If it was so "easy" there would be far more of those device on every plane to spread terror.
Well, let's consider another threat: shoulder-launched missles. Commecial airliners are sitting ducks for these things, and it is well known that terrorist groups have many (possibly thousands) of them (many were given to groups in Afghanistan who are now affiliated with the Taliban). Now, these have been used to shoot down commercial airliners in the past. However, like bombs, incidents have been rare. I don't pretend to know why. Perhaps there simply aren't as many mass murderers as the Gov./Media would like us to beleive there are. Regardless, what this shows is that the relative rarity of these incidents are not due to security (since there IS no security against SLMs).
As far as explosives showing up on X-Ray, I doubt that the detonator would set off any alarm bells if it were inside another electronic device. Moreover, it seems like every week since the attacks I have heard a news story about security screening personel failing to catch guns and knives in carry-one luggage (no nail clippers, phew!). As such, I am not reassured.
I work in the airline industry and around here every bagage is at least screened using X-rays. If it doesn't get explosive it at least catch electronical device.
You must not be high enough in the food chain to be trusted with the real facts. Or maybe it is the flight crews who are in the dark, because they are certainly not satisfied with the "checking." (Salon)
From the article:
"A small amount of Czech-made explosives, hidden inside a Toshiba radio, brought down the 300-ton aircraft and took the lives of 269 people, most of them Americans."
How would your X-Ray machine help against this? Are you telling me that every electronic device in checked luggage is dismantled and verified to be secure? The ARE ways to screen baggage for explosives (mentioned in the article). However, they only employed in a small percentage of US airports, and not at all for domestic flights. The Feds and your airline industry won't even release actual figures, a sure sign that they know the public wouldn't like what it heard.
Why is it that the massive failures of Federal programs are always forgotten when some new "crisis" comes up?
It's easy to get distracted by the equally massive private sector failures.
Or don't you trust "ordinary Americans?"
No, I do not. "Ordinary Americans" are far more dangerous to law-abiding citizens than the Feds. It is "ordinary Americans" who are out there commiting violent crimes everyday, is it not?
I don't trust the Feds to solve all my problems. However, I would pick them over a bunch or right-wing gun nuts any day of the week.
What you, like most of the anti-government paranoid-vigilante set, fail to realize is that as flawed as the Feds are, they represent a better alternative to profiteering corporations and white supremacist militias. Go figure.
That would hardly be reassuring, would it? It is well known that in spite of the increased security propaganda, it remains relatively easy to sneak explosives aboard a commercial jet. Best guesses are that about 5% of checked luggage is screened.
Maintenance, on the other hand, is still supposed to be impeccable. If this plane went down due to mechanical failure, that is yet another catastrophic vulnerability uncovered.
Windows XP does crash more, but it certainly does not do more than RedHat Linux 7.2
I don't use either, but I have not heard this from people who do (even on Slashdot). Perhaps you are falling back on the outdated truism, "Window crashes all the time." Hasn't been true since Win98, from what I here.
More to the point, it IS and excuse in the the consumer desktop market. The vast majority of consumers don't install an OS so that they can brag to other geeks about how long it has been since they had to reboot. They also do not care about thumbing their nose at Bill Gates. Time and time again they have chosen expensive, buggy M$ products over free (allegedly) superior alternatives. Why? Because M$ products are consumer-oriented-feature rich, easy to use and meet the reliability requirements of the consumer market.
Fortunately for M$ (and unfortunately fo Linux), the average user does not have the same requirements as the DOD. They will continue to pick functionality and ease of use over stability every time.
If Linux/Mac OS/etc was the most widely used, you'd see much the same focus on problems with the software.
Microsoft's products are buggier because they are more ambitious in terms of functionality and target user base. Designing software that is only used by people with software knowledge is much easier than designing software for the general public. Creating an application that accounts for all the possible mistakes and questions that the average user is going to have is a huge undertaking. Add to that the extra functinality that M$ adds to its products (for better or worse), and it is not mystery why it has more bugs. Sure it crashes more, but is also DOES more.
As such, the idea that more bugs will be found in software if it gets wider distribution puts the cart before the horse. In order to get wider distribution, software must expand ease of use and functinality, and thus expose itself to the introduction of bugs (if it is to be released in a timely manner). However, users, as history has demostrated, care more about features than they care about bugs. Again, as history has demostrated, the most stable OS you can create, even if it is free, can not compete with an OS that includes the functionality that people want and, more importantly, is easy to use.
Maybe they will figure it out when it has a measurable impact on them. You know, when they lose the ability to run roughshod over markets, dictate standards, and relegate competitors to obscurity.
Never having paid much attention to the Tick, the jokes were new to me. "Batmanuel" was the first laugh I got out of the show. Too bad they changed "American Maid," that would have been the second. "Captain Liberty" just plain sucks.
, you MUST have some form of ID, everyone currently has at least two forms.
True. However, you are not required by LAW to carry it or surrender it for purposes of identification. It would be severly inconvenient to live without the two forms of ID, but not impossible or illegal.
Yeah, but there aren't many losers who don't drive.
The point is that you are not required to carry or produce a Driver's License unless you are driving a vehicle. It may be used for ID purposes, but it is not the same as a mandatory ID.
You are vastly understimating the amount of technology and intelligence dedicated to committing crimes.
First of all, if you can fake existing picture IDs (DL, Passport), why would this be any different?
Second, our society is moving away from face to face transactions. As remote access to bank accounts, credit cards etc., becomes the standard, picture IDs become useless.
Your only hope is Biometrics, but even that is a thin one if the identity theif controls the client. It is hard to spoof a thumbprint, but how hard is it to spoof the digital representation of that thumbprint? So, when you log in from you biometric enabled home PC, they may as well say "insert your thumb into your thumb print scanner now, or initiate your spoofing mechanism."
In short, you are only making it marginally harder to steal an identity, while giving the thief a much richer reward.
wow.. sometimes i wonder what the world would be like without capitalism... no taxes people working to help others instead of for meaningless profit.
What makes you think that getting rid of capitalism will eliminate taxes?
and why do we need big companies hiring people if alot of open source people are willing to develop in their spare time for free.
Well, I would assume that the "spare time" is time NOT spent working for companies (big or small) so that these programmers can pay the bills. No companies, no paycheck. No paycheck, no food. No food, no interest in developing free software.
people were not buying MS windows, they were buying a computer that ran software they wanted.
Which is why people would still rather pay for Windows than use Linux for free. They don't give a damn about some philosophy, they just to be able to walk into CompUSA and know that just about any game, productivity software, etc. that they walk to the checkout with is going to run on their computer.
So, instead of wasting time developing anemic "alternatives," Linux development needs to concentrate on making the OS tranparent with respect to commercial software. When I can run all the apps that I have or will want to have on Linux, I will gladly change to Linux.
If you haven't heard of a band you're not going to search for them and I don't know of any services that really review independant music.
True, but how many times have you found a really great artists, and wished there was an easy way to find other artists like them. I think that adding some kind of classification scheme would be very useful. Something like the Book industry's BISAC categories, though better administered. I would much rather look for artists based on they type of music they play or who they are similar to.
As the representative of a wealthy, powerful industry group capable of litigating a smaller company out of business due to the mere possibility of it's service allowing infringement on said industries copyrights, I don't attribute anything she does to "guts."
As expensive as litigation and bribery are, I suspect they are more cost effective than trying to squeeze 12 quality songs out of the average pop artist.
Because Linux doesn't run the applications that they have invested money and training (if not custom development) on.
The reason technology managers don't want to hear about operating systems is that their business applications are their main concern. I'm sure they would warm up to Linux a lot faster if applications ported seamlessly. There is more to running a business than setting up a network and providing users with a desktop.
the last thing we need is people listening to a monotonous computer voice in public.
No the LAST thing we need is another whiny, irrational complaint about cell phones. Unless they were using speaker phone, how would this make a difference?
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't that be "dept"?
But, well, if they say so on Slashdot, it MUST be true.
Or, if it is a joke about Microsoft or Al Gore on Slashdot, it must be funny.
If it was so "easy" there would be far more of those device on every plane to spread terror.
Well, let's consider another threat: shoulder-launched missles. Commecial airliners are sitting ducks for these things, and it is well known that terrorist groups have many (possibly thousands) of them (many were given to groups in Afghanistan who are now affiliated with the Taliban). Now, these have been used to shoot down commercial airliners in the past. However, like bombs, incidents have been rare. I don't pretend to know why. Perhaps there simply aren't as many mass murderers as the Gov./Media would like us to beleive there are. Regardless, what this shows is that the relative rarity of these incidents are not due to security (since there IS no security against SLMs).
As far as explosives showing up on X-Ray, I doubt that the detonator would set off any alarm bells if it were inside another electronic device. Moreover, it seems like every week since the attacks I have heard a news story about security screening personel failing to catch guns and knives in carry-one luggage (no nail clippers, phew!). As such, I am not reassured.
I work in the airline industry and around here every bagage is at least screened using X-rays. If it doesn't get explosive it at least catch electronical device.
You must not be high enough in the food chain to be trusted with the real facts. Or maybe it is the flight crews who are in the dark, because they are certainly not satisfied with the "checking." (Salon)
From the article:
"A small amount of Czech-made explosives, hidden inside a Toshiba radio, brought down the 300-ton aircraft and took the lives of 269 people, most of them Americans."
How would your X-Ray machine help against this? Are you telling me that every electronic device in checked luggage is dismantled and verified to be secure? The ARE ways to screen baggage for explosives (mentioned in the article). However, they only employed in a small percentage of US airports, and not at all for domestic flights. The Feds and your airline industry won't even release actual figures, a sure sign that they know the public wouldn't like what it heard.
Why is it that the massive failures of Federal programs are always forgotten when some new "crisis" comes up?
It's easy to get distracted by the equally massive private sector failures.
Or don't you trust "ordinary Americans?"
No, I do not. "Ordinary Americans" are far more dangerous to law-abiding citizens than the Feds. It is "ordinary Americans" who are out there commiting violent crimes everyday, is it not?
I don't trust the Feds to solve all my problems. However, I would pick them over a bunch or right-wing gun nuts any day of the week.
What you, like most of the anti-government paranoid-vigilante set, fail to realize is that as flawed as the Feds are, they represent a better alternative to profiteering corporations and white supremacist militias. Go figure.
That would hardly be reassuring, would it? It is well known that in spite of the increased security propaganda, it remains relatively easy to sneak explosives aboard a commercial jet. Best guesses are that about 5% of checked luggage is screened.
Maintenance, on the other hand, is still supposed to be impeccable. If this plane went down due to mechanical failure, that is yet another catastrophic vulnerability uncovered.
Windows XP does crash more, but it certainly does not do more than RedHat Linux 7.2
I don't use either, but I have not heard this from people who do (even on Slashdot). Perhaps you are falling back on the outdated truism, "Window crashes all the time." Hasn't been true since Win98, from what I here.
More to the point, it IS and excuse in the the consumer desktop market. The vast majority of consumers don't install an OS so that they can brag to other geeks about how long it has been since they had to reboot. They also do not care about thumbing their nose at Bill Gates. Time and time again they have chosen expensive, buggy M$ products over free (allegedly) superior alternatives. Why? Because M$ products are consumer-oriented-feature rich, easy to use and meet the reliability requirements of the consumer market.
Fortunately for M$ (and unfortunately fo Linux), the average user does not have the same requirements as the DOD. They will continue to pick functionality and ease of use over stability every time.
If Linux/Mac OS/etc was the most widely used, you'd see much the same focus on problems with the software.
Microsoft's products are buggier because they are more ambitious in terms of functionality and target user base. Designing software that is only used by people with software knowledge is much easier than designing software for the general public. Creating an application that accounts for all the possible mistakes and questions that the average user is going to have is a huge undertaking. Add to that the extra functinality that M$ adds to its products (for better or worse), and it is not mystery why it has more bugs. Sure it crashes more, but is also DOES more.
As such, the idea that more bugs will be found in software if it gets wider distribution puts the cart before the horse. In order to get wider distribution, software must expand ease of use and functinality, and thus expose itself to the introduction of bugs (if it is to be released in a timely manner). However, users, as history has demostrated, care more about features than they care about bugs. Again, as history has demostrated, the most stable OS you can create, even if it is free, can not compete with an OS that includes the functionality that people want and, more importantly, is easy to use.
Maybe they will figure it out when it has a measurable impact on them. You know, when they lose the ability to run roughshod over markets, dictate standards, and relegate competitors to obscurity.
Never having paid much attention to the Tick, the jokes were new to me. "Batmanuel" was the first laugh I got out of the show. Too bad they changed "American Maid," that would have been the second. "Captain Liberty" just plain sucks.
, you MUST have some form of ID, everyone currently has at least two forms.
True. However, you are not required by LAW to carry it or surrender it for purposes of identification. It would be severly inconvenient to live without the two forms of ID, but not impossible or illegal.
So then, one of the consumer questions became, why should I buy an emulator (OS/2) when I can buy the Real Thing(tm).
Perhaps because Linux would be a free (or next to free) alternative? Or maybe because of it's touted stability?
1) Driver's licence is optional.
Yeah, but there aren't many losers who don't drive.
The point is that you are not required to carry or produce a Driver's License unless you are driving a vehicle. It may be used for ID purposes, but it is not the same as a mandatory ID.
You are vastly understimating the amount of technology and intelligence dedicated to committing crimes.
First of all, if you can fake existing picture IDs (DL, Passport), why would this be any different?
Second, our society is moving away from face to face transactions. As remote access to bank accounts, credit cards etc., becomes the standard, picture IDs become useless.
Your only hope is Biometrics, but even that is a thin one if the identity theif controls the client. It is hard to spoof a thumbprint, but how hard is it to spoof the digital representation of that thumbprint? So, when you log in from you biometric enabled home PC, they may as well say "insert your thumb into your thumb print scanner now, or initiate your spoofing mechanism."
In short, you are only making it marginally harder to steal an identity, while giving the thief a much richer reward.
wow.. sometimes i wonder what the world would be like without capitalism... no taxes people working to help others instead of for meaningless profit.
What makes you think that getting rid of capitalism will eliminate taxes?
and why do we need big companies hiring people if alot of open source people are willing to develop in their spare time for free.
Well, I would assume that the "spare time" is time NOT spent working for companies (big or small) so that these programmers can pay the bills. No companies, no paycheck. No paycheck, no food. No food, no interest in developing free software.
people were not buying MS windows, they were buying a computer that ran software they wanted.
Which is why people would still rather pay for Windows than use Linux for free. They don't give a damn about some philosophy, they just to be able to walk into CompUSA and know that just about any game, productivity software, etc. that they walk to the checkout with is going to run on their computer.
So, instead of wasting time developing anemic "alternatives," Linux development needs to concentrate on making the OS tranparent with respect to commercial software. When I can run all the apps that I have or will want to have on Linux, I will gladly change to Linux.
if someone has a pointer, that'd be cool.
here you go. . .
void *somthing_that_already_exists
Which would be a plus for all those users don't want to use it, and don't need that feature bloating up the code running on their machines.
If you haven't heard of a band you're not going to search for them and I don't know of any services that really review independant music.
True, but how many times have you found a really great artists, and wished there was an easy way to find other artists like them. I think that adding some kind of classification scheme would be very useful. Something like the Book industry's BISAC categories, though better administered. I would much rather look for artists based on they type of music they play or who they are similar to.
As the representative of a wealthy, powerful industry group capable of litigating a smaller company out of business due to the mere possibility of it's service allowing infringement on said industries copyrights, I don't attribute anything she does to "guts."
As expensive as litigation and bribery are, I suspect they are more cost effective than trying to squeeze 12 quality songs out of the average pop artist.
Because Linux doesn't run the applications that they have invested money and training (if not custom development) on.
The reason technology managers don't want to hear about operating systems is that their business applications are their main concern. I'm sure they would warm up to Linux a lot faster if applications ported seamlessly. There is more to running a business than setting up a network and providing users with a desktop.
That's great: Linux adoption reduced to an urban legend.
the last thing we need is people listening to a monotonous computer voice in public.
No the LAST thing we need is another whiny, irrational complaint about cell phones. Unless they were using speaker phone, how would this make a difference?