Perhaps it's time the TSA realized that no planeload of passengers is ever again going to quietly allow anyone to take over an aircraft. If we assume that there are fewer terrorists than defenders on the aircraft, and that all have been through a metal detector, the chances are pretty damn good that an aircraft full of uncooperative passengers can and will subdue any reasonable number of attackers, even if they have hostages and even if they have knives.
If TSA were to mount a publicity campaign to encourage fighting back (in the appropriate circumstances, of course), the odds would be even further improved.
But that would make far too much sense, and nobody would get rich selling useless tech to the government...
First, we all have to show picture ID and cryptically marked boarding passes
Next, we have to partially disrobe and empty our pockets
Then, we have to pass through a metal detector and a high-cost, dubiously useful (and even more dubiously safe) perv-scanner
You mean to tell me that TSA hasn't figured out, in cooperation with the airlines, of course, how to put some kind of cryptologic authenticator on boarding passes?
Perhaps they should have used some of the money they spent on perv-scanners to buy a computer, a bar code scanner and a crypto-hash generator for the boarding passes -- like they have at the gate when you board the airplane. They could scan the new high tech RealID[tm] licenses they forced on us, too, because you know they put an authenticator hash in them (right?)
Actually, you're incorrect in your thinking. They were required to put GPS in it for E911 to work and the device will not function until the GPS location is verified.
As the owner of a microcell I can tell you that GPS reception is the biggest #$@!@# pain in the ass for the thing in general. I have a metal roof at home and the microcell will only activate for me if I hang the device in the skylight.
Actually, the GPS is most likely there to provide a precise time reference...required by GSM.
...until you looked at his drawings of the motors and the gear train. I'm an EE, not an ME, and even I had a feeling that what he had wasn't going to be able to lift a man. His sole connection to the "wing" was at one end of the mast he used as the main spar. No way, I thought, is any motor able to drive that without breaking it off.
"I can't even fully use the products I already have."
I have a solution for that problem: just don't buy Sony stuff. I used to like Sony. Their stuff was a bit more expensive, but it was high quality. Then I bought a Trinitron TV. Within a few months (just after the 90 day warranty expored, as a matter of fact), the power switch stopped functioning. The repair bill was over $300. Now, Sony *could* have done the right thing and said "it's just out of warranty, no problem, we'll cover it". Nope. They had to be d*cks about it. After bitching to them, I got a 50% reduction in the repair bill. And decided that the extra cost of Sony stuff was no longer worth it. So I don't buy Sony any more. Plenty of other good brands out there.
The TV still works great...aside from that power switch, it was a good buy!
I'm also worried about the amount of radiation my member is being exposed to!
OK...but I am concerned that these machines are essentially operated by untrained people who have no concern at all for the safety of those passing through them. The machines themselves were produced for "national security" and as such were most likely granted all kinds of waivers to radiation safety regulations. I won't go through them and I don't trust TSA to be doing any kind of regular checks or maintenance on them, except when they fail to show an image.
POTS is a carefully engineered system (as is the entire telephone system, for that matter). It's a distributed system, designed to increase reliability by keeping the parts that are most likely to need repair concentrated at a single location: the central office. The parts of the system least likely to need repair are located at the periphery of the system: the terminal equipment. Remember the jokes about being able to drive nails with the old Western Electric handsets? If you take apart a WE phone, all you'll find is transformers, capacitors and switch contacts, all of which look incredibly rugged for the job they have to do. That's because it cost Ma Bell money if any of that stuff failed. They'd have to send a truck and a tech out to replace it. So it's designed to be entirely passive, rugged and the path between the central office and the subscriber set is automatically tested for continuity every night.
So why should you still keep your POTS line in this day of fiber? Well, for a start, as someone has pointed out below, it will keep working when the power goes out. Not just for 2 hours or until the battery on the wimpy UPS supplied by your fiber company runs out, but as long as the central office works, your phone will work (if you've been smart enough to keep one "genuine Bell" phone, that is). Use your cellphone? Sure, go ahead and try. Just know that everyone else is trying to do the same thing, and there's only a limited number of channels available on the cell site. So you may not get service and you may end up getting dropped if you do. Not usually a problem, you say. I agree, unless you're trying to dial 911.
Sure, POTS is a dinosaur, and it's probably not going to be around much longer. But it's way more reliable than fiber, and I think I'll hold on to mine. Besides...I kinda like the feel of those old Wester Electric handsets.
"...my phone is too archaic to receive text messages from newer smart phones (they somehow become picture messages)."
They're being turned into MMS, nothing you can do about it. Your old phone only does SMS (text). Your cell provider won't give you MMS unless you pay for data service, since SMS is native to GSM and MMS requires an internet (data) connection
All that being said, I'm currently using my son's old iPhone3 as a plain phone on AT&T, without a data plan, and it sends and receives SMS just fine, even to other iPhones with data plans (so they aren't translating their SMS to MMS). It also has the advantage of taking the same size SIM as my old Nokia candybar phone. Because of the smooth screen, though, I can't dial or answer it by touch, which may be a reason to keep your old phone.
Yeah. Not so funny if you're the one in the elevator.
And let's hope they don't play that cheery elevator music for a week, or they'll discover a bunch of suicide victims when the doors open.
Already on the DNC list, wired and cell lines; both still get these robocalls.
What makes FCC think the robocall spammers even care about their silly regulations?
I grant that the new rule is one more tool when (if?) they take these guys to court, if they ever find them.
For AT&T it's 7726 ("spam" on the keys).
They appear to be using the information provided to go after the spammers. Plus, if you forward it, you (and they) have a record so you can apply for a refund of the SMS fees on those messages.
I agree completely with you. However, aside from the perv aspect (which, as a guy, probably bothers me a lot less), the safety of those scanners concerns me.
I have no confidence that TSA is capable of correctly calibrating, testing or verifying their safety, or that they were designed and built to be safe in the first place. I'm not even sure we understand what *is* safe when working with millimeter or terahertz RF radiation exposure. I'm fairly confident I don't want *any* additional X-ray exposure.
In any case, as long as I have the option of not being "scanned", I intend to exercise it.
Time for TSA to acknowledge that those machines are a tremendous waste of taxpayer money anyway.
Folks, you can ask not to go through the scanners. Just say "OPT OUT". You get the pat down, of course, but from my experience, it seems to bother them more than it bothers me. And it sends a message.
I've never trusted TSA to verify the safety of those machines. I'll take the grope rather than trust an unregulated scanner that bombards my body with who knows what power and type of radio or ionizing radiation.
The real benefit of this new device, is thousands of sales to TSA and profits for the undoubtedly politically well-connected company that manufactures them.
View from a drone over the US:
- people, looking like ants, moving about their daily business
- drone operator clicks on a button, tags overlay on the image, connecting each "ant" with their phone number, sensed by nearby cell tower geolocation
Cylindrical cameras on top of traffic lights at all major intersections. Never heard an explanation, but they're at every new intersection built. Maybe they're for traffic monitoring, but once you have the image stream, anything's possible.
Yeah. You know, if the CC companies *really* wanted to shut these guys down, it seems like they could do it by identifying the stream of transactions that trace back to one or two payment processors in their network. But there's money involved, so I guess that's not going to happen.
Not if it gets in the way of profits for the company that sells them.
Even if the design is proven safe, I'm concerned that these machines aren't regularly tested, or that the regular testing is done by a random TSA employee, who considers adequate testing to be simply the act of checking a box on a piece of paper every day.
I refuse to go through them, and so should you. The pat down takes very little time, seems to be more uncomfortable for the screener than for me, and I'm sure they keep track of the number of "opt-outs", which I consider to be a form of protest against the whole silly charade.
Oh, and something interesting: last time I refused to be scanned, they didn't even put me through the metal detector before patting me down. Now that seems like the wrong thing to do...
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Perhaps it's time the TSA realized that no planeload of passengers is ever again going to quietly allow anyone to take over an aircraft. If we assume that there are fewer terrorists than defenders on the aircraft, and that all have been through a metal detector, the chances are pretty damn good that an aircraft full of uncooperative passengers can and will subdue any reasonable number of attackers, even if they have hostages and even if they have knives.
If TSA were to mount a publicity campaign to encourage fighting back (in the appropriate circumstances, of course), the odds would be even further improved.
But that would make far too much sense, and nobody would get rich selling useless tech to the government...
First, we all have to show picture ID and cryptically marked boarding passes
Next, we have to partially disrobe and empty our pockets
Then, we have to pass through a metal detector and a high-cost, dubiously useful (and even more dubiously safe) perv-scanner
You mean to tell me that TSA hasn't figured out, in cooperation with the airlines, of course, how to put some kind of cryptologic authenticator on boarding passes?
Perhaps they should have used some of the money they spent on perv-scanners to buy a computer, a bar code scanner and a crypto-hash generator for the boarding passes -- like they have at the gate when you board the airplane. They could scan the new high tech RealID[tm] licenses they forced on us, too, because you know they put an authenticator hash in them (right?)
Bruce Schneier hit it on the nose (and now, former TSA head Kip Hawley seems to agree: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577335783535660546.html) -- TSA is broken.
I'm pretty sure the Springfield Tire Fire and Mt Trashmore are in *our* Springfield, MA
Actually, you're incorrect in your thinking. They were required to put GPS in it for E911 to work and the device will not function until the GPS location is verified. As the owner of a microcell I can tell you that GPS reception is the biggest #$@!@# pain in the ass for the thing in general. I have a metal roof at home and the microcell will only activate for me if I hang the device in the skylight.
Actually, the GPS is most likely there to provide a precise time reference...required by GSM.
...until you looked at his drawings of the motors and the gear train. I'm an EE, not an ME, and even I had a feeling that what he had wasn't going to be able to lift a man. His sole connection to the "wing" was at one end of the mast he used as the main spar. No way, I thought, is any motor able to drive that without breaking it off.
ASR-33 Teletype
any unit record (IBM card) equipment - now, they had rhythm!
Line printer - chain was better than drum for rhythmic sound
I wonder if the book is in the school library?
"I can't even fully use the products I already have." I have a solution for that problem: just don't buy Sony stuff. I used to like Sony. Their stuff was a bit more expensive, but it was high quality. Then I bought a Trinitron TV. Within a few months (just after the 90 day warranty expored, as a matter of fact), the power switch stopped functioning. The repair bill was over $300. Now, Sony *could* have done the right thing and said "it's just out of warranty, no problem, we'll cover it". Nope. They had to be d*cks about it. After bitching to them, I got a 50% reduction in the repair bill. And decided that the extra cost of Sony stuff was no longer worth it. So I don't buy Sony any more. Plenty of other good brands out there.
The TV still works great...aside from that power switch, it was a good buy!
I'm also worried about the amount of radiation my member is being exposed to!
OK...but I am concerned that these machines are essentially operated by untrained people who have no concern at all for the safety of those passing through them. The machines themselves were produced for "national security" and as such were most likely granted all kinds of waivers to radiation safety regulations. I won't go through them and I don't trust TSA to be doing any kind of regular checks or maintenance on them, except when they fail to show an image.
Was it by any chance a Costa cruise liner?
POTS is a carefully engineered system (as is the entire telephone system, for that matter). It's a distributed system, designed to increase reliability by keeping the parts that are most likely to need repair concentrated at a single location: the central office. The parts of the system least likely to need repair are located at the periphery of the system: the terminal equipment. Remember the jokes about being able to drive nails with the old Western Electric handsets? If you take apart a WE phone, all you'll find is transformers, capacitors and switch contacts, all of which look incredibly rugged for the job they have to do. That's because it cost Ma Bell money if any of that stuff failed. They'd have to send a truck and a tech out to replace it. So it's designed to be entirely passive, rugged and the path between the central office and the subscriber set is automatically tested for continuity every night.
So why should you still keep your POTS line in this day of fiber? Well, for a start, as someone has pointed out below, it will keep working when the power goes out. Not just for 2 hours or until the battery on the wimpy UPS supplied by your fiber company runs out, but as long as the central office works, your phone will work (if you've been smart enough to keep one "genuine Bell" phone, that is). Use your cellphone? Sure, go ahead and try. Just know that everyone else is trying to do the same thing, and there's only a limited number of channels available on the cell site. So you may not get service and you may end up getting dropped if you do. Not usually a problem, you say. I agree, unless you're trying to dial 911.
Sure, POTS is a dinosaur, and it's probably not going to be around much longer. But it's way more reliable than fiber, and I think I'll hold on to mine. Besides...I kinda like the feel of those old Wester Electric handsets.
"...my phone is too archaic to receive text messages from newer smart phones (they somehow become picture messages)." They're being turned into MMS, nothing you can do about it. Your old phone only does SMS (text). Your cell provider won't give you MMS unless you pay for data service, since SMS is native to GSM and MMS requires an internet (data) connection All that being said, I'm currently using my son's old iPhone3 as a plain phone on AT&T, without a data plan, and it sends and receives SMS just fine, even to other iPhones with data plans (so they aren't translating their SMS to MMS). It also has the advantage of taking the same size SIM as my old Nokia candybar phone. Because of the smooth screen, though, I can't dial or answer it by touch, which may be a reason to keep your old phone.
Yeah. Not so funny if you're the one in the elevator. And let's hope they don't play that cheery elevator music for a week, or they'll discover a bunch of suicide victims when the doors open.
Already on the DNC list, wired and cell lines; both still get these robocalls.
What makes FCC think the robocall spammers even care about their silly regulations?
I grant that the new rule is one more tool when (if?) they take these guys to court, if they ever find them.
For AT&T it's 7726 ("spam" on the keys). They appear to be using the information provided to go after the spammers. Plus, if you forward it, you (and they) have a record so you can apply for a refund of the SMS fees on those messages.
I agree completely with you. However, aside from the perv aspect (which, as a guy, probably bothers me a lot less), the safety of those scanners concerns me. I have no confidence that TSA is capable of correctly calibrating, testing or verifying their safety, or that they were designed and built to be safe in the first place. I'm not even sure we understand what *is* safe when working with millimeter or terahertz RF radiation exposure. I'm fairly confident I don't want *any* additional X-ray exposure.
In any case, as long as I have the option of not being "scanned", I intend to exercise it.
Time for TSA to acknowledge that those machines are a tremendous waste of taxpayer money anyway.
Folks, you can ask not to go through the scanners. Just say "OPT OUT". You get the pat down, of course, but from my experience, it seems to bother them more than it bothers me. And it sends a message.
I've never trusted TSA to verify the safety of those machines. I'll take the grope rather than trust an unregulated scanner that bombards my body with who knows what power and type of radio or ionizing radiation.
The real benefit of this new device, is thousands of sales to TSA and profits for the undoubtedly politically well-connected company that manufactures them.
When there's Newegg? I mean, honestly: $25 USB cables and re-boxed returns vs easy return, no tax and better prices (even including shipping).
View from a drone over the US:
- people, looking like ants, moving about their daily business
- drone operator clicks on a button, tags overlay on the image, connecting each "ant" with their phone number, sensed by nearby cell tower geolocation
Cylindrical cameras on top of traffic lights at all major intersections. Never heard an explanation, but they're at every new intersection built. Maybe they're for traffic monitoring, but once you have the image stream, anything's possible.
Yeah. You know, if the CC companies *really* wanted to shut these guys down, it seems like they could do it by identifying the stream of transactions that trace back to one or two payment processors in their network. But there's money involved, so I guess that's not going to happen.
Now, collect the $ from the contractor.
Not if it gets in the way of profits for the company that sells them.
Even if the design is proven safe, I'm concerned that these machines aren't regularly tested, or that the regular testing is done by a random TSA employee, who considers adequate testing to be simply the act of checking a box on a piece of paper every day.
I refuse to go through them, and so should you. The pat down takes very little time, seems to be more uncomfortable for the screener than for me, and I'm sure they keep track of the number of "opt-outs", which I consider to be a form of protest against the whole silly charade.
Oh, and something interesting: last time I refused to be scanned, they didn't even put me through the metal detector before patting me down. Now that seems like the wrong thing to do...
Nice to see a vestige of DEC still doing something useful. Perfect Paul is probably the only DEC employee who still has a job :-)