Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. - Helen Keller
However I would rather lose 4 hours of my life with checks if it means that they catch someone who would blow up a plane.
I challenge you to name a single incident where TSA (not passengers or intelligence agents) caught someone who was going to try to blow up a plane.
So far all I can find are incidents where TSA failed completely, but either the bomber was incompetent or the passengers managed to subdue him and foil the plot.
Frankly, four hours of my life is a hell of a huge price to pay to not catch a single terrorist. We didn't have to waste four hours of my life to not catch any terrorists before, why do we have to waste four hours of our lives to not catch any terrorists now?
It's all just for show, and suckers like you have taken the bait hook, line, and sinker.
You really should look up the full quote I have in my sig - it's sage advice by one of the most inspiring women ever to walk the face of this earth.
Of course Obama is not actually a dictator, the point is that he has greatly expanded the powers of the Executive under the guise of "security" (Bush did it too, Obama has simply continued the trend, and has done so very aggressively). The road to dictatorship is one of continually expanded Executive powers until eventually the Executive is dictator in all but name. Some point after that they usually stop pretending and disband the remnants of the representative government. See Rome for a historical example.
520 people die in automobile accidents because they chose to drive instead of deal with airport security (TSA).
Over the course of ten years that's 5,200 people dead (next September is when this figure will become completely accurate instead of mostly accurate - it's a bit shy of 5,000 right now).
That means TSA is indirectly responsible for 73% more deaths than the 9/11 hijackers.
His numbers are way, way off. I'm pretty sure he made them up.
For one thing, winning the Big Lotto twice is in the several billion range, at least. Depending on the specific lotto it ranges from the millions to hundreds of millions the very first win.
For the backscatter stats, sixteen out of every billion people will get cancer as a direct result of the backscatter X-Ray. At 600 million passengers a year, that's about 11 deaths a year directly caused by the new machines.
Also, there are 130 deaths every three months among people who chose to drive instead of fly because of enhanced TSA security.
Total deaths caused by TSA is now up to 530 per year (we'll stick with 520 for most years though, since the backscatter is new) - in 10 years that's 5210 deaths caused by TSA. That's 73% more than the 3,000 who died in the 9/11 attack, directly or indirectly caused by TSA.
Add to that as far as I can find not a single terrorist attack has been foiled by TSA. To be fair, it can be hard to tell if some of these inane security measures made terrorists decide to cancel their plans, but you'd figure if they actually caught someone they would be making a really, really big deal about it. From what I've seen the only foiled plots are when the terrorists either screw up and fail completely (underwear bomber, printer bombs) or the passengers stepped in and foiled the attack (United flight 93, shoe bomber).
The proper form of profiling looks at behavior, not skin color or clothing. Detectives do it all the time, as well as good security guards.
It's what the Israeli's do for their airports, and they are right in the middle of the shit. I think they know a thing or two about this.
Basically, ask a few simple questions (where are you going, how long are you going to be there, etc), and see how they respond. You don't really give a rat's ass what their answers are, you are looking for signs of nervousness and irritation. Those who appear agitated you pull aside for further questioning and possibly a search.
It's exactly the same thing the boarder control does when trying to catch smugglers, except in the Israeli airports they do it four times instead of just once, making it extremely difficult to sneak past.
A person who can fool a lie detector test could probably pull it off, but the people capable of such a feat are few and far between (besides, getting no reaction at all from a person is potentially suspicious as well).
In your example, the five terrorists would have been pulled aside and searched, a cursory background check likely revealing terrorist ties, which would have got them pulled out for a more extensive investigation. Even if they eventually made it through security, the black guy from the US would have been pulled aside as well, the knives and fake ID discovered, and at the very least his ass would be in jail.
Plot foiled.
This kind of security is expensive, because your security professionals need to be real, trained security professionals and not the airport equivalent of a mall cop, but in the long run it saves a lot of money over the asinine security of the TSA because you actually get security.
My favorite new example of how utterly useless TSA's security measures is Adam Savage accidentally sneaking two foam scrapers (foot long razor blades) onto an airplane:
But even before that, I personally know several people who have accidentally brought box-cutters - the very weapon used on 9/11 - through security. It's one big joke, except the only ones laughing are the real security experts and the terrorists.
BTW, did you know nothing that has been implemented - including the body scanners - will catch a second underwear bomber if one were to try again? They wouldn't catch a laptop bomb or book bomb either, and I'm sure a terrorist could think of a lot more ways to sneak a bomb on a plane that TSA wouldn't have a hope of finding.
The Israeli's use a high-tech heuristic approach to catching their terrorist viruses.
The result? The country in the most active terrorist region in the world and they haven't had a "close call" in a decade.
How long does it take an Israeli to get through security? No more than 25 minutes.
See, in Israeli airports they only do basic x-ray and metal detector physical searches. They don't have strange rules for laptops and batteries and liquids and shoes and whatever else. They don't care what you're carrying with you as long as it isn't something obvious like a knife or a huge bomb.
What they do instead of all of TSA's useless rules is ask questions at four different security checkpoints (integrated into the flow of the airport check-in process, so they hardly take any extra time), and based on the responses they weed out suspicious people. Those people get the ringer, but nobody else does.
The physical scanners are also enclosed in a bomb-proof area, so if someone does try to sneak a bomb on, they simply cordon it off and open another security line - no need to shut down the entire airport just because they found a bomb.
That's real security, the nonsense TSA does is just theater.
What you want is an "and should not have fallen" there instead of "fell". You start out in past perfect (progressive) tense, so you need to maintain past perfect tense or it sounds awkward.
As for the content of your post, see my sig (better yet look the quote up, there is more to it, it was just too long to fit it in).
To be fair to Fox, generally when they are legitimately compared to their cable "news" competitors, Fox almost always comes out the most balanced of the group.
Case in point: the 2008 election coverage.
Fox gave Obama slightly more coverage than McCaine (it was a 3% difference), whereas CNN gave Obama 2/3 more coverage and MSNBC both gave Obama about twice as much coverage as McCain.
Fox had roughly equal amounts of positive, negative, and neutral stories about McCaine than Obama, giving McCaine a slightly higher percentage of positive stories. CNN and MSNBC both had significantly more (2-3 times as many) negative stories about McCaine than positive, and about equal portions of positve, negative, and neutral stories about Obama.
Network news coverage was much more balanced, basically the inverse of Fox news - slightly higher percentage of positive stories for Obama than for McCaine.
If that doesn't illustrate the point, I don't know what does. Pew has several studies in this vein, you can look through all of them, they tell the same story.
Frankly, I'd cut out CNN and MSNBC before Fox, and if you don't want to listen to so many blowhards (which are all that seem to exist on cable news) just stick to the broadcast news networks.
Could a co-op platformer similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii have been done on a PC?
Are you kidding? It's five or six buttons. WASD, two mouse buttons, and the mouse itself take care of all of it.
A better example would have been Super Mario Galaxy, but even then WASD to replace the thumb stick, two mouse buttons to replace the triggers, and the mouse itself to aim the stars.
Any time you can replace the thumbstick with a mouse the mouse will always win. It's even worse if you can replace the thumbstick with WASD. Three fingers to work four buttons vs one digit to work four directions - it should be clear which one is going to have quicker response times.
The only games that might be easier to control on a console are those where for some reason you need fine control of both thumbsticks. The mouse can easily handle one of them, but the keyboard only does North NE East SE South SW West NW - if it's important to have SSE or WNW directions, it's very difficult to do that on a keyboard.
I don't know of any games that require that kind of fine control over both joysticks (it would be hard as hell for console gamers anyway, it would simply be even harder for PC gamers).
Because PC users would utterly trash console users. It's not any kind of skill difference, either, because I know console players who are just as dedicated as PC players. The difference is the interface: the keyboard doesn't matter that much (some people do a lot with macros, but that's just gravy) but the mouse is so fast and inherently accurate that a console's thumbstick just doesn't stand a chance. You're using wide, smooth, fast arm motions compared to short, jerky digit motions. The difference is obvious just from the bio-mechanics involved.
Case in point: BBF2: Vietnam - console gamers have put in four times as many hours as PC gamers, yet the PC gamers have unlocked the secret map while console gamers are only half way through.
Without a huge advantage for one side that just doesn't happen.
I'm frankly terrible at both PC and console FPS games, but I know for a fact just with my own experience playing on consoles that I could rip through most of the console players I came up against if I had a keyboard and mouse (I usually got my ass kicked).
So far there have been four times as many hours played on BF2:Vietnam for consoles than on the PC. PS3 and Xbox each almost double the number of hours played on the PC.
Bear in mind, four times as many people playing yet they are half way through when PC gamers have finished.
In other words, all the awkward thumbstick lovers are living in backwards land, where fewer players means it's far more like they'll finish the game first.
Unless you just meant to say console gamers suck at gaming. I'm sure you don't want to say that (and I wouldn't believe it even if you did).
If controllers were actually better in any way PC gamers would be using them - they do exist for PC's you know. It's not like they are stuck with an inferior option.
Given the fact that PC gamers regularly trounce console gamers when the two square off directly, and given the fact that it is console gamers that are restricted on their input methods, I'd be much more inclined to believe it is the console gamers who are stuck with an inferior input method.
Anybody who has played an FPS on a PC and an FPS on a console knows right away which one is easier.
I frankly suck at both, and don't play either any more (used to play both but not a ton), but from my own experience I can tell you unequivocally that the keyboard/mouse combo is far, far more intuitive than two thumb sticks. If it's that apparent to someone who doesn't play much, the difference between two masters of their respective input methods is going to be even more drastic. You might be able to get really, really good with a controller, but you'll never be as good as you could have been with a keyboard and mouse.
The Xbox 360 (and I'm sure the PS3 will too, but I've never done it) will allow you to plug in a keyboard and use it in the base console (very handy for entering text!), but you will never find a console game that allows you to control via keyboard and mouse.
Know why? Anybody who used it would have an immediate unfair advantage over anybody using the controller, and that's just bad juju.
According to the BC2 stats, there are twice as many PS3 players than PC players, and twice as many Xbox players as PC players, for a grand total of four times as many console players.
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Aw hell, I went ahead and did it for you:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. - Helen Keller
However I would rather lose 4 hours of my life with checks if it means that they catch someone who would blow up a plane.
I challenge you to name a single incident where TSA (not passengers or intelligence agents) caught someone who was going to try to blow up a plane.
So far all I can find are incidents where TSA failed completely, but either the bomber was incompetent or the passengers managed to subdue him and foil the plot.
Frankly, four hours of my life is a hell of a huge price to pay to not catch a single terrorist. We didn't have to waste four hours of my life to not catch any terrorists before, why do we have to waste four hours of our lives to not catch any terrorists now?
It's all just for show, and suckers like you have taken the bait hook, line, and sinker.
You really should look up the full quote I have in my sig - it's sage advice by one of the most inspiring women ever to walk the face of this earth.
Somebody has never heard of hyperbole.
Of course Obama is not actually a dictator, the point is that he has greatly expanded the powers of the Executive under the guise of "security" (Bush did it too, Obama has simply continued the trend, and has done so very aggressively). The road to dictatorship is one of continually expanded Executive powers until eventually the Executive is dictator in all but name. Some point after that they usually stop pretending and disband the remnants of the representative government. See Rome for a historical example.
You do realize Obama has been in charge of the DHS for two years now, right?
It's Obama's USA right now, you can't keep blaming Bush for his fuckups forever.
Dude! You just got Godwinned!
Clearly only a terrorist would have a grievance against the TSA!
I say burn them all!
by giving passengers guns you make them judge jury and executioner.
Passing judgment a little quick there, aren't we? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Or does that not apply to self defense any more?
520 people per year, I meant to say. It's 130 every three months.
Another nice statistic:
520 people die in automobile accidents because they chose to drive instead of deal with airport security (TSA).
Over the course of ten years that's 5,200 people dead (next September is when this figure will become completely accurate instead of mostly accurate - it's a bit shy of 5,000 right now).
That means TSA is indirectly responsible for 73% more deaths than the 9/11 hijackers.
Chew on that one for a minute.
His numbers are way, way off. I'm pretty sure he made them up.
For one thing, winning the Big Lotto twice is in the several billion range, at least. Depending on the specific lotto it ranges from the millions to hundreds of millions the very first win.
For the backscatter stats, sixteen out of every billion people will get cancer as a direct result of the backscatter X-Ray. At 600 million passengers a year, that's about 11 deaths a year directly caused by the new machines.
Also, there are 130 deaths every three months among people who chose to drive instead of fly because of enhanced TSA security.
Total deaths caused by TSA is now up to 530 per year (we'll stick with 520 for most years though, since the backscatter is new) - in 10 years that's 5210 deaths caused by TSA. That's 73% more than the 3,000 who died in the 9/11 attack, directly or indirectly caused by TSA.
Add to that as far as I can find not a single terrorist attack has been foiled by TSA. To be fair, it can be hard to tell if some of these inane security measures made terrorists decide to cancel their plans, but you'd figure if they actually caught someone they would be making a really, really big deal about it. From what I've seen the only foiled plots are when the terrorists either screw up and fail completely (underwear bomber, printer bombs) or the passengers stepped in and foiled the attack (United flight 93, shoe bomber).
What exactly are we getting out of TSA?
The proper form of profiling looks at behavior, not skin color or clothing. Detectives do it all the time, as well as good security guards.
It's what the Israeli's do for their airports, and they are right in the middle of the shit. I think they know a thing or two about this.
Basically, ask a few simple questions (where are you going, how long are you going to be there, etc), and see how they respond. You don't really give a rat's ass what their answers are, you are looking for signs of nervousness and irritation. Those who appear agitated you pull aside for further questioning and possibly a search.
It's exactly the same thing the boarder control does when trying to catch smugglers, except in the Israeli airports they do it four times instead of just once, making it extremely difficult to sneak past.
A person who can fool a lie detector test could probably pull it off, but the people capable of such a feat are few and far between (besides, getting no reaction at all from a person is potentially suspicious as well).
In your example, the five terrorists would have been pulled aside and searched, a cursory background check likely revealing terrorist ties, which would have got them pulled out for a more extensive investigation. Even if they eventually made it through security, the black guy from the US would have been pulled aside as well, the knives and fake ID discovered, and at the very least his ass would be in jail.
Plot foiled.
This kind of security is expensive, because your security professionals need to be real, trained security professionals and not the airport equivalent of a mall cop, but in the long run it saves a lot of money over the asinine security of the TSA because you actually get security.
My favorite new example of how utterly useless TSA's security measures is Adam Savage accidentally sneaking two foam scrapers (foot long razor blades) onto an airplane:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20023820-71.html
But even before that, I personally know several people who have accidentally brought box-cutters - the very weapon used on 9/11 - through security. It's one big joke, except the only ones laughing are the real security experts and the terrorists.
BTW, did you know nothing that has been implemented - including the body scanners - will catch a second underwear bomber if one were to try again? They wouldn't catch a laptop bomb or book bomb either, and I'm sure a terrorist could think of a lot more ways to sneak a bomb on a plane that TSA wouldn't have a hope of finding.
The Israeli's use a high-tech heuristic approach to catching their terrorist viruses.
The result? The country in the most active terrorist region in the world and they haven't had a "close call" in a decade.
How long does it take an Israeli to get through security? No more than 25 minutes.
See, in Israeli airports they only do basic x-ray and metal detector physical searches. They don't have strange rules for laptops and batteries and liquids and shoes and whatever else. They don't care what you're carrying with you as long as it isn't something obvious like a knife or a huge bomb.
What they do instead of all of TSA's useless rules is ask questions at four different security checkpoints (integrated into the flow of the airport check-in process, so they hardly take any extra time), and based on the responses they weed out suspicious people. Those people get the ringer, but nobody else does.
The physical scanners are also enclosed in a bomb-proof area, so if someone does try to sneak a bomb on, they simply cordon it off and open another security line - no need to shut down the entire airport just because they found a bomb.
That's real security, the nonsense TSA does is just theater.
Case in point:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20023820-71.html
I should have been smart, not fell into the trap.
What you want is an "and should not have fallen" there instead of "fell". You start out in past perfect (progressive) tense, so you need to maintain past perfect tense or it sounds awkward.
As for the content of your post, see my sig (better yet look the quote up, there is more to it, it was just too long to fit it in).
How are they supposed to take their target Congress-critter to Tahiti if they can't fly?
I dunno, "sprout" kinda works, especially in a plant story.
Your whole post applies equally well (often better) to CNN and MSNBC.
Cable "news" is entertainment news.
If you actually want real news, watch broadcast news.
Is there a DNC for my mailbox? I frickin hate all the shit I get in the mail!
To be fair to Fox, generally when they are legitimately compared to their cable "news" competitors, Fox almost always comes out the most balanced of the group.
Case in point: the 2008 election coverage.
Fox gave Obama slightly more coverage than McCaine (it was a 3% difference), whereas CNN gave Obama 2/3 more coverage and MSNBC both gave Obama about twice as much coverage as McCain.
Fox had roughly equal amounts of positive, negative, and neutral stories about McCaine than Obama, giving McCaine a slightly higher percentage of positive stories. CNN and MSNBC both had significantly more (2-3 times as many) negative stories about McCaine than positive, and about equal portions of positve, negative, and neutral stories about Obama.
Network news coverage was much more balanced, basically the inverse of Fox news - slightly higher percentage of positive stories for Obama than for McCaine.
If that doesn't illustrate the point, I don't know what does. Pew has several studies in this vein, you can look through all of them, they tell the same story.
Frankly, I'd cut out CNN and MSNBC before Fox, and if you don't want to listen to so many blowhards (which are all that seem to exist on cable news) just stick to the broadcast news networks.
Could a co-op platformer similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii have been done on a PC?
Are you kidding? It's five or six buttons. WASD, two mouse buttons, and the mouse itself take care of all of it.
A better example would have been Super Mario Galaxy, but even then WASD to replace the thumb stick, two mouse buttons to replace the triggers, and the mouse itself to aim the stars.
Any time you can replace the thumbstick with a mouse the mouse will always win. It's even worse if you can replace the thumbstick with WASD. Three fingers to work four buttons vs one digit to work four directions - it should be clear which one is going to have quicker response times.
The only games that might be easier to control on a console are those where for some reason you need fine control of both thumbsticks. The mouse can easily handle one of them, but the keyboard only does North NE East SE South SW West NW - if it's important to have SSE or WNW directions, it's very difficult to do that on a keyboard.
I don't know of any games that require that kind of fine control over both joysticks (it would be hard as hell for console gamers anyway, it would simply be even harder for PC gamers).
Because PC users would utterly trash console users. It's not any kind of skill difference, either, because I know console players who are just as dedicated as PC players. The difference is the interface: the keyboard doesn't matter that much (some people do a lot with macros, but that's just gravy) but the mouse is so fast and inherently accurate that a console's thumbstick just doesn't stand a chance. You're using wide, smooth, fast arm motions compared to short, jerky digit motions. The difference is obvious just from the bio-mechanics involved.
Case in point: BBF2: Vietnam - console gamers have put in four times as many hours as PC gamers, yet the PC gamers have unlocked the secret map while console gamers are only half way through.
Without a huge advantage for one side that just doesn't happen.
I'm frankly terrible at both PC and console FPS games, but I know for a fact just with my own experience playing on consoles that I could rip through most of the console players I came up against if I had a keyboard and mouse (I usually got my ass kicked).
They show the exact opposite, in fact.
So far there have been four times as many hours played on BF2:Vietnam for consoles than on the PC. PS3 and Xbox each almost double the number of hours played on the PC.
Bear in mind, four times as many people playing yet they are half way through when PC gamers have finished.
In other words, all the awkward thumbstick lovers are living in backwards land, where fewer players means it's far more like they'll finish the game first.
Unless you just meant to say console gamers suck at gaming. I'm sure you don't want to say that (and I wouldn't believe it even if you did).
Indeed.
If controllers were actually better in any way PC gamers would be using them - they do exist for PC's you know. It's not like they are stuck with an inferior option.
Given the fact that PC gamers regularly trounce console gamers when the two square off directly, and given the fact that it is console gamers that are restricted on their input methods, I'd be much more inclined to believe it is the console gamers who are stuck with an inferior input method.
Anybody who has played an FPS on a PC and an FPS on a console knows right away which one is easier.
I frankly suck at both, and don't play either any more (used to play both but not a ton), but from my own experience I can tell you unequivocally that the keyboard/mouse combo is far, far more intuitive than two thumb sticks. If it's that apparent to someone who doesn't play much, the difference between two masters of their respective input methods is going to be even more drastic. You might be able to get really, really good with a controller, but you'll never be as good as you could have been with a keyboard and mouse.
The Xbox 360 (and I'm sure the PS3 will too, but I've never done it) will allow you to plug in a keyboard and use it in the base console (very handy for entering text!), but you will never find a console game that allows you to control via keyboard and mouse.
Know why? Anybody who used it would have an immediate unfair advantage over anybody using the controller, and that's just bad juju.
I'm looking at the website now, and it says 94 million hours played for Xbox, 90 million hours played for PS3, and 55 million hours played for PC.
Unless I'm a hell of a lot worse at math than I think I am, that's not quite four times as many hours played on a console than hours played on a PC.
It pretty much completely invalidates your whole argument, because the game is clearly more popular on consoles.
According to the BC2 stats, there are twice as many PS3 players than PC players, and twice as many Xbox players as PC players, for a grand total of four times as many console players.
The population is much, much smaller for PC.
Does that make things clearer for you?