. Go back to the 'original' on a 6-9 month schedule and verify it.
5. Go back to the 'copy1' on a schedule and verify it on a different schedule.
6. Go back to the 'original' on a different 9-12 month schedule and refresh(copy) it, stored to the other site.
7. Go back to the 'copy1' on a different schedule and refresh (copy) it, stored to the other site.
8. Repeat 4&5 on a year schedule. Do you need to re-write the data in 'current' formats and retain both original and new? Are you moving to new media?
9. Repeat 6&7 on a year schedule. Ditto the rest of step 8.
10. We should be at year 2 or 2.5. Repeat steps 1-9 once for a 6+/- year retention, again for 10+ year retention.

Are you changing data formats, and is it possible to ensure integrity by copy8ing and archiving in new formats?
As you change media, do you need to retain old media systems, or will you move to the new media?
At what point is the data no longer valid, determined by the owners?
Are the 'owners' the only stakeholders? If not, expand the set.

In all of this, you have a dedicated media management system including media drives, copy/verify capabilities, and stand-in for restoration.

This is all very interesting to me. Medical records in particular seem to be assumed to have a lifetime retention, but other than the date and nature of the event, how important are the details of your appendectomy performed at age 5 when you are 60? Is that benign tumor removed at age 12 important at age 45? How much LHC data collected in 2013 will be useful in 2023? Different criteria. Different processes.

There is a serious problem here, and one you are yet oblivious to, I suspect.

If entry would be denied because of any previous history of attempted suicide, I submit that the state has decided that once suicidal, always suicidal.

In other words, there is no cure. Merely remission, and more specifically unverifiable remission.

So, I suspect, any mental disease will be presumed to be either permanent or latent, and all sorts of privileges and rights will be denied mental health patients based not on treatment and/or outcome, but on diagnosis.

There are certainly incurable conditions, but there are also CUREable conditions, and if we leave the state in the position of arbiter of the state of mind of former mental patients, we should expect them to err not on the side of caution, but on the side of simplicity. Just ban them, much easier and 'safer' (for the state and its minions) than chancing anything.

This will leave not only mental patients, but many many others with permanent records of being an assumed danger, and it will expand until nearly everyone has an entry on the list. The state will use this to justify any action they wish to take.

And this will happen in America, where the state should have been restrained from this.

We are losing.

Fathers are being arrested for walking up to the school their children are in and, rather than wait in line in their car, take their children home on foot at the end of the school day.

Any bets on how the government will spin that willful act of disobedience into a disqualifier for gun possession?

His wishes are his law.

The Left in America is happy to chip away at civil rights one minority population at a time. Failing to get guns banned entirely, they will first deny gun ownership to those with ANY medical history, mental health diagnoses first. Any hint of domestic problems is morphed into domestic violence and another reason to deny guns. Look for aggressive driving, resistance to other government regulations, even debt to become reasons.

There is only one answer to these fascists. Refusal. Stop electing them, all of them. Party affiliation is no longer useful in determining your vote.

I was hired based on a specific set of qualifications:

- Support experience with a specific corporate website; Perhaps 12 people worldwide could claim to have that experience, and 4 of them do not speak English. I know them all.
- Support experience with three different software applications, all distributed by my employer. Perhaps 30 people worldwide would be able to claim some experience, but half of them at least would not have the depth of experience requested.
- Experience using several specific corporate applications, systems, and databases. Perhaps 6 people worldwide would have that combination of experience worldwide, all of them in the company, and all but one were, at the time, employed on the team I was hired on to.

I was a contractor at the time, and had been doing the job for 6+ years. The corporation decided to convert to full-timers, and the job description was not changed. HR required the hiring team to write the functional and experience requirements specific to the job, and they laid it on. We waited through the internal posting period, and were able to get through that with no other internal candidates being able to offer useful qualifications that justified hiring. When I was hired, now 7+ years ago, it took 6 months for me to be able to work without supervision. I deal with many systems and processes - currently I manage 34 different passwords I use at least weekly, some of which expire every 14 days, and with about 4 different minimum requirements for complexity. Not one of them is written down anywhere, but I use single-character hints to keep them straight, knowing that on one system a hint of 'O' would mean something than on another system. And no, I currently do not use an 'O' for any password.

Crafting those requirements saved the company perhaps 6-9 months training marginally qualified candidates, and preserved a lot of institutional knowledge. Most of this is very difficult to document, though I have my own knowledge base now that is perhaps 60% complete. Much of it goes out of date every 9-12 months due to software upgrades, system decommissons, blahblahblah. We are hiring another team member, and looking forward to training them up for at least 6 months.

I also see a lot of H1-B applications posted, and most I am at a loss to explain what the special skill is that cannot be found domestically. Many pay in the $80-130k range, require Masters degrees, but not specific experience with particular systems or applications beyond MSSQL, Oracle, and Microstrategy, which I suspect are either to retain a current contractor or qualify a specific candidate. All of these applications are actually for sponsored positions with the usual offshore IT contractors You all know their names.

Sometimes, an specially-crafted description is to favor a candidate. Sorry, but you were never in the running. Some, though, seem intended to result in no qualified domestic candidates, and somehow an offshore candidate will have these skills etc. And if you are merely an external candidate, you will never know about the H1-B. No one will ever give you the legal notice. You will never have a chance to make your case.

H1-B is horribly broken. There is already talk of jamming through federal immigration reform by executive order on the premise that most illegals actually entered legally - overstays being the primary problem. Ignoring the logical response, to find and deport them as required by law, many will be presented as crucial to our economy, being key employees, and deportation disrupting corporate operations needlessly. NEEDLESSLY. A lie, but tell the big lie and they believe you.

If we care at all about our nation's economic future, we need to compel an audit of the H1-B and related programs, and enforcement of the current laws, rather than abandoning them due to neglect.

But I'm an extremist.

No more reason than to look back at the 80's, or the 60's, or the late 1700's.

"dating from a time in a nascent Mars' history that scientists are eager to know more about."

And there is a time in Mars' history that scientists are NOT eager to know more about?

Vapid. Utter waste of bits. 'turning point' no less so. Troll video included.

Straight copper wire often reacts badly (in ours and the fire department's humble opinions) to too much current. In what way is it poorly designed or defective?

Or is it the design issue? Using copper wire where a resistive element would have been a better choice? Or perhaps connecting that copper wire to some more appropriate load? Maybe forgetting to include a much smaller wire (fuse) in the circuit?

Sorry, still getting enough caffeine in me to build immunity to the obvious. Devices don't react badly to too much current. They draw too much current and react badly to their own defect. Limiting current is a safety feature. Though 5W isn't a trickle in the real world.

Seeing as moderations are opinions, I keep hearing this whooshing sound... Odd.

...and thereby allow using that proxy card to empty out all the other accounts in one grand gesture.

Nice.

Amazon already lets you choose different payment methods, as do most big online stores.

A better idea is perhaps based on 3DS and one-time card accounts. But your idea is clearly not a fraud prevention scheme, so that's pointless to you.

"because of their higher swipe fees."

I dunno about Discover, but if you're a merchant, and you're thinking Amex is noticeably more expensive to accept, I dare you to challenge your processor or bank to break out all of your fees.

You will not be happy. The other cards have caught up.

And merchants know this. Some that are very sensitive to fees try to guess the card BIN and if it's a 'rewards' card they may not offer free shipping, disqualify the transaction for discounts, or reject outright.

Many of the fees merchants are being charged are actually thinly disguised recovery of what used to be cardholder fees. MasterCard/Visa particularly do this so the issuers regain some of the revenue the government is trying to protect consumers from.

No one is protecting merchants from such gouging and outright scammage.

Merchants that do mostly card-not-present also do AVS to minimize fraud. Since an address or name match aren't required by most acquirers for an approval, this is the merchant's own risk tolerance at work.

There are third-party risk outfits that will take data such as AVS, location, IP address, and using both their own data and decisioning system give the merchant a score for the risk.