I cannot imagine that even a SINGLE conversation with someone mildly conversant in basic security, no, just having common sense, would not have indicated that uncontrolled ID reading from a distance was a VERY VERY bad idea. It suggests to me that such a conversation was either not had, someone has a LOT of shares in RFID manufacturing or there is something else behind this rush to promote even more ID theft.
You can read ID from a distance which means it's now possible to create hidden bombs that lie dormant until there are enough people of a certain nationality nearby, it's possible to clone an identity and I suspect it won't be long before you can edit the biometric, making the theft of your LIFE complete because of "the 'pjuter is always rite" syndrome.
In the process other associated idiots are building up databases which are unnecessary (it works prefectly without) and which are a reversal of approach - normally your identity is only collected AFTER you have committed a crime, not BEFORE. You're now guilty until you prove it wasn't you who left a cloned identity behind. All of that without you noticing someone has been near to your passport, you no longer have control over who sees the data. Hello girls, welcome to stalking v2.
Actually, if you want political emotional scare stories, as the EU has now made one passport per person mandatory, it's also "Hello kids, welcome to 'brief your local paedophile'".
It would be really good if the clowns who dream up such stuff would be the first to suffer the consequences, all of them. Because I don't think they will learn otherwise - this is causing risk, not fixing identity issues./rant
I think you have already gathered from the large amount of responses that the problem has been "over solved" - many options to choose from. We provide a rip-n-replace service for HP Openview users (banks and trading exchanges), which, including any coding required and 24/7 support comes out at about 20% of those annual costs in year 1 and below 10% in subsequent years, but there's no point in telling you what Open Source product we use - you need to do your homework so you arrive at an answer that you and your boss understand yourself.
You will probably find a number of answers to your criteria - TRY THEM. Give the ones that seem viable in terms of support, community, code quality and your own ability to make it work for your company a good try - most you can even do in parallel. Only after a live test can you decide what you're going with, because you will be investing time in tuning it for your own needs - this is not the time you want to waste. A good preparation is worth 80% of the work for monitoring, or you will spend time monitoring the monitoring system instead which is a waste of your time.
It doesn't have a demo version which always makes a me a bit suspicious. However, the private version is cheap, so rather than throw up assumptions that are based on thin air I'm going to buy a copy and see what it does.
Who knows, it may actually do what it says, and I think the idea stacks up. Just don't know just how much processing power this will take, and Windows is pretty crap at whole screen manipulation but that's exactly what testing is for:-).
Heck, marriage was the argument to sell my totally over the top tuned Yamaha RD400 bike many years ago.
I guess the S4 is an interim bike surrogate. I like it's subtlety - it just looks like a normal family car with a somewhat lowered ride, below 4000 rpm it calmly burbles through traffic and in winter claws its way up snowy roads without needing chains. Keep it above 4000 rpm and the monster under the bonnet wakes up, takes a good gulp from the tank and throws a ridiculous amount of torque to the wheels - it's almost schizophrenically different.
I'll probably replace it with something more civilised in a year:-).
- No need to share air with funny smelling people - No need for stations/rails/train conductors/smelly toilets - Available at odd hours - A heck of a lot more fun once you get over the guilt (0.5msec, I reckon - you did all that when you spent the cash) - Goes to other places - More comfortable to sit in a queue with - If you're that rich, I presume your definition of "public transport" will include helicopters and business jets.
That's about it for now, I'm still busy reducing the blood level in my caffeine..
I have an unrestricted S4, and removing the limiter is the only mod it has ever had.
Now it is 4 years old, I finally had the time and safe place to test the top speed (well, "top" as in "got clamped by the rev limited instead"), and I got to a GPS measured 268 km/h before the rev limiter kicked in. It was somewhere in Germany, I happened upon this 5km stretch of perfect viewable road by chance (and had to drive another 5km before I found a chance to return and USE it:-).
Overtaking a row of 8 (I think) police vans at 220 km/h on cruise control during the run up was just a bonus (you know you're legal but still the nervousness remains).
There is, however, a good argument why you won't do this for long even if it's entirely legal and you find a safe bit of road to test. With a fuel consumption of just under 60 (yes, SIXTY) liters per 100km you will need a MUCH bigger tank to get from A to B. It's ridiculously uneconomical to push such a large amount of steel over 4 wheels against the wind.
Having said that, it's also good fun annoying BMW drivers who don't seem to know that "S4" means "brutally large factory sports tuned V8 in front, gripping on 4 wheels on sport suspension". Fnarr fnarr..
Conversions (all approx): 268 km/h = 166.5 mph 60l/100km = 1.67km/l, 4.7 MPG(UK) or 3.9 MPG(US)
Final notes for wannabees: I have had extensive high speed training. Don't try this stuff unless you're (a) stone sober and in top physical condition, (b) are 100% sure of the condition and capabilities of your car (and even then), (c) on location where such speeds are legal and (d) can do so without causing any risk to other road users (on circuit is even better) - and that's after doing some test runs.
I have used Avant in a company, and although it was irritating (does it really HAVE to tell you it's updating) it did the job.
I use Kaspersky for my own company. Does the job. Simple.
Every single new system and laptop I come across is either infested with Symantec or Norton, and in my opinion they're both about the most useless solution available - I think they have gotten lazy off the profits they make from pre-installs. They are resource hogs, expensive and don't appear to add that much value for the constant pain in the rear end they are to maintain, so those products are almost banned by default. As is MS Office now - we get on fine with OOo.
All I need now is a DECENT Outlook replacement. Not to say that Outlook itself is decent, but it's unfortunately the only program mobile phone suppliers feel like integrating with for contact and diary management which is VERY annoying, and has already led to research which makes will no longer be accepted for corpoate use.
Meanwhile, the trend appears to be that we'll switch to Apple with Linux back ends. I know that's switching one monopoly for another, but it appears to make sense for us (so far, still researching).
I hope they don't get this stupid idea of adding noise to it.
What I don't like: handles that disappear - that has no decent failure recover (what if the power fails? How do emergency services gain access?)
What I like: a dash I may be able to hack. The ultimate "pimp my ride" for any geek. Caveat: this should be isolated from the driver and control electronics because that is safety. You don't mess with safety (IMHO).
I like the idea overall. Heck, I may even invest in covering my roof with solar power - I want to bet that generating your own power will be taxed very soon - if cars like this become common there is a lot of fuel revenue the governments are going to miss out on..
Tamiflu appear to work by preventing the spread of the virus. In other words, you still get it but only in a "light" form. It can also be used preventative, but AFAIK that actually appears to require more of the drug than when you take it as recommended (within 36h of first symptoms).
If you get a decent flu you can become quite ill which can have all sorts of unpleasant side effects. Roche mentions this in the leaflet that comes with the product although they state they're not quite sure what is Tamiflu and what is "just" the flu (I guess that keeps the lawyers happy):
During Tamiflu treatment, events like convulsions and delirium (including symptoms such as altered level of consciousness, confusion, abnormal behaviour, delusions, hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, nightmares) have been reported, in a very few cases resulting in accidental injury, in some instances with fatal outcome. These events were reported primarily among children and adolescents and often had an abrupt onset and rapid resolution. The contribution of Tamiflu to those events is unknown. Such neuropsychiatric events have also been reported in patients with influenza who were not taking Tamiflu.
So, like Viagra, a lot of promise but certainly not one to take without medical supervision. Besides, The Real Thing is shockingly expensive (IMHO)..
Umm, no - the device should still be able to function safely when used normally - no excuses. Besides, there isn't that much multitasking going on, that's exactly one of the current complaints about the platform (I can live with it, however).
I'm thus happy that my current contract isn't at an end yet - I suspect this will be taken care of the few months I still have to go (not willing to pay extra for the switch other than the changed data tariff).
2007 joins Vista in being a downgrade. The whole ribbon thing puts the "less retraining required" MS argument against Open Source rather firmly to bed. It's crap, especially for experienced users it means they're hit with endless searching for features that used to be two menu steps away, so how anyone can sell that as a usability gain is beyond me.
Maybe for absolute beginners who have never seen a system in their life - but there comes the lack of logic in the interface to pester them. Some people love it, but I found them to be more a vocal minority, most people I know hate the ribbon with a passion that even Vista didn't manage to acquire. It.is.total.cr*p.
You raise questions on various levels, so let me traverse the stack in reverse order.
Link: just how reliable is it? I assume quality is unpredictable and varies (for instance during mobile and in-theatre deployment), which suggests you need to check for transmission errors in pretty small windows and force a error retransmit ASAP (if you have that capability on your specific type of link).
Protocol: I won't question using TCP/IP, but I would suggest you may want to ensure you tune the stack to small window sizes, and use UDP as that appears to match your transmission quality. MANET could help as well as that's made for mobile use, but I don't really know anything about it - it just may be an option worth checking.
FTP and TX security: I'm not sure of how sensitive this data is, but a microwave link does have stray signal issues, and FTP transmits UID and password more or less in cleartext. IMHO not quite desirable, but it depends what you do. In addition, FTP defaults in Windows to ASCII mode which makes a mess of data that is not of Windows origin or is binary. You MUST set to "binary" mode first before you start transmission, which others have already mentioned. In addition, do some tests with checksummed data so when you find differences you can work out if it's your own interpretation or a real problem.
Personally, I'd grab the PuTTY set and run a SSH session. You can find a server at FreeSSH. Also brutally easy to automate - I expect you're not that much in need of employment that you must generate your own opportunities to watch paint dry:-).
I note that this case claims a "mere" USD 750 per infringement. This is an interesting low amount.
Other than that, when-oh-when will we finally see sanctions for this sort of legal abuse? I can't see anyone regaining any sort of respect for the law and the legal system whilst this sort of shenanigans continue.
- Disabled people or that need help in any way - Those away on business - Those living abroad
Leaving that aside, an online offering also has other implications from a logistics point of view. The gaming in the US election wasn't just based on Diebold kit that was taking simple mathematics to depths not even equalled by UK MPs on expenses, it was also in failing to supply enough machines to areas that happened to have an unsupporting audience, and the ones that were supplied just happened to malfunction a lot without any support to get them running again (I'm not telling you anything new here, it's all documented). Oh, and no human could possibly alter the outcome of the election so you fix that too..
In summary, if you base a voting on online mechnisms, at least that part of the game is out of action.
However, as far as I know there is only one company in the whole world who has actually solved the electronic identity problem that you have with every single eGovernment idea: how do you prove the user is indeed who he/she says she is. That's a depressingly low count, but at least the company is Swiss which makes their idea less prone to "creative interference" from people in black suits with sunglasses..
Freedom very much correlates with democracy, so look for a democracy.
Secondly, with rights come obligations. If your aim is to escape your obligations, forget it. If your aim is to find a nation where the laws make sense and enforced to their meaning rather than to he letter, I may have a strange answer for you.
You see, laws MUST be enforced. The current UK mess is exactly because it's a non-democracy where a club has created a clique which tries to stay above the law. Now, clique forming isn't a new feature to British society, but the current government has destroyed any value that it could have brought. The parallel with the US is uncanny - there too do you have very nice people who all of a sudden have been manipulated in letting an idiot plus cronies destroy the country and its standing.
In this context, Switzerland isn't a bad place to examine. It's the last surviving democracy, despite the US trying to break their laws (no news there). For someone used to the UK's "we don't care" approach to law enforcement, however, it may come as a shock, but that's why it's also so safe. I found the police to be extremely correct and very efficient, but you get the impression they have a low tolerance level for BS. Which is fine with me..
I personally detest every bit of kit that assumes I'm some sort of moron who obviously needs to be told everything.
We have microwaves that bleep for 5 minutes just on the off chance that someone doesn't realise that microwaving means hot food, I have a dishwasher doing the same and I have come across plenty kit that keeps beeping until it gets attention, like a small child. In that same vein I consider UIs that time out so you have to do everything in a certain amount of time - the whole point of a machine is that it's not supposed to be impatient.
The main problem I see with this is that end users are less and less required to use their brain. The function "common sense" is by now all but atrophied..
I guess the counter will be class action against all those suppliers for damaging common sense, as that has wider ramifications than just the bit of kit they make..
In the UK, whole departments are deployed to ensure the offerings can never be like-for-like compared - AFAIK that's partly to withhold that opportunity for customers but more so that regulation doesn't get much grip.
If they want to drill through that game I wish them luck - they're up against years of well practised obfuscation..
I would like to find a public statement of what the TSA can and cannot do. There must be a definition of where the handover takes place between capable officers and these, well, misguided wannabees. I understand they have a function somewhere (apparently), it's just hard to pin down IMHO.
What I hear is someone who has been given special powers having no clue about what his powers are and what are the rights of the people they detain. This is an incredibly dangerous situation, and especially the question for someone's rights ("am I required by law to answer the question") is simply not answered in an acceptable fashion.
It's interesting that his question is turned into a refusal to answer - that is not what he does. I also like the appearance of that eternal dead duck: "if you have nothing to hide"..
I am glad this was taped - these guys need some serious correction.
Sorry, wasn't clear in point 3: I suspect that virtually any sane challenge to this verdict will be successful as letting this stand would render the whole process and those who judge looking like ridiculous.
This would not be enforcing the law but breaking some very fundamental legal and founding principles.
I can't see that happen. Well, OK, I *hope* it doesn't, but's opened one hell of a can of worms and it's about time it did.
Slashdot Mirror
And where do you keep the keys for those safes? Or their access code?
Just curious :-)
I cannot imagine that even a SINGLE conversation with someone mildly conversant in basic security, no, just having common sense, would not have indicated that uncontrolled ID reading from a distance was a VERY VERY bad idea. It suggests to me that such a conversation was either not had, someone has a LOT of shares in RFID manufacturing or there is something else behind this rush to promote even more ID theft.
You can read ID from a distance which means it's now possible to create hidden bombs that lie dormant until there are enough people of a certain nationality nearby, it's possible to clone an identity and I suspect it won't be long before you can edit the biometric, making the theft of your LIFE complete because of "the 'pjuter is always rite" syndrome.
In the process other associated idiots are building up databases which are unnecessary (it works prefectly without) and which are a reversal of approach - normally your identity is only collected AFTER you have committed a crime, not BEFORE. You're now guilty until you prove it wasn't you who left a cloned identity behind. All of that without you noticing someone has been near to your passport, you no longer have control over who sees the data. Hello girls, welcome to stalking v2.
Actually, if you want political emotional scare stories, as the EU has now made one passport per person mandatory, it's also "Hello kids, welcome to 'brief your local paedophile'".
It would be really good if the clowns who dream up such stuff would be the first to suffer the consequences, all of them. Because I don't think they will learn otherwise - this is causing risk, not fixing identity issues. /rant
I think you have already gathered from the large amount of responses that the problem has been "over solved" - many options to choose from. We provide a rip-n-replace service for HP Openview users (banks and trading exchanges), which, including any coding required and 24/7 support comes out at about 20% of those annual costs in year 1 and below 10% in subsequent years, but there's no point in telling you what Open Source product we use - you need to do your homework so you arrive at an answer that you and your boss understand yourself.
You will probably find a number of answers to your criteria - TRY THEM. Give the ones that seem viable in terms of support, community, code quality and your own ability to make it work for your company a good try - most you can even do in parallel. Only after a live test can you decide what you're going with, because you will be investing time in tuning it for your own needs - this is not the time you want to waste. A good preparation is worth 80% of the work for monitoring, or you will spend time monitoring the monitoring system instead which is a waste of your time.
Good luck :-)
Puts a whole new meaning to the word "blowback".
I guess it makes a change from putting a *tiger* in your tank, but the conversion days will be hell.
"Do not piss in this tank, diesel/petrol only"
It doesn't have a demo version which always makes a me a bit suspicious. However, the private version is cheap, so rather than throw up assumptions that are based on thin air I'm going to buy a copy and see what it does.
Who knows, it may actually do what it says, and I think the idea stacks up. Just don't know just how much processing power this will take, and Windows is pretty crap at whole screen manipulation but that's exactly what testing is for :-).
It wouldn't surprise me if Bugatti make a big move into a (obviously lower) luxury market very soon, cashing in on the recognition they've earned.
Yeah, sure. I bet they'll be called Volkswagen. Oh, wait ..
Heck, marriage was the argument to sell my totally over the top tuned Yamaha RD400 bike many years ago.
I guess the S4 is an interim bike surrogate. I like it's subtlety - it just looks like a normal family car with a somewhat lowered ride, below 4000 rpm it calmly burbles through traffic and in winter claws its way up snowy roads without needing chains. Keep it above 4000 rpm and the monster under the bonnet wakes up, takes a good gulp from the tank and throws a ridiculous amount of torque to the wheels - it's almost schizophrenically different.
I'll probably replace it with something more civilised in a year :-).
- No need to share air with funny smelling people
- No need for stations/rails/train conductors/smelly toilets
- Available at odd hours
- A heck of a lot more fun once you get over the guilt (0.5msec, I reckon - you did all that when you spent the cash)
- Goes to other places
- More comfortable to sit in a queue with
- If you're that rich, I presume your definition of "public transport" will include helicopters and business jets.
That's about it for now, I'm still busy reducing the blood level in my caffeine..
I have an unrestricted S4, and removing the limiter is the only mod it has ever had.
Now it is 4 years old, I finally had the time and safe place to test the top speed (well, "top" as in "got clamped by the rev limited instead"), and I got to a GPS measured 268 km/h before the rev limiter kicked in. It was somewhere in Germany, I happened upon this 5km stretch of perfect viewable road by chance (and had to drive another 5km before I found a chance to return and USE it :-).
Overtaking a row of 8 (I think) police vans at 220 km/h on cruise control during the run up was just a bonus (you know you're legal but still the nervousness remains).
There is, however, a good argument why you won't do this for long even if it's entirely legal and you find a safe bit of road to test. With a fuel consumption of just under 60 (yes, SIXTY) liters per 100km you will need a MUCH bigger tank to get from A to B. It's ridiculously uneconomical to push such a large amount of steel over 4 wheels against the wind.
Having said that, it's also good fun annoying BMW drivers who don't seem to know that "S4" means "brutally large factory sports tuned V8 in front, gripping on 4 wheels on sport suspension". Fnarr fnarr..
Conversions (all approx):
268 km/h = 166.5 mph
60l/100km = 1.67km/l, 4.7 MPG(UK) or 3.9 MPG(US)
Final notes for wannabees: I have had extensive high speed training. Don't try this stuff unless you're (a) stone sober and in top physical condition, (b) are 100% sure of the condition and capabilities of your car (and even then), (c) on location where such speeds are legal and (d) can do so without causing any risk to other road users (on circuit is even better) - and that's after doing some test runs.
I have used Avant in a company, and although it was irritating (does it really HAVE to tell you it's updating) it did the job.
I use Kaspersky for my own company. Does the job. Simple.
Every single new system and laptop I come across is either infested with Symantec or Norton, and in my opinion they're both about the most useless solution available - I think they have gotten lazy off the profits they make from pre-installs. They are resource hogs, expensive and don't appear to add that much value for the constant pain in the rear end they are to maintain, so those products are almost banned by default. As is MS Office now - we get on fine with OOo.
All I need now is a DECENT Outlook replacement. Not to say that Outlook itself is decent, but it's unfortunately the only program mobile phone suppliers feel like integrating with for contact and diary management which is VERY annoying, and has already led to research which makes will no longer be accepted for corpoate use.
Meanwhile, the trend appears to be that we'll switch to Apple with Linux back ends. I know that's switching one monopoly for another, but it appears to make sense for us (so far, still researching).
I'm not quite sure how oral sex is performed in your corner of the world, but over here it would get in the way of communication.
And polite people don't talk with their mouth full.
In general this would get complex, with all the no smoking laws it would mean you'd have to provide nicotine patches for afterwards..
OK, OK, I'm going already :-)
I hope they don't get this stupid idea of adding noise to it.
What I don't like: handles that disappear - that has no decent failure recover (what if the power fails? How do emergency services gain access?)
What I like: a dash I may be able to hack. The ultimate "pimp my ride" for any geek. Caveat: this should be isolated from the driver and control electronics because that is safety. You don't mess with safety (IMHO).
I like the idea overall. Heck, I may even invest in covering my roof with solar power - I want to bet that generating your own power will be taxed very soon - if cars like this become common there is a lot of fuel revenue the governments are going to miss out on..
what happens if you try to drive it through two or three feet of water
You generate energy for other cars by producing oxygen and hydrogen. No problem :-)
Tamiflu appear to work by preventing the spread of the virus. In other words, you still get it but only in a "light" form. It can also be used preventative, but AFAIK that actually appears to require more of the drug than when you take it as recommended (within 36h of first symptoms).
Generic Tamiflu info can be found at the Roche website.
If you get a decent flu you can become quite ill which can have all sorts of unpleasant side effects. Roche mentions this in the leaflet that comes with the product although they state they're not quite sure what is Tamiflu and what is "just" the flu (I guess that keeps the lawyers happy):
During Tamiflu treatment, events like convulsions and delirium (including symptoms such as altered level of consciousness, confusion, abnormal behaviour, delusions, hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, nightmares) have been reported, in a very few cases resulting in accidental injury, in some instances with fatal outcome. These events were reported primarily among children and adolescents and often had an abrupt onset and rapid resolution. The contribution of Tamiflu to those events is unknown. Such neuropsychiatric events have also been reported in patients with influenza who were not taking Tamiflu.
So, like Viagra, a lot of promise but certainly not one to take without medical supervision. Besides, The Real Thing is shockingly expensive (IMHO)..
Umm, no - the device should still be able to function safely when used normally - no excuses. Besides, there isn't that much multitasking going on, that's exactly one of the current complaints about the platform (I can live with it, however).
I'm thus happy that my current contract isn't at an end yet - I suspect this will be taken care of the few months I still have to go (not willing to pay extra for the switch other than the changed data tariff).
2007 joins Vista in being a downgrade. The whole ribbon thing puts the "less retraining required" MS argument against Open Source rather firmly to bed. It's crap, especially for experienced users it means they're hit with endless searching for features that used to be two menu steps away, so how anyone can sell that as a usability gain is beyond me.
Maybe for absolute beginners who have never seen a system in their life - but there comes the lack of logic in the interface to pester them. Some people love it, but I found them to be more a vocal minority, most people I know hate the ribbon with a passion that even Vista didn't manage to acquire. It.is.total.cr*p.
You raise questions on various levels, so let me traverse the stack in reverse order.
Link: just how reliable is it? I assume quality is unpredictable and varies (for instance during mobile and in-theatre deployment), which suggests you need to check for transmission errors in pretty small windows and force a error retransmit ASAP (if you have that capability on your specific type of link).
Protocol: I won't question using TCP/IP, but I would suggest you may want to ensure you tune the stack to small window sizes, and use UDP as that appears to match your transmission quality. MANET could help as well as that's made for mobile use, but I don't really know anything about it - it just may be an option worth checking.
FTP and TX security: I'm not sure of how sensitive this data is, but a microwave link does have stray signal issues, and FTP transmits UID and password more or less in cleartext. IMHO not quite desirable, but it depends what you do. In addition, FTP defaults in Windows to ASCII mode which makes a mess of data that is not of Windows origin or is binary. You MUST set to "binary" mode first before you start transmission, which others have already mentioned. In addition, do some tests with checksummed data so when you find differences you can work out if it's your own interpretation or a real problem.
Personally, I'd grab the PuTTY set and run a SSH session. You can find a server at FreeSSH. Also brutally easy to automate - I expect you're not that much in need of employment that you must generate your own opportunities to watch paint dry :-).
Good luck...
I note that this case claims a "mere" USD 750 per infringement. This is an interesting low amount.
Other than that, when-oh-when will we finally see sanctions for this sort of legal abuse? I can't see anyone regaining any sort of respect for the law and the legal system whilst this sort of shenanigans continue.
You're forgetting a few people that way:
- Disabled people or that need help in any way
- Those away on business
- Those living abroad
Leaving that aside, an online offering also has other implications from a logistics point of view. The gaming in the US election wasn't just based on Diebold kit that was taking simple mathematics to depths not even equalled by UK MPs on expenses, it was also in failing to supply enough machines to areas that happened to have an unsupporting audience, and the ones that were supplied just happened to malfunction a lot without any support to get them running again (I'm not telling you anything new here, it's all documented). Oh, and no human could possibly alter the outcome of the election so you fix that too..
In summary, if you base a voting on online mechnisms, at least that part of the game is out of action.
However, as far as I know there is only one company in the whole world who has actually solved the electronic identity problem that you have with every single eGovernment idea: how do you prove the user is indeed who he/she says she is. That's a depressingly low count, but at least the company is Swiss which makes their idea less prone to "creative interference" from people in black suits with sunglasses..
Freedom very much correlates with democracy, so look for a democracy.
Secondly, with rights come obligations. If your aim is to escape your obligations, forget it. If your aim is to find a nation where the laws make sense and enforced to their meaning rather than to he letter, I may have a strange answer for you.
You see, laws MUST be enforced. The current UK mess is exactly because it's a non-democracy where a club has created a clique which tries to stay above the law. Now, clique forming isn't a new feature to British society, but the current government has destroyed any value that it could have brought. The parallel with the US is uncanny - there too do you have very nice people who all of a sudden have been manipulated in letting an idiot plus cronies destroy the country and its standing.
In this context, Switzerland isn't a bad place to examine. It's the last surviving democracy, despite the US trying to break their laws (no news there). For someone used to the UK's "we don't care" approach to law enforcement, however, it may come as a shock, but that's why it's also so safe. I found the police to be extremely correct and very efficient, but you get the impression they have a low tolerance level for BS. Which is fine with me..
I personally detest every bit of kit that assumes I'm some sort of moron who obviously needs to be told everything.
We have microwaves that bleep for 5 minutes just on the off chance that someone doesn't realise that microwaving means hot food, I have a dishwasher doing the same and I have come across plenty kit that keeps beeping until it gets attention, like a small child. In that same vein I consider UIs that time out so you have to do everything in a certain amount of time - the whole point of a machine is that it's not supposed to be impatient.
The main problem I see with this is that end users are less and less required to use their brain. The function "common sense" is by now all but atrophied..
I guess the counter will be class action against all those suppliers for damaging common sense, as that has wider ramifications than just the bit of kit they make..
1 - look up Aspergers, and see if it fits. Chances are it does which means you need some help with social clues, hence item 2 below.
2 - "The rules of the game", by Neil Strauss, get it and apply it.
3 - be yourself.
Good luck.
In the UK, whole departments are deployed to ensure the offerings can never be like-for-like compared - AFAIK that's partly to withhold that opportunity for customers but more so that regulation doesn't get much grip.
If they want to drill through that game I wish them luck - they're up against years of well practised obfuscation..
I would like to find a public statement of what the TSA can and cannot do. There must be a definition of where the handover takes place between capable officers and these, well, misguided wannabees. I understand they have a function somewhere (apparently), it's just hard to pin down IMHO.
What I hear is someone who has been given special powers having no clue about what his powers are and what are the rights of the people they detain. This is an incredibly dangerous situation, and especially the question for someone's rights ("am I required by law to answer the question") is simply not answered in an acceptable fashion.
It's interesting that his question is turned into a refusal to answer - that is not what he does. I also like the appearance of that eternal dead duck: "if you have nothing to hide"..
I am glad this was taped - these guys need some serious correction.
Sorry, wasn't clear in point 3: I suspect that virtually any sane challenge to this verdict will be successful as letting this stand would render the whole process and those who judge looking like ridiculous.
This would not be enforcing the law but breaking some very fundamental legal and founding principles.
I can't see that happen. Well, OK, I *hope* it doesn't, but's opened one hell of a can of worms and it's about time it did.