In most countries (I won't claim to know all nations laws), you can buy and install aftermarket parts. Generally, aftermarket parts exclude very few pieces. I haven't seen too many aftermarket frames, but I know they exist.:) They simply are sold as the aftermarket company, and don't include the OEM marks (like, the company logo). If you really look into the parts on a car though, you'll find that a lot aren't made by the auto manufacturer.
Depending on your location, you can do a ground-up build of your own vehicle. Have a look at "Sand Rails". Depending on who builds it, it could have a nice mix of factor and aftermarket parts. It would be registered as a homebuilt though. In my state, there is a list of essential things for it to be legal on the street, which includes lights, turn signals, brakes, windshield, and horn.
You can also build your own aircraft, since we're on the idea of hardware certification. I've been looking at homebuilt aircraft or retrofitted aircraft with Chevy LS1 engines. Some people use rotary engines, or even Volkswagon air cooled engines. Those, if I understand correctly, are registered as experimental, and have restrictions on where they can be used.
On the medical use, most medical companies like to keep a tight hold on everything they do, so they wouldn't just open source their pacemaker software for other vendors to use. It costs them enough to get certified, they don't want to lose profits elsewhere. It's not like you want any Joe building your pacemaker in his garage.:)
Wind can make creaking and banging sounds. The wind can move doors, windows, or depending on the construction of the structure, it can shift the walls enough to make the wall, pieces in the wall, or even the roof or floor creak.
I was in a newer construction 2 story house on a hill, and strong winds would make the whole house move. I was glad I was only renting.:) The earthquakes would make it shift too, so it wasn't an ideal place to stay.
The stills were timelaps photos, that do look totally computer generated. There are videos that are clearly rockets with guidance problems.
It's already been identified to be a Bulava missile from the Typhoon submarine "Dmitri Donskoy" in the White Sea area. They had already announced their missile test, and had exclusive use of the area for launch. Nothing like hitting a fishing boat from the bottom with an ICBM to mess up your morning.:) Apparently it wasn't that surprising, most of their test have had rather dramatic failures.
A well planned covert operation would go unnoticed though. What's the difference between booking 100 tickets for your "Christian group tour of [insert city]", "100 terrorists who want to break something", and "100 arbitrary people"? The first two are dangerous.:)
If the identities of all those who are involved (or interested) in terrorist organizations were already known to your favorite TLA (three letter agency), they would have already been collected, and shuttled off to rendition camps somewhere. The ones who remain on the street are well, just "suspicious", so not only can't they be arrested, but they they'll only rate "SSSSS" on their boarding pass, and be given the same cursory examination that the rest of us already get.
I upgraded my ticket at a kiosk for a flight. I love the $75 upgrades.:) My original boarding pass already had "SSSSS" on it, which means I was flagged to be checked. The upgraded ticket also had the "SSSSS" on it. I went through the metal detector. I was patted down, and questioned about my intentions on the flight (Umm, to get from Point A to Point B). Something trivial was taken from me and thrown in the bin, but I don't remember exactly what. My seat? Row 1, Seat C. That put me in the very first row, on the aisle. If I sneezed, the snot would have hit the cockpit door. If I was a security concern for any reason, is that really where you want me?
At one point during the flight, the pilot came out to use the restroom. The only thing between me and the controls? A petite stewardess. Obviously I had no intention of doing anything bad, since I'm writing this in freedom.:) But, come on, if there was even a hint that I'd do something bad, would it be appropriate to give me the perfect seat to do it from?
No, your views aren't cynical. They're realistic. Unfortunately, we (the gov't with our tax dollars) are spending so much to enhance the illusion, that could be better spent elsewhere. But, the TSA isn't going away any time soon, and "security" measures will continue, even though they are entertaining at best.
I had a nice talk with a TSA agent once. I had time to waste, and he was going through the drill. It was obvious that he understood his job was just to maintain the illusion. We both understood that if air travel is the path of most resistance, a real terrorist would choose the path of least resistance. There are so many options, and even in a total police state those methods wouldn't be fool proof. Consider the underground movements during WWII in Europe. Even in occupied cities with Axis troops on every corner, the resistance was able to not only subvert their security by moving people in and out, but they were able to stage resistance attacks (as we'd now know as terrorist attacks). But as it goes, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
It's not clueless and inept. It's the illusion of security. Take off your shoes. Put your liquids in a clear bag. Stand here while we do a cursory search of your carry on luggage. It's to make the general population *FEEL* secure, not to actually secure them. Have you looked in their trash bin of confiscated items? It's all stuff that wouldn't sell at a yard sale. Their "explosive" detectors are a joke. And backscatter xrays? I went through one. Because of the way my shirt was sewn, it looked like I was wearing suspenders. 15 minutes to explain that it was just a shirt. How about recent tests where only 25% of the tests done passing obvious dangerous items (bombs, knives, guns, etc) through security were caught?
They still allow objects with more serious potential through. A laptop as a blunt force instrument? The potential energy stored in a laptop battery? The RF radiation created by handheld electronics? The fact that a highschool football player could overpower the flight crew and air marshals? They worry about that tube of toothpaste. What if 100 of the tickets for a flight were booked by terrorists? Good luck for the rest of the passengers to overpower them.
But, the people demanded higher security, so they get the illusion of higher security.
Now, take off your shoes, and play along with the security theater.
* Hobbyist watch repairs as a teenager.
* Machinist in Detroit.
* Steam engine repairs for Westinghouse.
* Engineer at Edison Illuminating Company (promoted to chief engineer)
Kinda sounds like the type of guy who could build a car.:) Not that I like Fords though, I prefer GM vehicles.:)
I've done that in the past, when I had a good reliable endpoint on a fast connection. I was on providers who did all kinds of nasty stuff, including rate limiting various things, redirecting SMTP and DNS to their own servers, etc, etc. PPP over SSH is a real easy thing to do. One little script, and ppp available at both ends, and voila, you're now re-homed, and the transit from your location to your other endpoint is encrypted.
And I know someone's going to say it, so... no PPP over SSH isn't slow or unreliable. It's actually pretty good. It'll handle some pretty substantial outages, and connection quality issues without a problem. Like, I had a provider who would go down for about 5 minutes every hour, and my connections were never "lost". They kept retrying and picked right back up where they were. On top of that, they frequently had 10% packet loss. Really, you have to love cablemodems.:)
Ya, I'm sure there was more evidence on him, or they would have never perused it. I've dealt with the FBI on other topics (mostly CC fraud and Nigerian scams), and it takes high dollar fraud for them to even be interested. I seriously doubt one mislabeled download was enough for them to be interested.
You know the defendant is going to always make himself look as innocent as possible.
The FBI is doing their job properly by not saying all the evidence that they have. It's quite likely part of a larger investigation, so they will continue to keep quiet about what they have so they can finish following their leads. They are far more interested in the people producing the materials, than the end users. Well, unless the end user is heavily involved in the trafficking of those materials. Since they only managed to find one deleted file, that indicates to me that there could be a few circumstances.
1) The evidence lead to him, and he was simply mistaken as someone heavily involved. Then yes, this was a terrible mistake.
2) He was heavily involved in trafficking in these materials, and had them stored elsewhere. What they found was just a little bit of what he had previously deleted from his local machine. By letting themselves be known, he will likely lead them to the rest of the evidence. For example, if he had it stored off-site, he'll probably log in and try to destroy the rest of the evidence.
or....
3) The FBI agents involved had few leads recently, and this was the only one that they could even begin to prosecute. That would be nice to believe that kiddie porn barely exists. Unfortunately, it does exist, so I doubt this to be true.
I know you can get just about anything you want from the P2P networks. I haven't looked specifically for kiddie porn. It's not for the legal consequences. It's because I feel it is morally wrong. Give me some good consenting adult porn, and I'm fine with it.:) Just kidding there. I just want to see TV episodes that I've missed, that aren't out of DVD yet.:)
You're correct, it all depends on your utilization. I wasn't trying to give a tutorial on cleaning your tracks. A proper DoD wipe on empty space is the only way to clean up, but that is contingent on the fact that all other traces have been removed. Windows has a bad habit of leaving all kinds of kinds of trails around. Well, not entirely Microsoft's fault, it is rampant in many Windows programs.
But, if you have a decent amount of fragmentation, it's very likely the data will be overwritten as you go. Luckily, if someone is doing a lot of P2P and web browsing, you'll end up with lots of fragmentation and reused space.
Ummmm, ACLU may not be interested, but I'm sure a local attorney would. So, exactly why did they break in, and what were they asking, or are you just full of it?
Well, one thing is true. If they show up to your house without a warrant, they can't search. You can let them in, and they still can't search. Well, they can. There are a few loopholes to that rule.
If they show up to your house, and you don't let them in, and they really want to do the search, they can be sure you don't leave before they get one. They can even be sure enough that you don't destroy any evidence meanwhile, by holding you for up to 72 hours. While you're happily tucked away in jail waiting to be charged or released, they can get the warrant.
But, there's no need to give up anything. No, you may not search my house or my car. I'd give them the opportunity to tell me their probable cause. They they have a reasonable probable cause that a judge would give them the search warrant for, sure go ahead. If they want to search "ummm, because we think there could be something", nope. Go secure yourself a search warrant and give me a call.
But, over two year and at least one or two defrags (I'd hope), the data would have been overwritten and unrecoverable.
I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn. They had a lead, which I'm sure was more substantial. To get the search warrant, they had to prove probable cause to the judge. That warrant has to be specific to what they are searching for. It wasn't just a blanket "we think he's bad, we're going to find why". Nor was it "he downloaded College Girls Gone Wild 99.wmv, we want a warrant".
They don't talk about the specifics of what they already had on him. I'm sure it was relevant though. It definitely wasn't a courtesy check for kiddie porn. By the time they show up and start asking questions, they already have a case, they're just completing their investigation.
The sheriff's department showed up to my ex-mother-in-law's house a couple years ago. They wanted to search her computer, along with any other computer in the house. They took her computer, and brought it back a few days later. The case was, she had a tenant in her spare room. He had used her computer. They already had a list of things which is what brought them there. Unfortunately, she didn't know about the pending investigation, and I was there between the time they knew there was a problem and the time they showed up to investigate. While I was there, she was complaining that her computer was slow. I did a sweep for malware, cleared the browser cache and history, and defragged the drive. I don't know that there was anything to find. I told the investigator exactly what I had done. They weren't able to recover anything related to the case, because it was now clean. The most they found was my searches for flight times and weather reports, and items related to her work, all of which happened after I cleaned the machine up. I didn't notice anything while I was cleaning, but I also wasn't looking for tracks of kiddie porn.
It doesn't matter much. The first sibling to grab key 1a is usually running for the car. Even if the other sibling grabbed key 1b, they'll be looking at an empty parking spot, complaining to mom.:)
The aliens probably wouldn't help with a cancer cure. Consider what would happen if another substantial cause of death were eliminated. Lifespans would be extended beyond our unusually long lives now. The world's population is already too high, and growing beyond the unsustainable level. While it's nice to think we can get rid of something that causes pain and death, pain and death are part of life. If you reduce the death rate, you'll have to reduce the reproduction rate.
I'm sure the next effort would be to identify and control the "grow old" gene. They already know how old age works, but they'd want to control it. Ok, so you stop the aging process, so people live for 100 years as if they're in their 20's and 30's. Great. I'd hope we have a whole lot of new planets to extend to, because sure as hell this one will be used up quick.
I saw this years ago. I didn't build my own Tesla coil, but I did have a spark gap generator that would pulse at the frequencies I specified to make sounds. I ran it up and down the scales mathematically, but from what I understand others have their programs using MIDI files to control their frequencies. Still, a single 2" spark singing to me was entertainment enough, and didn't cost very much.:)
Oops, sorry about that. For some reason I was thinking it was 8 million queries out of the general population. Thanks for narrowing the search parameters. It's not that it looks any more favorable, but at least the numbers are more accurate.
I'd suspect the phone company can override it any time they'd like, but I can't confirm that. They can get an approximate location based on tower triangulation. Sure, 3 meters is good resolution, but 50 meters is good enough. If you're on foot running, 50 meters goes by pretty damned quick. Even 200 meters isn't much to worry about. There's a huge difference between wanting to know if a target is in the state, or knowing between which of 4 houses is he in.
With 8 million queries, I'd have to assume that their accuracy information is pretty good, or else they wouldn't bother to use it. I also have to assume that those 8 million queries aren't on a handful of phones. If you want to find someone, just a few queries would be sufficient. "Where should we send the arresting officers?" "Is the target still there?".
So, we're looking at probably 1 million civilian phones being located. So, 1 in 174
There are approx 205 million people in the United States age 15 to 64
Approx 85% of those people own cell phones.
So, approx 174,250,000 cell phones in use by the most likely target demographic.
So, less than 1% of us have been tracked. But with 1:174 odds, do you feel good about thinking that some law enforcement agency wanted to know where you were? It's not what you've done. It's what they think that you've done. But hey, just because you were within 200 meters of a known felon's house doesn't mean you were associating with them. Right?
If someone flips a coin to decided something with me, I punch them in the face. When they wake up I tell them "Nope, it's what I called." They obviously didn't care much if they left it to the random chance of a coin flip. Try it. You'll find it helps solve a lot of problems. Well, until they start trying to do the same thing. If they swing at you, after they wake up, knock 'em out again just for spite.... and people say violence doesn't solve anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, on the car analogy, no.
In most countries (I won't claim to know all nations laws), you can buy and install aftermarket parts. Generally, aftermarket parts exclude very few pieces. I haven't seen too many aftermarket frames, but I know they exist. :) They simply are sold as the aftermarket company, and don't include the OEM marks (like, the company logo). If you really look into the parts on a car though, you'll find that a lot aren't made by the auto manufacturer.
Depending on your location, you can do a ground-up build of your own vehicle. Have a look at "Sand Rails". Depending on who builds it, it could have a nice mix of factor and aftermarket parts. It would be registered as a homebuilt though. In my state, there is a list of essential things for it to be legal on the street, which includes lights, turn signals, brakes, windshield, and horn.
You can also build your own aircraft, since we're on the idea of hardware certification. I've been looking at homebuilt aircraft or retrofitted aircraft with Chevy LS1 engines. Some people use rotary engines, or even Volkswagon air cooled engines. Those, if I understand correctly, are registered as experimental, and have restrictions on where they can be used.
On the medical use, most medical companies like to keep a tight hold on everything they do, so they wouldn't just open source their pacemaker software for other vendors to use. It costs them enough to get certified, they don't want to lose profits elsewhere. It's not like you want any Joe building your pacemaker in his garage. :)
I love this game. :)
Wind can make creaking and banging sounds. The wind can move doors, windows, or depending on the construction of the structure, it can shift the walls enough to make the wall, pieces in the wall, or even the roof or floor creak.
I was in a newer construction 2 story house on a hill, and strong winds would make the whole house move. I was glad I was only renting. :) The earthquakes would make it shift too, so it wasn't an ideal place to stay.
The stills were timelaps photos, that do look totally computer generated. There are videos that are clearly rockets with guidance problems.
It's already been identified to be a Bulava missile from the Typhoon submarine "Dmitri Donskoy" in the White Sea area. They had already announced their missile test, and had exclusive use of the area for launch. Nothing like hitting a fishing boat from the bottom with an ICBM to mess up your morning. :) Apparently it wasn't that surprising, most of their test have had rather dramatic failures.
And they were well funded by one particular superpower. Oh ya, that was the US.
A well planned covert operation would go unnoticed though. What's the difference between booking 100 tickets for your "Christian group tour of [insert city]", "100 terrorists who want to break something", and "100 arbitrary people"? The first two are dangerous. :)
If the identities of all those who are involved (or interested) in terrorist organizations were already known to your favorite TLA (three letter agency), they would have already been collected, and shuttled off to rendition camps somewhere. The ones who remain on the street are well, just "suspicious", so not only can't they be arrested, but they they'll only rate "SSSSS" on their boarding pass, and be given the same cursory examination that the rest of us already get.
I'd be happy if they'd just use some lube. Unfortunately, they confiscate it and throw it in the bin BEFORE the body cavity search.
I have one better for you.
I upgraded my ticket at a kiosk for a flight. I love the $75 upgrades. :) My original boarding pass already had "SSSSS" on it, which means I was flagged to be checked. The upgraded ticket also had the "SSSSS" on it. I went through the metal detector. I was patted down, and questioned about my intentions on the flight (Umm, to get from Point A to Point B). Something trivial was taken from me and thrown in the bin, but I don't remember exactly what. My seat? Row 1, Seat C. That put me in the very first row, on the aisle. If I sneezed, the snot would have hit the cockpit door. If I was a security concern for any reason, is that really where you want me?
At one point during the flight, the pilot came out to use the restroom. The only thing between me and the controls? A petite stewardess. Obviously I had no intention of doing anything bad, since I'm writing this in freedom. :) But, come on, if there was even a hint that I'd do something bad, would it be appropriate to give me the perfect seat to do it from?
No, your views aren't cynical. They're realistic. Unfortunately, we (the gov't with our tax dollars) are spending so much to enhance the illusion, that could be better spent elsewhere. But, the TSA isn't going away any time soon, and "security" measures will continue, even though they are entertaining at best.
I had a nice talk with a TSA agent once. I had time to waste, and he was going through the drill. It was obvious that he understood his job was just to maintain the illusion. We both understood that if air travel is the path of most resistance, a real terrorist would choose the path of least resistance. There are so many options, and even in a total police state those methods wouldn't be fool proof. Consider the underground movements during WWII in Europe. Even in occupied cities with Axis troops on every corner, the resistance was able to not only subvert their security by moving people in and out, but they were able to stage resistance attacks (as we'd now know as terrorist attacks). But as it goes, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
It's not clueless and inept. It's the illusion of security. Take off your shoes. Put your liquids in a clear bag. Stand here while we do a cursory search of your carry on luggage. It's to make the general population *FEEL* secure, not to actually secure them. Have you looked in their trash bin of confiscated items? It's all stuff that wouldn't sell at a yard sale. Their "explosive" detectors are a joke. And backscatter xrays? I went through one. Because of the way my shirt was sewn, it looked like I was wearing suspenders. 15 minutes to explain that it was just a shirt. How about recent tests where only 25% of the tests done passing obvious dangerous items (bombs, knives, guns, etc) through security were caught?
They still allow objects with more serious potential through. A laptop as a blunt force instrument? The potential energy stored in a laptop battery? The RF radiation created by handheld electronics? The fact that a highschool football player could overpower the flight crew and air marshals? They worry about that tube of toothpaste. What if 100 of the tickets for a flight were booked by terrorists? Good luck for the rest of the passengers to overpower them.
But, the people demanded higher security, so they get the illusion of higher security.
Now, take off your shoes, and play along with the security theater.
Since they mangled the link in the story, I'm pretty sure it's mostly Slashdot-effect-proof. Or I guess that would be slashdoteffectproof. :)
Well...
* Hobbyist watch repairs as a teenager.
* Machinist in Detroit.
* Steam engine repairs for Westinghouse.
* Engineer at Edison Illuminating Company (promoted to chief engineer)
Kinda sounds like the type of guy who could build a car. :) Not that I like Fords though, I prefer GM vehicles. :)
I've done that in the past, when I had a good reliable endpoint on a fast connection. I was on providers who did all kinds of nasty stuff, including rate limiting various things, redirecting SMTP and DNS to their own servers, etc, etc. PPP over SSH is a real easy thing to do. One little script, and ppp available at both ends, and voila, you're now re-homed, and the transit from your location to your other endpoint is encrypted.
And I know someone's going to say it, so ... no PPP over SSH isn't slow or unreliable. It's actually pretty good. It'll handle some pretty substantial outages, and connection quality issues without a problem. Like, I had a provider who would go down for about 5 minutes every hour, and my connections were never "lost". They kept retrying and picked right back up where they were. On top of that, they frequently had 10% packet loss. Really, you have to love cablemodems. :)
Thank you.
Ya, I'm sure there was more evidence on him, or they would have never perused it. I've dealt with the FBI on other topics (mostly CC fraud and Nigerian scams), and it takes high dollar fraud for them to even be interested. I seriously doubt one mislabeled download was enough for them to be interested.
You know the defendant is going to always make himself look as innocent as possible.
The FBI is doing their job properly by not saying all the evidence that they have. It's quite likely part of a larger investigation, so they will continue to keep quiet about what they have so they can finish following their leads. They are far more interested in the people producing the materials, than the end users. Well, unless the end user is heavily involved in the trafficking of those materials. Since they only managed to find one deleted file, that indicates to me that there could be a few circumstances.
1) The evidence lead to him, and he was simply mistaken as someone heavily involved. Then yes, this was a terrible mistake.
2) He was heavily involved in trafficking in these materials, and had them stored elsewhere. What they found was just a little bit of what he had previously deleted from his local machine. By letting themselves be known, he will likely lead them to the rest of the evidence. For example, if he had it stored off-site, he'll probably log in and try to destroy the rest of the evidence.
or....
3) The FBI agents involved had few leads recently, and this was the only one that they could even begin to prosecute. That would be nice to believe that kiddie porn barely exists. Unfortunately, it does exist, so I doubt this to be true.
I know you can get just about anything you want from the P2P networks. I haven't looked specifically for kiddie porn. It's not for the legal consequences. It's because I feel it is morally wrong. Give me some good consenting adult porn, and I'm fine with it. :) Just kidding there. I just want to see TV episodes that I've missed, that aren't out of DVD yet. :)
You're correct, it all depends on your utilization. I wasn't trying to give a tutorial on cleaning your tracks. A proper DoD wipe on empty space is the only way to clean up, but that is contingent on the fact that all other traces have been removed. Windows has a bad habit of leaving all kinds of kinds of trails around. Well, not entirely Microsoft's fault, it is rampant in many Windows programs.
But, if you have a decent amount of fragmentation, it's very likely the data will be overwritten as you go. Luckily, if someone is doing a lot of P2P and web browsing, you'll end up with lots of fragmentation and reused space.
Ahhh, a proper response from a representative from the Pentagon. :)
It's also the same reason aliens will never visit us and say "hi". If you don't understand it (or can't see it), bomb it. :)
Ummmm, ACLU may not be interested, but I'm sure a local attorney would. So, exactly why did they break in, and what were they asking, or are you just full of it?
Well, one thing is true. If they show up to your house without a warrant, they can't search. You can let them in, and they still can't search. Well, they can. There are a few loopholes to that rule.
If they show up to your house, and you don't let them in, and they really want to do the search, they can be sure you don't leave before they get one. They can even be sure enough that you don't destroy any evidence meanwhile, by holding you for up to 72 hours. While you're happily tucked away in jail waiting to be charged or released, they can get the warrant.
But, there's no need to give up anything. No, you may not search my house or my car. I'd give them the opportunity to tell me their probable cause. They they have a reasonable probable cause that a judge would give them the search warrant for, sure go ahead. If they want to search "ummm, because we think there could be something", nope. Go secure yourself a search warrant and give me a call.
But, over two year and at least one or two defrags (I'd hope), the data would have been overwritten and unrecoverable.
I'd suspect that it wasn't just one file that was old. The FBI doesn't just show up to random people's houses to look for child porn. They had a lead, which I'm sure was more substantial. To get the search warrant, they had to prove probable cause to the judge. That warrant has to be specific to what they are searching for. It wasn't just a blanket "we think he's bad, we're going to find why". Nor was it "he downloaded College Girls Gone Wild 99.wmv, we want a warrant".
They don't talk about the specifics of what they already had on him. I'm sure it was relevant though. It definitely wasn't a courtesy check for kiddie porn. By the time they show up and start asking questions, they already have a case, they're just completing their investigation.
The sheriff's department showed up to my ex-mother-in-law's house a couple years ago. They wanted to search her computer, along with any other computer in the house. They took her computer, and brought it back a few days later. The case was, she had a tenant in her spare room. He had used her computer. They already had a list of things which is what brought them there. Unfortunately, she didn't know about the pending investigation, and I was there between the time they knew there was a problem and the time they showed up to investigate. While I was there, she was complaining that her computer was slow. I did a sweep for malware, cleared the browser cache and history, and defragged the drive. I don't know that there was anything to find. I told the investigator exactly what I had done. They weren't able to recover anything related to the case, because it was now clean. The most they found was my searches for flight times and weather reports, and items related to her work, all of which happened after I cleaned the machine up. I didn't notice anything while I was cleaning, but I also wasn't looking for tracks of kiddie porn.
It doesn't matter much. The first sibling to grab key 1a is usually running for the car. Even if the other sibling grabbed key 1b, they'll be looking at an empty parking spot, complaining to mom. :)
Where do you think they got the cheap labor to design it? Not here in the US. Oh no, farm everything out to keep our costs down. {sigh}
The aliens probably wouldn't help with a cancer cure. Consider what would happen if another substantial cause of death were eliminated. Lifespans would be extended beyond our unusually long lives now. The world's population is already too high, and growing beyond the unsustainable level. While it's nice to think we can get rid of something that causes pain and death, pain and death are part of life. If you reduce the death rate, you'll have to reduce the reproduction rate.
I'm sure the next effort would be to identify and control the "grow old" gene. They already know how old age works, but they'd want to control it. Ok, so you stop the aging process, so people live for 100 years as if they're in their 20's and 30's. Great. I'd hope we have a whole lot of new planets to extend to, because sure as hell this one will be used up quick.
Nope, some of us are jaded 30-somethings. :)
I saw this years ago. I didn't build my own Tesla coil, but I did have a spark gap generator that would pulse at the frequencies I specified to make sounds. I ran it up and down the scales mathematically, but from what I understand others have their programs using MIDI files to control their frequencies. Still, a single 2" spark singing to me was entertainment enough, and didn't cost very much. :)
And ya, I'm bored to see this making news too.
Oops, sorry about that. For some reason I was thinking it was 8 million queries out of the general population. Thanks for narrowing the search parameters. It's not that it looks any more favorable, but at least the numbers are more accurate.
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go!
I'd suspect the phone company can override it any time they'd like, but I can't confirm that. They can get an approximate location based on tower triangulation. Sure, 3 meters is good resolution, but 50 meters is good enough. If you're on foot running, 50 meters goes by pretty damned quick. Even 200 meters isn't much to worry about. There's a huge difference between wanting to know if a target is in the state, or knowing between which of 4 houses is he in.
With 8 million queries, I'd have to assume that their accuracy information is pretty good, or else they wouldn't bother to use it. I also have to assume that those 8 million queries aren't on a handful of phones. If you want to find someone, just a few queries would be sufficient. "Where should we send the arresting officers?" "Is the target still there?".
So, we're looking at probably 1 million civilian phones being located. So, 1 in 174
There are approx 205 million people in the United States age 15 to 64
Approx 85% of those people own cell phones.
So, approx 174,250,000 cell phones in use by the most likely target demographic.
So, less than 1% of us have been tracked. But with 1:174 odds, do you feel good about thinking that some law enforcement agency wanted to know where you were? It's not what you've done. It's what they think that you've done. But hey, just because you were within 200 meters of a known felon's house doesn't mean you were associating with them. Right?
If someone flips a coin to decided something with me, I punch them in the face. When they wake up I tell them "Nope, it's what I called." They obviously didn't care much if they left it to the random chance of a coin flip. Try it. You'll find it helps solve a lot of problems. Well, until they start trying to do the same thing. If they swing at you, after they wake up, knock 'em out again just for spite. ... and people say violence doesn't solve anything.