It's never that simple. Backdoors are so easy to install, and I've personally seen automated scripts hidden in standard features that created a backdoor several weeks post-firing. That way the changed password was worthless, and even the search for backdoors in the days following the firing was futile. So changing passwords and a thorough search for backdoors was a waste of time.
Bottom line: You can't be sure when it comes to admins. Either part on amicable terms or reinstall everything - or chance it...
The Judaic Law (I am Catholic) tolerated teen fornication provided the couple got married afterward, yet in the U.S. an 18-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old is considered rape.
Unless both is famous... Justin Bieber was 16 and Selena Gomez 18 when they were papped making out (just tongue kissing but still). Both are California residents and it happened in California, whose statutory rape law clearly make this illegal (misdemeanor fine), yet no charges were ever filed as far as I know.
There is no general rule, but pre-puberty is a fundamental rule. When a human hits puberty it ceases to be a child. Now hormones control things and sexual thoughts and feeling fills up the mind of the pubescent, and the child is no more. Not an adult yet of course but certainly not a child either.
It might be that some states/countries defines humans as children if their age is less or equal to 18, but that's a legal definition. Many countries defines a sexual adult by their age of consent, which is 15-16 in most western countries, some with a higher age for homosexuality or similar (which is a violation of human rights of course). Once a human reaches this age it can certainly not be considered a child in any shape or form when we're talking about sex.
Actually more people voted for Romney than Obama but a stupid undemocratic system gave Obama the victory.
I think it's time to drop the current system and go to direct votes like in most other democratic countries. This would open up for more parties and for both sides of the Republican party to get their representatives in the running for President.
On another note, prepare for four more years of growing deficit and businesses going out of business, leading to ever more unemployment.
Pot farms usually bypass their meter so their high usage doesn't show up.
Exactly! - Or use generators for the additional power needed.
Heard of a case where a pot farm was hidden in an apartment, complete with a generator in a soundproofed box and its exhaust fed into the main sewer. The grow rooms were waterproofed as well, making sure the people on the floor below didn't get nasty stains on their ceiling. It was found only by accident. The pot apartment had average water usage, normal power usage and an untampered meter.
It is illegal in some jurisdictions to build fortified homes. Many of the techniques listed would fall under that category. This is for the protection of the police and safety workers of course.
The police? - So you're saying that a drug dealer would be breaking the law if he fortified his home? - Yes, that will truly be a big problem as he's obviously a law-abiding citizen to begin with. Seriously?
It is the same stupid reasoning we see again and again: Let make it illegal so we can keep it out of the hands of the criminals because they really care about the law, being criminals to begin with... Doh!
Let people fortify their homes. Any fortification can be broken so if the police need to make a raid they need to do the right thing to enter, not the usual.
Here's a reverse example from real life. A company specializing in handling large amounts of cash for major retail businesses was located in a fortified industrial building they shared with a package distributor. Their own part had impenetrable steel doors, thick walls etc. but some very clever thieves knew that the wall inside the building between the two companies was not reinforced. So one day they smashed through the gate to the package distributor, through the gate to the inside of the building and on through the wall to the money company. There they helped themselves to everything and made away with many millions. The thieves have since been caught but the money is gone...
The morale of the above story is that even the most professional people will leave gaps in the security, and if you really want to enter there's always a way. Maybe you need to crash through the living room wall or down through the roof - but there is a way.
The castle builders of the middle ages were among the best in physical security and some castles withstood many centuries of attacks, but none has ever not been penetrated at the end. They were all defeated, often through an inside job, a sneak penetration or similar. Most had escape tunnels that could also be used for supplies in case of a long siege, and if they were revealed by the attackers, a few men could enter and kill or kidnap some key people from the castle, and then the game would be up and the castle defeated.
If these phone really are stolen, I see no problem if we could make them explode when turned on by the thief, fence or fence customer... When you buy a hot phone, expect to loose your hand, just like what would happen to thieves in Islamic countries...
What would be your response if a liquid bomb threat was discovered and then the TSA did nothing to screen for it? Everyone would be screaming their heads off that the TSA should be checking for known threats. It is absurd to try to claim that the TSA airport checks are not security.
The checks are security... security theater that is. They don't work. They don't catch terrorists. They don't prevent terrorists from trying something else.
You mention the liquid bomb incident. First of all, the liquids were not even meant to be taken aboard an airplane. They could have been though and that started the scare. Now, the sensible rules would be such, that it would be impossible to bring enough liquid aboard to create a bomb that could do any worthwhile damage. But no. The rules allow for one liter of liquid to be brought aboard and any half-decent explosives expert could tell you that it takes less than 200 ml of some liquid explosives to create a bomb that could bring down the aircraft. So we've ended up with a worthless rule that doesn't work, but which cause lots of inconvenience and hassle for the traveler. That's security theater - if it's REALLY annoying it must be REALLY effective...
Sure, you can't bring enough liquid explosive to blow a hole in the universe but you can still drop the plane on a major city, and that's usually enough for most terrorists.
With the mess in Japan fresh in mind, we've learned our lesson, right?
We have shut down those nuclear power plants well in advance so even in the worst case (total flooding) the nuclear fuel is safe, completely inactive with full passive moderation in place, right? No need to keep up production while the storm passes as powerlines will be among the first thing to go.
If not then a major lawsuit is both justified and necessary. I would not bet on winning such a thing if my plant suffered a meltdown due to ignorance or mindless greed.
In order to combat data breaches you need to be secure to begin with. This is where almost everybody fails. Trying to keep a flawed system secure is like trying to keep a leaking boat afloat - if you work hard and the hole is small enough, it just might work, but...
But even with the perfect system to begin with, things change and before you know it, action is required to keep things secure. Fail here and you're back in the leaking boat.
Now add people. Gullible, naive and stupid. Have the ability to turn even the best system into one big hole.
There's only one solution: Add enough security staff to both project new secure systems, keep the systems secure and to educate its users. Much cheaper in the long run against the alternative of 'fixing' massive data breaches.
I was very surprised when the story of the illegal raid on TPB and the international corruption that led to it broke. I regarded Sweden as one of the pinnacles of democracy in the world and now that image was shattered forever. I now have absolutely no doubt that the rape charges against Assange are pure fiction and that strange things would happen if the Swedish police got their hands on Assange; maybe he would 'disappear' or something similar - I would not trust the Swedish government one bit anymore.
Both TPB and Assange/Wikileaks are freedom fighters in my book - fighting for the freedom of information.
Ah, for all values of random where random = any flag in a DHS database anywhere.
Just so thrilled that we have discrimination down to a science.
Profiling is awesome. It surpasses all other screening methods in efficiency and effectiveness.
Not only is it fast (it can be done entirely before the passenger even arrives at the airport), and those not flagged can be sent through with a minimum of screening (all this equals much less waiting), it is also efficient as it would have caught all the 9/11 hijackers as well as the 'shoe bomber' and the 'underwear bomber', while none of the scanners would have caught anything, and even the grope search is likely to have missed almost everything.
Another backside to the current scanner-fixated system is that it creates some awfully attractive long queues filled with people outside the secure area where even a small nail bomb easily could kill hundreds. If you are going to assemble a lot of people in a confined space at the airport it should be inside the secured areas where they are less of a target.
And of course there's plenty of other places with lots of people assembled and little or no security - like malls, concerts, amusement parks, train- and bus stations or so on. There's a lot of potential targets so the only efficient means to secure them it to take out any potential terrorists way before they can get near such places or even get their hands on bomb materials and explosives.
Absolutely, there's no way Swedish officials would break the law to gain a conviction on someone.
I guess that depends on the bribe offered by the MAFIAA?
A two-week luxury cruise paid for by the MAFIAA was enough to make the Swedish attorney general break a dozen laws by authorizing a raid on The Pirate Bay...
Research has suggest that in most cases, murder is directly related to getting out of bed.
Actually death has been linked to life. Research has showed that every single death is the result of being alive. Nobody has died from being not-alive and nobody dead has died again. Life can therefore be said to be a fatal sexually transmitted disease.
Undeath and zombiism were not included in the research, mainly due to lack of available undead creatures and zombies.
Please pardon me, perhaps I am being too dense to understand the following intricacies:
How can it be that "Human activity triggered an earthquake" when a quake "would likely have occurred at some point in the area" ?
It's the Global Warming standard. If Human Activity can cause something, it is beyond any doubt or hesitation Human Activity that's at fault. It doesn't matter if other causes are more likely, nor that similar Human Activity has been done for decades elsewhere with no ill effects. Oh, and Occams Razor be damned.
Sorry, I fully support a parent's right to use filtering for their child, on a computer that the parent owns.
The parents may have a right to use filtering but the child still has an even more fundamental right to seek and receive information. It is part of the fundamental human rights afforded to everyone regardless of age.
If the child doesn't care and can live with the filters, fine. But if the child hits them and find that its access to desired information is blocked, and starts looking at peacefire for help, it's no longer fine. It's a human rights violation.
I have personally disabled filtering on many public library computers. I cannot accept any form of censorship, especially when it comes to children.
That he runs peacefire isnt necessarily a mark in his favor. The idea that people have a right to circumvent filtering on computers they do not own is about as equally shady as whats being discussed here.
Theres "fighting for an ideal", and theres "going over the edge".
Actually Peacefire IS a mark in his favor - free speech (which includes the right to seek and obtain information) is so fundamental that it trumps the right on those who happen to 'own' the media through which this happens. I fully support this. Children has a right to obtain exactly the same information as an adult. We can discuss whether it should be 'offered' to the children, but if they decide to seek it, they have a right to obtain it. The job of the adults are to guide and advice the children in using this right responsibly and with care, not to play fascistic dictator and secret police rolled into one.
Unless it is to block full Internet access at places with public access or similar it is a waste of time. If someone has adequate time in front of the machine with filters, they can be bypassed - often fairly easily. The only thing that works is to block traffic in a separate firewall, proxy or similar, i.e. to move the filter off the machine in question. If you block all traffic except to that proxy/firewall, there's nothing the user can do to bypass. And you don't have to play arms race to keep up with proxy lists etc. because it runs using whiitelists and those proxies are not going to appear on those.
"a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence"
Think cyber bullying, but as with most things related to the internet, there's a massive wide grey line here.
Pretty much no.
You are always welcome to state your opinion, but as soon as you start spreading lies, private nude pictures etc. with the purpose to cause grief for a specific individual, it's cyber bullying and should be punish accordingly, i.e. hard and with a vengenance. There's no grey area or line here. It's pretty much black and white. As soon as it gets personal you're over line in perhaps more than one way.
Any kind of bullying is repulsive and cruel, and the cyber version just adds cowardice to the mix (the 'safe distance'). All bullies should be punished severely, both physically and through the legal system. If you stop them early, things can still be brought back on track. Later we're talking jail time (juvenile detention or similar) and transfer/relocation of the victim to solve things and that's both expensive and messy. Do not forget that a bully that don't stop after the first warning must be considered evil and ruthless and should be dealt with accordingly.
I'm actually surprised that so few shows back then used experts when it came to 'designing the future'. I mean, the reason Star Trek TOS looks so dated was because they took their current technology and surroundings and transplanted them to a spaceship. So you had a typical 1960's environment that just happened to be the bridge of a spaceship. Later, a lot of efforts were put into making the future actually futuristic, and those movies/tv-shows looks a lot less dated today, although there's a lot of huge misses here and there.
In "Blade Runner" there are flying cars but no traffic? - We rarely see any flying cars besides those of the main characters and there's very few road cars as well and we see no subways. There's a lot of pedestrians but still - Los Angeles is a huge city with many millions of people and they can't all walk everywhere.
In "The Island" we get more realistic reality where there's still a lot of road traffic but flying vehicles do exist. The regional trains have gone maglev and the subways are flying too (using guide wires). It just seems more realistic that the mass transit systems are the first to move away from congested roads and rails. Phone booths are now information kiosks as well - although they didn't see Bing coming...;)
Both of these films had 'visual futurists' attached, thus making a conscious effort to guess at what's coming.
Airships (Zeppelins) are actually quite efficient and safe. Just don't use hydrogen: use helium and electric motors, powered by solar-charged batteries, and the whole thing is both cheap, safe and environmentally friendly. They offer the ability to fly into the center of a metropolis without polution and noise. I predict that they'll return soon, and we might still see a metropolis skyline filled with airships.
Muslims need to fit the stereotype of running around burning flags and threatening to behead unbelievers before they'll stand a chance of getting on the news.
Too bad they're all oh so eager to comply... If they want to change the stereotypical image of Muslims, stop behaving like mindless morons confirming every cliché out there about Muslims.
I know there's 1.6 billion of them and only very, very few actually participate in protests, but the very thing they're doing paints them as extremists with no respect for anything outside their own limited world... I mean lining up in front of Google to protest against a clip from a movie made by someone else in defense of a man that's been dead for 1.300 years... That's lunacy - and a cliché.
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It's never that simple. Backdoors are so easy to install, and I've personally seen automated scripts hidden in standard features that created a backdoor several weeks post-firing. That way the changed password was worthless, and even the search for backdoors in the days following the firing was futile. So changing passwords and a thorough search for backdoors was a waste of time.
Bottom line: You can't be sure when it comes to admins. Either part on amicable terms or reinstall everything - or chance it...
The Judaic Law (I am Catholic) tolerated teen fornication provided the couple got married afterward, yet in the U.S. an 18-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old is considered rape.
Unless both is famous... Justin Bieber was 16 and Selena Gomez 18 when they were papped making out (just tongue kissing but still). Both are California residents and it happened in California, whose statutory rape law clearly make this illegal (misdemeanor fine), yet no charges were ever filed as far as I know.
Sorry, but an individual under 18 is a CHILD.
What? - That is nonsense.
There is no general rule, but pre-puberty is a fundamental rule. When a human hits puberty it ceases to be a child. Now hormones control things and sexual thoughts and feeling fills up the mind of the pubescent, and the child is no more. Not an adult yet of course but certainly not a child either.
It might be that some states/countries defines humans as children if their age is less or equal to 18, but that's a legal definition. Many countries defines a sexual adult by their age of consent, which is 15-16 in most western countries, some with a higher age for homosexuality or similar (which is a violation of human rights of course). Once a human reaches this age it can certainly not be considered a child in any shape or form when we're talking about sex.
Actually more people voted for Romney than Obama but a stupid undemocratic system gave Obama the victory.
I think it's time to drop the current system and go to direct votes like in most other democratic countries. This would open up for more parties and for both sides of the Republican party to get their representatives in the running for President.
On another note, prepare for four more years of growing deficit and businesses going out of business, leading to ever more unemployment.
Pot farms usually bypass their meter so their high usage doesn't show up.
Exactly! - Or use generators for the additional power needed.
Heard of a case where a pot farm was hidden in an apartment, complete with a generator in a soundproofed box and its exhaust fed into the main sewer. The grow rooms were waterproofed as well, making sure the people on the floor below didn't get nasty stains on their ceiling. It was found only by accident. The pot apartment had average water usage, normal power usage and an untampered meter.
It is illegal in some jurisdictions to build fortified homes. Many of the techniques listed would fall under that category. This is for the protection of the police and safety workers of course.
The police? - So you're saying that a drug dealer would be breaking the law if he fortified his home? - Yes, that will truly be a big problem as he's obviously a law-abiding citizen to begin with. Seriously?
It is the same stupid reasoning we see again and again: Let make it illegal so we can keep it out of the hands of the criminals because they really care about the law, being criminals to begin with... Doh!
Let people fortify their homes. Any fortification can be broken so if the police need to make a raid they need to do the right thing to enter, not the usual.
Here's a reverse example from real life. A company specializing in handling large amounts of cash for major retail businesses was located in a fortified industrial building they shared with a package distributor. Their own part had impenetrable steel doors, thick walls etc. but some very clever thieves knew that the wall inside the building between the two companies was not reinforced. So one day they smashed through the gate to the package distributor, through the gate to the inside of the building and on through the wall to the money company. There they helped themselves to everything and made away with many millions. The thieves have since been caught but the money is gone...
The morale of the above story is that even the most professional people will leave gaps in the security, and if you really want to enter there's always a way. Maybe you need to crash through the living room wall or down through the roof - but there is a way.
The castle builders of the middle ages were among the best in physical security and some castles withstood many centuries of attacks, but none has ever not been penetrated at the end. They were all defeated, often through an inside job, a sneak penetration or similar. Most had escape tunnels that could also be used for supplies in case of a long siege, and if they were revealed by the attackers, a few men could enter and kill or kidnap some key people from the castle, and then the game would be up and the castle defeated.
If these phone really are stolen, I see no problem if we could make them explode when turned on by the thief, fence or fence customer... When you buy a hot phone, expect to loose your hand, just like what would happen to thieves in Islamic countries...
What would be your response if a liquid bomb threat was discovered and then the TSA did nothing to screen for it? Everyone would be screaming their heads off that the TSA should be checking for known threats. It is absurd to try to claim that the TSA airport checks are not security.
The checks are security... security theater that is. They don't work. They don't catch terrorists. They don't prevent terrorists from trying something else.
You mention the liquid bomb incident. First of all, the liquids were not even meant to be taken aboard an airplane. They could have been though and that started the scare. Now, the sensible rules would be such, that it would be impossible to bring enough liquid aboard to create a bomb that could do any worthwhile damage. But no. The rules allow for one liter of liquid to be brought aboard and any half-decent explosives expert could tell you that it takes less than 200 ml of some liquid explosives to create a bomb that could bring down the aircraft. So we've ended up with a worthless rule that doesn't work, but which cause lots of inconvenience and hassle for the traveler. That's security theater - if it's REALLY annoying it must be REALLY effective...
Sure, you can't bring enough liquid explosive to blow a hole in the universe but you can still drop the plane on a major city, and that's usually enough for most terrorists.
With the mess in Japan fresh in mind, we've learned our lesson, right?
We have shut down those nuclear power plants well in advance so even in the worst case (total flooding) the nuclear fuel is safe, completely inactive with full passive moderation in place, right? No need to keep up production while the storm passes as powerlines will be among the first thing to go.
If not then a major lawsuit is both justified and necessary. I would not bet on winning such a thing if my plant suffered a meltdown due to ignorance or mindless greed.
In order to combat data breaches you need to be secure to begin with. This is where almost everybody fails. Trying to keep a flawed system secure is like trying to keep a leaking boat afloat - if you work hard and the hole is small enough, it just might work, but...
But even with the perfect system to begin with, things change and before you know it, action is required to keep things secure. Fail here and you're back in the leaking boat.
Now add people. Gullible, naive and stupid. Have the ability to turn even the best system into one big hole.
There's only one solution: Add enough security staff to both project new secure systems, keep the systems secure and to educate its users. Much cheaper in the long run against the alternative of 'fixing' massive data breaches.
I was very surprised when the story of the illegal raid on TPB and the international corruption that led to it broke. I regarded Sweden as one of the pinnacles of democracy in the world and now that image was shattered forever. I now have absolutely no doubt that the rape charges against Assange are pure fiction and that strange things would happen if the Swedish police got their hands on Assange; maybe he would 'disappear' or something similar - I would not trust the Swedish government one bit anymore.
Both TPB and Assange/Wikileaks are freedom fighters in my book - fighting for the freedom of information.
Ah, for all values of random where random = any flag in a DHS database anywhere.
Just so thrilled that we have discrimination down to a science.
Profiling is awesome. It surpasses all other screening methods in efficiency and effectiveness.
Not only is it fast (it can be done entirely before the passenger even arrives at the airport), and those not flagged can be sent through with a minimum of screening (all this equals much less waiting), it is also efficient as it would have caught all the 9/11 hijackers as well as the 'shoe bomber' and the 'underwear bomber', while none of the scanners would have caught anything, and even the grope search is likely to have missed almost everything.
Another backside to the current scanner-fixated system is that it creates some awfully attractive long queues filled with people outside the secure area where even a small nail bomb easily could kill hundreds. If you are going to assemble a lot of people in a confined space at the airport it should be inside the secured areas where they are less of a target.
And of course there's plenty of other places with lots of people assembled and little or no security - like malls, concerts, amusement parks, train- and bus stations or so on. There's a lot of potential targets so the only efficient means to secure them it to take out any potential terrorists way before they can get near such places or even get their hands on bomb materials and explosives.
From the TFA:
"There are no unlimited data deals"
Why? - There's clearly a market. Just set the price according to expenditures and let the customer decide whether it's worth it.
Absolutely, there's no way Swedish officials would break the law to gain a conviction on someone.
I guess that depends on the bribe offered by the MAFIAA?
A two-week luxury cruise paid for by the MAFIAA was enough to make the Swedish attorney general break a dozen laws by authorizing a raid on The Pirate Bay...
Because information is more dangerous than violence.
Or in other words: "The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword" which Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote back in 1839.
Research has suggest that in most cases, murder is directly related to getting out of bed.
Actually death has been linked to life. Research has showed that every single death is the result of being alive. Nobody has died from being not-alive and nobody dead has died again. Life can therefore be said to be a fatal sexually transmitted disease.
Undeath and zombiism were not included in the research, mainly due to lack of available undead creatures and zombies.
Please pardon me, perhaps I am being too dense to understand the following intricacies:
How can it be that "Human activity triggered an earthquake" when a quake "would likely have occurred at some point in the area" ?
It's the Global Warming standard. If Human Activity can cause something, it is beyond any doubt or hesitation Human Activity that's at fault. It doesn't matter if other causes are more likely, nor that similar Human Activity has been done for decades elsewhere with no ill effects. Oh, and Occams Razor be damned.
The same way as everyone else I presume. What does religion (of lack thereof) have to do with raising a kid?
Sorry, I fully support a parent's right to use filtering for their child, on a computer that the parent owns.
The parents may have a right to use filtering but the child still has an even more fundamental right to seek and receive information. It is part of the fundamental human rights afforded to everyone regardless of age.
If the child doesn't care and can live with the filters, fine. But if the child hits them and find that its access to desired information is blocked, and starts looking at peacefire for help, it's no longer fine. It's a human rights violation.
I have personally disabled filtering on many public library computers. I cannot accept any form of censorship, especially when it comes to children.
That he runs peacefire isnt necessarily a mark in his favor. The idea that people have a right to circumvent filtering on computers they do not own is about as equally shady as whats being discussed here.
Theres "fighting for an ideal", and theres "going over the edge".
Actually Peacefire IS a mark in his favor - free speech (which includes the right to seek and obtain information) is so fundamental that it trumps the right on those who happen to 'own' the media through which this happens. I fully support this. Children has a right to obtain exactly the same information as an adult. We can discuss whether it should be 'offered' to the children, but if they decide to seek it, they have a right to obtain it. The job of the adults are to guide and advice the children in using this right responsibly and with care, not to play fascistic dictator and secret police rolled into one.
What is the purpose of those filters?
Unless it is to block full Internet access at places with public access or similar it is a waste of time. If someone has adequate time in front of the machine with filters, they can be bypassed - often fairly easily. The only thing that works is to block traffic in a separate firewall, proxy or similar, i.e. to move the filter off the machine in question. If you block all traffic except to that proxy/firewall, there's nothing the user can do to bypass. And you don't have to play arms race to keep up with proxy lists etc. because it runs using whiitelists and those proxies are not going to appear on those.
"a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence"
Think cyber bullying, but as with most things related to the internet, there's a massive wide grey line here.
Pretty much no.
You are always welcome to state your opinion, but as soon as you start spreading lies, private nude pictures etc. with the purpose to cause grief for a specific individual, it's cyber bullying and should be punish accordingly, i.e. hard and with a vengenance. There's no grey area or line here. It's pretty much black and white. As soon as it gets personal you're over line in perhaps more than one way.
Any kind of bullying is repulsive and cruel, and the cyber version just adds cowardice to the mix (the 'safe distance'). All bullies should be punished severely, both physically and through the legal system. If you stop them early, things can still be brought back on track. Later we're talking jail time (juvenile detention or similar) and transfer/relocation of the victim to solve things and that's both expensive and messy. Do not forget that a bully that don't stop after the first warning must be considered evil and ruthless and should be dealt with accordingly.
I'm actually surprised that so few shows back then used experts when it came to 'designing the future'. I mean, the reason Star Trek TOS looks so dated was because they took their current technology and surroundings and transplanted them to a spaceship. So you had a typical 1960's environment that just happened to be the bridge of a spaceship. Later, a lot of efforts were put into making the future actually futuristic, and those movies/tv-shows looks a lot less dated today, although there's a lot of huge misses here and there.
In "Blade Runner" there are flying cars but no traffic? - We rarely see any flying cars besides those of the main characters and there's very few road cars as well and we see no subways. There's a lot of pedestrians but still - Los Angeles is a huge city with many millions of people and they can't all walk everywhere.
In "The Island" we get more realistic reality where there's still a lot of road traffic but flying vehicles do exist. The regional trains have gone maglev and the subways are flying too (using guide wires). It just seems more realistic that the mass transit systems are the first to move away from congested roads and rails. Phone booths are now information kiosks as well - although they didn't see Bing coming... ;)
Both of these films had 'visual futurists' attached, thus making a conscious effort to guess at what's coming.
Airships (Zeppelins) are actually quite efficient and safe. Just don't use hydrogen: use helium and electric motors, powered by solar-charged batteries, and the whole thing is both cheap, safe and environmentally friendly. They offer the ability to fly into the center of a metropolis without polution and noise. I predict that they'll return soon, and we might still see a metropolis skyline filled with airships.
Muslims need to fit the stereotype of running around burning flags and threatening to behead unbelievers before they'll stand a chance of getting on the news.
Too bad they're all oh so eager to comply... If they want to change the stereotypical image of Muslims, stop behaving like mindless morons confirming every cliché out there about Muslims.
I know there's 1.6 billion of them and only very, very few actually participate in protests, but the very thing they're doing paints them as extremists with no respect for anything outside their own limited world... I mean lining up in front of Google to protest against a clip from a movie made by someone else in defense of a man that's been dead for 1.300 years... That's lunacy - and a cliché.