>> All I see from your posts...that we let these people die.
Did I say you let anyone die? No. On the evidence of your post, i will, however, call you a liar.
>> You think the 'psychopathic killer' behind you will let himself get caught and not just detonate the bomb strapped to his chest...
Again, did I say that? No. i said the scanners would act as a deterrent because the target they are after is on the trains, not the platform. (Besides, there no reason to think the terrorist would be able to detonate the bomb. The Israelis have successfully prevented a number of captured suicide killers from doing just that.
Obviously, you are a simple-minded adolescent prancing blowhard. You'd rather prance around exclaiming how unafraid you are, pretending that anyone who argues common-sense is a coward. When you grow up, if that ever happens, you'll understand what the word "poseur" means. I'm pretty sure you already understand the meaning of the words "puffed-up liittle idiot."
If you don't stop terrorism, whatever the costs, then you won't have much reason to worry about threats.
>> If the point isn't saving human lives, then what is it?
The point is stopping and eliminating terrorists before they kill. You don't do that by pretending you're not afraid, or by walking around as if nothing is different, or by pedantically arguing about peripheral issues that have no bearing on the issue at hand. Nothing of what you have suggested has any cause-and-effect relationship with either ending terror and terrorists or protecting people from them.
>> If the UK or the USA took even a third of their terrorism money and put it towards building safer roads or more hospitals or training more police officers, they would save a hundredfold more lives.
But we would no have done a damn thing to keep psychopaths from killing us. You're argument is false.
>> By spending such a ridiculous amount on anti-terrorism, we are in fact giving the terrorists exactly what they want--we are allowing our *terror* to outweigh good our judgement and concern for human life.
>> Terrorism works because people like you get worked up about it.
Why is wanting to protect lives being "worked up"? I'm not quivering in my shoes. Doing nothing but walking around with false bravado won't stop psychopaths from killing people. Using scanners seems to me an appropriate deterrent. I'm not concerned about my privacy because my obligation to help save lives takes precedence over any self-centered concern I might have about a momentary and alleged loss of privacy.
>> If you want to protect people, stop the media from trying to scare the crap out of the general population for ratings.
So, you want to abandon freedom of the press because you think that the aim of terrorists is to frighten us? You think that if we muzzle the messengers everyone will be nice and happy? Absolutely wrong. Terrorists don't want to frighten us, they want to kill us. Failing that, they want us to do exactly what you propose: destroy our own freedoms.
Even if he detonates the bomb, the scanner worked as a deterrent. These guys want the bomb to go off in a moving train in order to maximize the damage.
>> Every time you step into a street you have greater odds of getting run down and killed than what you have from dying on the tube network...
So what? Because lots of other threats exits, am I supposed to take no action? Lightening ddoesn't kill many people, right? So am I supposed to be loony enough to stand next to the only tree in a meadow during an electrical storm?
I'm at a loss to understand the privacy issue here. All I see is intemperate rhetoric from people with no apparent sense of social responsibility who apparently quite willing to allow other people to be murdered rather than walk by a scanner they wouldn't even know wwas operating.
All I'm hearing from you is that you'd trade the lives of the victims in Madrid and London for some ridiculous misplaced concern about your privacy. Nice.
>> What about the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of ways you're more likely to die?
You seem to be suggesting that because many things threaten us we should take no action to counter any threat. That's insane.
>> You're talking exactly like everyone else who is causing this problem.
I'm not causing the problem. Psychopaths who want to kill us are causing the problem. So are people like you who'd rather beat your chests than take sensible and unobtrusive precautions to protect people. It is obvious that you value your own ego more than the lives of your neighbors.
I don't mind being scanned if it catches the guy behind me with a bomb strapped to his chest.
Is being scanned a privacy issue? I guess so. But being murdered is th real issue, isn't it. I'm no more worried about the loss of privacy involved in being scanned than I am in stripping off at the doctors for a medical exam. It's a no-brainer tradeoff to potentially save my life.
(Please. no braindead testosterone-laden out-of-context quotes from Ben Franklin.)
1. Technology -- use of tools -- defined and shaped humanity, and still does. If we turn away from new technology because we fear we might use it inappropriately, then we might as well forget how to make wheels and fire and join the other primates sitting in the forest eating grubs and taking up space.
2. Any advanced propulsion technology, including antimatter, is likely to be deployed only in space, not on vehicles launched from Earth. Manufacturing facilities could be base off the planet, as well.
3. Where did you get the weird notion of antimatter-powered SUV's?
>> This is flatly incorrect. When I turn on a laptop with a wireless card, the card senses the WAP and requests permission to connect. The WAP confirms that the connection is allowed, and the two begin communicating. The owner of the WAP has indeed granted permission to connect. It's unreasonable to demand that I assume that permission was inadvertent.
No, it is not incorrect. You are equating the behavior of hardware with the behavior of people. I'm talking about a human being explicitly requesting permission to use another's wireless capacity. I do not consider the automated actions of hardware to constitute a grant of permission.
You're reversing the sense of my argument. This was a case of an individual who moved his auto to a location within range of someone's signal. He then mooched off that signal without the permission of its owner.
>> Even in the default, fully open state, every access connection is a request, and every request is granted. Your argument fails because the true analogy is that you leave a door open with a person sitting next to it, and that person invites anyone who asks to go inside>
That's a techincal argument. I don't know how much legal applicability it would have. One could make much the same argument about spam. viruses and network attacks: Each packet was allowed in only because it was permitted. In neither case is a person involved. A connection may be wide open, but I question whether that amounts to giving blanket permission to the anonymous public to use it; just as leaving a door unlocked does not grant permission to enter. In my view, an open connection does not constitute legal permission to use it.
>> Is it reasonable to demand that I seek further verification when your WAP grants me permission?
Yes, because you haven't asked the owner and the owner has not granted permission.
Entering your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called trespass. That's a crime. Taking your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called burglary. That's a crime.
Even if your front door is wide open and you're out of town for two weeks, there is the rather justified assumption that rational people know the difference between the great outdoors and a building.
Technical arguments about networks very likely will not caryy weight in court. Specifically, arguments that it is the responsibility of the owner of the wireless hardware to block unwanted use is tantamount to arguing that, because we own the locks, anyone who enters through an unlocked door is not trespassing. The issue should be seen from the other point of view: That any use of the wireless connection without the permission of the connection's owner is impermissible.
The best solution to all of this is via innovative technology that would allow a wireless connection to identify the specific pieces of hadware allowed to interact with it, and to reject all others.
I'm guessing 50-75 cents for the mailer and one dollar or so USPS, FedEx UPS, minimum. Add in the cost of paying someone to retrieve, package and ship and you're easily in the $3 range. The margin on a $1 product -- any $1 product -- is so low that costs need to be minimal.
>>...none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online...
Because shipping costs would exceed the purchase price. Either the vendor would have to eat shipping cost (meaning no profit and, hence, no $1 DVD's) or the buyers would pay shipping cost (meaning the $1 DVD now costs about $3.)
Easier to buy them by the pound and dump them in the bins.
Agrguing that the government requires everyone to get an SSN and then to conclude the way to deal with identity theft is to eliminate SSN's is typical of the lame emptyheaded remarks that pass for insight on/..
There was no government requirement mandating that everyone get an SSN. The SSN serves to uniquely identify anyone who is eligible to receive Social Security benefits. I.e., anyone who has ever worked for an employer who followed the law and made SS contributions in his or her name.
Since it was so obviously convenient to use this unqiue identifier in other contexts, people did just that. And, as well, parent began acquiring SSN's for their children. This took place decades before anyone had heard of databases.
You can't discontinue SSN's without discontinuing Social Security.
The use of unique identifiers -- for SS, for private retirement programs, for medical use, for tax purposes, in the schools, etc. -- is not going to go away. Rather, it will increase.
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>> All I see from your posts...that we let these people die.
Did I say you let anyone die? No. On the evidence of your post, i will, however, call you a liar.
>> You think the 'psychopathic killer' behind you will let himself get caught and not just detonate the bomb strapped to his chest...
Again, did I say that? No. i said the scanners would act as a deterrent because the target they are after is on the trains, not the platform. (Besides, there no reason to think the terrorist would be able to detonate the bomb. The Israelis have successfully prevented a number of captured suicide killers from doing just that.
Obviously, you are a simple-minded adolescent prancing blowhard. You'd rather prance around exclaiming how unafraid you are, pretending that anyone who argues common-sense is a coward. When you grow up, if that ever happens, you'll understand what the word "poseur" means. I'm pretty sure you already understand the meaning of the words "puffed-up liittle idiot."
If you don't stop terrorism, whatever the costs, then you won't have much reason to worry about threats.
>> If the point isn't saving human lives, then what is it?
The point is stopping and eliminating terrorists before they kill. You don't do that by pretending you're not afraid, or by walking around as if nothing is different, or by pedantically arguing about peripheral issues that have no bearing on the issue at hand. Nothing of what you have suggested has any cause-and-effect relationship with either ending terror and terrorists or protecting people from them.
>> If the UK or the USA took even a third of their terrorism money and put it towards building safer roads or more hospitals or training more police officers, they would save a hundredfold more lives.
But we would no have done a damn thing to keep psychopaths from killing us. You're argument is false.
>> By spending such a ridiculous amount on anti-terrorism, we are in fact giving the terrorists exactly what they want--we are allowing our *terror* to outweigh good our judgement and concern for human life.
Wrong. They do not want that. They want us dead.
>> Terrorism works because people like you get worked up about it.
Why is wanting to protect lives being "worked up"? I'm not quivering in my shoes. Doing nothing but walking around with false bravado won't stop psychopaths from killing people. Using scanners seems to me an appropriate deterrent. I'm not concerned about my privacy because my obligation to help save lives takes precedence over any self-centered concern I might have about a momentary and alleged loss of privacy.
>> If you want to protect people, stop the media from trying to scare the crap out of the general population for ratings.
So, you want to abandon freedom of the press because you think that the aim of terrorists is to frighten us? You think that if we muzzle the messengers everyone will be nice and happy? Absolutely wrong. Terrorists don't want to frighten us, they want to kill us. Failing that, they want us to do exactly what you propose: destroy our own freedoms.
Maybe, maybe not.
Even if he detonates the bomb, the scanner worked as a deterrent. These guys want the bomb to go off in a moving train in order to maximize the damage.
>> Every time you step into a street you have greater odds of getting run down and killed than what you have from dying on the tube network...
So what? Because lots of other threats exits, am I supposed to take no action? Lightening ddoesn't kill many people, right? So am I supposed to be loony enough to stand next to the only tree in a meadow during an electrical storm?
I'm at a loss to understand the privacy issue here. All I see is intemperate rhetoric from people with no apparent sense of social responsibility who apparently quite willing to allow other people to be murdered rather than walk by a scanner they wouldn't even know wwas operating.
All I'm hearing from you is that you'd trade the lives of the victims in Madrid and London for some ridiculous misplaced concern about your privacy. Nice.
That's a good little teen-aged moron, Come back when you grow up and get a brain that's bigger than your testicles.
>> What about the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of ways you're more likely to die?
You seem to be suggesting that because many things threaten us we should take no action to counter any threat. That's insane.
>> You're talking exactly like everyone else who is causing this problem.
I'm not causing the problem. Psychopaths who want to kill us are causing the problem. So are people like you who'd rather beat your chests than take sensible and unobtrusive precautions to protect people. It is obvious that you value your own ego more than the lives of your neighbors.
If the guy behind me is caught, great. One less psychopathic killer on the loose.
I don't mind being scanned if it catches the guy behind me with a bomb strapped to his chest.
Is being scanned a privacy issue? I guess so. But being murdered is th real issue, isn't it. I'm no more worried about the loss of privacy involved in being scanned than I am in stripping off at the doctors for a medical exam. It's a no-brainer tradeoff to potentially save my life.
(Please. no braindead testosterone-laden out-of-context quotes from Ben Franklin.)
1. Technology -- use of tools -- defined and shaped humanity, and still does. If we turn away from new technology because we fear we might use it inappropriately, then we might as well forget how to make wheels and fire and join the other primates sitting in the forest eating grubs and taking up space.
2. Any advanced propulsion technology, including antimatter, is likely to be deployed only in space, not on vehicles launched from Earth. Manufacturing facilities could be base off the planet, as well.
3. Where did you get the weird notion of antimatter-powered SUV's?
There are no atrocities. But, if there were, moral perfection is not a prerequisite for self-defense.
>> This is flatly incorrect. When I turn on a laptop with a wireless card, the card senses the WAP and requests permission to connect. The WAP confirms that the connection is allowed, and the two begin communicating. The owner of the WAP has indeed granted permission to connect. It's unreasonable to demand that I assume that permission was inadvertent.
No, it is not incorrect. You are equating the behavior of hardware with the behavior of people. I'm talking about a human being explicitly requesting permission to use another's wireless capacity. I do not consider the automated actions of hardware to constitute a grant of permission.
Perhaps that people like you are pretentious poseurs prancing about in an unmerited and uninformed cynicism.
You're reversing the sense of my argument. This was a case of an individual who moved his auto to a location within range of someone's signal. He then mooched off that signal without the permission of its owner.
>> Even in the default, fully open state, every access connection is a request, and every request is granted. Your argument fails because the true analogy is that you leave a door open with a person sitting next to it, and that person invites anyone who asks to go inside>
That's a techincal argument. I don't know how much legal applicability it would have. One could make much the same argument about spam. viruses and network attacks: Each packet was allowed in only because it was permitted. In neither case is a person involved. A connection may be wide open, but I question whether that amounts to giving blanket permission to the anonymous public to use it; just as leaving a door unlocked does not grant permission to enter. In my view, an open connection does not constitute legal permission to use it.
>> Is it reasonable to demand that I seek further verification when your WAP grants me permission?
Yes, because you haven't asked the owner and the owner has not granted permission.
Entering your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called trespass. That's a crime. Taking your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called burglary. That's a crime.
Even if your front door is wide open and you're out of town for two weeks, there is the rather justified assumption that rational people know the difference between the great outdoors and a building.
Technical arguments about networks very likely will not caryy weight in court. Specifically, arguments that it is the responsibility of the owner of the wireless hardware to block unwanted use is tantamount to arguing that, because we own the locks, anyone who enters through an unlocked door is not trespassing. The issue should be seen from the other point of view: That any use of the wireless connection without the permission of the connection's owner is impermissible.
The best solution to all of this is via innovative technology that would allow a wireless connection to identify the specific pieces of hadware allowed to interact with it, and to reject all others.
Or, I just wanted to light a little fire and see what happened.
Of course, it is about commerce. No reason to be cynical. It is not immoral to work in your own best interest.
>> Being pointlessly expensive is a good thing?
No, but neither is hypocrisy.
Yes, Media Mail is the cheapest and the slowest USPS offers. Delivery time often exceeds two weeks.
I'm guessing 50-75 cents for the mailer and one dollar or so USPS, FedEx UPS, minimum. Add in the cost of paying someone to retrieve, package and ship and you're easily in the $3 range. The margin on a $1 product -- any $1 product -- is so low that costs need to be minimal.
Slashdot is a bastion of cheapness cowering in a cloak of principle.
>> ...none of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online...
Because shipping costs would exceed the purchase price. Either the vendor would have to eat shipping cost (meaning no profit and, hence, no $1 DVD's) or the buyers would pay shipping cost (meaning the $1 DVD now costs about $3.)
Easier to buy them by the pound and dump them in the bins.
Agrguing that the government requires everyone to get an SSN and then to conclude the way to deal with identity theft is to eliminate SSN's is typical of the lame emptyheaded remarks that pass for insight on /..
There was no government requirement mandating that everyone get an SSN. The SSN serves to uniquely identify anyone who is eligible to receive Social Security benefits. I.e., anyone who has ever worked for an employer who followed the law and made SS contributions in his or her name.
Since it was so obviously convenient to use this unqiue identifier in other contexts, people did just that. And, as well, parent began acquiring SSN's for their children. This took place decades before anyone had heard of databases.
You can't discontinue SSN's without discontinuing Social Security.
The use of unique identifiers -- for SS, for private retirement programs, for medical use, for tax purposes, in the schools, etc. -- is not going to go away. Rather, it will increase.