Some of the comments there say that someone else will just pull ahead of you. Ahem, they will then get tickets.
Ahem, that's where you're wrong. You would get the ticket, because you were following too close to the punk that pulled in front of you. And, unless you have video evidence backing up your claim that the prick pulled in front of you, a judge is not going to throw out that ticket.
I for one only use the browsers store password feature for the most trivial of sites. For more important sites, I use Password Safe. The program and the database fit easily on a thumb drive, and requires a master password to access. It has a user configurable time out, and a double click on an account copies the data to the clipboard for later use, allowing you to foil keyboard based sniffers.
It appears to me that most of you missed the point of what the that the poster was asking about. He was asking about OUTSIDE the game industry. The fact of the matter is, Game Programming has many applications outside the video game industry. There is a whole group of problems called Serious Games, which use things like AI development and graphics which have been perfected in video games to model real world situations.
I work with Scientists who specialize in visualization. Thus far, I haven't seen a real interest in people with that kind of specialization, but I'd imagine a MS in Game Programming is a fairly recent development. I do know that being able to apply game theories is an emerging area, but seems to sit mostly on the fringes of vis technologies. Part of the problem, I think, is that Serious Games has had a pretty high "cool" factor with geeks, but it's a little hard to get funding agencies to take anything with "game" in the name seriously. Until we can get past that, I'd suggest the more "general" (relatively) computer science degree.
that thinks this argument has much wider implications than just Open Source Software? If the judge rules for this piece of crap argument, it could pretty much shut down the web. Sites like the New York times, and ESPN would be forced to charge for every bit of content on their sites, because if they didn't, they would run the risk of losing control of their copyrighted material.
Who says anything about absolving them of responsibility? But if the parents were never made aware of what their kids had done, how could they possibly discipline them for it? It seems you want to hold parents responsible for their kids actions, but don't want to allow the parents the responsibility of disciplinging their children. This is not a criminal action, it is a civil suit. The plaintiff in this case wants monetary renumeraiton for the action of the children. The kids don't have much, so going after them doesn't make sense. Have to add the parents to the suit to get any real action. That's what adding the parents to this suit is all about.
As for "what they deserve." Make no mistake, what these kids did was wrong, but I disagree with you about your statement that their actions had any world wide impact. Sure, the medium they chose is accessable around the world, but the impact was the same as if they had spray painted the accusations on their local water tower. Quite possibly it is even less than that, due to the actual location of the website. Outside of their town, and more particularly outside of thier school, there would be a relatively few people who would know who this person is, or even care about their sexual orientation. I think the person had every right to contact the parents, tell them what the kids had done, and to check back with the parents to find out what punishment had been meted out. I'm sick and tired, however, of people's first reaction to everything being a lawsuit.
"Allowing access to the Internet, unsupervised and without restraint poses an obvious and unreasonable danger that such children would utilize the Internet for illicit purposes such as the ones alleged above," says the suit in accusing the parents of "negligent supervision."
I remember a much simpler time, when school administrators called you parents to report that you did something wrong, and allowed the parents the opportunity to discipline their own children. Apparantly, these days such information is delivered via subpoena. The person in question claims many sleepless nights worrying over the content of this fake page. It seems to me that all that useless worry could have been avoided by simply calling the kids and their parents into the office or mediating the dispute in some manner. Obviously the kids are pricks, and probably never even gave a second thought to how this would affect the other person. Given the chance, their parents might have been able to help their children understand why their behaviour was unacceptable. Now, however, there is just likely to be a bad taste in everyone's mouth over this, and the children are far more likely to label the woman in question as a B----.
The mouse I recently bought had an on/off switch on the bottom. I switch off the button when I leave the computer. It takes a little discipline to remember to do, but I have yet to replace a set of batteries.
As I mentioned yesterday (but apparantly wasn't cool enough to get included in the back slash), it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the neighbor in question just didn't realize they were using someone else's wireless connection. They very likely could have gone to best buy, bought a wireless 'kit' hooked up the WAP, installed their wireless card, which happily connected to the first wireless network it detected, the unsecured wireless connection next door. I know that even though I have the wireless card in my laptop set to automatically connect to "known" connections first, I have found myself accidentally connected to my neighbors wireless, with the only indication given to me was that my signal strength was WAY less than it should be. If I hadn't noticed that, there's no telling how long I would have been using my neighbors wireless.
I agree 100% with the parent. There's a reason that library computers are called "public access." There are people that for whatever reason don't have a computer or internet connection in their homes. Some old grandma sending email to her grandchildren is what I believe is a perfectly valid use for library computers. A parent reading/writing posts on a message board for parents with disabled children, also a valid use of library computers. Both of these could be considered prohibited uses of library computers under this bill. This bill was pushed through as a "for the children" concept, but it was poorly concieved. As much as I hate myspace, it bothers me that people keep talking about how it is a tool used by pedophiles. They have no statistics on how many pedophiles find their next victim on myspace. A few kids get contacted that way, and suddenly, it's an "explosion." I'm supprised they haven't passed a ban on webcams yet. Applying the same logic used for this bill, it is a tool used by pedophiles to get their victims comfortable with sexual acts. Therefore we must ban webcams "for the children." Who cares that there are legitimate businesses that use webcams, or that there are legitimate uses for them. Just watch dateline's to catch a predator, and you'll see that pretty much every preditor they caught used a webcam to contact their prospective victim. So, that is proof positive that ALL pedophiles use webcams to set up their victims...
This was hillarious. I loved the upside-down images! The comments for this story have been entertaining...
However, I suspect the neighbor of just not understanding how things work. I'll bet they set up a wireless access point in their house, put in the wireless card, and fired up the machine, which connected to the first network it could see, and they assumed it was theirs.
So, what you're saying is that improvements in technolgy never make it possible to do things better. So radio recievers from 60 years ago are just as effective and useful as radio recievers today? What I said had nothing to do with the laws of physics, and everything to do with the technology that is available. Reading RFID tags at distances greater than inches is already being done, as pointed out by TFA. Even advanced as it is, there is still room for improvement in the area of signal processing and radio recievers.
You are basing your assumptions on the fact that there will be no advances in the technology involved with RFID readers. The fact that you had to be within a very short range for your school tag to be read doesn't mean that it will always be the case, or that your school didn't just go with cheap tech instead of a nicer reader. Further, the field to power the tag itself may be small, but what's the broadcast range of the tag? Could someone with a passive reader pick up the signal from your tag being read at a border? The research mentioned in the article seems to indicate this is possible.
Now, I must point out, that this article is based on old assumptions. As someone else pointed out, Bruce Schneier has been talking about these passports for some time, and has provided a number of suggestions to the government about how it can handle many of the issues he has raised. The current implementation calls for shielding in the covers of the passport that would render it unreadable when closed. If that works as advertised, then many of the issues that Bruce has with the passports are nullified.
I have to chime in on this one. It seems that most of the comments I have read so far are critical of the politicians passing "pointless" legislation. This seems to qualify, but in reality, it is less than pointless. First of all, our elected leaders are saying that they can't do everything to avert an energy crisis in this country, so they are asking us to give them a hand. No one would ever stand for politicians mandating power efficient servers, so they do what they can, which is to recommend.
Further, this initiative is not just a suggestion in the sector where I work, as a government contractor. This becomes a strict guideline for us, at least if we want to continue to recieve funding for research. We need this kind of guideline to justify the added cost of high efficiency equipment. In this line of work, cost justification is necessary (anecdotal evidence to the contrary).
Plus, this kind of inititive gives industries such as power supply manufacturers added impetus to develop more effecient products. There aren't a lot of high efficiency power supplies out there, so the competition is poor and the prices are high.
If this business model sees the light-day and it looks like it will, Netscape readers will change from the baby-boomers of yester-year to a younger audience more interested in Jessica Alba's Bikini or Britney Spears than real intellectual news.
I for one see nothing wrong with Jessica Alba's bikini... And, really is there such a thing as too much of Jessica Alba in a bikini?
Many people on/. would have the same type of reaction that you did. "Not enough power for what I do, or what I have seen done." This is not targeted towards power users, programmers, or engineers. In many buisinesses, all a person needs is MS Office (Some have mentioned Real Estate offices, legal offices would be a good target here too). There is no reason for them to have a $1500 workstation on their desk for such work. The latest graphics processor is not necessary for creating excel spreadsheets. These machines are the consumate thin client. The only thing that would be better, as one poster mentioned, would be to use some sort of netboot (PXE, TFTP, etc...) instead of having an OS on the client itself. Using Terminal Services centralizes maintenance, reducing staffing costs (I know this sounds like a marketing presentation) which is the real savings of thin clients. It also makes an IT managers job a little nice by making it easier to lock down functionality that users have available. One of the biggest costs for IT is fixing stuff that stupid users messed up by customizing thier computer or installing bogus software.
Actually, there is no dubious constitutionality involved, and they aren't violating any statute. As long as they work with only phone numbers, and names don't get involved they are in the clear. Law enforcement can get phone records of calls to and from a specific number by simply asking, without any court order. So, they can gather information such as "someone from this number called this other number overseas, then immediately called these 10 people domestically." Armed with that information, they can then try to determine if further investigation is warranted.
Mini cards are built in (sort of). There is a panel you can open on the Dell to replace the mini card, but it isn't like an external PCMCIA slot.
I also went to Dell to try to build a similar machine. I was actually able to build a machine for slightly less than the Apple. Now, it may be that Dell dropped thier prices this morning just to compete with Apple, but I'm not sure.
I started with their entertainment PC's. These are a little closer to the Apple spec, and also you can add on a remote, which puts it mroe in parity with the apple.
Inspiron E1405:
Intel® Core(TM) processor Duo T2400 (2MB Cache/1.83GHz/667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Remote Control for Windows XP Media Center Edition
14.1 inch Wide Screen XGA Display
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHZ, 1 DIMM
60GB Hard Drive
24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Dell Wireless 1390 Mini Card (802.11b/g, 54Mbps)
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Integrated Audio
53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Corel WordPerfect word processor
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr Mail-In Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support
Starter Entertainment Pack - Basic digital Music, Photo and Game experience
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
Cost was $928. Now the nay-sayers would point out that this doesn't include a built in webcam or firewire ports. That is true. So, if you want those, then the apple is probably a better machine for you. Personally, I wouldn't use either of those features, so why should I pay for them?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines software as:
The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.
Princton Universities Word Net defines it as:
written programs or procedures or rules and associated documentation pertaining to the operation of a computer system and that are stored in read/write memory
And the The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing Defines it as:
The instructions executed by a computer, as opposed to the physical device on which they run...
Software includes both source code written by humans and
executable machine code produced by assemblers or
compilers. It does not usually include the data processed
by programs unless this is in a format such as multimedia
which depends on the use of computers for its presentation.
So, 2 sources *could* include multimedia files in thier definition of software, while a third *does* include multimedia files in its definition of software.
Regardless, DVD and CD media are already taxed by the state of Washington, so the comparison is muddied.
Ok, first, where'd you learn math? The guy says he is 17, and has used Linux since he was 11. Where I come from, that's 6 years, not 3. Second, he states in the first paragraph that is is more of a desktop enhancing toolkit rather than a sysadmin toolkit. The most you could rant about there is that he should have named the article more appropriately. Also, bittorrent is getting to be a useful sysadmin tool. It is valid method for getting ISO's of your distro of choice. And, although a client isn't necessary for this, tools like Systemimager are starting to use the torrent protocol for distributing images in a cluster install.
I suspect that Halo 2 on PC has more to do with DRM than with anything else. It will likely use Vista's DRM techniques, and thus wouldn't run on an earlier version of Windows. I can see this being the proof of concept for using DRM in video game development. They may also be looking at this as a real world test of Vista's DRM.
The same people that have been lauding the librarian for her stand would probably been the people howling the loudest about how the Feds didn't do a thing to stop this tradgedy if there had really been a bomb.
I for one am glad that the librarian insisted on a warrant. I've been disturbed by the laws that Congress has passed recently in the name of fighting terrorism. But, I also have some idea of how difficult the job of assessing terrorist threats is. How many people would have been willing to submit to some of the measures implemented in airports befor 9/11? By the complaints I have heard often, I would guess very few would have felt them necessary (some would argue that they aren't necessary now either). The Federal government, even now, has to walk a very fine line. On the one hand, we the people hold the responsible to protect us for terrorist threats. On the other, we don't want too much government intervention. They can't seem to be using techniques such as profiling (whether or not they really are), because that would raise the cry of discrimination, but they also have to be aware of the fact that the most credible threat to safety comes from a militant arm of a particular sect of a religion, centered in a particular region of the world. I for one am glad I don't have the job of having to deal with this stuff. I'll stick with writing software in my little office, thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
Antitrust anyone?
destroying other people's favorite hobbies.
I for one only use the browsers store password feature for the most trivial of sites. For more important sites, I use Password Safe. The program and the database fit easily on a thumb drive, and requires a master password to access. It has a user configurable time out, and a double click on an account copies the data to the clipboard for later use, allowing you to foil keyboard based sniffers.
It appears to me that most of you missed the point of what the that the poster was asking about. He was asking about OUTSIDE the game industry. The fact of the matter is, Game Programming has many applications outside the video game industry. There is a whole group of problems called Serious Games, which use things like AI development and graphics which have been perfected in video games to model real world situations.
I work with Scientists who specialize in visualization. Thus far, I haven't seen a real interest in people with that kind of specialization, but I'd imagine a MS in Game Programming is a fairly recent development. I do know that being able to apply game theories is an emerging area, but seems to sit mostly on the fringes of vis technologies. Part of the problem, I think, is that Serious Games has had a pretty high "cool" factor with geeks, but it's a little hard to get funding agencies to take anything with "game" in the name seriously. Until we can get past that, I'd suggest the more "general" (relatively) computer science degree.
that thinks this argument has much wider implications than just Open Source Software? If the judge rules for this piece of crap argument, it could pretty much shut down the web. Sites like the New York times, and ESPN would be forced to charge for every bit of content on their sites, because if they didn't, they would run the risk of losing control of their copyrighted material.
It's on wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu
Who says anything about absolving them of responsibility? But if the parents were never made aware of what their kids had done, how could they possibly discipline them for it? It seems you want to hold parents responsible for their kids actions, but don't want to allow the parents the responsibility of disciplinging their children. This is not a criminal action, it is a civil suit. The plaintiff in this case wants monetary renumeraiton for the action of the children. The kids don't have much, so going after them doesn't make sense. Have to add the parents to the suit to get any real action. That's what adding the parents to this suit is all about.
As for "what they deserve." Make no mistake, what these kids did was wrong, but I disagree with you about your statement that their actions had any world wide impact. Sure, the medium they chose is accessable around the world, but the impact was the same as if they had spray painted the accusations on their local water tower. Quite possibly it is even less than that, due to the actual location of the website. Outside of their town, and more particularly outside of thier school, there would be a relatively few people who would know who this person is, or even care about their sexual orientation. I think the person had every right to contact the parents, tell them what the kids had done, and to check back with the parents to find out what punishment had been meted out. I'm sick and tired, however, of people's first reaction to everything being a lawsuit.
I remember a much simpler time, when school administrators called you parents to report that you did something wrong, and allowed the parents the opportunity to discipline their own children. Apparantly, these days such information is delivered via subpoena. The person in question claims many sleepless nights worrying over the content of this fake page. It seems to me that all that useless worry could have been avoided by simply calling the kids and their parents into the office or mediating the dispute in some manner. Obviously the kids are pricks, and probably never even gave a second thought to how this would affect the other person. Given the chance, their parents might have been able to help their children understand why their behaviour was unacceptable. Now, however, there is just likely to be a bad taste in everyone's mouth over this, and the children are far more likely to label the woman in question as a B----.
The mouse I recently bought had an on/off switch on the bottom. I switch off the button when I leave the computer. It takes a little discipline to remember to do, but I have yet to replace a set of batteries.
As I mentioned yesterday (but apparantly wasn't cool enough to get included in the back slash), it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the neighbor in question just didn't realize they were using someone else's wireless connection. They very likely could have gone to best buy, bought a wireless 'kit' hooked up the WAP, installed their wireless card, which happily connected to the first wireless network it detected, the unsecured wireless connection next door. I know that even though I have the wireless card in my laptop set to automatically connect to "known" connections first, I have found myself accidentally connected to my neighbors wireless, with the only indication given to me was that my signal strength was WAY less than it should be. If I hadn't noticed that, there's no telling how long I would have been using my neighbors wireless.
I agree 100% with the parent. There's a reason that library computers are called "public access." There are people that for whatever reason don't have a computer or internet connection in their homes. Some old grandma sending email to her grandchildren is what I believe is a perfectly valid use for library computers. A parent reading/writing posts on a message board for parents with disabled children, also a valid use of library computers. Both of these could be considered prohibited uses of library computers under this bill. This bill was pushed through as a "for the children" concept, but it was poorly concieved. As much as I hate myspace, it bothers me that people keep talking about how it is a tool used by pedophiles. They have no statistics on how many pedophiles find their next victim on myspace. A few kids get contacted that way, and suddenly, it's an "explosion." I'm supprised they haven't passed a ban on webcams yet. Applying the same logic used for this bill, it is a tool used by pedophiles to get their victims comfortable with sexual acts. Therefore we must ban webcams "for the children." Who cares that there are legitimate businesses that use webcams, or that there are legitimate uses for them. Just watch dateline's to catch a predator, and you'll see that pretty much every preditor they caught used a webcam to contact their prospective victim. So, that is proof positive that ALL pedophiles use webcams to set up their victims...
This was hillarious. I loved the upside-down images! The comments for this story have been entertaining...
However, I suspect the neighbor of just not understanding how things work. I'll bet they set up a wireless access point in their house, put in the wireless card, and fired up the machine, which connected to the first network it could see, and they assumed it was theirs.
So, what you're saying is that improvements in technolgy never make it possible to do things better. So radio recievers from 60 years ago are just as effective and useful as radio recievers today? What I said had nothing to do with the laws of physics, and everything to do with the technology that is available. Reading RFID tags at distances greater than inches is already being done, as pointed out by TFA. Even advanced as it is, there is still room for improvement in the area of signal processing and radio recievers.
You are basing your assumptions on the fact that there will be no advances in the technology involved with RFID readers. The fact that you had to be within a very short range for your school tag to be read doesn't mean that it will always be the case, or that your school didn't just go with cheap tech instead of a nicer reader. Further, the field to power the tag itself may be small, but what's the broadcast range of the tag? Could someone with a passive reader pick up the signal from your tag being read at a border? The research mentioned in the article seems to indicate this is possible.
Now, I must point out, that this article is based on old assumptions. As someone else pointed out, Bruce Schneier has been talking about these passports for some time, and has provided a number of suggestions to the government about how it can handle many of the issues he has raised. The current implementation calls for shielding in the covers of the passport that would render it unreadable when closed. If that works as advertised, then many of the issues that Bruce has with the passports are nullified.
I have to chime in on this one. It seems that most of the comments I have read so far are critical of the politicians passing "pointless" legislation. This seems to qualify, but in reality, it is less than pointless. First of all, our elected leaders are saying that they can't do everything to avert an energy crisis in this country, so they are asking us to give them a hand. No one would ever stand for politicians mandating power efficient servers, so they do what they can, which is to recommend.
Further, this initiative is not just a suggestion in the sector where I work, as a government contractor. This becomes a strict guideline for us, at least if we want to continue to recieve funding for research. We need this kind of guideline to justify the added cost of high efficiency equipment. In this line of work, cost justification is necessary (anecdotal evidence to the contrary).
Plus, this kind of inititive gives industries such as power supply manufacturers added impetus to develop more effecient products. There aren't a lot of high efficiency power supplies out there, so the competition is poor and the prices are high.
I for one see nothing wrong with Jessica Alba's bikini... And, really is there such a thing as too much of Jessica Alba in a bikini?
Many people on /. would have the same type of reaction that you did. "Not enough power for what I do, or what I have seen done." This is not targeted towards power users, programmers, or engineers. In many buisinesses, all a person needs is MS Office (Some have mentioned Real Estate offices, legal offices would be a good target here too). There is no reason for them to have a $1500 workstation on their desk for such work. The latest graphics processor is not necessary for creating excel spreadsheets. These machines are the consumate thin client. The only thing that would be better, as one poster mentioned, would be to use some sort of netboot (PXE, TFTP, etc...) instead of having an OS on the client itself. Using Terminal Services centralizes maintenance, reducing staffing costs (I know this sounds like a marketing presentation) which is the real savings of thin clients. It also makes an IT managers job a little nice by making it easier to lock down functionality that users have available. One of the biggest costs for IT is fixing stuff that stupid users messed up by customizing thier computer or installing bogus software.
Actually, there is no dubious constitutionality involved, and they aren't violating any statute. As long as they work with only phone numbers, and names don't get involved they are in the clear. Law enforcement can get phone records of calls to and from a specific number by simply asking, without any court order. So, they can gather information such as "someone from this number called this other number overseas, then immediately called these 10 people domestically." Armed with that information, they can then try to determine if further investigation is warranted.
I believe the proper term for this is a "lab-brat"
I also went to Dell to try to build a similar machine. I was actually able to build a machine for slightly less than the Apple. Now, it may be that Dell dropped thier prices this morning just to compete with Apple, but I'm not sure.
I started with their entertainment PC's. These are a little closer to the Apple spec, and also you can add on a remote, which puts it mroe in parity with the apple.
Inspiron E1405:
Intel® Core(TM) processor Duo T2400 (2MB Cache/1.83GHz/667MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
Remote Control for Windows XP Media Center Edition
14.1 inch Wide Screen XGA Display
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHZ, 1 DIMM
60GB Hard Drive
24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
Dell Wireless 1390 Mini Card (802.11b/g, 54Mbps)
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Integrated Audio
53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Corel WordPerfect word processor
Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr Mail-In Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support
Starter Entertainment Pack - Basic digital Music, Photo and Game experience
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
Cost was $928. Now the nay-sayers would point out that this doesn't include a built in webcam or firewire ports. That is true. So, if you want those, then the apple is probably a better machine for you. Personally, I wouldn't use either of those features, so why should I pay for them?
The programs, routines, and symbolic languages that control the functioning of the hardware and direct its operation.
Princton Universities Word Net defines it as:
written programs or procedures or rules and associated documentation pertaining to the operation of a computer system and that are stored in read/write memory
And the The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing Defines it as:
The instructions executed by a computer, as opposed to the physical device on which they run ...
Software includes both source code written by humans and executable machine code produced by assemblers or compilers. It does not usually include the data processed by programs unless this is in a format such as multimedia which depends on the use of computers for its presentation.
So, 2 sources *could* include multimedia files in thier definition of software, while a third *does* include multimedia files in its definition of software.
Regardless, DVD and CD media are already taxed by the state of Washington, so the comparison is muddied.
Ok, first, where'd you learn math? The guy says he is 17, and has used Linux since he was 11. Where I come from, that's 6 years, not 3. Second, he states in the first paragraph that is is more of a desktop enhancing toolkit rather than a sysadmin toolkit. The most you could rant about there is that he should have named the article more appropriately. Also, bittorrent is getting to be a useful sysadmin tool. It is valid method for getting ISO's of your distro of choice. And, although a client isn't necessary for this, tools like Systemimager are starting to use the torrent protocol for distributing images in a cluster install.
I suspect that Halo 2 on PC has more to do with DRM than with anything else. It will likely use Vista's DRM techniques, and thus wouldn't run on an earlier version of Windows. I can see this being the proof of concept for using DRM in video game development. They may also be looking at this as a real world test of Vista's DRM.
The same people that have been lauding the librarian for her stand would probably been the people howling the loudest about how the Feds didn't do a thing to stop this tradgedy if there had really been a bomb.
I for one am glad that the librarian insisted on a warrant. I've been disturbed by the laws that Congress has passed recently in the name of fighting terrorism. But, I also have some idea of how difficult the job of assessing terrorist threats is. How many people would have been willing to submit to some of the measures implemented in airports befor 9/11? By the complaints I have heard often, I would guess very few would have felt them necessary (some would argue that they aren't necessary now either). The Federal government, even now, has to walk a very fine line. On the one hand, we the people hold the responsible to protect us for terrorist threats. On the other, we don't want too much government intervention. They can't seem to be using techniques such as profiling (whether or not they really are), because that would raise the cry of discrimination, but they also have to be aware of the fact that the most credible threat to safety comes from a militant arm of a particular sect of a religion, centered in a particular region of the world. I for one am glad I don't have the job of having to deal with this stuff. I'll stick with writing software in my little office, thank you.