There's no reason why you would have a three attempts limit, or five, or ten, and so on. If I get three per account, I'll just use the top three and try again different accounts. If I get three attempts per IP, I'll use many different IPs and do the same.
To remain user friendly, delays are the way to go. E.g. you could have three different delays that add to each other: Account-level, IP-level and global. Increase each with every failed attempt up to 30 seconds of wait time, and add them together. This will slow down brute force attempts to the point where they're useless, while still allowing legitimate users to login (just with a little inconvenience).
As a result, if I failed three attempts with one account, and three one next, etc., my IP-level limit will prohibit me from moving on to other accounts. If I try a lot of passwords on one account, the account-level and IP-level ones will slow me down. And if there's a distributed attack with many IPs, the global delay will reduce the damage the attack can do. All the while legitimate users can still use the service.
A lot of this information might already be available, just not in the obvious places. An example:
"how to start an airline" came up a couple of times in this discussion. If you ask an existing airline "How should I begin?", they might see you as a future competitor or as a waste of time - either way, they won't gain anything by helping you.
But plane manufactures do gain something from helping you. Even if only every millionth guy looking for advice actually buys a plane, it's still worth it for them. In face, you can check out Boings guide on how to start an airline:
I'd wager that it's the same in other industries. If you want to start a cable company, talk to the people that'd profit off of it - people selling routers, contractors that build the infrastructure, helpline operators, etc.
Starting a wiki is a great idea, and there's already some information you could copy/link to (depending on the license). You'd have some information right off the start.
I agree with you, and I want to call out a particular phrase you wrote as profoundly good advice:
"If you want to start a [$ALMOST_ANYTHING] company, talk to the people that'd profit off of it"
There's certainly more you need to know about starting and running any type of business, but finding the people who would potentially profit from a successful company is going on my shortlist of "Let's evaluate this idea" questions
Is there anything that prevents this from being a phone app and sell it in one of the app stores?
You could abstract away all the web and phone (press '9') stuff and just have a button "Open the door? Yes/No" if someone activates the buzzer.
Maybe add some easy management for pins that:
- always open (roommates/family/friends)
- open only one time (deliveries, not-so-close-friends)
- open only under certain conditions (time of day, day of
month, etc)
Make it possible to easily share those pin numbers via SMS,
Facebook, email, etc.
I think you have a product that's great for access management. You should highlight the additional benefits in your marketing, e.g.:
- easy to invite friends over for dinner
- easy to share apartment without the need for new keys
- easy to revoke access
- easy to let cleaning staff in during certain times of day
Another thought: Market it as a helpful add-on for AirBnB customers. You don't have to give someone a key to your apartment, just a PIN that only works for the time they rent the apartment (this is also useful for sub-leases). You can revoke access at any time, no matter where you are (big problem with keys).
Short version: I think you'd have a better chance packaging your product as a mobile app, abstracting away all the web/phone stuff and sell it as "entry management" instead of "automated buzzer".
Aren't those clauses in there to cover transferring files to CDNs or backup services?
I'd interpret the "Basically" section as a display of their intent, since the full terms require a lot of legalese to protect 500px.
As NyxWulf and other commentators said, the "Basically" sections would probably play a role in a law suit anyway, so they couldn't hide contradicting terms in the left section.
play, circles - google is pushing those things onto me, hereby cluttering up the rest of their products. yahoo, for me, always was the definition of clutter, whereas google had focused clarity.
that clarity is gone, under the helm of larry page. it is becoming more and more obvious just how great the performance of schmidt was.
What is the article arguing? Is there even an argument made? Why should Americans elect more scientists? Will it lead to a higher quality of living or more wealth or what?
It mentions China as a pro-scientists country, but why? It's riddled with human rights violations, corruption and environmental pollution. While American politicians decry climate change openly, China just seems to ignore it.
Singapore is a city-state with 5mio citizens, and a high cost of living. Finland also has 5mio citizens, is known for its wealth and the president Tarja Halonen has a degree in law - in fact, the other politicians mentioned on Finlands wikipedia page are missing a scientific degree as well.
I'm not buying it. Just staffing your government with scientists seems pretty irrelevant for the success of a nation.
China is socially repressive and an environmental catastrophe in progress, but it's also one of the fastest-advancing nations in the world. Chinese citizens were starving to death en masse as recently as the 70's. The fact that they've pulled themselves out of that kind of industrial slump is amazing.
Wikipedia says that Singapore is the best trade center in Asia and one of the best in the world. It also has the best credit and the best markets. Socially, it's a bit repressive, but it is apparently doing very well economically.
Of course, without much data the argument is useless. It would be interesting to see a pile of charts comparing scientists and engineers in politics to economic success; with only three or four data points it's a a toss-up.
One thing to consider here is that it may be fast advancing because it is advancing from such a low positions. With more than a billion people, Chinese economic potential is enormous, far exceeding any other country. The fact that the have almost the same GDP as Japan while having more than 10 times more population and huge natural resources can be explained only by broken political and economic system. It is slowly moving out towards being somewhat less broken, but one would be deeply mistaken taking this as a sign that one should take it as an example to follow in its current state.
What I tried to say (and perhaps didn't) was scientists won't necessarily be good for a country, not that they'd be bad.
The german minister of justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, did a lot of good for the german internet. Her decisions were very rational and fact-based, yet she holds a law degree.
There just are too many good politicians without science degrees for the sweeping generalisation "scientists are good and lawyers bad".
Singapore is also a very wealthy state, and it has nothing to do with the population size and the costs of living there. You are comparing countries on a single factor, the population - how is that variable relevant? Then why don't you compare with Turkmenistan, also 5 million people, no scientists in charge and a ridden with poverty ? How about Sierra Leone, 5 million people. no scientists, ridden with civil war? One can pick up stupid examples everywhere then, if population is indicative of something.
Just to clarify: I didn't want to say that Singapore is successful due to its small-ish population size, just that another country is almost as successful _without_ scientists at the top of the government. I chose Finland as an example since its population size is the same, the per-capita income is similiar and it enjoys a low rate-of-crime as well.
Actually, the president of Turkmenistan has a PhD in medical science [1] and the vice-president of Sierra Leone has a bachelors degree of science [2]. So both have more scientists in the top government positions than Finland. The politicians education really doesn't seem to be an important factor for the countrys success.
Allright, seems like I picked up the wrong examples :) I agree on your last sentence as least, that the educational background of politicians is irrelevant to the success of a nation.
Then again, there are many different ways to define what "success" truly means. It really depends what you consider: wages / welfare / freedom of expression / perceived happiness, etc... It's hard to compare two different countries unless you take a look at a bunch of criteria.
One thing I would add, though: you cannot judge a country's current success by the politicians currently in charge. For all you know, they may not be the ones responsible for the current situation and may just benefit from what was done years ago. Economics trends are very much happening on the long term, you would not see a net difference in a few years of policy (unless something very drastic is done). Europe is, for the most, now suffering from poor decisions made during the 80s and 90s regarding sovereign debt, and only recently the massive problems seem to surface while the policies have been going on for about 30years+.
> It's riddled with human rights violations, corruption and environmental pollution.
More likely because it's a poor country than because it is pro-scientist.
> While American politicians decry climate change openly, China just seems to ignore it.
They are doing significant efforts in green technology. Furthermore, China isn't all that bad if you look at per capita statistics which is arguably more fair to compare.
EU leaders will be going to the Chinese in a few weeks, cap in hand, looking for the Chinese to help bolster the European bailout fund (otherwise the euro could well be toast). The Chinese are going to use the carbon tax as negotiating leverage. Ah, politics.
Also I read a very interesting article (in the guardian paper i believe) from an insider at one of the major climate change treaties a few years back. The official story was that the different leaders couldn't come to an agreement and that there would be another summit in a few years. The real story was that the Chinese delegation blocked every proposal, thereby sinking the talks (as any major climate change treaty would require the backing of the major industrial powers).
While in the meantime, US cries about China's 'unfair' advantage in developing green technologies and lifts tariffs for imports. Perhaps just another difference between a lawyer driven society and an engineering driven society.
American politicians decry climate change openly? The way things have been going the last few years, you could have fooled me. Huntsman was notable as the only republican candidate to say he believed in climate change.
I think the idea behind the article is that scientists are generally trained to work with/find factual information and grow their understanding, while engineers are generally going to take scientific knowledge and apply it to solve problems. These are both approaches our country could use more of in government.
While I believe that humans are having a significant, negative effect on the climate, I can see how there might be some doubt and skepticism as to the magnitude of the damage and how much of that is caused by humans. I'm not saying I agree with full-on denial, but there is probably some room for discussion. The problem is that we aren't really having that discussion.
Our more fundamental science problem is that a significant portion of Americans and several of the Republican presidential candidates don't believe in evolution, despite the fact that civilization has benefited from the application of it for centuries.
Unfortunately her doctorate hasn't prevented her from making one inane decision after the other during the ongoing financial crisis and even on the field she should be at least somewhat knowledgeable (nuclear power) she didn't really evoke any trust into her decision-making (first extending life span of nuclear reactors despite strong criticism by experts and than retracting this decision only a year later in the wake of Fukushima).
Merkel's decision are not so 'inane'. If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now.
She is also not only 'somewhat knowledgeable' about nuclear power, she was the responsible minister for several years.
Extending the life span was a political decision - especially moved ahead by her coalition partner - the FDP. Before Fukushima there was a majority of conservatives and liberals against the nuclear exit. This changed with Fukushima.
Merkel often bases her decisions on what is politically possible in Germany. She believes in a politics of small steps which, where the outcome can be verified and one can adapt then. A very scientific approach.
"If you look at the German situation (and that's her main job), it is looking pretty good right now."
I am a German and the outside perspective is unfortunately somewhat misrepresenting our situation here. As far as I can tell most foreign news sources tell about our unemployment rate and our GDP growth but both come with strings attached.
First of all our unemployment rate does not reflect the true unemployment in any rate due to changing the definition what constitutes an unemployed person. For instance, jobless people over 58, people being forced to do work-fare, people doing mandated education and a couple of other cases are not counted as unemployed although this people live off social welfare. A rapidly expanding part of the work force is also counted among the working poor, i.e. they don't earn enough and have to be subsided by the state. A lot of once full-time positions are transformed into part-time jobs which makes it increasingly difficult for people to make ends meet and leave them susceptible to poverty when becoming old since our pension scheme is mostly based on your work years and your income.
Most of the (slow) GDP growth is attributed to export while our domestic consumption is either stagnating or declining because Germans had in the last 20 years stagnating or declining real wages. So we have growth but the majority does not profit from it in any way.
"Extending the life span was a political decision"
What else? It was just to show that expertise in the respective field has nothing to do with competent decision making. The problems with nuclear power (extremely dangerous in a densely populated country as Germany, no means to store nuclear waste long-term, extremely expensive, etc.).
There is an international standard definition to count unemployed people.
There is no 'true unemployment'. There are several different definitions. By all definitions the unemployment in Germany is at a very low level compared to recent years.
Which really doesn't show, ever. I think being a scientist (and by contrast, a politician) is a matter of thinking, not of degree or title. The currently top rated comment [1] explains it rather nicely.
Policing a community is where humans excel and policies/computers fail.
I ran a community once, with around 30k active users. Definitely not big, but we faced the same problems. Our solution was simple, aside from adhering to the law: "Mods delete what looks icky".
We felt that automated systems would always fail (users would use "4" instead of "a"), and strict policies always led to debate about whether something was allowed or not.
Instead we tried to recruit mods that knew the community, the direction it was heading and were able to keep a level head. Sure, someone went overboard once in a while and deleted o.k. stuff, but we'd just remove their mod privileges and reinstate what they deleted (thinks were removed from the database 14 days after they were marked as "deleted").
We were never accused of harboring pedophiles, or going overboard with removal. Those that complained about free-speech were always radical political groups well outside of "acceptable" for most communities.
The key is to find moderators in line with the community, in a benevolent dictator way. No idea if reddit could find enough of those, but it worked well for us and should scale with community size, as reddit has a larger pool to recruit from.
The problem is that reddit mods are self selected from within their communities by the other mods in that community. The quality of the moderators varies wildly and most subreddits are not run very professionally (obvious exceptions like /askscience exist).
Sure reddit has overall mods but they do not usually get involved and communities manage themselves which usually leads to a lack of coherent policy in regards to what is acceptable and not.
http://www.splashdata.com/press/PR121023.htm
There's no reason why you would have a three attempts limit, or five, or ten, and so on. If I get three per account, I'll just use the top three and try again different accounts. If I get three attempts per IP, I'll use many different IPs and do the same.
To remain user friendly, delays are the way to go. E.g. you could have three different delays that add to each other: Account-level, IP-level and global. Increase each with every failed attempt up to 30 seconds of wait time, and add them together. This will slow down brute force attempts to the point where they're useless, while still allowing legitimate users to login (just with a little inconvenience).
As a result, if I failed three attempts with one account, and three one next, etc., my IP-level limit will prohibit me from moving on to other accounts. If I try a lot of passwords on one account, the account-level and IP-level ones will slow me down. And if there's a distributed attack with many IPs, the global delay will reduce the damage the attack can do. All the while legitimate users can still use the service.