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TSA Paid $1.4 Million For Randomizer App That Chooses Left Or Right (geek.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For those of you who have traveled through U.S. airports in recent years, you may have noticed the Transport Security Administration (TSA) use a Randomizer app to randomly search travelers in the Pre-Check lane. The app randomly chooses whether travelers go left or right in the Pre-Check lane so they can't predict which lane each person is assigned to and can't figure out how to avoid the random checks. Developer Kevin Burke submitted a Freedom of Information Act request asking for details about the app. The documents he received reveals the TSA purchased the Randomizer iPad app for $336,413.59. That's $336,413.59 for an app, which is incredibly simple to make as most programming languages of choice have a randomizing function available to use. What may be even more intriguing is that the contract for the TSA Randomizer app was won by IBM. The total amount paid for the project is actually $1.4 million, but the cost is not broken down in Burke's documents. It's possible IBM supplied all the iPads and training in addition to the app itself.
TSA soon to be appearing in the Panama Papers...
$413 dollars in developer time to create the app and $336,000.59 in corporate overhead and bloat, the additional $1,000,000 is just for Evil
I have practical and fool-proof system that requires no electricity or internet connection to operate.
I can sell it to you for about $5 per TSA agent. Actual cost to me is $0. Just tell me where you want me to ship this jar of pennies.
The question is whether it is truly random or not. If they spent $1.4M and got a truly random result, fine. It's absurdly pricey, but it works. If they spend $1.4M and got the rand() function, then terrorists might be able to exploit it to escape random searches.
"as most programming languages of choice have a randomizing function available to use"
You mean has a psudo-random function that is not that hard to predict.
Casino Level Randomization is a little harder.
I'm just happy to know that my most favorite of government agencies is spending my tax dollars wisely.
--There are two kinds of people in this world. I don't like either of them.
I know you're being silly on purpose, but would a true randomizing device really be necessary? Human traffic patterns already have such a random element to them that even if one somehow could reliably predict the next number in the software algorithm, there are so many other factors that can't be controlled that it's still essentially random anyway.
I honestly could see it being in the low five-figures to develop such an application, but that money would mostly be applied to figuring out how to design the user-interface of the application such that it best-fits with how the TSA is *supposed* to operate, and in beta-testing to confirm that it does what it's supposed to do and that any untrained TSA agent down to the junior-assistant-trainee who breathes with his mouth open could use it and understand it, but mid-six-figures is pretty ridiculous.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A simple micro-controller, a button, and two LEDs would work just as well for just a few bucks.
The TSA's employees need training on an app that randomly tells people to go left or right?
ZOMG $1.4M for an app that randomizes a single bit!!! (*)
* Note that it may have actually been $1.4M for hardware, training, and app.
Seriously, how fucking asinine are these clickbait articles getting? If you can decisively say that they charged $300k+ or $1.4M+ for an app that simple, do so. Otherwise you're just full of shit.
Better to train/pay a human then to buy robots or mechanical gateways to direct people randomly.
AC comments get piped to
He means precisely instances like that. One needs to find a more idiotic view: the app tells TSA person which way to show the finger. If anybody wants an example of fraud, waste and abuse: this is it. We could listen ad nauseum to TSA explanations, saying that app needs to be secure, or that they have to follow the procedures, or they needed many licenses.... blah blah blah
The point is that if airport security would be private that kind of nonsense would not exist by definition. Now it is public money that were spent.
This is not the only software that uses random function. There is another software that randomly selects passengers for additional screening. Here is how Israel does it, does it for free and very effectively: they let the screening agents to pick and choose any passenger that they want or have a hunch. So fare they are very effective in preventing bad dudes in boarding their planes.
This may be the most surprising tidbit in the article.
Sorry, doesn't meet the specifications. Your solution picks "yes" or "no", but we require it to pick " left " or "right ".
*sarcasm*
It is idiots and red tape that cause simple things to explode into stratospheric costs.
Perhaps it snaps a picture of the person, analyzes it with deep neural learning, and decides whether or not the person looks suspicious.
This is one of those things that sounds like it could be tricky to actually get right. Still they could just do what that secret service does when choose travel options for the President; you flip a coin with one agent calling it in air and the other doing the flipping. Seems reasonable free from exploits.
FWIW I don't think this about cryptographically secure random and more about a system that by design can't be hacked and such that you'd need to bribe an entire team to get through the line you want.
Peace, or Not?
If the random number generator used in the algorithm came from the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), it might not be as random as possible.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Honestly having worked with government, it sounds about right probably a 1000 hours of meetings to choose the colours, shape, discuss the randomizing algorithm etc. prob took no time at all to write.
The TSA employees first needed to be trained to understand "left" and "right".
I have a system that is:
- Analog
- Does not require electricity
- Durable
- Ambidextrous
- Gender neutral
- Made in the USA
It is called a flipping a US quarter. For $1.2M dollars, I will provide 1 case of 2000 quarters and a training video on how to flip coins.
Training video here: http://putlocker.is/watch-goin...
I'm happy to compete, because I have a system that is more effective, easier to use, as well as cheaper. My solution only costs $1.1 million, and I will furnish 10,000 coins. Instead of bulky, heavy quarters my system uses a copper-plated zinc coin that is both smaller and lighter than a quarter, resulting in less physical strain in the workforce. The obverse depicts the profile of a man, while the reverse is of a rectangular building which cannot be confused with the obverse. In addition, my system contains all of the benefits of your system, with a 500% increase in deployment size, at a substantial cost savings to the taxpayer.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Are you selling it to the federal government? [YES]
Is a random number generator used in the product? [YES]
Is the product intended for a security application? [YES]
Requirement: The Random Number Generator be CAVS certified to SP800-90A and the module within which is operates be FIPS140-2 certified.
That's $100,000 before you've got out of bed, to meet the government procurement requirements.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I read stuff like this and it makes me question having ethics and conscience.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
"If they spend $1.4M and got the rand() function, then terrorists might be able to exploit it to escape random searches." Like lining up sequentially with 2, maybe 3 people?
Please help metamoderate.
Come on now, what could go wrong? Well, OK
http://www.footballzebras.com/...
In this thread you will find out why it is unusual to find a software developer that can start a successful software development business.
It's possible IBM supplied all the iPads and training in addition to the app itself.
I know it is fun and easy to criticize the TSA, and I am in favor of replacing them entirely with any of a dozen different possibilities. That said, there is a big difference between developing an app and supplying hardware and doing testing and training. I could build the app but I have no idea what the cost would be to test it sufficiently to meet government standards, then train the staff to use them, then equip the staff with hardware to use it. The cost of the app could literally be $0 and still top $1 million after the testing, training and equipment costs.
Someone else pointed out this is typical clickbait. It's got a shocking headline but then scant details on what actually caused the scenario. If they'd instead said "TSA has IBM develop an app that IBM contributed for free in exchange for exclusive rights to train staff for $10/hr each on how to handle customer service. Additionally, IBM will supply sufficient devices to have a minimum of two for each airport line at 5% profit per device" then the headline wouldn't generate nearly so much interest and the criticisms would be much better founded.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the bureaucracy that guides the TSA spent far more than is reasonable. I just didn't see enough details in TFA to assume that is actually the case. Does *anyone* have a breakdown on what kind of training, what kind of testing, what kind of devices were purchased?
That was surprising? Have you seen a TSA agent recently?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
To be fair, can you imagine flipping a coin and flawlessly catching it thousands of times per day?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
> What, how to press the "flip coin" button?
Several million to design a physical UI so you really feel like you are flipping the coin?
You two best race to the patent office!
Presumably the app takes inputs like lanes open, pre-check lanes open, historical information on speed of processing each lane, etc, to decide how many people get assigned to the pre-check lane. And training the supervisors to upload all that data is a major cost, right?
I do see the ipad on a nice ruggedized stand/enclosure, and I'd imagine the 1M non-development costs include those units.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Build a device with a small radioisotope source, detector, poison vial and cat. Calibrate the source to provide a 50% probability of a particle emission for the average passenger rate. Open the box and check the cat. Cat alive: Right lane. Cat dead: Left lane, reset vial, replace the cat and proceed.
Have gnu, will travel.
What happens when ISIS uses one of the well-known DNS holes to redirect http://www.yesnogenerator.com/ to a site that returns the answer that they want? You just let 5 terrorists get through security.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
The TSA's employees need training on an app that randomly tells people to go left or right?
The app was the easy part. The expensive part was being able to answer "Do you mean my right or your right?" every time they tell someone which line to get in. Anti-violence training is expensive.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I know you're being silly on purpose, but would a true randomizing device really be necessary?
I have a $0.01 alternative to this randomizer app.... Flip a fair coin. Designate one side of the penny Heads, and the other side tails....
Also, even if they have 50,000 pre-check lanes, the total cost is still only $500.
I have a system that is:
- Analog
- Does not require electricity
- Durable
- Ambidextrous
- Gender neutral
- Made in the USA
Training video here: http://putlocker.is/watch-goin...
Dear Mr. Sexconker,
We are in receipt of your case of 2000 (two thousand) manually operated analog cupronickel randomization discs. We admire the evident durability and domestic origin of your product, and initial testing proves that the sequence of flips is suitably random. In addition, we are confident that your training video can be developed into a course that our agents will be able to complete in about six months.
Unfortunately, your product does not meet the contracted criterion of gender neutrality. Al of the "heads" depicted are male.
Yours,
Monroe Fnord, Technology Director
Transportation Security Administration
The TSA ended the managed inclusion program for which this app was built and deployed.
They ended it when a notorious felonwas allowed to go through the pre-check line.
rand() & 2; Where is my money?
#include
#include
int main(int ac, char* av[])
{
srand(time(NULL));
while( 1 )
printf("%s\n", (rand() RAND_MAX/2) ? "Left" : "Right" );
}
The TSA's employees need training on an app that randomly tells people to go left or right?
The app was the easy part. The expensive part was being able to answer "Do you mean my right or your right?" every time they tell someone which line to get in. Anti-violence training is expensive.
Hehe... I hadn't thought of that problem.
...they used a die.
This should fall under the government's recently published commitment to publish publically financed software. I'm thinking this should be one of the 1st pieces of software we get to see and criticize. Eh? https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
I recently read "Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things" to my eight year old. One of the (many) interesting substories involved "fair coins." Lauren's money isn't taken in Userland because her quarters can't be guaranteed as fair. However, someone points out that you can make any coin a fair coin by flipping it twice. If both flips result in the same side, you ignore it and flip two more times. If the two flips have differing sides, you take the first side.
In other words:
Heads-Heads or Tails-Tails = Flip again.
Heads-Tails = Heads
Tails-Heads = Tails
Even if there's a bias towards one side, it will be cancelled out and the flip would be fair.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Seriously, 80%-85% of the bid covers dealing with the US government. Multiple thousand-documents over the course of years, flying back and forth for pointless meetings, and maybe you eventually get paid.
Here are my rates as a developer , for similar software delivered:
Order online, by submitting my order form: $159
Email me and discuss: $500
Meetings to discuss, demo (local businesses): $1,500
Local government bureaucracy: $8,000
Federal government: $400,000
The rates I mentioned above for "similar software" meant for software of the kind I write (network security), not the TSA app. For a random left/right app like the TSA wanted, prices would be a bit lower. Not much lower for the federal government though, they'll require a thousand man hours of BS for the simplest application. I used to work at a place that did federal contracts.
Frankly, for $1.4million, I'd at least expect it to sense movement (you know, like the sensors on the automated doors about 5 meters away from the people in this video that cost a few dollars each) and automatically tell people left or right, without requiring an actual human to stand there and press the screen to randomly change left to right when they feel like pressing the screen (which is random, how??).
Or if they insist on an iPad, at least use the camera to determine someone is there and then say left or right. How is it that this "random" system requires a human to press the screen to change the arrow. In what way is that random?
I know you're being silly on purpose, but would a true randomizing device really be necessary? Human traffic patterns already have such a random element to them that even if one somehow could reliably predict the next number in the software algorithm, there are so many other factors that can't be controlled that it's still essentially random anyway.
Small airport, obscure time there might not be much of a line. That said, if you look at the real requirements then no. All that's required is:
a) Some form of initial seed so it's not the same left-right pattern every time you turn it on
b) A non-predictable outcome, a slight bias like 55% right, 45% left is pretty much irrelevant
Any kind of low quality seed and PRNG would do that, even the ones we'd generally consider flawed or broken. You could have the operator press the button a few times with a minimum delay on boot using the number of ticks between them as seed and RANDU and you could stand there all day, every day without finding a "safe" spot. To use a true cryptologically secure RNG is just massive overkill, even though that too shouldn't cost much these days.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
the actual passenger-facing software was really cheap. what was expensive to develop and install is the cameras and computer detection algorithms to tell if the person is white, black or brown.
Department of Homeland Pork, Transportation Pork Administration
Why is Snark Required?
Why IBM?
Wouldn't the Rand Corporation be a better match for once?
finally some fucking intelligent comment!
-
But maybe they pay a premium to not have to put up with Asperger-like social deficiencies and racism.
Table-ized A.I.
That doesn't seem right. If the coin is biased toward heads, then what you describe as "Heads-Tails" would be more likely. If it's biased towards tails, then "Tails-Heads" would be more likely.
But maybe they pay a premium to not have to put up with Asperger-like social deficiencies and racism.
Not to mention people who use "Asperger-like" as a derogatory term?
Please, continue calling out racists as you just did, because they do deserve to be called out, but be careful of the insults you choose.
That doesn't seem right. If the coin is biased toward heads, then what you describe as "Heads-Tails" would be more likely. If it's biased towards tails, then "Tails-Heads" would be more likely.
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do."
Try it. :-) Let's assume P(HEADS) = 2 / 3
H -> HH, HH, HT
H -> HH, HH, HT
T -> TH, TH, TT
Eliminating HH and TT, you're left with HT x 2 and TH x 2. Using this method, it's easy to prove by induction that for any whole number ratio (IOW for any P(HEADS) in the set of rational numbers between 0 and 1, exclusive), that HT and TH are equal. IMO the gaps between the rationals are small enough that it doesn't matter if you can prove this for irrationals, but someone smarter than me can probably give you a proof for irrationals too.
It's probably more random, but when you're using entropy for security the most important thing is whether an attacker can guess it. If it's completely random, then this is hard. If the attacker can influence it, then it's easy. If an attacker can send WiFi packets to you and bias your random number generator, then that's pretty bad if, for example, one of the things that you're using your random number generator for is generating TLS session keys to stop people on the local WiFi from snooping in your data.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why? Let's say it's the probability is 0.7 of head, 0.3 of tails. The probability of head-heads is 0.7*0.7. The probability of tails-tails is 0.3*0.3. The probability of heads-tails is 0.7*0.3. The probability of tails-heads is 0.3*0.7. 0.3*0.7 = 0.7*0.3, so the probability of heads-tails is equal to the probability of tails-heads.
This assumes that the coin tosses are independent.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
> Human traffic patterns already have such a random element to them
You'd think so. It's not. Neither vehicular nor pedestrian traffic is random. There is order to that chaos, it's just not easy to find and the herd is easily spooked.
I lack the time and energy to get into the gritty details but I've gone into this quite a bit in the past. Feel free to scrounge through my posting history if you want. I modeled traffic (vehicular and pedestrian) and I'm pretty sure that it is chaotic but not truly random.
It may appear random, it is not. How to describe it quickly.
Okay, try this... Go to your nearest mall or department store - you might want to go to a few. Watch the people when they enter. If given a choice, they will (almost invariably) opt to go to the right. Stores, those who wish to curate the experience, will actually work to *force* you to go to the right. For example, they'll often have the bakery to the right - and lots of colorful objects. Why? Lots of reasons but because it's not *always* true that people go to the right - but it's true (far) more often than not.
It doesn't seem to matter if the person favors one hand over the other, or is "goofy footed" or not, nor does it seem to have much cultural variation. Chances are REALLY high that you'll go to the right. The odds favor it so heavily that it's the assumed default and they'll literally make changes to a store's layout to force compliance - with some notable exceptions that are too long to detail here but include things like a pharmacy within the same store. They want you on that route because they don't want you to be able to quickly grab your needed/most often purchased items quickly and then leave.
It's a lot of data. It's very chaotic. It's not random - not even remotely. Done well, you won't even notice. It's even true at outdoor events, in large auditoriums, and in sporting arenas. We don't know why this is true but, unless the data has changed in the past eight years, we humans are particularly fond of going to the right. There are a variety of other things to "count on" as a whole but it's not something I'm going to delve into in this post. I lack time and energy. That's one (of many) examples.
There are many patterns and near-universal truths but you have to step back and make observations and have a whole lot of data before some of them become apparent. By a whole lot of data, I mean a whole lot of data. By the end of the 1990s it was to the point where we were using disk arrays that were a full terabyte in size. That might not seem like a lot but, going by estimates with your UUID, look at the time period that was and think about how much a TB really is. (It was also not very cheap back then.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
A TSA dungeon master. How much do you not want to go into that basement?
I know you're being silly on purpose, but would a true randomizing device really be necessary?
I have a $0.01 alternative to this randomizer app.... Flip a fair coin. Designate one side of the penny Heads, and the other side tails....
Also, even if they have 50,000 pre-check lanes, the total cost is still only $500.
Sell the pennies to the government for $10 apiece.
Mersenne twister (MT), having good statistical properties, is not a bad PRNG, but it's slow, needs a lengthy initialization, and is not cryptographically secure (CS): someone observing the output for a while can reconstruct the internal state and predict the next outcome.
For an online casino, you'd want a CSPRNG. For computer simulations that need to draw trillions of numbers from the PRNG, you'd want a fast PRNG with good statistics, such as a multiply-with-carry (MWC) or xorshift. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... . I don't really understand why MT is used so much.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
It can use the same PRGEN code that any HTTPS security suite provides to generate a strong source of random numbers.
In fact, you only need to take the product of two large randomly selected primes modulo a 2^(block cipher's bit-width)-1, then use that as the key for any NIST approved cipher in CBC counter mode to generate a incredibly random source of 1's and 0's that won't repeat before the end of the universe. Once you've keyed your block cipher, you encrypt 0, then 1, then 2, etc. and each iteration produces a block of 256 or 512 or 1024, etc. bits to use as the next part of your bitstream.
Alternatively, every so often just query the kernel for some randomness from its pool that does rely on the timing of system events, drive seeks, etc. and re-seed the cipher.
Hell, you don't even need a cipher. You could do this with any hashing function. Take SHA512, salt with one block-length of random bits from /dev/random, then just keep hashing the the previous output to generate the next block of randomness.
My point is that every device already has a source of strong randomness and a way to generate cryptographically strong pseudo randomness. That's how HTTPS gets itself started up initially.
It's so damn trivial that if you did a search for "generate strong randomness" online you'd get pointed to the source code or syscall on a myriad of platforms which provide such a service already.
Or you could take the number of tenths of a second since startup. Good luck trying to pass at exactly the right tenth of a second to not get frisked.
"IMO the gaps between the rationals are small enough that it doesn't matter if you can prove this for irrationals"
Excuse me, but your opinion is wrong. Rational numbers are said to be sparse in the real number space. For the argument see "Lebesgue Measure." As for why there are more irrational numbers than rational numbers see "Cantor's diagonal argument".
Your reasoning is however correct. If P(HEADS) = p, P(TAILS) = (1-p). The probability for coin tosses are:
HH = p*p
HT = p(1-p)
TH = (1-p)p
TT = (1-p)(1-p)
Eliminating HH and TT leaves HT and TH at p(1-p) probability. There's no assumption on p being rational or not. However the further you are from p=0.5, the longer it takes to get a "valid" flip.
reason defies logic
Fine, we BOTH have it, now fuck off!
Table-ized A.I.
It's not the app that cost so much but the system to make the agent always be at the correct position to know which 'right' is the 'right' the app says to go.
The manufacturing of such contraption at an airport * the number of needed agents = huge cost.
Get a bloody great tombola wheel. You could even have prizes to relieve the boredom - bag of candy, jump the line, trip to Gitmo...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Suppose the chance of heads is H and the chance of tails is 1 – H. /. removes it from comments. WTF
This is the table of chances:
Heads-heads: HH
Tails-tails: (1 – H)^2
Heads-tails: H(1 – H)
Tails-heads: (1 – H)H
Because multiplication is commutative, the last two are the same. Alternatively:
Heads-tails: H – HH
Tails-heads: HH – H
Because addition is commutative, the chances are again the same.
P.S. There is a square on my keyboard (AltGr+2) but
replying to revert a wrong mod rating - sorry...
Even if you need a cryptographic strength random number generator, the added cost amounts to a few hours of labour at most.
As for the user interface; this thing is so stupidly simple you could even use it upside down. Literally. Nobody would notice.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yeah maybe it is a coin toss app and IBM are laughing at the stupid government procurements process. Or maybe there is other stuff which at least partially justifies the price.
Go to your nearest mall or department store - you might want to go to a few. Watch the people when they enter. If given a choice, they will (almost invariably) opt to go to the right.
I wonder if you would get the same result in the UK or Australia.
But that's not the kind of 'random' at issue here. They're talking about the clock time when a person standing in a line triggers a sensor. For any sensor of human-sized objects moving at TSA-line speeds, I would expect sensor variability to be a large part of the "is the current millisecond even or odd" decision.
I was just in Washington D.C. and the security at EVERYTHING is airport crazy. Touring the house/senate galleries involves a backscatter X-ray machine, the Smithsonian museums have x-ray machines and metal detectors.
Yet there is no security AT ALL at the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials, and they're open 24/7. Really? The symbolic value of these targets is enormous.
I also wonder why shopping malls in the US haven't been targets, especially on the weekend after Thanksgiving. It would achieve a huge terror result as well as having a huge economic cost. Is our security that good against evildoers, or is there something else at work there?
There's a lot of discussion here about the random number generation aspect, and how much it'd cost. I'd be interested to see how the costs were split between the software functionality, and the hardening of the software and device against external interference
The catch is the terrorists may have invented a "Smart" biased coin which is more likely to land on the opposite side of which it previously landed, Or is otherwise inconsistent between flips in regards to its unfairness (Dependent on initial conditions). Also, it might or might not contain a bit of implanted machinery with a wireless remote to allow the person in line to select whether the coin will flip "Left" or "Right" at the push of a button.
For that kind of a price tag they could assign an official quarter to every TSA employee out there, and have them toss a freakin' coin. How stupid can the gov't get?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
he is thinking like a developer... wanting to get paid.
You may find better elsewhere, but you'll never pay more!
No, to get the best results in this particular quest, you search everyone. Anything less will perform more poorly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
[Tinfoil] It's not a real randomizer app, it's an advanced layered neural network program (IBM...Watson?) that automates racial profiling so that TSA workers are in the clear, they can say the machine made the decision for someone to go through heightened security, "at random." Teaching the program to pick out the right minorities took a lot of work. [/Tinfoil]
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
According to TFA, "The TSA, which asked Congress for a $100 million cut in its 2015 budget..."
So the real story here is that they can't spend fast enough. This likely just reflects a broken or understaffed procurement organization.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
easy solution
just tap a nearby casino for a case of dice
if the roll is ODD go left if the roll is EVEN go right
given that most casinos are only 1 gen away from being "Family Owned" im sure they can come up with some Fair Dice.
I could implement these simple standards in less than a day - just because it says "SP800-90A and the module within which is operates be FIPS140-2 certified." does not mean it costs 100,000.00 to develop.
It sucks there are so many retarded niggers in the united states government, including yourself
It costs real money to certify regardless of how cheaply you develop it.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Besides the troll statement at the end, you don't know what professional means.
I worked on a printer "driver" (more like an LPR filter) for several UNIXes, to talk to one of a family of laser printers. This was back in teh day where a color laser printer cost more than your car.
If i changed a single line of code, i had a testing matrix of N UNix platforms, both on GUI and command line, to go to X printers (this one has color, we need to test that it works B/W as well. this one has duplex, this needs to not show it has duplex,...)
Each one line change caused at least 6 hours of testing. Obviously we bundled a lot of our code changes, or you'd go nuts. This is what being a professional and properly testing means.
Somebody's missing something here.... the idea is not to take a random sample of fliers to determine what percentage are carrying bombs, is it? Because I would have thought the idea was to catch all bombers. Therefore, the only way to do that is to search everybody.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I have a $0.01 alternative to this randomizer app.... Flip a fair coin. Designate one side of the penny Heads, and the other side tails....
Also, even if they have 50,000 pre-check lanes, the total cost is still only $500.
But then TSA has to hire skilled workers. They have to be able to flip a coin.
http://www.virtualcointoss.com...
Why are they going after $1.4M contracts? It most cost them more than that to enter it into their accounts!
If there are fewer than N people in the pre-check lane, grab the next passenger (or group) from the regular lane. You can adjust N based on local conditions including number and experience of agents, etc.
Sure, you could game this system if you really practiced and worked at it. But doing so would be harder than just blowing up the screening line anyway, so no one would bother.
Nope, no sig
Yeah! We also need a better mousetrap and a good 5-cent cigar! I'll have the boys in the lab start working on these projects right away!
You can? If so, (no sarcasm) that's an incredible and lucrative skill you've got there! You know, if you show an employer that you are able to get an app certified without the project costing $100,000, they'd probably be happy to employ you for like $250,000 a year! Oh..wait, I found the flaw.
While rational numbers are sparse, they're dense in the sense that you can find a rational arbitrarily close to any real you can specify (which, to be honest, is only a countable amount of them). If you have a continuous function on the rationals, then it extends to the reals very nicely.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I have a $0.01 alternative to this randomizer app.... Flip a fair coin. Designate one side of the penny Heads, and the other side tails....
Also, even if they have 50,000 pre-check lanes, the total cost is still only $500.
How many coin flippers do you need and how much do you have to pay each of them?
The TSA's employees need training on an app that randomly tells people to go left or right?
Yes, so what is your alternative? Hiring people that aren't as dumb as posts will cost you more than $1.4 mil.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the bureaucracy that guides the TSA spent far more than is reasonable. I just didn't see enough details in TFA to assume that is actually the case. Does *anyone* have a breakdown on what kind of training, what kind of testing, what kind of devices were purchased?
I've worked in different levels of govt you are 100% correct. The numbers make great headlines, but when you breakdown the costs, there usually is no cheaper way to do it (properly).
Governance adds a big chunk to every project, but with public money it has to be done.
I suppose the randomizing algorithm would take into account the number of people in the QUEUEs. If there were only two individuals, whats the point, unless one of them was you.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I'm sad for you APK. I'm sad for what you've become. Here, I'll play along to hopefully help you feel better.
Oh, geez! Man, I hope people don't click on that link you posted! Boy, am I embarrassed! All of those quotes about how fantastic and professional your software is, and how people love you as a person, make me really look goofy! Oh, shucks. Man, I've really been thoroughly defeated, and I feel a great and burdensome sense of shame (not just on me, but indeed upon my entire extended family). You have really put me in my place APK, and clearly everyone on Slashdot recognizes and understands that you are an upstanding genius who only makes Slashdot better, while my entire life has no value. I am going to immediately cancel all internet services, destroy all of my electronic devices, donate my property to hungry children, and go live the life of a recluse monk in Nepal seeking a way to atone for all that I've done.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Heck, my guess is any training that went with the app would be to reinforce over and over for 30 minutes that they aren't allowed to profile based on race/gender/age/whatever, the have to USE THE APP. FOLLOW THE APP. DON'T PROFILE. And so on and on.