That is trivial to circumvent. Zimbardo, Millgram, The Third Wave,...
All three of the examples you state are a ringing endorsement of what I said: In each case, it was a peer giving the orders, or gaining obedience. In none of those cases, did people fall on each other like a pack of wolves. But even if that wasn't the case, your examples still don't touch my original assertion: Human beings aren't innately violent towards their peers. They can be coaxed into doing so, but it isn't something that comes naturally to them.
Re:One can always remain anon if he tries hard eno
on
Boston Tech Vs. the Bomber
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't talk on social media. Don't tell anyone. Buy supplies with cash in different locations, spread over significant time. Wear different clothing/hat/sunglasses and don't ever use them before of after the event. Die your hair, shave, obscure your style and gender. Don't drive a car, anywhere. Don't do obvious stuff like use cellphones in the operation.
You do realize that everything you just listed is what the Department of Homeland Security trains people are the things terrorists do, right? Let me tell you something about walking through the woods unnoticed; Don't try and cover your tracks. Every attempt to cover them is, in actuality, disturbing the surroundings even more. It makes you easier to track. If you want to go unseen in the world, step lightly and deliberately, and don't move in a straight line towards your destination. Take a circular route. Walk where others have walked (deer trails, for example). Disturb little, move erratically, sleep lightly, and nobody will find you.
Which is what anyone who's spent any amount of time outdoors can tell you. It's common sense. The advice you're offering, if followed, would be like shooting a flare up, saying "Hi, I'm over here!" Terrorists aren't stupid. They aren't exactly smart either, but they do plan. A lot. In detail. Because they know what's coming after them when they're done: A bunch of very pissed off Marines. And intelligence isn't really important, not nearly as much as planning. That's why 9/11 happened. That's why terrorism survives to this day, despite all our efforts to stop it. They aren't stupid.
Never underestimate your opponent. If you're going to catch terrorists, you have to think like one. And you sir, are a terrible impersonation of a terrorist. The real ones know better. Which is unfortunate. If they were more like you, we'd have won the war on terror by now.
Shooting lots of people seems a very specific reaction to a loss if impulse control. Why didn't he lose bladder control, or some such more obvious reaction to loss of control.
Perhaps because the centers of the brain responsible for bladder control aren't the same parts that handle aggression... otherwise our action movies would consist of burly men gunning down their enemies while wearing Depends.
The Charles Whitman article states he was predisposed to violence and popped pills.
He passed Marine basic training and a full psychological workup. They didn't find anything. He applied to study mechanical and architectural engineering as part of his efforts to become a commissioned officer. Although his college career sputtered, he maintained his reputation as an outstanding Marine, and in one case single-handedly lifted up an overturned Jeep to free fellow soldiers in an accident. There's no history of a predisposition for violence cited in any available professional medical assessments for him. The pills they found on him after he was shot were part of a survival kit that he had assembled beforehand, no doubt part of his military training. He had no history of drug abuse, and the drugs given at the time were available within the military at the time (but not today) as stimulants for long-term deployments.
The article that you read, undoubtedly is sensationalist garbage, an attempt to try to explain irrational impulses. Because if it can be explained, then he can be blamed. We certainly don't want a mass murderer to appear as though his violence was the result of an uncontrollable medical condition -- because that would mean that the violence wasn't preventable. It would mean we were powerless against it. It would mean, most critically for the average person, that a higher moral authority didn't exist and didn't prevent it from happening -- that the universe doesn't reward good behavior and punish bad behavior, but that it doesn't care. That sometimes, bad things just happen. Whatever article you read, is based on emotive reasoning.
In actuality, this was a perfectly normal man who, likely as a result of an emergent medical condition, lost his impulse control through no fault of his own, became violent, and killed a bunch of people before being killed himself. That doesn't at all fit with our need for vengance -- though people usually call it 'justice' instead. But it isn't. The need for vengance is a major motivation for our justice system, just not one anyone wants to discuss because it's taboo.
Yes. And they didn't take into account whether there's any way a pressure cooker would fit inside said backpack, probably because they have never seen a pressure cooker.
I have. One could fit inside a backpack. But it would be a bloated backpack -- you'd have to carry/hold it. Trying to walk with a giant metal can rolling back and forth against your back would make you stand out in a crowd. And given the amount of materials they estimate to be in the backpack, there's a good chance it would rip the seams open if you tried, letting your makeshift bomb fall out before getting it to the target.
Which means that, in all likelihood, you're looking for someone carrying a backpack, not wearing it.
No, I have not. Differing definitions do not mean differing underlying psychological conditions. My point was that violence is inherently anti-social. It doesn't matter whether you're anti-social with a lot of dead bodies in a short period of time, or anti-social with a lot of dead bodies over an extended period of time, you've still got a screw loose.
For this reason, I have to wonder if many of these mass killings were not caused by a mental illness, but by the consequences of being ostracized and outcast due to having the mental illness.
Despite reams of scientific studies and a great many books on criminology indicating that being ostracized and outcast is a stereotype, not a fact. You're drawing on a common prejudice that has no empirical basis.
They also found Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, thousands of times. 4Chan is not exactly a bastion of reliable information. Now I get what you're saying about crowdsourcing, but there's another, older term, for this sort of thing:
Prevention is totally possible. Strip all those pesky rights and liberties, problem solved.
It's a little known fact that an investigation of serial murderers has revealed that there isn't a single common motivation amongst them, nor is there a profile. The quintessential serial murderer, Charles Whitman, who climbed a clock tower and sniped dozens below, was at the time cast as the "typical loner". It wasn't released at the time that he had begged his doctors to help him for months beforehand, saying he was developing violent impulses and he didn't know why. He wrote a note just before climbing the tower asking that they do an autopsy after and look at his brain. They did. They found a tumor pressing against a region of the brain responsible for impulse control. The autopsy report at the time (incorrectly) stated that the tumor had no effect on his behavior.
There have been studies done linking lead poisoning to aggression control -- after banning lead in gasoline, the crime rate in every country that did so dropped within a few years by double-digit percentages. I guess what my point here is, is that prevention isn't possible because we don't understand what causes violent behavior. There isn't a single common thread linking them all; There is no profile, and sometimes no violent history. For some reason, perfectly normal people just... break. And it's likely there are many causes. But the takeaway here is that it is not in our nature to be violent to our peers unless threatened. Violent impulses are inherently anti-social, and the human race is a social one. Now, before you argue, note the caveat above: our peers. Our tribe. Our family, etc. Not strangers. In the same way ant colonies will war with each other so do we: But it is not a behavioral norm to attack our peers.
Which is why, in the final analysis, stripping away people's rights and liberties will do exactly dick for prevention. All it will do is lower the quality of life for everyone, while accomplishing a vanishingly small improvement in the safety of the same. We need to understand violence better before we can achieve long-term gains. Imagine if researchers discovered a drug that removes violent impulses. In fact, for schizophrenics, that's more or less exactly what we have today: A common mental condition which, if untreated, leads to violent impulses, but if treated, creates a productive and contributing member of society. Should we lock them up... or give them medical treatment?
Arguments for reductions in our civil rights and freedoms in order to improve safety are fundamentally flawed. The two aren't related -- not statistically, not empirically... there is no association between the two, except in our own worldviews which demand a link be there when one is not. And we do it because we want to feel like we have control. But we don't. We don't even know why... if there even is a why. And that is deeply unsettling to most. That's why people cry out for restrictions... not because they'll do any good, but because they feel a need to do something, anything, to restore their sense of personal power.
Not in the article: Success rates and false positives.
The problem with these type of technologies is that even if they're 99% effective, that still means they're useless. You need to be about 99.9% effective before the false positive rate drops to a point where it is investigationally useful. If these technologies happen to finger the person who did this, everyone will point to it as proof that it works. But I can tell you right now, there won't be any news stories of the dozens to hundreds detained, questioned, and humiliated by simply matching an arbitrary profile -- because in both the media's eyes and the general public, that would be flinging mud on a "hero".
I'm all for investigation into these technologies... but none of them are mature enough yet to be used in criminal investigations responsibly.
You seem to have confused IT with R&D -- it's not Corporate IT's job to invent new technologies like the Internet.
Dude, I work in "Corporate IT", and yes, my job is to invent new technologies. Amusingly, most of the new stuff I write is to fix the broken old stuff they haphazardly implimented because the bean counters said we didn't need a budget as big as originally specified to get the job done.
The reason the bean counters are counting beans is to make sure there's enough beans to keep the company running.
The reason us engineers refer to them as bean counters is due to the old proverb "penny wise and pound foolish." Bean counters cut corners wherever they can. The bean counter says if we use this kind of concrete instead of that kind, it'll cure faster and we'll save on labor. The engineer knows that the concrete was chosen because it has less fracturing risk. So the bean counter saves the project $30,000 now, but then the bridge needs an additional $350,000 in materials and labor over the service life. That's why we hate bean counters -- they only thing of the "now". They rarely look at the big picture.
Installing the latest and greatest bleeding edge technology is rarely the best option unless...
Whoa there cowboy. Nobody said adopting the "latest and greatest". We're talking about packet-switched networks needing a redesign because they're costing us a fortune in security, labor, etc., because of a design decision made early on that turned out to be less than optimal. The argument here is that we can spend more up front, but save a lot more in maintenance down the road. It has nothing to do with "cutting edge" anything.
...nothing could go wrong with allowing the network to be software controlled from a remote/external server - right?
What he's talking about doesn't necessarily mean the server is remote; It could reside on the same system. But by separating the roles, you could move it to another system within the same administrative domain, and it also reduces the vulnerability profile, if only because of KISS... fewer things for the software to do means fewer bugs and bugs that are found are easier to troubleshoot.
Once again, bean counters chime in with the usual rhetoric. "It's impossible. It can't work! It'll be too expensive! Implimentation will be difficult! The benefits aren't enough!"
Sorry, with an attitude like that, the Internet wouldn't exist. Let me tell you something about IT: Never listen to the bean counters. If you think you can do it, go for it. Nothing pisses people off more than saying it's impossible and then being shoved out of the way by the person doing it. And I'm all for pissing off the mediocre... any day of the week.
Speaking of weighing evidence, can you be a little more specific than a vague reference to "half a dozen smaller countries"? It's not possible to take such claims seriously. They certainly don't constitute grounds to think less of Mozilla, but they do raise doubts about you if this is your best way of establishing credibility. (And no, you can't date my daughter either, in case you were wondering. You're definitely not in her league.)
From the summary of the article: "Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan". And no, I wouldn't want to date your daughter, if she's got a personality anything like yours though, I can well imagine your desperation to find her someone.
Are you really this stupid? Do you not understand how gasses and liquids behave when subjected to sudden pressure changes? I can boil water by simply throwing it in a vaccum...
Let's keep the comparison apples to apples, and either note that being doused in a fluorohydrocarbon will probably do little more than to cool you down a bit; or that being doused in carbon monoxide is not exactly the start of a good night on the town, either.
Dude, it won't "cool you down" a bit. It will, upon being exposed to fire, pass through your skin without leaving any evidence of its passage, and thereupon start to chemically burn your body from the inside out.
We don't know how that compares to this compound, all we know is that, under the right circumstances, it can produce HF, while the same can be said of gasoline and CO.
Exposure to carbon monoxide or gasoline is readily treatable. If I expose you to hydrofloric acid... shooting you in the face would be a mercy compared to what you'll experience over the next (and last) few days of your life, as your body dies, piece by piece, cell by cell, and there is no pain medication strong enough to make you comfortable. You will be in screaming agony until you finally pass, days later, your skin grayed and slagging off, blood pooling and pouring out at the cracks whenever you move.
BUT PLEASE, TELL US ALL HOW IT'S JUST LIKE INHALING SOME CAR EXHAUST OR GETTING SPLASHED WITH GASOLINE.
I know that I'm more inclined to use a product that is squarely on the side of human rights than one which can be used as an instrument of oppression.
Then you may want to consider not using Mozilla. They're talking about pulling the certificate authority of a half dozen smaller countries on the suspicion that it has cooperated with those governments' lawful requests to monitor their citizens internet access. Or as it is called on slashdot, "spying." But here's the thing: There's no proof. It's just a suspicion... and it's a suspicion based on guilt by association no less.
So Mozilla is proposing forcing some of the people in these countries to use insecure communications on the suspicion that their governments may be trying to force their citizens to use insecure communications.
Those numbers by themselves are useless in predicting the number of cases of exposure per year. Unfortunately, accurate numbers for the hours an average person drives are hard to come by, but by miles it's around 13,476 per year. Let's high-ball it for the sake of discussion and say the average speed of a motor vehicle is going to be 60 MPH. That means the average driver then spends 224.6 hours in their vehicle.
So the risk to the driver per year would be, er, about 1 in 13.3 million. "Coincidentally" that's about the same rate of you sustaining life-threatening injuries in a car accident, per year.
Or put another way... the statistics look safe, but the reality is... you've made it highly probable that after being trapped in your car, shit burning everywhere, you now have another hazard to face: Your air conditioner is now leaking a highly toxic gas which, if inhaled, could kill you and anyone who tries to rescue you. This particular failure mode will be common in a serious car accident.
Now, while you're sitting your car, chest impacted with the steering wheel, blood gushing from your nose, smoke and flames everywhere, I want you to think about this: Do I, a potential rescuer, want to risk walking into a fume of toxic gasses that the CDC says is very deadly and could be a very effective chemical weapon for terrorists... to save your ass?
Hangon... I'm still thinking about it.
Thinking.
Can you please stop screaming? Trying to think here, HELLLO.
but I would think 500C is a bit unusual for an engine to operate at. That's roughly 900F, well above the melting point of, say, lead, and getting close to that of aluminum or magnesium.
If you pop open the hood and look along the sides of the engines, you'll notice that even though your block is aluminum, your exhaust manifold is not. The operating temperature of that will vary from 500 to 1000F for a V6 or V8. It will be higher if it is a rotary engine, or turbo-charged. A turbo-charger works by taking the pressure of the exhaust and using that to drive a turbine that compresses air and feeds it into the intake -- as a result, the exhaust will be at a much higher pressure, typically 9-12 PSI, and that results in the excess heat not dissipating as quickly. 1000F is easily attainable in a turbo-charged engine, like those typically found on the higher-end vehicles this refrigerant was/is installed in.
So by the time your engine block has reached 500C, you should already have run a good ways away.
As indicated earlier, the engine block is not the only source of heat under the hood, nor is it the hottest location. Also, the ignition temperature of gasoline can be much lower than 280C -- it can be as low as 232C (495F).
tetraflouropropene sounds like a hard chemical to aerosolize, which is also a condition needed for it to release HF.
It is in a closed loop refrigeration system. The typical pressures for the "high" side of a typical system is 200-350 PSI. Needless to say, a leak in the system would result in already-heated liquid that is designed to vaporize at 15-25 PSI being released into the atmosphere (at zero PSI)... which makes converting it to a gaseous state a simple matter of poking a hole somewhere in either loop; Though it would be somewhat more disasterous on the "high" side of the compressor.
So to recap: Your understanding of physics is based on incorrect assumptions, and is incomplete as well.
Can't be much more dangerous than gasoline, which can kill you under far less unusual circumstances.
Yes, if you drink it I suppose. But many people have been doused in gasoline and unless they are lit on fire, find that it simply stinks and itches. And in many cases, people have survived being burned by gasoline spills that have caught fire. The same can not be said of anyone exposed to hydrofluoric acid. The CDC has a few things to say about it... namely that it can be used as a chemical weapon and is exceptionally toxic and fatal even in small amounts. Gasoline on the other hand...
The requirements for something like these PV compounds are far lower.
Yes, there's no disagreement there. I'm just saying, creating a list of potentially useful molecules is only the first step in the search. Just like it is with "Pharma". Nobody's claiming otherwise...
Just have your mom insert a Steriflow brand catheter once a week, and never need to take your hands from the controls!"
Unless your mom is a trained nurse, that's actually a really, really bad idea. Self-catheterization can cause permanent and serious injury if done incorrectly. It would be a lot safer, and just as cost-effective, to use a chemical toilet. These are commonly sold to hunters and for people doing construction work at remote sites where conventional facilities are not available. As well, it doesn't impede wanking at the computer. You know, as long as we're playing the stereotype card.:)
That HF production scenario involved Daimler spraying HFO-1234yf over a burning hot engine block.
Okay, am I the only one that thinks that putting a chemical that, when exposed to high heat or fire, converts to one that can cause death if it comes in contact with a patch of skin smaller than the palm of your hand for a few seconds in a car's engine compartment is a really dumb idea? In the event of a front-end collision, you've got shit spraying and leaking everywhere, smoke, flames, people dead, dying, or injured... and you're suggesting that we should introduce into an already inherently dangerous situation for first responders to walk into... the risk of exposure to an airborn acid that can kill them if they come in contact with it and likely wouldn't know at the time they did?
I'm sorry, but I'm with Congress on this: The woman that approved this was a flaming retard that, on no account, should be put in a position of authority over approving other compounds that could potentially save a company a few bucks at the expense of people's lives and health.
That's like saying that if you've shoplifted, you're also a rapist and murderer in the making for sure. Am I the only one who has a problem with extrapolating like this?
Yes. The average person believes in the Just World Hypothesis (google it), which is more or less that they believe in a higher moral authority that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. So, whenever someone is accused of something, there's the presumption that they must have done something, otherwise why would they be persecuted? It's the same reason you hear people who are wealthy spouting off about how they deserved it, or got there with "hard work", and everyone else is just lazy freeloaders. These people, on a very basic emotional level, reject the idea of random chance. That you can't just be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's the same logic that leads to "She was asking to be raped with that outfit". All of this is based on the fundamental idea that the universe gives a damn whether you're a good person, or a bad one.
But in truth, the universe doesn't care. Most people are wealthy because of a fortunate string of events, which all together are improbable, but happen just often enough. It's like winning the lottery -- there's a 100% chance that someone will win, and for them, it's going to be a life altering event. But there's about a 99.999--% chance that it won't be you, which makes playing the lottery an incredible waste of money.
Bottom line? People are superstitious. Even well-educated and literate ones like people who work with information technology all day. I mean, just look at this thread... despite all of their education and intelligence, they're still ever-willing to believe, even subconsciously, that the universe is fair.
Yes, it could lead to an organic compound that could do that. It could also lead to an organic compound like the one recently installed into BMWs that, when exposed to fire, converts in an aerosol of the deadliest acid known to man. It was marketed as a "green" alternative to existing refridgerants... and it was approved by the EPA. Twenty thousand molecules sounds impressive -- but the odds of finding one that meets safety requirements and is still effective isn't good. Pharmaceutical companies test thousands of compounds every year... and very, very few of those find a medical application. It's the same story here.
So yes, good first step. Good exploratory research. Don't get your hopes up.
One is that the Swedish prosecution is hopelessly corrupt
Okay, I'mma let you finish, but I just wanted to know... how's Julian Assange doing? I heard something about... something happening in Sweden... something about... being hopelessly corrupt, something about the United States and backroom deals. Oh, sorry for interrupting you. Please, continue...
and has decided to level very, very specific yet trumped up charges against him,
Rule #1 about lying? Be specific. And Rule #1 about prosecuting? Trump it up -- it gives you something to negotiate with. Also, it may scare the defendant into cutting a deal. So both of these are things routinely done by any prosecutor. Routinely.
The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers. Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.
Okay, let me fix this for you: The other is that a guy who knows the government is looking for a reason to bring him down. Any reason. And this guy's obviously intelligent and literate; He built one of the largest websites on the internet. So we're left to ponder... just why would someone who's intelligent, and well-known, and the government is watching his every move, do something so heineously stupid? Ah well, we can always fall back on Well he must have been doing something!(tm) Because you know, the police would never stoop so low as to come up with bogus charges just to shut someone up they find irritating. So, wanna come with me to the protest later this afternoon?
Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.
Right. Not talking to the police is a sure sign of guilt. Because the interrogator doesn't have 25 years of experience in getting confessions out of people, and turning even the most innocent and and exculpatory statement into something that can be used to crucify the guy. He's just a totally nice guy who I'm sure really just wants to help out the accomplice here. And I'm George Washington.
Your argument is a house of cards. It's stacked with bullshit emotive reasoning and not a lick of actual evidence. Which is not unlike the government's case! But hey, when there's a society full of people like you willing to crucify someone based only on mere appearances of impropriety, who needs evidence?
Which is actually rather my point here -- not to blast you out of the water (though, incidentally, I did), but to point out that such errors in reasoning are so common that they contribute massively to our prison overpopulation and the convictions of innocent people. Because people are mostly emotional, not logical -- and they're swayed easily by appearances, not facts. See also: The Innocence Project. Such problems are so commonplace that there's an entire organization dedicated simply to picking out people they can prove beyond any doubt are totally and completely innocent, and then fighting (hard, I might add!) to get the justice system to, I don't know... be just? Releasing the wrongly convicted, even in the case of overwhelming evidence of innocence, is actually really, really hard. And all of this, this entire issue -- is because of logic just like yours. Emotional reasoning.
Slashdot Mirror
That is trivial to circumvent. Zimbardo, Millgram, The Third Wave, ...
All three of the examples you state are a ringing endorsement of what I said: In each case, it was a peer giving the orders, or gaining obedience. In none of those cases, did people fall on each other like a pack of wolves. But even if that wasn't the case, your examples still don't touch my original assertion: Human beings aren't innately violent towards their peers. They can be coaxed into doing so, but it isn't something that comes naturally to them.
Don't talk on social media.
Don't tell anyone.
Buy supplies with cash in different locations, spread over significant time.
Wear different clothing/hat/sunglasses and don't ever use them before of after the event.
Die your hair, shave, obscure your style and gender.
Don't drive a car, anywhere.
Don't do obvious stuff like use cellphones in the operation.
You do realize that everything you just listed is what the Department of Homeland Security trains people are the things terrorists do, right? Let me tell you something about walking through the woods unnoticed; Don't try and cover your tracks. Every attempt to cover them is, in actuality, disturbing the surroundings even more. It makes you easier to track. If you want to go unseen in the world, step lightly and deliberately, and don't move in a straight line towards your destination. Take a circular route. Walk where others have walked (deer trails, for example). Disturb little, move erratically, sleep lightly, and nobody will find you.
Which is what anyone who's spent any amount of time outdoors can tell you. It's common sense. The advice you're offering, if followed, would be like shooting a flare up, saying "Hi, I'm over here!" Terrorists aren't stupid. They aren't exactly smart either, but they do plan. A lot. In detail. Because they know what's coming after them when they're done: A bunch of very pissed off Marines. And intelligence isn't really important, not nearly as much as planning. That's why 9/11 happened. That's why terrorism survives to this day, despite all our efforts to stop it. They aren't stupid.
Never underestimate your opponent. If you're going to catch terrorists, you have to think like one. And you sir, are a terrible impersonation of a terrorist. The real ones know better. Which is unfortunate. If they were more like you, we'd have won the war on terror by now.
Shooting lots of people seems a very specific reaction to a loss if impulse control. Why didn't he lose bladder control, or some such more obvious reaction to loss of control.
Perhaps because the centers of the brain responsible for bladder control aren't the same parts that handle aggression... otherwise our action movies would consist of burly men gunning down their enemies while wearing Depends.
The Charles Whitman article states he was predisposed to violence and popped pills.
He passed Marine basic training and a full psychological workup. They didn't find anything. He applied to study mechanical and architectural engineering as part of his efforts to become a commissioned officer. Although his college career sputtered, he maintained his reputation as an outstanding Marine, and in one case single-handedly lifted up an overturned Jeep to free fellow soldiers in an accident. There's no history of a predisposition for violence cited in any available professional medical assessments for him. The pills they found on him after he was shot were part of a survival kit that he had assembled beforehand, no doubt part of his military training. He had no history of drug abuse, and the drugs given at the time were available within the military at the time (but not today) as stimulants for long-term deployments.
The article that you read, undoubtedly is sensationalist garbage, an attempt to try to explain irrational impulses. Because if it can be explained, then he can be blamed. We certainly don't want a mass murderer to appear as though his violence was the result of an uncontrollable medical condition -- because that would mean that the violence wasn't preventable. It would mean we were powerless against it. It would mean, most critically for the average person, that a higher moral authority didn't exist and didn't prevent it from happening -- that the universe doesn't reward good behavior and punish bad behavior, but that it doesn't care. That sometimes, bad things just happen. Whatever article you read, is based on emotive reasoning.
In actuality, this was a perfectly normal man who, likely as a result of an emergent medical condition, lost his impulse control through no fault of his own, became violent, and killed a bunch of people before being killed himself. That doesn't at all fit with our need for vengance -- though people usually call it 'justice' instead. But it isn't. The need for vengance is a major motivation for our justice system, just not one anyone wants to discuss because it's taboo.
Yes. And they didn't take into account whether there's any way a pressure cooker would fit inside said backpack, probably because they have never seen a pressure cooker.
I have. One could fit inside a backpack. But it would be a bloated backpack -- you'd have to carry/hold it. Trying to walk with a giant metal can rolling back and forth against your back would make you stand out in a crowd. And given the amount of materials they estimate to be in the backpack, there's a good chance it would rip the seams open if you tried, letting your makeshift bomb fall out before getting it to the target.
Which means that, in all likelihood, you're looking for someone carrying a backpack, not wearing it.
You've confused serial killing and mass killing.
No, I have not. Differing definitions do not mean differing underlying psychological conditions. My point was that violence is inherently anti-social. It doesn't matter whether you're anti-social with a lot of dead bodies in a short period of time, or anti-social with a lot of dead bodies over an extended period of time, you've still got a screw loose.
For this reason, I have to wonder if many of these mass killings were not caused by a mental illness, but by the consequences of being ostracized and outcast due to having the mental illness.
Despite reams of scientific studies and a great many books on criminology indicating that being ostracized and outcast is a stereotype, not a fact. You're drawing on a common prejudice that has no empirical basis.
You missed the point. If you lock everyone into a prison cell at age 18, you'll reduce crime significantly.
No, you'll just move crime into the prison.
4chan may have found them... http://imgur.com/a/sUrnA
They also found Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, thousands of times. 4Chan is not exactly a bastion of reliable information. Now I get what you're saying about crowdsourcing, but there's another, older term, for this sort of thing:
Witch hunt.
Prevention is totally possible. Strip all those pesky rights and liberties, problem solved.
It's a little known fact that an investigation of serial murderers has revealed that there isn't a single common motivation amongst them, nor is there a profile. The quintessential serial murderer, Charles Whitman, who climbed a clock tower and sniped dozens below, was at the time cast as the "typical loner". It wasn't released at the time that he had begged his doctors to help him for months beforehand, saying he was developing violent impulses and he didn't know why. He wrote a note just before climbing the tower asking that they do an autopsy after and look at his brain. They did. They found a tumor pressing against a region of the brain responsible for impulse control. The autopsy report at the time (incorrectly) stated that the tumor had no effect on his behavior.
There have been studies done linking lead poisoning to aggression control -- after banning lead in gasoline, the crime rate in every country that did so dropped within a few years by double-digit percentages. I guess what my point here is, is that prevention isn't possible because we don't understand what causes violent behavior. There isn't a single common thread linking them all; There is no profile, and sometimes no violent history. For some reason, perfectly normal people just... break. And it's likely there are many causes. But the takeaway here is that it is not in our nature to be violent to our peers unless threatened. Violent impulses are inherently anti-social, and the human race is a social one. Now, before you argue, note the caveat above: our peers. Our tribe. Our family, etc. Not strangers. In the same way ant colonies will war with each other so do we: But it is not a behavioral norm to attack our peers.
Which is why, in the final analysis, stripping away people's rights and liberties will do exactly dick for prevention. All it will do is lower the quality of life for everyone, while accomplishing a vanishingly small improvement in the safety of the same. We need to understand violence better before we can achieve long-term gains. Imagine if researchers discovered a drug that removes violent impulses. In fact, for schizophrenics, that's more or less exactly what we have today: A common mental condition which, if untreated, leads to violent impulses, but if treated, creates a productive and contributing member of society. Should we lock them up... or give them medical treatment?
Arguments for reductions in our civil rights and freedoms in order to improve safety are fundamentally flawed. The two aren't related -- not statistically, not empirically... there is no association between the two, except in our own worldviews which demand a link be there when one is not. And we do it because we want to feel like we have control. But we don't. We don't even know why... if there even is a why. And that is deeply unsettling to most. That's why people cry out for restrictions... not because they'll do any good, but because they feel a need to do something, anything, to restore their sense of personal power.
Not in the article: Success rates and false positives.
The problem with these type of technologies is that even if they're 99% effective, that still means they're useless. You need to be about 99.9% effective before the false positive rate drops to a point where it is investigationally useful. If these technologies happen to finger the person who did this, everyone will point to it as proof that it works. But I can tell you right now, there won't be any news stories of the dozens to hundreds detained, questioned, and humiliated by simply matching an arbitrary profile -- because in both the media's eyes and the general public, that would be flinging mud on a "hero".
I'm all for investigation into these technologies... but none of them are mature enough yet to be used in criminal investigations responsibly.
You seem to have confused IT with R&D -- it's not Corporate IT's job to invent new technologies like the Internet.
Dude, I work in "Corporate IT", and yes, my job is to invent new technologies. Amusingly, most of the new stuff I write is to fix the broken old stuff they haphazardly implimented because the bean counters said we didn't need a budget as big as originally specified to get the job done.
The reason the bean counters are counting beans is to make sure there's enough beans to keep the company running.
The reason us engineers refer to them as bean counters is due to the old proverb "penny wise and pound foolish." Bean counters cut corners wherever they can. The bean counter says if we use this kind of concrete instead of that kind, it'll cure faster and we'll save on labor. The engineer knows that the concrete was chosen because it has less fracturing risk. So the bean counter saves the project $30,000 now, but then the bridge needs an additional $350,000 in materials and labor over the service life. That's why we hate bean counters -- they only thing of the "now". They rarely look at the big picture.
Installing the latest and greatest bleeding edge technology is rarely the best option unless...
Whoa there cowboy. Nobody said adopting the "latest and greatest". We're talking about packet-switched networks needing a redesign because they're costing us a fortune in security, labor, etc., because of a design decision made early on that turned out to be less than optimal. The argument here is that we can spend more up front, but save a lot more in maintenance down the road. It has nothing to do with "cutting edge" anything.
...nothing could go wrong with allowing the network to be software controlled from a remote/external server - right?
What he's talking about doesn't necessarily mean the server is remote; It could reside on the same system. But by separating the roles, you could move it to another system within the same administrative domain, and it also reduces the vulnerability profile, if only because of KISS... fewer things for the software to do means fewer bugs and bugs that are found are easier to troubleshoot.
Once again, bean counters chime in with the usual rhetoric. "It's impossible. It can't work! It'll be too expensive! Implimentation will be difficult! The benefits aren't enough!"
Sorry, with an attitude like that, the Internet wouldn't exist. Let me tell you something about IT: Never listen to the bean counters. If you think you can do it, go for it. Nothing pisses people off more than saying it's impossible and then being shoved out of the way by the person doing it. And I'm all for pissing off the mediocre... any day of the week.
Speaking of weighing evidence, can you be a little more specific than a vague reference to "half a dozen smaller countries"? It's not possible to take such claims seriously. They certainly don't constitute grounds to think less of Mozilla, but they do raise doubts about you if this is your best way of establishing credibility. (And no, you can't date my daughter either, in case you were wondering. You're definitely not in her league.)
From the summary of the article: "Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan". And no, I wouldn't want to date your daughter, if she's got a personality anything like yours though, I can well imagine your desperation to find her someone.
So it will evaporate, not aerosolize?
Are you really this stupid? Do you not understand how gasses and liquids behave when subjected to sudden pressure changes? I can boil water by simply throwing it in a vaccum...
Let's keep the comparison apples to apples, and either note that being doused in a fluorohydrocarbon will probably do little more than to cool you down a bit; or that being doused in carbon monoxide is not exactly the start of a good night on the town, either.
Dude, it won't "cool you down" a bit. It will, upon being exposed to fire, pass through your skin without leaving any evidence of its passage, and thereupon start to chemically burn your body from the inside out.
We don't know how that compares to this compound, all we know is that, under the right circumstances, it can produce HF, while the same can be said of gasoline and CO.
Exposure to carbon monoxide or gasoline is readily treatable. If I expose you to hydrofloric acid... shooting you in the face would be a mercy compared to what you'll experience over the next (and last) few days of your life, as your body dies, piece by piece, cell by cell, and there is no pain medication strong enough to make you comfortable. You will be in screaming agony until you finally pass, days later, your skin grayed and slagging off, blood pooling and pouring out at the cracks whenever you move.
BUT PLEASE, TELL US ALL HOW IT'S JUST LIKE INHALING SOME CAR EXHAUST OR GETTING SPLASHED WITH GASOLINE.
I know that I'm more inclined to use a product that is squarely on the side of human rights than one which can be used as an instrument of oppression.
Then you may want to consider not using Mozilla. They're talking about pulling the certificate authority of a half dozen smaller countries on the suspicion that it has cooperated with those governments' lawful requests to monitor their citizens internet access. Or as it is called on slashdot, "spying." But here's the thing: There's no proof. It's just a suspicion... and it's a suspicion based on guilt by association no less.
So Mozilla is proposing forcing some of the people in these countries to use insecure communications on the suspicion that their governments may be trying to force their citizens to use insecure communications.
Sounds legit.
Those numbers by themselves are useless in predicting the number of cases of exposure per year. Unfortunately, accurate numbers for the hours an average person drives are hard to come by, but by miles it's around 13,476 per year. Let's high-ball it for the sake of discussion and say the average speed of a motor vehicle is going to be 60 MPH. That means the average driver then spends 224.6 hours in their vehicle.
So the risk to the driver per year would be, er, about 1 in 13.3 million. "Coincidentally" that's about the same rate of you sustaining life-threatening injuries in a car accident, per year.
Or put another way... the statistics look safe, but the reality is... you've made it highly probable that after being trapped in your car, shit burning everywhere, you now have another hazard to face: Your air conditioner is now leaking a highly toxic gas which, if inhaled, could kill you and anyone who tries to rescue you. This particular failure mode will be common in a serious car accident.
Now, while you're sitting your car, chest impacted with the steering wheel, blood gushing from your nose, smoke and flames everywhere, I want you to think about this: Do I, a potential rescuer, want to risk walking into a fume of toxic gasses that the CDC says is very deadly and could be a very effective chemical weapon for terrorists... to save your ass?
Hangon... I'm still thinking about it.
Thinking.
Can you please stop screaming? Trying to think here, HELLLO.
but I would think 500C is a bit unusual for an engine to operate at. That's roughly 900F, well above the melting point of, say, lead, and getting close to that of aluminum or magnesium.
If you pop open the hood and look along the sides of the engines, you'll notice that even though your block is aluminum, your exhaust manifold is not. The operating temperature of that will vary from 500 to 1000F for a V6 or V8. It will be higher if it is a rotary engine, or turbo-charged. A turbo-charger works by taking the pressure of the exhaust and using that to drive a turbine that compresses air and feeds it into the intake -- as a result, the exhaust will be at a much higher pressure, typically 9-12 PSI, and that results in the excess heat not dissipating as quickly. 1000F is easily attainable in a turbo-charged engine, like those typically found on the higher-end vehicles this refrigerant was/is installed in.
So by the time your engine block has reached 500C, you should already have run a good ways away.
As indicated earlier, the engine block is not the only source of heat under the hood, nor is it the hottest location. Also, the ignition temperature of gasoline can be much lower than 280C -- it can be as low as 232C (495F).
tetraflouropropene sounds like a hard chemical to aerosolize, which is also a condition needed for it to release HF.
It is in a closed loop refrigeration system. The typical pressures for the "high" side of a typical system is 200-350 PSI. Needless to say, a leak in the system would result in already-heated liquid that is designed to vaporize at 15-25 PSI being released into the atmosphere (at zero PSI)... which makes converting it to a gaseous state a simple matter of poking a hole somewhere in either loop; Though it would be somewhat more disasterous on the "high" side of the compressor.
So to recap:
Your understanding of physics is based on incorrect assumptions, and is incomplete as well.
Can't be much more dangerous than gasoline, which can kill you under far less unusual circumstances.
Yes, if you drink it I suppose. But many people have been doused in gasoline and unless they are lit on fire, find that it simply stinks and itches. And in many cases, people have survived being burned by gasoline spills that have caught fire. The same can not be said of anyone exposed to hydrofluoric acid. The CDC has a few things to say about it... namely that it can be used as a chemical weapon and is exceptionally toxic and fatal even in small amounts. Gasoline on the other hand...
The requirements for something like these PV compounds are far lower.
Yes, there's no disagreement there. I'm just saying, creating a list of potentially useful molecules is only the first step in the search. Just like it is with "Pharma". Nobody's claiming otherwise...
Can you provide a citation that doesn't come from a fear-mongering rag of an excuse for journalism?
Sure can!
(trollface)
Just have your mom insert a Steriflow brand catheter once a week, and never need to take your hands from the controls!"
Unless your mom is a trained nurse, that's actually a really, really bad idea. Self-catheterization can cause permanent and serious injury if done incorrectly. It would be a lot safer, and just as cost-effective, to use a chemical toilet. These are commonly sold to hunters and for people doing construction work at remote sites where conventional facilities are not available. As well, it doesn't impede wanking at the computer. You know, as long as we're playing the stereotype card. :)
That HF production scenario involved Daimler spraying HFO-1234yf over a burning hot engine block.
Okay, am I the only one that thinks that putting a chemical that, when exposed to high heat or fire, converts to one that can cause death if it comes in contact with a patch of skin smaller than the palm of your hand for a few seconds in a car's engine compartment is a really dumb idea? In the event of a front-end collision, you've got shit spraying and leaking everywhere, smoke, flames, people dead, dying, or injured... and you're suggesting that we should introduce into an already inherently dangerous situation for first responders to walk into... the risk of exposure to an airborn acid that can kill them if they come in contact with it and likely wouldn't know at the time they did?
I'm sorry, but I'm with Congress on this: The woman that approved this was a flaming retard that, on no account, should be put in a position of authority over approving other compounds that could potentially save a company a few bucks at the expense of people's lives and health.
That's like saying that if you've shoplifted, you're also a rapist and murderer in the making for sure. Am I the only one who has a problem with extrapolating like this?
Yes. The average person believes in the Just World Hypothesis (google it), which is more or less that they believe in a higher moral authority that rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior. So, whenever someone is accused of something, there's the presumption that they must have done something, otherwise why would they be persecuted? It's the same reason you hear people who are wealthy spouting off about how they deserved it, or got there with "hard work", and everyone else is just lazy freeloaders. These people, on a very basic emotional level, reject the idea of random chance. That you can't just be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's the same logic that leads to "She was asking to be raped with that outfit". All of this is based on the fundamental idea that the universe gives a damn whether you're a good person, or a bad one.
But in truth, the universe doesn't care. Most people are wealthy because of a fortunate string of events, which all together are improbable, but happen just often enough. It's like winning the lottery -- there's a 100% chance that someone will win, and for them, it's going to be a life altering event. But there's about a 99.999--% chance that it won't be you, which makes playing the lottery an incredible waste of money.
Bottom line? People are superstitious. Even well-educated and literate ones like people who work with information technology all day. I mean, just look at this thread... despite all of their education and intelligence, they're still ever-willing to believe, even subconsciously, that the universe is fair.
It's mankind's oldest delusion.
Yes, it could lead to an organic compound that could do that. It could also lead to an organic compound like the one recently installed into BMWs that, when exposed to fire, converts in an aerosol of the deadliest acid known to man. It was marketed as a "green" alternative to existing refridgerants... and it was approved by the EPA. Twenty thousand molecules sounds impressive -- but the odds of finding one that meets safety requirements and is still effective isn't good. Pharmaceutical companies test thousands of compounds every year... and very, very few of those find a medical application. It's the same story here.
So yes, good first step. Good exploratory research. Don't get your hopes up.
Their new company slogan should be, "And You Thought Square Enix Was Evil. Muwhahahaha. Ha. ..... Haaaaaaaaaaah."
One is that the Swedish prosecution is hopelessly corrupt
Okay, I'mma let you finish, but I just wanted to know... how's Julian Assange doing? I heard something about... something happening in Sweden... something about... being hopelessly corrupt, something about the United States and backroom deals. Oh, sorry for interrupting you. Please, continue...
and has decided to level very, very specific yet trumped up charges against him,
Rule #1 about lying? Be specific. And Rule #1 about prosecuting? Trump it up -- it gives you something to negotiate with. Also, it may scare the defendant into cutting a deal. So both of these are things routinely done by any prosecutor. Routinely.
The other is that a guy who made profits out of massive piracy of other peoples work doesn't have any moral qualms about stealing things from other peoples computers. Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.
Okay, let me fix this for you: The other is that a guy who knows the government is looking for a reason to bring him down. Any reason. And this guy's obviously intelligent and literate; He built one of the largest websites on the internet. So we're left to ponder... just why would someone who's intelligent, and well-known, and the government is watching his every move, do something so heineously stupid? Ah well, we can always fall back on Well he must have been doing something!(tm) Because you know, the police would never stoop so low as to come up with bogus charges just to shut someone up they find irritating. So, wanna come with me to the protest later this afternoon?
Note that even his friend/partner in crime Sunde isn't willing to actually state in public he thinks the guy is innocent - rather telling.
Right. Not talking to the police is a sure sign of guilt. Because the interrogator doesn't have 25 years of experience in getting confessions out of people, and turning even the most innocent and and exculpatory statement into something that can be used to crucify the guy. He's just a totally nice guy who I'm sure really just wants to help out the accomplice here. And I'm George Washington.
Your argument is a house of cards. It's stacked with bullshit emotive reasoning and not a lick of actual evidence. Which is not unlike the government's case! But hey, when there's a society full of people like you willing to crucify someone based only on mere appearances of impropriety, who needs evidence?
Which is actually rather my point here -- not to blast you out of the water (though, incidentally, I did), but to point out that such errors in reasoning are so common that they contribute massively to our prison overpopulation and the convictions of innocent people. Because people are mostly emotional, not logical -- and they're swayed easily by appearances, not facts. See also: The Innocence Project. Such problems are so commonplace that there's an entire organization dedicated simply to picking out people they can prove beyond any doubt are totally and completely innocent, and then fighting (hard, I might add!) to get the justice system to, I don't know... be just? Releasing the wrongly convicted, even in the case of overwhelming evidence of innocence, is actually really, really hard. And all of this, this entire issue -- is because of logic just like yours. Emotional reasoning.