You use GNU Shred to wipe all the data off.
After you arrive in the US, you connect to your corporate intranet via VPN and download the stuff you need. Be sure to read the filesystem-specific caveats in the shred man page. It doesn't always work as expected.
I just got a new Dell laptop a couple months ago, and the first thing I did was wipe the system and install a fresh copy of Windows. Just as you described -- low res, no network, nothing. I pointed my old system at support.dell.com and downloaded for 20 minutes, double-clicked a few times, and the system was up and running fine, all within an hour after finishing the Windows install.
I also installed Ubuntu 7.10. Aside from the fact that the desktop install CD didn't work (the alternative CD worked fine), more did come up out of the box than Windows: I had ethernet, wireless, and it offered the binary nvidia drivers so I had full resolution. But the sound didn't work at all, USB and CPU frequency scaling didn't work right after suspend, and I was greeted with a black screen while booting up. After much googling, I got the system to a state where everything works.
My point in all this? Neither Windows nor Linux had everything work right from install. But all Windows needed was driver downloads from a single source. I spent many hours getting Linux working properly, and I've been running Linux since the 2.0 days -- I can't imagine how an average Windows user would do.
And then I got to do it all over again after the upgrade to Hardy screwed up a whole new set of stuff.
Not to be a prick, but you have heard of laptops and the suspend-to-RAM feature, right? Doesn't use a whole lot more power than turning the thing off, plus you don't have to waste all that power waiting for it to boot up and start all your applications again.
I've had Firefox running for at least a week now, and it's pushing half a gig of RAM. Of course I also have close to 40 tabs open.
If bacterial levels on the hands are not reduced, how is antibiotic resistance being selected?
Read what you quoted again. It doesn't say bacterial levels on the hands are not reduced. It says that antibacterial soap is "no more effective than plain soap at... reducing bacterial levels on the hands." There's a difference. Some bacteria are still left on the hands either way, but presumably with antibacterial soap there are more resistant bacteria left.
The Air Force is saying that it's not going to "test" these weapons that everyone THINKS are non-lethal in a combat area and find out they are, in fact, NOT non-lethal.... The Air Force response [sic] by saying, "Once you test them on yourselves, American population, we will agree to use them on our enemies... they are nonlethal, after all?".
And I, as an American citizen, say that I don't want the military testing these things that they THINK are non-lethal on me only to find out they are, in fact, NOT non-lethal. How is it better to kill your own citizens rather than those you're at war with? And further, there is a world of difference between non-lethal and non-harmful. Maybe it doesn't cause death, but instead blindness, paralysis, or some other permanent injury. In any of these cases, after killing and/or maiming American citizens, what's the military going to do? Say "Ooops! Hope we don't kill some more Americans while testing the next idea!"? Or say "at least we didn't accidentally kill that guy we were fighting against"?
I mean get real, there are established mechanisms by which drugs are determined to be non-harmful (sometimes they miss some side effects, but generally it works). Why can't the military go through that process rather than asking Americans to subject themselves to something that might possibly kill them, all in the name of... what, exactly?
In the job advert, just include a tiny line with the text "applicants might be credit checked".
Just what the world needs, more fine print. Personally I prefer my potential employers to be open and candid with me, and not bury such things in fine print. I'm not an enemy or a competitor here, I'm a job applicant!
For my part, I'm sure it would work i my favor. Because I know I have a very positive credit history.
I have a spotless credit history too. That's not the point. I'm also male but still support laws against discrimination against women.
Countless? Really?
Yes, countless. Just as countless as the number of ways to have bad credit by making poor decisions. Just use your imagination for a few minutes. Let's see... if the companies are anything like potential lenders, then I hope you don't use cash for everything, because no credit is bad credit. What if you had a health problem but you couldn't afford health insurance at the time. Maybe you couldn't find a job right after graduation (say you graduated right at the bottom of the dot-com bust) and had trouble paying off student loans. Maybe somebody slipped on your front porch and sued you for more than your homeowner's policy is worth. Maybe you're just really poor and can't afford to pay your electric bill. Maybe you got divorced, got laid off from your high-paying job, and can't afford the child support payments because you can't find another job that pays as well as the last one. You get the idea.
But I think the odds are in favor of you not being very responsible and in control of your personal economy.
"I think the odds are in favor". So you think that there's a greater than 50% chance that a person with bad credit is irresponsible. Wow. Yeah, let's base hiring decisions on that. With some real research, I might be able to support this. But I'm sure not going by some random person's gut feeling.
Did you not read the piece of the article I quoted? It said federal law requires applicants to be notified before a check is run. In other words, if I am not informed that it was done, then yes, it's illegal.
My company often runs a credit check on possible customers, which is a sane thing to do. I hope you agree on that one.
Doing it on a possible employee seems like a even more sane thing to do.
This is a total non-sequitur. The reason for a credit check is to determine the likelihood of being paid back by a customer who you are going to extend credit to, based on that person's past experience of paying others back. Thus it makes perfect sense to check the credit of a customer if you're in that business. But checking potential employees? Unless the job involves paying bills out of my own pocket, then one has nothing to do with the other. Please tell me how my ability to pay back creditors reflects my ability as a software engineer. As others have pointed out, there are countless ways to have bad credit without having made poor decisions in your life.
Federal laws require that companies notify job applicants before conducting credit checks, butmany firms reason that viable applicants with good credit have nothing to hide.
When a company does a credit check, it is listed in your report, so this is just another reason to look at your credit report as often as possible. If I were to find that a company I had interviewed with had checked my credit without my knowledge and I didn't get the job, I would certainly be in contact with a lawyer or the attorney general.
This is an unadulterated power play and invasion of a candidate's privacy. And I suggest all out there looking for work decline the credit check as a part of the interview process.
I'm curious where the companies are getting the social security numbers from. I've never been asked for mine during an interview. And honestly, I don't think I'd be willing to fork that over until after I've been hired (even before reading this article). They just don't have a need for that much information as part of the interview process.
What's next, asking candidates about their sex lives, since a satisfied employee is a productive employee?/.'ers beware!
Whoop-de-doo, one free copy every year. So if things start hitting my credit report the day after I check it, I'm screwed for 364 days unless I somehow find out about it and can then get another copy based on suspicion of fraud. How much does it cost the reporting agencies to let you get an online copy far more often, like once a week or once a month? Just about nothing. I could understand not being able to get a paper copy that often, since that actually has costs. But online, come on. Once a year is a joke (but still better than never, I suppose).
Ok. COps deny a lawyer, because they are attempting to sweat a confession. Hours later, after filling him with coffe and water, they deny him use of the bathroom. They get their confession after hours of interrogation. But he requested a lawyer. No confession. He goes free. State cannot prosecute. State does NOT prosecute. This guy wins the criminal lottery and goes free?
Yes the state can too prosecute. They just can't use the confession. If they actually had other evidence linking him to the crime, they could use that. Or if he later confesses legitimately, they could use that as well. But just because the confession you described is inadmissable (as well it should be) doesn't mean that the suspect is immune from prosecution.
1)Maybe the key evidence linking him is inadmissible in court (but still reliable).
The laws surrounding collection of evidence exist for a reason. If the cops can't be trusted to collect the evidence properly, how can you trust that such evidence is really reliable?
2)Maybe the statue of limitations has expired or there are jurisdictional problems.
The statute of limitations on sex crimes is a long time, if there even is one. It the suspect hasn't committed another offense since the original, then he's probably not going to do it again. In which case having him on the registry is a moot point.
3)Maybe the victim is unwilling to press charges or has fled.
If the victim is unwilling to press, then maybe a crime wasn't really committed at all. Girl winds up pregnant, her parents are pissed, so she makes something up. She knows it didn't really happen, so her conscience doesn't let her press charges.
4)Maybe what the person did is despicable but not criminal, e.g. someone with HIV who knowingly refuses to use protection or inform his/her partners.
Intentionally infecting someone with a fatal disease will be considered attempted murder in just about all jurisdictions. There was a case in New York State a while back where a guy did just that. He's currently in jail.
In the end I'd rather have my daughter kidnapped than a crackhead roaming through my house at night. Paying ransom for my daughter is (you asked for it) merely monetary damage while the crackhead in my daughter's bedroom would be the end of my life as I know it.
Merely monetary damage? Huh? Which kidnappings are you reading about? A significant percentage of abducted kids are sexually abused and/or killed. Does anybody even kidnap for ransom anymore, outside of third-world countries? Seems to me that the risks of collecting the ransom money are just too great. (And now that I venture over to Wikipedia, they claim that kidnapping for ransom is nearly non-existent in the U.S. today)
I'd much prefer the crackhead in my house to my kid getting abducted. At least while someone's in the house I can do something about it. And a crackhead is more interested in money/jewelry/valuables than a kid, methinks. Easier to fence a laptop than a child.
It's a theory of mine that the lack of interest in space exploration is at least partially due to light pollution obscuring our view of the night sky. Whenever I find myself in a really dark place (and living in the northeast US, such places are hard to come by) I always look up in wonder. I can just lie down and stare up at the stars for hours. Looking at the hazy glow of the Milky Way, watching satellites go by and shooting stars streaking across the sky... it's hard to not be interested in finding out more about what's up there. But in many cities it's hard to even see the Big Dipper. It's not surprising people have no interest in space when many of them don't have a connection to it anymore.
I know this is Slashdot and all but the "did you read the article?" accusation when somebody posts something you don't agree with is getting rather tiring. You disagree with me, fine, but don't go flinging accusations.
I can't speak for the other folks out there, but the only I time I ask if someone read the article is when they post something that is a complete non-sequitur. Which I found your post to be - a law to help defendants get a fair trial gets turned into something straight out of Stalinist Russia.
And if the information released by the officials shouldn't be publicly known, that's the officials' problem, not the paper's. Maybe the lawyers should be threatening them, not foreign news organizations.
As far as we know lawyers aren't threatening anyone, which is how this thread arrived at where it is now: the NY Times took it upon themselves to not make the article available to British readers. And if the information shouldn't be publicly known and the NYT knows that it shouldn't be publicly known, then yes, it is their problem if they publish it.
If you're going to argue that journalistic censorship is a good thing, you then open the door to arguments such as "we shouldn't be talking about Falun Gong and the people who practice it because China hates that" or "we shouldn't be publishing anything that dictator X of country Y feels doesn't advance his/her causes" (in that case, we wouldn't know about illegal warrantless wiretapping here in the US, for example, because the publishing of the story was not in line with the power grab plans of the government).
Did you even read the article? The law is to prevent the press from basically convicting a defendant in the public's eye before the trial even begins, so as to help ensure a defendant gets a fair trial. And yet here you are talking about dictators and the Falun Gong, as if it were Google in China all over again.
Just look at the U.S. press coverage at the beginning of the recent JonBenet Ramsey snafu for a perfect example of what the media can do. The day it all started CNN was saying how this might finally provide closure for the Ramsey family. Can the guy even get back into the U.S. before they convict him?
All that said, I'm not sure this law is a good thing; allowing the press to publicize that a prosecutor doesn't have much evidence can help prevent and/or stop witchhunts that would otherwise go on if the media couldn't get involved, for example. But you're really blowing things way out of proportion.
Do you think suicide bombers worry about dangerous?
They may be willing to die, but they generally want to take other people down with them. Not much glory in getting yourself killed standing in front of a stove stirring hair bleach.
Thermite while not an explosive could take out a plane.
Right, and what's thermite again? Aluminum and (typically) iron oxide. I think that'd be pretty easy to detect with a metal detector.
A fairly pure from of H202 and any flammable substance could be combined in a bathroom.
TFA discusses difficulties with obtaining concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The kind you buy at the drugstore is around 5% and distilling it is dangerous.
Unless they can somehow speed up the process (fast-forward while still getting every frame and all the audio) I would find that unlikely. Not too many people are going to sit around Circuit City for 2 hours while their movie encodes.
Huh? Perhaps I misinterpreted the person I originally replied to, but I'm talking about limiting the door to the bank to only open to folks with a valid ATM card, so that putting in your grocery store shopping card won't work. The bank already has access to financial records, so that's clearly not a problem.
My point was that obviously the ATM has no problem validating the account, so in theory the door should be able to do the same. It's not like the door couldn't have access to whatever database the ATM uses. But if it can't be done without the PIN, then it's a moot point, since entering the PIN twice (once at the door, once at the ATM) is rather inconvenient.
Umm, maybe the same way the ATM checks for valid cards? (Though not being in the banking industry, I don't know if there's any way to verify an account number without having the PIN)
I didn't. My parent did. He said, if you recall, "And yet 747s are the most efficient known method for moving people from place to place." Makes the rest of your post rather moot.
But by nitpicking holes in the specifics of my post, you fail to comprehend the gist of the thing: that saying the 747 is the most efficient method of travel is ridiculous. The Corolla was merely an example to demonstrate that. Change the Corolla to a van. Gets less mileage, but holds more people and gear. Or stick a luggage rack on top of the car. May decrease the mileage by 25% or so, but it's still better than the plane. Or use a bus. Or use a train. Or a bicycle. As for the ocean, use a sailboat. You get the idea.
#1 Your Corolla won't get 37-40 with 5 people in it, but for sake of argument, I'm going to say 35 even.
*shrug* I've gotten 41 mpg with 2 people and enough stuff for said two people for a three month trip (I drove cross-country a few years back). This consisted of the trunk packed completely full and the backseat covered up to the windows. All told, that's probably a couple more people's worth of weight. From that it's not a huge stretch to get 37 with five people. But as you said, even at 35, it's still way better than the 747.
#2 When comparing effiency [sic], you need to take into account travel time.
Don't read too well, do you? From my post:
If you're speaking strictly of fuel efficiency, then bullshit. ... Now if you want to take time into account, or the infrastructure required to build a road/railroad across the country, then it's a slightly different story. But since the GP wasn't talking about those, it's a bit irrelevant.
the Jet moved you nearly 1000% faster at only a 1.7% fuel consumption increase.
Huh? Your own numbers give 4 passenger-gallons for the car, and 6.8 for the jet. How exactly is the jet's consumption only 1.7% more than the car's? It's over 40% more!
By that argument, you could state the 747 is indeed far more efficient than your car.
You could, but it depends on how you value time. It also depends on how you value seeing the part of the world you're just flying over. As I said before, I drove cross-country a couple years ago. It took us 40 days to get to the Pacific. A jet could have gotten us there in a few hours. Would I have preferred the jet? Not on your life. Not even in Kansas.
In other words, it's impossible to objectively take time into account since it requires subjective valuations.
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I just got a new Dell laptop a couple months ago, and the first thing I did was wipe the system and install a fresh copy of Windows. Just as you described -- low res, no network, nothing. I pointed my old system at support.dell.com and downloaded for 20 minutes, double-clicked a few times, and the system was up and running fine, all within an hour after finishing the Windows install.
I also installed Ubuntu 7.10. Aside from the fact that the desktop install CD didn't work (the alternative CD worked fine), more did come up out of the box than Windows: I had ethernet, wireless, and it offered the binary nvidia drivers so I had full resolution. But the sound didn't work at all, USB and CPU frequency scaling didn't work right after suspend, and I was greeted with a black screen while booting up. After much googling, I got the system to a state where everything works.
My point in all this? Neither Windows nor Linux had everything work right from install. But all Windows needed was driver downloads from a single source. I spent many hours getting Linux working properly, and I've been running Linux since the 2.0 days -- I can't imagine how an average Windows user would do.
And then I got to do it all over again after the upgrade to Hardy screwed up a whole new set of stuff.
Not to be a prick, but you have heard of laptops and the suspend-to-RAM feature, right? Doesn't use a whole lot more power than turning the thing off, plus you don't have to waste all that power waiting for it to boot up and start all your applications again. I've had Firefox running for at least a week now, and it's pushing half a gig of RAM. Of course I also have close to 40 tabs open.
If bacterial levels on the hands are not reduced, how is antibiotic resistance being selected?
... reducing bacterial levels on the hands." There's a difference. Some bacteria are still left on the hands either way, but presumably with antibacterial soap there are more resistant bacteria left.
Read what you quoted again. It doesn't say bacterial levels on the hands are not reduced. It says that antibacterial soap is "no more effective than plain soap at
The Air Force is saying that it's not going to "test" these weapons that everyone THINKS are non-lethal in a combat area and find out they are, in fact, NOT non-lethal. ... The Air Force response [sic] by saying, "Once you test them on yourselves, American population, we will agree to use them on our enemies... they are nonlethal, after all?".
... what, exactly?
And I, as an American citizen, say that I don't want the military testing these things that they THINK are non-lethal on me only to find out they are, in fact, NOT non-lethal. How is it better to kill your own citizens rather than those you're at war with? And further, there is a world of difference between non-lethal and non-harmful. Maybe it doesn't cause death, but instead blindness, paralysis, or some other permanent injury. In any of these cases, after killing and/or maiming American citizens, what's the military going to do? Say "Ooops! Hope we don't kill some more Americans while testing the next idea!"? Or say "at least we didn't accidentally kill that guy we were fighting against"?
I mean get real, there are established mechanisms by which drugs are determined to be non-harmful (sometimes they miss some side effects, but generally it works). Why can't the military go through that process rather than asking Americans to subject themselves to something that might possibly kill them, all in the name of
In the job advert, just include a tiny line with the text "applicants might be credit checked".
Just what the world needs, more fine print. Personally I prefer my potential employers to be open and candid with me, and not bury such things in fine print. I'm not an enemy or a competitor here, I'm a job applicant!
For my part, I'm sure it would work i my favor. Because I know I have a very positive credit history.
I have a spotless credit history too. That's not the point. I'm also male but still support laws against discrimination against women.
Countless? Really?
Yes, countless. Just as countless as the number of ways to have bad credit by making poor decisions. Just use your imagination for a few minutes. Let's see... if the companies are anything like potential lenders, then I hope you don't use cash for everything, because no credit is bad credit. What if you had a health problem but you couldn't afford health insurance at the time. Maybe you couldn't find a job right after graduation (say you graduated right at the bottom of the dot-com bust) and had trouble paying off student loans. Maybe somebody slipped on your front porch and sued you for more than your homeowner's policy is worth. Maybe you're just really poor and can't afford to pay your electric bill. Maybe you got divorced, got laid off from your high-paying job, and can't afford the child support payments because you can't find another job that pays as well as the last one. You get the idea.
But I think the odds are in favor of you not being very responsible and in control of your personal economy.
"I think the odds are in favor". So you think that there's a greater than 50% chance that a person with bad credit is irresponsible. Wow. Yeah, let's base hiring decisions on that. With some real research, I might be able to support this. But I'm sure not going by some random person's gut feeling.
Illegal?
Did you not read the piece of the article I quoted? It said federal law requires applicants to be notified before a check is run. In other words, if I am not informed that it was done, then yes, it's illegal.
My company often runs a credit check on possible customers, which is a sane thing to do. I hope you agree on that one. Doing it on a possible employee seems like a even more sane thing to do.
This is a total non-sequitur. The reason for a credit check is to determine the likelihood of being paid back by a customer who you are going to extend credit to, based on that person's past experience of paying others back. Thus it makes perfect sense to check the credit of a customer if you're in that business. But checking potential employees? Unless the job involves paying bills out of my own pocket, then one has nothing to do with the other. Please tell me how my ability to pay back creditors reflects my ability as a software engineer. As others have pointed out, there are countless ways to have bad credit without having made poor decisions in your life.
Federal laws require that companies notify job applicants before conducting credit checks, butmany firms reason that viable applicants with good credit have nothing to hide.
When a company does a credit check, it is listed in your report, so this is just another reason to look at your credit report as often as possible. If I were to find that a company I had interviewed with had checked my credit without my knowledge and I didn't get the job, I would certainly be in contact with a lawyer or the attorney general.
This is an unadulterated power play and invasion of a candidate's privacy. And I suggest all out there looking for work decline the credit check as a part of the interview process.
/.'ers beware!
I'm curious where the companies are getting the social security numbers from. I've never been asked for mine during an interview. And honestly, I don't think I'd be willing to fork that over until after I've been hired (even before reading this article). They just don't have a need for that much information as part of the interview process.
What's next, asking candidates about their sex lives, since a satisfied employee is a productive employee?
Whoop-de-doo, one free copy every year. So if things start hitting my credit report the day after I check it, I'm screwed for 364 days unless I somehow find out about it and can then get another copy based on suspicion of fraud. How much does it cost the reporting agencies to let you get an online copy far more often, like once a week or once a month? Just about nothing. I could understand not being able to get a paper copy that often, since that actually has costs. But online, come on. Once a year is a joke (but still better than never, I suppose).
Ok. COps deny a lawyer, because they are attempting to sweat a confession. Hours later, after filling him with coffe and water, they deny him use of the bathroom. They get their confession after hours of interrogation. But he requested a lawyer. No confession. He goes free. State cannot prosecute. State does NOT prosecute. This guy wins the criminal lottery and goes free?
Yes the state can too prosecute. They just can't use the confession. If they actually had other evidence linking him to the crime, they could use that. Or if he later confesses legitimately, they could use that as well. But just because the confession you described is inadmissable (as well it should be) doesn't mean that the suspect is immune from prosecution.
IANAL, but...
1)Maybe the key evidence linking him is inadmissible in court (but still reliable).
The laws surrounding collection of evidence exist for a reason. If the cops can't be trusted to collect the evidence properly, how can you trust that such evidence is really reliable?
2)Maybe the statue of limitations has expired or there are jurisdictional problems.
The statute of limitations on sex crimes is a long time, if there even is one. It the suspect hasn't committed another offense since the original, then he's probably not going to do it again. In which case having him on the registry is a moot point.
3)Maybe the victim is unwilling to press charges or has fled.
If the victim is unwilling to press, then maybe a crime wasn't really committed at all. Girl winds up pregnant, her parents are pissed, so she makes something up. She knows it didn't really happen, so her conscience doesn't let her press charges.
4)Maybe what the person did is despicable but not criminal, e.g. someone with HIV who knowingly refuses to use protection or inform his/her partners.
Intentionally infecting someone with a fatal disease will be considered attempted murder in just about all jurisdictions. There was a case in New York State a while back where a guy did just that. He's currently in jail.
In the end I'd rather have my daughter kidnapped than a crackhead roaming through my house at night. Paying ransom for my daughter is (you asked for it) merely monetary damage while the crackhead in my daughter's bedroom would be the end of my life as I know it.
Merely monetary damage? Huh? Which kidnappings are you reading about? A significant percentage of abducted kids are sexually abused and/or killed. Does anybody even kidnap for ransom anymore, outside of third-world countries? Seems to me that the risks of collecting the ransom money are just too great. (And now that I venture over to Wikipedia, they claim that kidnapping for ransom is nearly non-existent in the U.S. today)
I'd much prefer the crackhead in my house to my kid getting abducted. At least while someone's in the house I can do something about it. And a crackhead is more interested in money/jewelry/valuables than a kid, methinks. Easier to fence a laptop than a child.
It's a theory of mine that the lack of interest in space exploration is at least partially due to light pollution obscuring our view of the night sky. Whenever I find myself in a really dark place (and living in the northeast US, such places are hard to come by) I always look up in wonder. I can just lie down and stare up at the stars for hours. Looking at the hazy glow of the Milky Way, watching satellites go by and shooting stars streaking across the sky... it's hard to not be interested in finding out more about what's up there. But in many cities it's hard to even see the Big Dipper. It's not surprising people have no interest in space when many of them don't have a connection to it anymore.
I know this is Slashdot and all but the "did you read the article?" accusation when somebody posts something you don't agree with is getting rather tiring. You disagree with me, fine, but don't go flinging accusations.
I can't speak for the other folks out there, but the only I time I ask if someone read the article is when they post something that is a complete non-sequitur. Which I found your post to be - a law to help defendants get a fair trial gets turned into something straight out of Stalinist Russia.
And if the information released by the officials shouldn't be publicly known, that's the officials' problem, not the paper's. Maybe the lawyers should be threatening them, not foreign news organizations.
As far as we know lawyers aren't threatening anyone, which is how this thread arrived at where it is now: the NY Times took it upon themselves to not make the article available to British readers. And if the information shouldn't be publicly known and the NYT knows that it shouldn't be publicly known, then yes, it is their problem if they publish it.
If you're going to argue that journalistic censorship is a good thing, you then open the door to arguments such as "we shouldn't be talking about Falun Gong and the people who practice it because China hates that" or "we shouldn't be publishing anything that dictator X of country Y feels doesn't advance his/her causes" (in that case, we wouldn't know about illegal warrantless wiretapping here in the US, for example, because the publishing of the story was not in line with the power grab plans of the government).
Did you even read the article? The law is to prevent the press from basically convicting a defendant in the public's eye before the trial even begins, so as to help ensure a defendant gets a fair trial. And yet here you are talking about dictators and the Falun Gong, as if it were Google in China all over again.
Just look at the U.S. press coverage at the beginning of the recent JonBenet Ramsey snafu for a perfect example of what the media can do. The day it all started CNN was saying how this might finally provide closure for the Ramsey family. Can the guy even get back into the U.S. before they convict him?
All that said, I'm not sure this law is a good thing; allowing the press to publicize that a prosecutor doesn't have much evidence can help prevent and/or stop witchhunts that would otherwise go on if the media couldn't get involved, for example. But you're really blowing things way out of proportion.
Do you think suicide bombers worry about dangerous?
They may be willing to die, but they generally want to take other people down with them. Not much glory in getting yourself killed standing in front of a stove stirring hair bleach.
Thermite while not an explosive could take out a plane.
Right, and what's thermite again? Aluminum and (typically) iron oxide. I think that'd be pretty easy to detect with a metal detector.
A fairly pure from of H202 and any flammable substance could be combined in a bathroom.
TFA discusses difficulties with obtaining concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The kind you buy at the drugstore is around 5% and distilling it is dangerous.
Unless they can somehow speed up the process (fast-forward while still getting every frame and all the audio) I would find that unlikely. Not too many people are going to sit around Circuit City for 2 hours while their movie encodes.
Yeah, but the US has never lost the World Series. Ever. Must be some kind of miracle!
Missed the World Series in 1992 and 1993, eh?
Huh? Perhaps I misinterpreted the person I originally replied to, but I'm talking about limiting the door to the bank to only open to folks with a valid ATM card, so that putting in your grocery store shopping card won't work. The bank already has access to financial records, so that's clearly not a problem.
My point was that obviously the ATM has no problem validating the account, so in theory the door should be able to do the same. It's not like the door couldn't have access to whatever database the ATM uses. But if it can't be done without the PIN, then it's a moot point, since entering the PIN twice (once at the door, once at the ATM) is rather inconvenient.
And how exactly should it check for valid cards?
Umm, maybe the same way the ATM checks for valid cards? (Though not being in the banking industry, I don't know if there's any way to verify an account number without having the PIN)
You also fail to take into account luggage.
I didn't. My parent did. He said, if you recall, "And yet 747s are the most efficient known method for moving people from place to place." Makes the rest of your post rather moot.
But by nitpicking holes in the specifics of my post, you fail to comprehend the gist of the thing: that saying the 747 is the most efficient method of travel is ridiculous. The Corolla was merely an example to demonstrate that. Change the Corolla to a van. Gets less mileage, but holds more people and gear. Or stick a luggage rack on top of the car. May decrease the mileage by 25% or so, but it's still better than the plane. Or use a bus. Or use a train. Or a bicycle. As for the ocean, use a sailboat. You get the idea.
*shrug* I've gotten 41 mpg with 2 people and enough stuff for said two people for a three month trip (I drove cross-country a few years back). This consisted of the trunk packed completely full and the backseat covered up to the windows. All told, that's probably a couple more people's worth of weight. From that it's not a huge stretch to get 37 with five people. But as you said, even at 35, it's still way better than the 747.
#2 When comparing effiency [sic], you need to take into account travel time.
Don't read too well, do you? From my post:
the Jet moved you nearly 1000% faster at only a 1.7% fuel consumption increase.
Huh? Your own numbers give 4 passenger-gallons for the car, and 6.8 for the jet. How exactly is the jet's consumption only 1.7% more than the car's? It's over 40% more!
By that argument, you could state the 747 is indeed far more efficient than your car.
You could, but it depends on how you value time. It also depends on how you value seeing the part of the world you're just flying over. As I said before, I drove cross-country a couple years ago. It took us 40 days to get to the Pacific. A jet could have gotten us there in a few hours. Would I have preferred the jet? Not on your life. Not even in Kansas.
In other words, it's impossible to objectively take time into account since it requires subjective valuations.