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User: RockDoctor

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  1. Re: Preventable on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    Well,if you think that will make you impervious, enjoy.

  2. Re: Preventable on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1
    EU to UK is the exception, being an island. The rest of (mainland) Europe sees no reason to monitor the movements of people. Hostile borders (eg EU to south) generate more information. But to assume that all movements generate the same amount of data as an air flight does is false. Dangerously false.

    Consider some-American-one who goes to ... CAR for business (of whatever sort), and in the process crosses many borders, then returns to the US. (I ignore the question of who gets fuck ed on the way) Since CAR is a long way from the at - risk areas, he should not raise any alarms.

    Beyond one degree of separation, border controls are not effective.

  3. Re:No difference here on Who's In Charge During the Ebola Crisis? · · Score: 1

    If you are an American and you want to move to Canada, you need to have a job offer first,

    Yes. I went through that when I was last working in Canada. And the employer has to prove to the Canadian government that they've advertised the job adequately in Canada.

    You've got good skills, I take it? So, this isn't a problem.

    and then you still need to take the entrance exam to determine if you will be allowed to emigrate.

    Skills, languages, income ... again, this isn't a problem. They waived the languages tests for me (and my colleagues) because we weren't looking for settlement, just employment, but that wouldn't have been a problem anyway. My French is adequate, my Spanish workable (not that I need either very often). My Russian isn't worth much, but I can navigate my way around the country without getting lost or shot, so it's not useless.

    Might be worthwhile getting some of those useful rarer skills.

  4. Re:Preventable on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    The information is stored in the computer system.

    You're missing the point. In some countries (not, I take it, America ; assuming you're American, I think we've had this conversation before) your entry and exit of the country is not recorded. Not on computer, not in stamps in anyone's passport, not in face recognition at non-existant border posts. It's simply not recorded.

    For starters, I did (counts ...) 10 border crossings in my recent vacation. Only the ones into and out of the UK generated a border crossing datum. The rest, at best, recorded the movements of a hired car. And at least two of those crossings were in someone else's car. And that is in high-tech modern Europe. Go to most of Africa and there is still negligible border security if you're a person. (there's a bit more security if you're a 30-tonne truck, due to being rather more conspicuous and needing a reasonable road surface).

  5. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    The beautiful thing will be if a vaccine is produced.......watching the cognitive dissonance in all those anti-vaxers who also are posting hysterical things about ebola. Will they risk the autism?

    Just hold onto that thought for .... at least 14 months.

    GSK are not expecting to have a vaccine in production lines before 2016.

  6. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    Ebola has been around since the 70s

    Ebola virus has almost certainly been around for a lot longer than that. It was identified and characterised in the mid-1970s.

    It's entirely possible that, for millennia, whole villages or towns have been wiped out by Ebola at 10 yearly intervals. But with no survivors, nobody knew what had killed them.

  7. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    I believe

    I think I'd rather rely on published journal papers, thanks.

    that's the airborne strain that doesn't affect humans.

    Yet.

  8. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    Except for that one very specific symptom of traveling to Western Africa!

    Don't worry, that won't be a helpful symptom for much longer.

  9. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    I hope the vaccine makers and distributers are successful and that my expectations are not met.

    GSK-Beecham were putting out an item to the UK's morning TV news (I'm watching at the moment) that they don't think they could be shipping an effective vaccine before 2016, at the earliest.

  10. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    Well, I'd think with today's computer systems, it would be pretty easy to keep track where someone is flying from.

    "Com-puter sys-tems" .... sorry, but haven't you flown on hand-written tickets this year? I have. In (well, from) West Africa.

    I'm not 100% sure if all of the countries in question have a US embassy. For certain, many of them simply don't have direct flights to the US, nor do they have US-airlines flying in or out. So why would they have US-compatible systems? (I don't recall seeing a single US operator on any of the boards over the last year, but I wasn't looking for anything other than my flight)

  11. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    I don't think there are any direct flights from that area into the US. Thomas Duncan came through Brussels. It's probably impossible to totally quarantine such a large area.

    Most of the flights I saw when travelling through the area in the last year were to and from other African countries, or to and from France (they don't call it "Francophone West Africa" without reason). But I was in Abidjan one day (I think - they blur one into the other after a time) and ISTR there was a flight to Rio de Janeiro.

    But, so what about the lack of direct flights? I can get anywhere in the world with the possible exception of Antarctica within 24 hours and probably 3 flights. The door is open.

  12. Re:Just tell me on Positive Ebola Test In Second Texas Health Worker · · Score: 1

    with our flight systems, can we not pretty readily track anyone flying OUT of that area

    Because your (USA's) flight systems extend as far as the origin points of flights that terminate in your country. What happens outside that, you're dependent on other countries (or the traveller themselves) reporting information to you. (Of course, the NSA are probably perfectly well aware of the full flight history of anyone leaving the area, but they can't admit to that without being jailed.)

    Better than have it reach pandemic proportions

    It may have reached that point already. The WHO are expecting that, by Christmas/ New Year (when there will be a global surge of travel, intranationally and internationally) essentially every country in the world will have had several cases arrive from West Africa (albeit via third countries). The likelihood of secondary cases from those primary cases is high ; whether there are then tertiary cases is going to depend on local responses.

    Which doesn't mean that we're fucked - just that global vigilance is going to have to increase and efforts at containment will have to increase rapidly too. So ... maybe every international airport in the world is going to need the nearest hospital dedicating to isolation cases. And if that means that no operations which are not urgent get carried out in the remaining hospital beds, then that may be the price.

    For what it's worth, it's plausible that the number of deaths from the economic disruption caused to the three core countries is already exceeding the number of deaths due to the virus.

  13. Re:Competition urgently needed on ISPs Violating Net Neutrality To Block Encryption · · Score: 1

    While there is a certain amount of logic there, privately owned city streets

    I don't know about America, but over here in Britain we used to have private fire brigades, run by insurance companies.

    seem like a disaster to me.

    It was.

  14. Re:No Carriers on ISPs Violating Net Neutrality To Block Encryption · · Score: 1

    What someone should probably come up with is something between https and http..

    Sorry, but I don't see what http or https has got to do with this. The session in question is using telnet on port 25, not ports 80, 8080 or ... 443 for https? That should be unencrypted text at either end and whatever (transparent) compression or gets done on the way. The contents of the packets have been changed, and that shouldn't happen.

  15. Re:No difference here on Who's In Charge During the Ebola Crisis? · · Score: 1

    If you haven't been fucked by your insurance company yet,[...]; you can't win or even hope to break even.

    Well, while you probably didn't have any say in being born in America, you (probably, criminal record and skills permitting) have the option of leaving to live in the civilized world somewhere. Maybe the Canadians would accept you?

  16. Re:Not only in Finland. on Too Much Privacy: Finnish Police Want Big Euro Notes Taken Out of Circulation · · Score: 1

    "Cash" as in bills or "cash" as in a check? Everyone can handle checks, no problem.

    Cheques are either completely dead, or about to die. The banks are about to shut down the cheque-handling infrastructure and have been actively discouraging them for years. I honestly don't know if they've been shut down yet because I haven't seen one being used for ... ages.

    Regardless, I got rid of my last chequebook in ... about 1989. Which was about 4 years before I got my first credit card.

  17. Re:That's not the reason you're being ignored. on Flight Attendants Want Stricter Gadget Rules Reinstated · · Score: 1

    The only reason for the ban was RF interference. That is no longer a problem with modern devices, so the ban should end.

    So, you want the flight attendants to inspect every device before it gets used, to check that it's on the list of "modern devices" which are not a problem?

    Right, I can just see that working.

  18. Re:Oblig xkcd on VeraCrypt Is the New TrueCrypt -- and It's Better · · Score: 1

    Would deleting/destroying your keys be considered destroying evidence?

    That varies by jurisdiction. And, of course, if you've gone down the "hidden container route", then they've no way of knowing if you've given them the key to all the data.

    You do have key management issues with lots of keys ratting around though.

  19. Re:What happens with no ID? on Federal Government Removes 7 Americans From No-Fly List · · Score: 1

    "The rest of you can go on ahead," they said, as if we mighty fly on despite the loss of a teenager.

    Why would that be a problem? You're talking about someone who is close to the 18 end of teenagerhood, but even so, so what? I was hitch-hiking form one end of the country to the other when I was 14 (which was about 11 years before I first flew in a fixed-wing aircraft). Make sure the kid has a charged mobile phone, get on the plane, sort him out with a hotel room by phone, and then get on with sorting out how to move him on to catch up with the rest of the family.

    Beside, whose fault is it that the person hadn't got appropriate ID? Yours, or the young adult? They're often whinging about not being treated like adults, so ... here's your power, take the consequences if you get it wrong.

  20. Re: Chinese Virgin on China Bans "Human Flesh Searching" · · Score: 1

    It really sucks that we're stuck with Latin-1 here.

    I wonder if my recently-sorted set of cat icons will work. Slight chance.

    U+1F638 ; GRINNING CAT FACE WITH SMILING EYES ; U+1F639 ; CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ; U+1F63A ; SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH ; U+1F63B ; SMILING CAT FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES ; U+1F63c ; CAT FACE WITH WRY SMILE ; U+1F63d ; KISSING CAT FACE WITH CLOSED EYES ; U+1F63e ; POUTING CAT FACE ; U+1F63f ; CRYING CAT FACE ; U+1F640 ; WEARY CAT FACE ;

    Bollocks, no.

  21. Re:Dunno about you but on Feces-Filled Capsules Treat Bacterial Infection · · Score: 1

    I imagine the pills are fine, but any subsequent burps are rather unpleasant.

    I'd imagine that the technicians designing the pill choose appropriate packaging materials that (1) wouldn't rupture under chewing (because NOBODY reads the instructions on the package, EVER. Well known fact.) and (2) don't release their contents until after acid immersion followed by a return to more normal pH (indicating that the pill has passed the stomach and is now in the small intestine, where the bugs are desired.

    You know, people do think these things through. Unlike people looking for a quick laugh on Slashdot.

  22. Re:Preventable on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    then African nations will stop stamping US passports (that was the solution to the Cuban embargo).

    Or do what some countries do to this day - put your visa stamp on a slip of paper loose inside your passport.

    The visa stamp is a proof of your legal visitor status inside the country (typically including paying some sort of entry tax, and not carrying that proof is a crime punishable by a fine - which disappears into a pocket along with the constable's gun disappearing into his holster) ; outside the country, you don't need it.

  23. Re: Preventable on Texas Health Worker Tests Positive For Ebola · · Score: 1

    you do realize you need a passport to enter this country, and that this passport lists your country of origin and every country you've traveled to, right

    (1) Not relevant to the question of someone getting out of the infected area. And

    (2) My #1 passport contains the Muslim countries I've visited, and some of the others. My #2 passport contains American, Israeli visits and many others. The non-troublesome countries I distribute between the two passports as necessary for getting visas.

    Why do you only have one passport? Don't you travel much?

  24. Re:I'm sorry on Four Dutch Uberpop Taxi Drivers Arrested, Fined · · Score: 1
    ... before getting shot.

    Sounds good to me.

  25. Re: Purely academical interest on Ebola Vaccine Trials Forcing Tough Choices · · Score: 1

    No problems. It's a scary disease,and I've already lost access to several colleagues because of it. "Run in circles, scream and shout" isn't helpful. Neither is overconfidence.