Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Blender, Pictures, Servitude
Is your Blender still under warranty? Myriad writes: "NaN, the publishers of the free cross-platform 3D modeling and rendering package Blender, may not be as dead as was previously reported here on Slashdot. While Blender remains unavailable for download, some of the websites functionality has returned along with the notice "NaN is currently undergoing a re-organization of the company...and are working to restore wider operations as soon as possible." Hopefully they will manage to bring back Blender!"
"I only read Computerra for the pictures." Natalie Shahova writes: "As the translator of Just for Fun, I had to contact Linus by email in order to clarify some issues. This way we got virtually acquainted, and Linus agreed to give me an interview. Its Russian version was published in Computerra on March 26, but the original is - as you might guess - in English. As far as I know, Linus Torvalds has never given an interview to a Russian journalist before. Knowing from Just for Fun that Linus is tired of questions about Linux and open source, I chose some other subjects that interest me as a professional translator: languages, emigration, fiction, etc." A fun interview, with some amusing pictures, too (only in the Russian version). Thanks, Natalie!
Wasn't Windows NT 'More UNIX than UNIX'? thelizman writes: "C|Net is reporting that the joint Microsoft and Unisys website attacking Unix has been experiencing problems all day. Now, normally I would venture an evil laugh, but in light of yesterdays revelation here on /. about the site being FreeBSD powered, could this merely reinforce Microsoft's point? Not likely, since it was quickly switched over to IIS running on Windows 2000, and that's when the problem seems to have started."
What time is it when an elephant dances on your computer? Tom Veil writes: "Minor editorial changes have been made on the article "When Elephants Dance" (referenced earlier by Slashdot). The most interesting change adds one more step to the solution, suggesting that the DMCA must be repealed. A comment is also made as to how fair use is already protected, and thus 'there is no need for additional action in this area.'"
And thanks for flying Air Canada -- Have a nice day. steveha writes: "Linux Journal has more on cyborg Steve Mann's troubles with Air Canada. Over $100,000 in equipment damage, and possible... brain damage?!? Not good."
Can we be really sure that they are really running IIS on Win* now? They could be a bunch of 31337 h4x0rz running IIS over Wine. I bet Bill would be upset if he found out that was what was really going on...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
We have the way (404: Forbidden)
the site still allows you to download the /bin/ls program, which indicates it is running *nix or bsd (on an improperly configured server).
Someone pointed this out in a previous discussion on the matter.
When I click on the link, I get:
/index.htm,html,asp and nothing worked.
Directory Listing Denied
This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.
?!?!?!?!
I guess they must have hired some MCSEM's (Microsoft Certified System Engineer Monkeys) to set up their site.
I also tried
Should have stuck with the leaders, I guess, instead of following Microsoft.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Sounds like "Final Exit" - someone call Dr Kervorkian!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I'm confused. Now, what the airline did to this guy sounds awful. Pretty much the worst nightmare for anyone. However, I guess I just don't understand his situation if his brain can be damaged by rebooting this system he's attached to. Truly bizzare. Is he a "cyborg" for medical reasons? Is he like that kook in the UK who sees himself as half machine?
What a strange and wonderful and horrible time we live in...
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
It doesn't seem as though his 'brain damage' was exactly what we think of. The first thing that pops into my head is ratardation and the lack of ability to think. It seems, however, that the abilities were more related to his brain being able to control his body. For example, if you damaged part of your brain you would no longer be able to see, or move your arm, or feel your pinky toe. It appears that the brain damage was more realted to his ability to interact with his devices, most specifically the vision items, then his ability to formulate thought.
Either way, AirCanada really fucked this guy over. What they did was simply wrong, and they deserve what they get, and then some. This is some fucked up shit, and though the part about the knives is fairly irrelevant, it does throw their safety procedure excuse out the window.
I don't get what changes Dr. Mann had. We've got people in the technology/medical field for whom implanting a tiny little chip into their skin is major international news yet this guy his stuff wired into his brain and eyeballs and vital organs and stuff to the extent that removing it would cause brain damage and possibly death?
Or is this all blown out of proportion and the "health risk" and "damage" we're talking about is nothing more than his "shock" at no longer looking at images with a little targeter on a pair of glasses and no longer knowing what his pulse rate is, from little patches on his chest? And what's this about a hard drive? In his brain? Recording what?! Jesus, think people - think.
And no i'm not trying to troll. His website is really sparse and I dont' see any "hey here's what I've done to myself - check it out!" page or anything.
Microsoft putting up an Anti-Unix site is like going to Sturgis on your Vespa Scooter, poking a Hell's Angel in the chest, and saying, "Hey, Fatass! My Vespa totally kicks ass over your American-Made pile of crap."
Second:
Exactly how much crap did Steve Mann have embedded in him? Come on, did he have a wire going into the center of his brain, or what? I'm certainly not a fan of 'go to the airport - forfeit your rights', but last time I checked his site (before Air Canaduh), he just had some VR gear and some wireless network thing. Not a pacemaker or anything. (Idea: send Dick Cheney to Canada via Air Canada)
Just balme it on the beer and the liberals.
Thats what I do.
Now the fact that a man with THAT much hardware got on the plain without a special permit is just wrong.
I guess it's the biggest weakness with a bureaucracy anything out of that ordanary and everything goes to hell.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
As you wish: (Modified for Lameness)
root:~$ nmap -O -P0 wehavethewayout.com
Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA30 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on www.wehavethewayout.com (130.94.214.143):
(The 1158 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered or closed)
Port State Service
21/tcp open ftp
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
110/tcp open pop-3
443/tcp open https
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
2105/tcp open eklogin
3306/tcp open mysql
5900/tcp open vnc
Remote OS guesses: FreeBSD 2.2.1 - 4.1, Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 155 seconds
root:~$
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
1. Unisys and MS start a $25+ mil PR campaign against Unix and set up a web site as a part of this wehavethewayout.com.
2. The website is running on Apache and FreeBSD and the campaign receives criticism.
3. Next day they move the hosting of the above to MS' domain and the server's IP address changes and software seems to be Win2k/IIS 5.
4. In no time after this move, the Win2k server gets cracked and started serving an empty HTML page and then getting 403 errors, campaign gets more bad PR.
Just a curious question. How in the hell are they spending this $25+ mil that has so far not gotten any positive coverage and only generated bad PR? Funny that the FreeBSD site seems to be still up and running at http://198.63.57.204/
As some people have pointed out, the web server has http://www.wehavethewayout.com/bin/ls available, and it's the FreeBSD version.
/bin/ directory.
My guess for this is that they had copied a complete directory structure over from the FreeBSD box, including the web server's
-vic
But I can believe disorientation. Similar to losing hearing or some other input channel.
I recall experiments from many years ago where the people were wearing glases that flipped everything upside down. At some point the people completely adjusted.
in a similar fashion, space shuttle jockeys take about two weeks to get used to weightlessness, especially for tasks like throwing balls, etc. both throwing and catching are pretty hard wired.
Loss of an electronic input should not be any more damaging than any of these things.
Unless he is counting electronics as part of his brain.
Which I disagree with.
Now the reality check might be an issue as far dealing with non-electronic reality goes.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Regardless of what wehavethewayout.com is running, that webserver has probably had a hell of a day. Besides being slashdotted, I would speculate that hundreds of curious slashdotters have portscanned, banner-scanned, and run all sorts of scripts against this server. No wonder it's offline right now. :)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
the english one:
I don't think I have any special messages at all. I think the only "message" in my book was the tongue-in-cheek "Party on, Dude!"
and here is the russian one:
I definitely don't want to give a message to anybody. The most important thing in my book is its cool ending: "Let's rock, pal?"
this is just one of many examples.
A small info: i am a native russian speaker although i live in germany since 1993.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Yes, because Microsoft and Unisys can't afford to buy two servers.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.linu x64.com
Imagine you wear special, expensive, contact lens. You wear them all day, every day, for a long time. Then an airline security guard decides the contact lens might be the next thing in terms of smuggled terrorist weapons (after all, given a bomb hidden in shoes, and plastic explosives, well, better safe than sorry). So security rips the contact lenses out of your eyes (scratching your corneas in doing so), and ruins your lens with their grubby fingers in the process of examining them.
Suddenly, you're back to pre-contact lens vision, with some "damage" (not dramatic in the overall scale of things, but still painful) to your eyes.
Now imagine you can't get easily get new contact lenses, or even replacement glasses, because they're specially-made.
Stripped of the cyborgness, this is the sort of experience we're talking about. It's clear it's not a pleasant one.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
See the previous article re. Prof. Mann for testimony from myself and other students who have worked with him.
As far as any of us have been able to tell, he has absolutely no medical requirement for any of his equipment, or any actual physical or psychological dependence on his equipment. He has been observed working fine without it on several occasions.
This is a publicity stunt, plain and simple. Prof. Mann has an agenda to push and is pushing it as hard as he can.
The only way he could be damaged is if his VR stuff caused some kind of permanent change to his brain by replacing part of its normal function, sort of like (imagine) if you lived in a weightless environment for long enough, you might lose your ability to walk in normal gravity. That change of course would be a very slow, gradual process that came from wearing the electronics for years.
The electronics are bound to fail sooner or later. If they were really causing some physical change in him, then if they ran for a few more years before failing, the change would have progressed that much further and the damage would have been worse. So if removing the stuff caused damage, it's good that he found out about it now while the effects aren't as bad.
But I agree with the Linuxjournal comment from the guy claiming to be a doctor, saying Mann is probably just looking for an excuse to sue. If that VR removal really caused brain damage, two things should happen:
>is
>their FreeBSD web server process be able to read
>files in
Yes!
The site is mirrored at
www.pleabargainingisthewayout.com
and
www.whe
Speaking of sleepytime, Bill has asked me to say
"Will the last person to leave wecantfindthewayout.com please shut off the lights?"
Thank You.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Why should this guy have to go through any trouble at all? He wasn't wearing anything that could be construed as a bomb or a weapon of any kind.
Unless he's changed it very recently, his gear looks like a fanny pack filled with gutted computer parts, with misc. cables going out to various peripherals, many with visible PCBs and so forth.
He may have cleaned it up a bit, but take this and add a reasonable-sized battery, and you have a rig that looks a lot like your "ACME Personal Bomb" from any action movie from the past decade or two.
Add to this the fact that Prof. Mann is a bit on the eccentric side and that he would very likely have gotten pushy with the guards when they challenged him (trust me on this one), and what you have is a recipe for a really bad day (and a really golden publicity opportunity, which was probably the plan).
The bureaucracy comes from the refs. The rest is just any pickup game on any sheet of ice anywhere in the country. Could it be you don't *play hockey? Canajen you say eh? I wonder...quick which NHL goalie was the first to wear a mask?
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
"...the following words from your mother: "I still don't think Linus has any 'special' talent and certainly not 'for computers' - if it weren't that, it would be something else. In another day and age he would focus on some different challenge, and I think he will. (What I mean is, I hope he won't be stuck in Linux maintenance forever)."
No matter how big, how bad, how high your IQ your mom will always be there to ground you.
"MOM! I've just won 5 Noble prizes and been elected president of Earth for Life!"
"That's nice dear. Take out the garbage and then don't forget to wash your hands."
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
I'm on the west coast and man I miss Montreal. There's no poutaine anywhere unless you go for cheddar cheese instead of cheese curd. Yuck!
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
The whole point of airline security is that They do not know how to screen out little old ladies and average citizens from the pool of potential terrorists.
This may be because they know that they have already have everyone riled with the government to begin with. Of course, one way to make an enemy is to treat everyone as they were the enemy already.
This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I bet some expensive UNIX system administrators could get a web page installed on a UNIX box in less than a day and a half. Something to think about next time you're in the market to buy some trained monkeys to run your Windows network.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Let's see someone yank out an eyeball, cause bleeding, and then shut down your other eye with an iron brand, and see if you can imagine yourself complaining of brain damage.
To be fair, we'll administer anesthetic, as I'm sure yanking an electrode and power cycling is nowhere near as painful as pulling an eyeball or burning your cornea.
He didn't say there *was* brain damage, if you read the report, only that it was *possible* if he didn't reconnect quickly/soon.
Not necessarily brain damage in the mental retardation sense, but brain damange in the 'neural stimulus has been removed, neurons and neural connections will die and wither due to lack of use/stimulus/feedback' damage, which is still damage.
Another analogy, a better analogy:
You have become very accustomed to your normal eyesight. Imagine someone giving you very powerful glasses to wear for years (akin to his implants), and then Canadian airport security ripping them from your face, tearing the skin off your noise and brow.
Will you suffer brain damage? You will certainly suffer visual problems, and until your brain becomes accustomed to not wearing glasses (if possible) or if you regain your glasses, your brain, body, coordination, and vision will most certainly be affected.
GPL Deconstructed
$ lynx -mime-header http://www.wehavethewayout.com/
HTTP/1.1 403 Access Forbidden
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 02:22:14 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 172
<html><head><title>Directory Listing Denied</title></head>
<body><h1>Directory Listing Denied</h1>This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.</body></html>
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
A spokesman for Air Canada issued a statement concerning Steve Mann's latest claims, "Take off, eh? We didn't cause no brain damage! He was brain damaged before, eh? Why else would he got on our plane to start with? Now, let's go get a beer and a jelly donut, eh?"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Given M$ recently delared push to fix the security of their OS, this makes a fiendishly clever move. The single most valuable resource for fixing security problems is to know EVERY exploit currently in use.
Try this for a plan... So they get the security problems fixed, kinda sorta they think. The truly evil plan would be to TROLL the entire net. With some sort of nasty unfounded lie about UNIX. It would generate millions of hits, and have every cracker, script kiddie and real Security Geek on the planet spend the next few days trying to take down that system. Log it. M$ would now have a comprehensive database of every known method for breaking windows because thousands of enemies just showed them their favorite exploits!
From now on, we can assume that M$ actually has the most knowledge about methods of cracking windoze. Here is the ultimate panic point. Now that M$ has this information, it is quite possible that they WILL soon have the most secure system. With this quality of information about holes, and legions of code drones spending ALL of their time fixing them, they just might actually fix them ALL. What happens to *NIX if M$ really does end up with the most secure system?
Still, this Steve Mann thing sounds more like it should be coming from the South - is our security overcompensating, or is it just me?
Simply put, I don't know. I've had but one similar experience when returning via Seattle from Tokyo. Suffering from jet lag I approached an American security guard thinking him a clerk and offered him my documentation. My mistake took me to a small room for a half-hour quiz which went well and no farther than explaining to me that I had mistakenly approached security guard whose sole job was to cull suspicious characters. No strip search, just clarification and a polite explanation. Accordingly I have to think Mr. Mann had much to do with the length and details of his detainment. Excluding cases of mistaken identity I have to think it takes two to tango. Trained in statistics I try not to draw too much, if any, inferrence from any one instance.
cheersP.S. I didn't know NY Fries sold poutaine... thnx for the tip although the one time I dined at one of their fine establishments I didn't think all that much of their chips.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
This whole air canada story sounds like a nightmare, but the simple fact is that that guy could have rented a car and drove home, he was in no way trapped into taking a flight, the fact that he submitted to the airlines demands seems very suspicious to me. It takes about a day or two to drive from St. John to T.O. and would probably have cost a couple of hundred dollars, much cheaper and easier than having you implants ripped out if you ask me.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Netcraft now shows that they are using Win2K now and IIS 5.0
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Did your daddy make you eat your puke after you threw up from eating yucky stuff? Anyway, don't try to gross me out d00d; yesterday for the first time in my short second life as a /. poster I was modded a Troll. Now I'm bad.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Hey, at least they didn't have to hire expensive experts to run their simple static one page web site.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
What is *up* with this guy, anyway? Does he have a suite of disabilities or something, or is he just a nut? (From what little I could piece together of him from various sources, the "nut" theory seems more plausible.)
Does anyone really believe he had half a million bucks of wearable computers on him that he really needed? And that he suffered brain damage from having them rebooted? Was this supposed to be posted on April 1st or something?
Anybody who is trying to board a plane in this day and age with a whack of unnecessary electrodes and hardware placed all over his body, is just looking for trouble (or more likely, publicity).
I've travelled many Airlines, and Air Canada is luxurious and incredibly careful as compared to any of the others I've used (never lost a bag, never damaged anything, for me). And any increased level of security (for a rather suspicious whack of hardware) is solely due to attempts to protect Canada's neighbor to the south from terrorist activities.
Getting this guy any press at all for his supposed problems is just ludicrous.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
He's been doing this for 20 years, it's his lifes research, he's a professor now, he's been interestesd in this field since he was a student.
The electrodes as far as I can tell are implanted under the skin, which means to remove them you would have to break them out of the skin, they're not designed to be removed except under clinical conditions I suspect...security gaurds randomly grabbing things is hardly clinical.
Personaly anyone who believe in their research enough to get this involved with it deserves one hell of a lot of respect, this is the very definition of putting your money where your mouth is.
If your body constantly uses something then it begins to expect it to be there, if you suddenly rip it all out you will seriously disorientate the body and it will not thankyou for it...think of it akin to someone who looses their sight or hearing during adulthood - it's seriously disorientating to them because it's always been there and they don't know how to function without it.
The whole fiasco sounds like someone on a powertrip to me...which went to far but by then they couldn't back down.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I can understand how removal of Mann's equipment would cause him something of a form of "brain damage". What we all tend to forget is how long Mann has been doing this sort of thing - his first rig (IIRC) was a TV attached to an Apple IIe back in the 80's!!!
His latest rigs are much more compact - others here have noted the research done using special glasses that flipped the image - in those researches the volunteers got used to it, but when they were taken away, they were "disoriented" again (if I have it right, the brain starts to reinterpret everything normally, but take away the special glasses, and the user sees things wrong, until the brain readjusts - someone posted that some of the volunteers NEVER readjusted, which is scary).
Furthermore, you have to realise that Mann's devices were a form of brain/memory augmentation - he literally had a system where he could look at locations/faces and "tag" them with reminders, so that he didn't have to remember names/places/items - he could just look at them again, and if he had tagged them before, the tag would appear - in true augmented reality "magic". Anything from names to reminders about events ("milk on sale", etc).
So, without the system, one could effectively say he had lost a portion of his memory (and he has been doing this so long, almost two decades now, that one could say his augmentation is normal for him - he seems to be truely a walking experiment). While I am sure some of his antics are publicity stunt type material, I don't really think this was the case here. It would be more akin to someone who had chopped their arm off intentionally to use a "bionic" replacement (custom designed, of course), but had it taken away because it could be a "bomb"...
As far as the comment about Mann's system being "wires and pc boards" and looking like it could be a bomb - the last version I remember Mann working on (and supposedly had a prototype of) was contained in the "lining" of a large suit sport coat, with the boards spread out among the coat's inner surface, maybe a bit of kit in a fanny pack (batteries likely), and a very small vision/camera system (can't remember the company that was developing it, but it looked like an ordinary set of glasses, with a very small prism mounted on one lens, with the projection system mounted on the earpiece of the frame projecting in from the side) - the whole thing was mostly "invisible". I suppose the camera and such made for a slightly more visible system, but I don't think (if this was the system he was wearing at the time) that it would be a "shocking" looking system. Of course, I could be wrong, and he might have been testing out something more recent...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So they're migrating all their mainframe customers to Win2k running on their very expensive up-to-32-way Wintel 'mainframe' (caugh).
me: So there are no plans for Linux then?
them: No. We don't think it scales and besides Unix is proprietary.
me: www.osdl.org has it on a 16cpu (4x4) NUMA and it appears to scale just fine.
them: We don't know. Nearly everyone we talk to asks us what our Linux plan is and we just tell them "senior management has decided we'll run Windows."
So I finished with the FreeBSD server stuff and they went 'oh yeah, we got some internal mail on that stuff'.
Unisys is just being their normal closed, proprietary self. They make zillions doing this by being kissy-face with governments all over. I hope this round bites them squarely since Windows does not make an enterprise O/S no matter how much wishful thinking is done on Bill's or Unisys's part.
-- Multics
He had a heart monitor. Even in a hospital setting they don't stick wires into you to monitor your heart. They tape them to your skin, which is what I understand Dr. Mann had. The tape being removed may have caused irratation and minor damage to the skin.
Not that I condone the airlines' actions, but this thing is getting blown way out of proportion.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Now there's nothing there.
I guess there is no "way out".
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
5900/tcp open vnc
mysql?
mysql nothing. VNC? Woohoo, what fun could be had with that...
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
Both the DOS box (www.wehavethewayout.com) and the FreeBSD box (198.63.57.204) have anonymous FTP open. Both of them contains a file in the root directory, called 10k.html. /. readers wonder why, or what the heck is this!?
Both of these files are filled with the string "10k" repeated hundreds of times, ended with a </BODY> tag - the size is exactly 10000 bytes.
Did they put them there just to make
:wq!
since he probably would've refused to turn off all electronic devices during takeoff and landing. I know the article says he agreed to turn his junk off and back on after they'd already started messing with him, but I bet he'd have refused once on the plane. (The article mentioned he agreed to do it reluctantly even though it might cause data loss and brain damage - yeah, right!)
I don't want some retard geek-boy fiddling around with my safety on the plane - they should have offered to check him as luggage.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Which leads to his second characteristic which is using his gear as a tool to provoke folks. He deliberately makes himself obtrusive with his "requirements" and pushes folks by blatantly recording them, refusing to cease, indeed almost assaulting them.
Imagine an adult declaring they *must* have their pet/TV/tinfoil-hat/shotgun/whatever with them and you've got Mann. Now watch them use it as a passive-aggressive tool to deliberately provoke other folks and get attention and you've really got Mann. Now watch after throwing a tantrum the objects of it all get nonchalantly taken off, put down, walked away from. That's what he does.
Needless to say many folks actively avoid him; consider him with pity but wish no involvement with his little dramas. Indeed there's a running debate as to when someone will finally take exception to his behavior with a pipe and he really will find his gear "integrated" with his body, likely starting with his anterior sphincter. While most will decry the violence few will not have more then a little empathy for the poor sod Mann will have finally managed to push too far.
That Mann has managed to score points with Air Canada is no surprise. The folks at the gate have little authority and a mandate to prevent suspicious objects from being brought on-board. As has been pointed out there is no "right" in Canada to fly onboard an aircraft and the protestations of Mann's pet Dr. notwithstanding he has no disabled status.
Furthermore the requirements of turning off electronics during take-off & landing are well & long established, the local folks have no authority to grant exceptions to this Federal policy. His electronics is not certified medical electronics but a nest of boxes and wires doubtlessly radiating RF and precisely the sort of thing that concerns regulators.
Indeed I expect if any /. reader were to be asked to share an aircraft with some loon "requiring" a mass of electronics & cabling all declaring he *must* have it I expect they'd reconsider their schedule and debark pretty darn quickly. Its easy to sit in front of a keyboard & monitor declaring Mann to be a victim, doubtless a little harder to be some security folk faced with him & the responsibility for a safe aircraft. As to "knowing" he is safe - can you say for sure Mann with all of his dysfunctions doesn't have something nasty tucked in there?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
As to the intellect & motives of the security staff, glad to see you have such insight into them. Its almost as if you've flown through St. John (which btw I found to have rather decent security staff, certainly better then most other airports.) Doubtless all folks not doing whatever it is you do are "idiots with IQs that combined still don't match the intelligence of a small kitchen appliance trying to believe that they actually had a purpose for living". Remind me to be impressed by you sometime (not.)
The only thing anyone here has to admit is the security folks were trying to do their job. As has been widely noted in Canadian press there is no "right" to fly. Furthermore Mann didn't have the paperwork that would be expected of medical electronics nor of a disabled person. Finally I'm not aware of his electronics having been certified for use onboard an aircraft and the local folks simply don't have the authority to contravene this Federal policy (nor should they for such a frivolous reason.)
Glad you've found such a role model in Mann - I wish you the dubious pleasure of spending some time with him sometime and seeing how he operates. You just got sucked into yet another of his little dramas.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.