Jesus fucking Christ are you dense. You can't make a single sensible argument, your beliefs fly in the face of the most obvious evidence, and you can't seem to listen to anything I say. Good luck trying to make it in life. Goodbye.
And what about putting those people in government changes that?
I didn't say a dictatorship. In a representative government, we can collectively decide what is good for society, even if it is bad for some individuals. Look at traffic. I would love to fly through red lights so I can get where I'm going faster. But if everyone did that, the roads would be choked with accidents. So we all agree to follow the rules (for the most part) for betterment of all, even if it means I have to wait at a red light. The same thing with most laws. I would love to be able to rob people so I can have their stuff. But I don't want to be constantly robbed. So we all agree that robbing is bad, even if it means I can't get ahead by mugging everyone I see. We need to do the same thing with the environment. We need to collectively decide that driving Hummers and using lots of resources is bad when everyone does it and institute rules to get everyone to follow along. Honestly, this is third grade social science. If this is too hard for you to grasp, and by your signature, it seems it is, I don't see any point in going further.
That being said, if you would prefer to live in a world with 1 billion people and a life expectancy of 38.5 years
Why would a lower population translate to stone age life expectancy?
Personally, I do not have the hubris to believe that mankind is capable of destroying the planet
What, just because we've eaten cod to extinction in a few short decades of overfishing? Turned Egypt, China, Andes, and other sites of early civilization to desert in a short period of time, and with bronze age technology no less? As early man immigrated to each continent, mass extinctions followed. In North America, 75% of mammals over 100lbs were wiped out within 300 years of man arriving. The world over, we've decimated native ecosystems, polluted the air and water, and consumed any natural resource we can get our hands on. What could possibly make you think it'll just last forever? Which one of us is guilty of hubris?
I believe that the most efficient way to improve the state of the planet is to give people the freedom to act as they choose and to encourage the rule of law to apply to all.
Have you ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Given the freedom to act, people will take resources for their own personal benefit, even if it harms everyone as a whole.
This combination will improve the lot of life of more people than any other system and as people's lot in life improves, they will choose to take better care of the planet.
How is this different from the last few thousand years of mankind destroying the planet? We've always had freedom to act, and this has always led to more destruction.
I believe that any system that attempts to force people to take better care of the planet will actually result in greater destruction of the environment in the long run.
Look at the Dominican Republic, that is if you're willing to let your beliefs stand up to evidence. In the Dominican Republic, the environment was protected with extreme measures for many years. The military was used to clear vagrants out of national parks. In Haiti, with "freedom to act", they cut down every tree in sight and illegally crossed the border into DR to get more trees. The border between these two countries is clearly visible as a barren area on one side, and forested on the other. The only thing that saved DR was a strong, even Draconian, protection of the environment.
I highly recommend you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse". I doubt you'll feel the same way after reading it.
True but misleading. First world consumers like Americans consume 17 times the natural resources of third-world consumers. So as people having ~6 kids go to ~2 but consume far more resources (cars, houses, phones, etc) we are going to consume more and more as a species. Having fewer kids doesn't even come close to solving the problem of stopping us from destroying the planet.
What does density have to do with it? We are consuming our natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Period. The people/square mile is irrelevant. So there are lots of people in Europe living just fine. Their metals are mined from around the world. Their food is grown and harvested from around the world. Forests are cut down so they can have nice hardwood furniture. Their pollution is spread around the world. Look at the planet as a whole.
There are essentially two solutions: cull about 4 billion people, or throw resources at clean power until it sticks
I think both may be necessary. No matter how efficient we become at using energy, we still have 7 billion people eating, consuming, polluting, and other otherwise destroying the planet.
The big difference was the Iraqis gave up. If North Korea were invaded, North Koreans would fight for their leader to the death. They are fanatical, xenophobic, heavily armed, and intimately familiar with their terrain. The last time we fought there, we lost.
Iraq proved that sheer numbers mean very little against modern technology.
And yet, with all our technology, we are just now leaving after 8 years of horrific bloodshed. Don't count on technology.
I work in the intelligence community, and every estimate says the same thing here. We would face an intense fight against a large dug-in motivated force that's been planning for 50 years. No one seriously thinks it would be a "landslide". If you have a source for this position other than your uniformed opinion, I'd be happy to hear it.
U.S. quickly recovering from the initial bombardment and then demolishing the N. Korean army.
No, not quite. NK has the fourth largest military in the world with 1.2 million active and 5 million in reserve. They have 8 conventional corps, 1 armored corps, 4 mechanized corps, 2 artillery corps, 1 capital defense command, 30 infantry divisions and 4 infantry brigades, 15 armored brigades, and 20 motorized/mechanized infantry brigades in their ground forces alone. Poor as the country may be, defenseless they are not.
Oh good, now you understand the "theater" part of TSA's security theater.
No, I have on idea what you're talking about.
If these devices are effective at finding bombs, then we need them in all airports, not just the 100 largest ones.
I have even less idea now. have to admit I have no idea what you're arguing anymore. I thought you were trying to argue before that we're spending too much on scanning and searching and that the threat doesn't warrant the expense. Now you're saying we need these expensive scanners at thousands of airports? As for why they're not used in smaller airports, I would imagine since the vast majority of travelers go through the large ones, that's where the security would be focused. Also, they're expensive, so the bigger airports get them first. I've heard plans to roll them out to more airports, so I guess the smaller ones will have to wait. I just get the impression you, like the other slashdaughters here, want to complain about the TSA, security theater, etc without a clear idea of how to fix it.
If it could, don't you think maybe they would have done it? Do you have an explanation why this silver bullet of yours isn't being implemented?
The 9/11 hijackers were locked out of at least one cockpit. So they held a flight attendant hostage with a boxcutter to her neck and told the pilot to open up or they'd kill her. So he let them in. As long as the pilot can open the door, it is far from foolproof. And now the threat isn't just from hijackers with smuggled boxcutters, but explosives hidden in various forms. So not only is a locked cockpit ineffectual against hijackers (which explains why we still have and need other security) but completely useless against explosives. Thank for trying.
Well, hallelujah! The answer at last! It's such a shame the TSA hasn't consulted with you this whole time. We could have saved a lot of money trying to scan for explosives that can take down a plane without having to go to the cockpit.
innocent civilians to be subjected to humiliation in public like this repeatedly?
Repeatedly? How many times has this happened, besides your imagination? There have been a few incidents in the news, but this is far from "repeatedly".
Planes were hijacked and blown up decades prior to 9/11
Typically, they were held hostage until demands were met. They were never used to cause billions in damage and kill thousands.
Lots of difficult and expensive things are done in practice - like deploying ineffectual x-ray machines that may or may not cause cancer to thousands of airports.
Yeah, that would be difficult, since there's only about 100 airports in the US that have them. If it's difficult to the point that it won't happen, seems pretty close to the definition of impractical.
Law enforcement is our best defense against many of these kinds of attacks
Before 9/11, terrorism was considered a law enforcement problem, and it's been nearly (except for you) universally regarded as a failure. People can only be arrested for committing a crime, which is usually only useful after the attack. Evidence pointing to state sponsors is locked up in confidential court documents. Lone Wolves don't show up anyone's radar until it's too late, and if they're caught beforehand you can't even pin them on conspiring, since that requires 2 or more people. You can't fight terrorism with law enforcement, only react and charge surviving terrorists with crimes. The US PATRIOT Act was designed to help defeat this problem by allowing information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and it's been pretty unpopular.
Maybe I'm overly cynical but I would have to see a lot of really hard documentation (like 1,000 videos)
Yeah, if your threshold of evidence is a thousand videos, you're overly cynical.
Given how they overreact when confronted with printed guns I guess they probably shoot anyone that actually has a real gun on sight anyway.
A lot of the incidents are people forgetting they had a gun, since they carry one every day. Have you heard even one incident of TSA shooting someone for carrying a gun? Do you think if a gun image on a purse makes the news, an actual shooting might as well? Recovering guns at checkpoints has become too common to warrant making the news, but a singular incident of a gun image on a purse is newsworthy.
What the flying fuck are you talking about? Who said anything about being scared, besides you? I'm talking about trying to prevent another 9/11 attack.
If anyone wanted to cause megadeaths in the US, I can roll off the top of my head dozens of ways not involving airplanes or airports.
Which wouldn't be TSA's responsibility, the subject of this conversation. Stay focused.
Yet there hasn't been anything like that, nothing even hinting at that.
There have in fact been multiple plots thwarted involving bombing bridges, dirty bombs, and other non-airport related attacks.
They won and those like you are letting them keep their victory by cowering like the little yellow bellied chickenshit you are.
Said the anonymous internet troll. I served my country on active duty in the United States Marine Corps. Keep your ad hominems and generalizations to yourself.
OK, I'm going have to ask for a source for that. I work in the intelligence community, and track real threats every day. Lots of them. You sound like you're referring to V for Vendetta or 1984.
Um, you did. It doesn't scale well and it requires a massive highly educated workforce, which takes many years to implement. We have a couple more airports than Israel. Like a few thousand. Seems pretty impractical to me. Cost and tactics aside, it has no chance of working.
I hope you don't have a "We will never forget" kind of 9/11 sticker on your car. Because you clearly don't remember the multi-billion dollar disaster that attacked our nation's military headquarters.
Look up the numbers sometime of the amount of money to prevent death, versus the estimates of how many people are saved.
Sure, ill do your research for you. No problem. Human lives aren't the only issue. The clean up costs alone for 9/11 were over $600,000,000, not including the cost of the economic downturn it helped exacerbate. Entire companies were destroyed. Our nation's military headquarters shut down. If the fourth plane hit the white house, the costs would be a little higher. Al Qaeda's attacks have only escalated over the years. The next one won't just kill the passengers on one airplane. They will maximize death and destruction like 9/11, only on a larger scale. I think that's worth at least an attempt at preventing.
We have spent more on law enforcement and intelligence activities, which people also complain about, and we have caught plenty of terrorists as they plotted attacks. But a lone wolf, who has not broken any laws or appeared in any investigations, can still be a threat.
Slashdot Mirror
WebOS? I'd love to see it as a viable open-source alternative to Android.
Yeah, after the first few sentences I was expecting he received several boxes of printed out code. Oh, he got one CD? That sounds...anticlimactic.
Jesus fucking Christ are you dense. You can't make a single sensible argument, your beliefs fly in the face of the most obvious evidence, and you can't seem to listen to anything I say. Good luck trying to make it in life. Goodbye.
And what about putting those people in government changes that?
I didn't say a dictatorship. In a representative government, we can collectively decide what is good for society, even if it is bad for some individuals. Look at traffic. I would love to fly through red lights so I can get where I'm going faster. But if everyone did that, the roads would be choked with accidents. So we all agree to follow the rules (for the most part) for betterment of all, even if it means I have to wait at a red light. The same thing with most laws. I would love to be able to rob people so I can have their stuff. But I don't want to be constantly robbed. So we all agree that robbing is bad, even if it means I can't get ahead by mugging everyone I see. We need to do the same thing with the environment. We need to collectively decide that driving Hummers and using lots of resources is bad when everyone does it and institute rules to get everyone to follow along. Honestly, this is third grade social science. If this is too hard for you to grasp, and by your signature, it seems it is, I don't see any point in going further.
That being said, if you would prefer to live in a world with 1 billion people and a life expectancy of 38.5 years
Why would a lower population translate to stone age life expectancy?
Personally, I do not have the hubris to believe that mankind is capable of destroying the planet
What, just because we've eaten cod to extinction in a few short decades of overfishing? Turned Egypt, China, Andes, and other sites of early civilization to desert in a short period of time, and with bronze age technology no less? As early man immigrated to each continent, mass extinctions followed. In North America, 75% of mammals over 100lbs were wiped out within 300 years of man arriving. The world over, we've decimated native ecosystems, polluted the air and water, and consumed any natural resource we can get our hands on. What could possibly make you think it'll just last forever? Which one of us is guilty of hubris?
I believe that the most efficient way to improve the state of the planet is to give people the freedom to act as they choose and to encourage the rule of law to apply to all.
Have you ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Given the freedom to act, people will take resources for their own personal benefit, even if it harms everyone as a whole.
This combination will improve the lot of life of more people than any other system and as people's lot in life improves, they will choose to take better care of the planet.
How is this different from the last few thousand years of mankind destroying the planet? We've always had freedom to act, and this has always led to more destruction.
I believe that any system that attempts to force people to take better care of the planet will actually result in greater destruction of the environment in the long run.
Look at the Dominican Republic, that is if you're willing to let your beliefs stand up to evidence. In the Dominican Republic, the environment was protected with extreme measures for many years. The military was used to clear vagrants out of national parks. In Haiti, with "freedom to act", they cut down every tree in sight and illegally crossed the border into DR to get more trees. The border between these two countries is clearly visible as a barren area on one side, and forested on the other. The only thing that saved DR was a strong, even Draconian, protection of the environment.
I highly recommend you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse". I doubt you'll feel the same way after reading it.
True but misleading. First world consumers like Americans consume 17 times the natural resources of third-world consumers. So as people having ~6 kids go to ~2 but consume far more resources (cars, houses, phones, etc) we are going to consume more and more as a species. Having fewer kids doesn't even come close to solving the problem of stopping us from destroying the planet.
What does density have to do with it? We are consuming our natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Period. The people/square mile is irrelevant. So there are lots of people in Europe living just fine. Their metals are mined from around the world. Their food is grown and harvested from around the world. Forests are cut down so they can have nice hardwood furniture. Their pollution is spread around the world. Look at the planet as a whole.
There are essentially two solutions: cull about 4 billion people, or throw resources at clean power until it sticks
I think both may be necessary. No matter how efficient we become at using energy, we still have 7 billion people eating, consuming, polluting, and other otherwise destroying the planet.
Iraq proved that sheer numbers mean very little against modern technology.
And yet, with all our technology, we are just now leaving after 8 years of horrific bloodshed. Don't count on technology.
I work in the intelligence community, and every estimate says the same thing here. We would face an intense fight against a large dug-in motivated force that's been planning for 50 years. No one seriously thinks it would be a "landslide". If you have a source for this position other than your uniformed opinion, I'd be happy to hear it.
U.S. quickly recovering from the initial bombardment and then demolishing the N. Korean army.
No, not quite. NK has the fourth largest military in the world with 1.2 million active and 5 million in reserve. They have 8 conventional corps, 1 armored corps, 4 mechanized corps, 2 artillery corps, 1 capital defense command, 30 infantry divisions and 4 infantry brigades, 15 armored brigades, and 20 motorized/mechanized infantry brigades in their ground forces alone. Poor as the country may be, defenseless they are not.
Oh good, now you understand the "theater" part of TSA's security theater.
No, I have on idea what you're talking about.
If these devices are effective at finding bombs, then we need them in all airports, not just the 100 largest ones.
I have even less idea now. have to admit I have no idea what you're arguing anymore. I thought you were trying to argue before that we're spending too much on scanning and searching and that the threat doesn't warrant the expense. Now you're saying we need these expensive scanners at thousands of airports? As for why they're not used in smaller airports, I would imagine since the vast majority of travelers go through the large ones, that's where the security would be focused. Also, they're expensive, so the bigger airports get them first. I've heard plans to roll them out to more airports, so I guess the smaller ones will have to wait. I just get the impression you, like the other slashdaughters here, want to complain about the TSA, security theater, etc without a clear idea of how to fix it.
You can solve this by locking the cockpit door.
If it could, don't you think maybe they would have done it? Do you have an explanation why this silver bullet of yours isn't being implemented?
The 9/11 hijackers were locked out of at least one cockpit. So they held a flight attendant hostage with a boxcutter to her neck and told the pilot to open up or they'd kill her. So he let them in. As long as the pilot can open the door, it is far from foolproof. And now the threat isn't just from hijackers with smuggled boxcutters, but explosives hidden in various forms. So not only is a locked cockpit ineffectual against hijackers (which explains why we still have and need other security) but completely useless against explosives. Thank for trying.
Well, hallelujah! The answer at last! It's such a shame the TSA hasn't consulted with you this whole time. We could have saved a lot of money trying to scan for explosives that can take down a plane without having to go to the cockpit.
innocent civilians to be subjected to humiliation in public like this repeatedly?
Repeatedly? How many times has this happened, besides your imagination? There have been a few incidents in the news, but this is far from "repeatedly".
Planes were hijacked and blown up decades prior to 9/11
Typically, they were held hostage until demands were met. They were never used to cause billions in damage and kill thousands.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070483/TSA-screeners-confiscate-2-machetes-6-grenades-23-loaded-guns.html
http://www.wsmv.com/story/16155120/gun-confiscated-at-nashville-airport
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Loaded-gun-confiscated-by-TSA-at-SLC-airport/Ih20n3TQykG7eso8vF8q8w.cspx
Lots of difficult and expensive things are done in practice - like deploying ineffectual x-ray machines that may or may not cause cancer to thousands of airports.
Yeah, that would be difficult, since there's only about 100 airports in the US that have them. If it's difficult to the point that it won't happen, seems pretty close to the definition of impractical.
Law enforcement is our best defense against many of these kinds of attacks
Before 9/11, terrorism was considered a law enforcement problem, and it's been nearly (except for you) universally regarded as a failure. People can only be arrested for committing a crime, which is usually only useful after the attack. Evidence pointing to state sponsors is locked up in confidential court documents. Lone Wolves don't show up anyone's radar until it's too late, and if they're caught beforehand you can't even pin them on conspiring, since that requires 2 or more people. You can't fight terrorism with law enforcement, only react and charge surviving terrorists with crimes. The US PATRIOT Act was designed to help defeat this problem by allowing information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and it's been pretty unpopular.
Maybe I'm overly cynical but I would have to see a lot of really hard documentation (like 1,000 videos)
Yeah, if your threshold of evidence is a thousand videos, you're overly cynical.
Given how they overreact when confronted with printed guns I guess they probably shoot anyone that actually has a real gun on sight anyway.
A lot of the incidents are people forgetting they had a gun, since they carry one every day. Have you heard even one incident of TSA shooting someone for carrying a gun? Do you think if a gun image on a purse makes the news, an actual shooting might as well? Recovering guns at checkpoints has become too common to warrant making the news, but a singular incident of a gun image on a purse is newsworthy.
93 WTC, 95 OKC, 98 Embassy bombings, 2000 Cole Attack. Bin Laden himself said he needed to go bigger because America wasn't listening.
What the flying fuck are you talking about? Who said anything about being scared, besides you? I'm talking about trying to prevent another 9/11 attack.
If anyone wanted to cause megadeaths in the US, I can roll off the top of my head dozens of ways not involving airplanes or airports.
Which wouldn't be TSA's responsibility, the subject of this conversation. Stay focused.
Yet there hasn't been anything like that, nothing even hinting at that.
There have in fact been multiple plots thwarted involving bombing bridges, dirty bombs, and other non-airport related attacks.
They won and those like you are letting them keep their victory by cowering like the little yellow bellied chickenshit you are.
Said the anonymous internet troll. I served my country on active duty in the United States Marine Corps. Keep your ad hominems and generalizations to yourself.
OK, I'm going have to ask for a source for that. I work in the intelligence community, and track real threats every day. Lots of them. You sound like you're referring to V for Vendetta or 1984.
Who said it's impractical?
Um, you did. It doesn't scale well and it requires a massive highly educated workforce, which takes many years to implement. We have a couple more airports than Israel. Like a few thousand. Seems pretty impractical to me. Cost and tactics aside, it has no chance of working.
I hope you don't have a "We will never forget" kind of 9/11 sticker on your car. Because you clearly don't remember the multi-billion dollar disaster that attacked our nation's military headquarters.
Look up the numbers sometime of the amount of money to prevent death, versus the estimates of how many people are saved.
Sure, ill do your research for you. No problem. Human lives aren't the only issue. The clean up costs alone for 9/11 were over $600,000,000, not including the cost of the economic downturn it helped exacerbate. Entire companies were destroyed. Our nation's military headquarters shut down. If the fourth plane hit the white house, the costs would be a little higher. Al Qaeda's attacks have only escalated over the years. The next one won't just kill the passengers on one airplane. They will maximize death and destruction like 9/11, only on a larger scale. I think that's worth at least an attempt at preventing.
We have spent more on law enforcement and intelligence activities, which people also complain about, and we have caught plenty of terrorists as they plotted attacks. But a lone wolf, who has not broken any laws or appeared in any investigations, can still be a threat.