I expect any unix based OS to support a term mapping thats used on a daily basis.
You ended your sentence prematurely. You were about to tell us by whom it's used on a daily basis. Then somebody else was going to point out that the group you cited was insignificantly small, and we all could have had a good laugh.
See what you spoiled?
You act likes its a dead emulation
Yes. That's exactly what I did. Glad you got it.
Load BitchX or irssi
I had to google those to even find out what they are. Turns out they're pitifully obsolete and user-hostile chat programs. Anybody who wants to use one of them should use Snak instead. Problem solved.
(Actually, anybody who wants to use one of them should take a long, hard look into his soul and ask himself why he wants to use this "IRC" thing at all. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.)
There are stretches of border and coast guarded by nothing but empty space.
No, there are not. Why would you think that there are? Do you think that the people in charge of HomeSec are idiots? Or are you the idiot? Which is more likely?
The gamma radiation can be shielded as well with a few inches of the proper materials
Wrong. A "few inches" of lead will stop a sizable fraction of gamma radiation, but in order to stop enough of it to avoid detection, we're talking about tons upon tons of lead, or even more concrete. Definitely possible, but a bomb thus shielded would be impossible to transport.
I'd call 1 kiloton a "tiny" nuclear blast. Small would be, say, 20 kiloton.
Thing is, though, that a 20-kiloton bomb would be the size of a Volkswagen. Shielded to avoid detection, it would be the size of a shipping container, but it would weigh as much as a jumbo jet. It's just not possible to get something like that across our border. And if the weapon were unshielded, it'd be impossible to get it across the border undetected. And if the core were removed somehow so the bomb could be assembled here, it would be impossible to get the core across the boarder undetected. It just can't happen. We're defended in ways that you, evidently, can't even imagine.
Since when is "jihadism" a completely uniform phenomenon with one black and white founding philosophy?
Since 1996. But beyond that, you're either sadly ignorant of or completely ignoring Islam itself. Islam is not a messianic or an apocalyptic religion.
There are, by any account, many Muslim terrorists who evoke Islam's eschatology to justify "suicidal martyrdom," whatever the hell that is. How exactly is that rejection of eschatology?
Okay, at this point it's obvious that you are using words without understanding what they mean. This is par for the course for Slashdot, but I don't think that's a very good excuse.
Martyrdom means sacrificing one's own life for a greater cause to ensure entry into Paradise. Eschatology is a system of beliefs regarding the end of the world. Messianic and/or apocalyptic cults (there's some overlap, but they can also be distinct) carry out acts of terror (Aum Shinrikio) or mass suicide (Heaven's Gate) with the belief that doing so will trigger the coming of a messiah or the end of the world.
Jihadists are not messianic or apocalyptic.
You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all.
You are not e.e. fucking cummings. Learn to use capital letters, you illiterate mouth-breather.
nothing is impossible.
Okay, that's demonstrably untrue. Right out of the gate, too. Not a good way to start.
clandestine nuclear attack is clearly one of the most dangerous terrorist threats the US faces.
That's like saying that a meteor from space is one of the most dangerous threats we face. Sure, if such a thing were to happen it would be really bad, but you have to take the odds of it happening into consideration. It's simply not possible for radioactive material to make it into the United States. The border--land, sea and air--is under constant surveillance using detection equipment so incredibly sensitive that... well, it's really sensitive. More sensitive than you can imagine, I'd wager. Let's leave it at that.
neutron emissions from, say, fissile plutonium (so we are talking primarily about neutron spectroscopic detection in this case) can be shielded.
We're not talking about neutron radiation. Duh. Didn't you ever take physics in high school? Don't you know how a Geiger counter works? We're not using Geiger counters, obviously, but you really need to start somewhere if you're going to try to keep up with this discussion.
this would almost certainly fall under purple
Put down the Tom Clancy techno-thriller that you paid $6.95 for in the Atlanta airport Waldenbooks.
most of the above-sea energetic neutrons are actually generated in-atmosphere. they are not really cosmic rays. but you knew that, right?
I said exactly what I meant: cosmic rays. In particular, high-energy photons in the MeV range. These play holy hell with our most sensitive detectors. And if you still can't grasp the idea that we're not talking about neutrons here, you really need to reach between your knees, grab the handle, and bail out of this conversation. You're in over your head.
the bottom line is that it runs counter to common sense that the nuclear threat is eliminated, while for some reason we are still not safe from hijacked airplanes.
If you had a shred of common sense, you abandoned it when you decided to render your entire post in lower-case letters.
a crashed airliner or collapsed building is NOTHING compared to a nuke blast in even a modestly populated area.
It's nothing compared to a supernova, either. How worried about a supernova are you? Not very, because you know it's unlikely. A supernova is unlikely because natural laws dictate that it must be so. A nuclear detonation inside CONUS is unlikely because we have made it so.
there is no medical infrastructure anywhere that could cope effectively with even a small nuclear blast.
Okay, well, that's just stupid. Did you sleep through the Cold War? It's not like we rolled up all of our civil defense infrastructure after the USSR split.
Do you even know what a "small" nuclear blast would be? Clue #1: It'd be on the order of a kiloton. Probably much less, maybe as little as 0.1 kilotons. About three times the size of the Oklahoma City bomb, in other words. Sufficient to destroy a few city blocks. Not sufficient to overwhelm medical infrastructures.
the best bet for a national strategy is to throw energy into fighting the most dire national threats - country-collapsing threats - while maintaining a strong focus on foreign intelligence.
You'll pardon me if I don't get my national security strategy from a moron who doesn't even know the difference between "A" and "a."
(And "messianic terrorists?" You fucking tool. You don't even know what we're fighting against! Jihadism rejects eschatology! It is neither apocalyptic nor messianic! Fucking tool.)
Neither. Just another case of somebody failing to bring his reading comprehension game.
Have fun detecting the lead lined nuke in the container full of liquid...
Again with the too-much-television. Liquid is of no use. We're not talking about neutron radiation here. The kinds of detectors we're talking about don't even see neutrons. And lead? Do you have the foggiest idea how much lead would be required to stop the necessary fraction of ionizing radiation? We're not talking about the half-inch of lead that stops 50% of gamma radiation here. We're talking about feet of solid lead, or multiple feet of concrete. The hypothetical container in question would be over the gross weight limits by tons and so would never make it aboard the ship. It'd be stopped at the scale at the point of origin.
or detecting the one smuggled through the mostly unpatrolled Canadian border
"Mostly un-patrolled?" It's not 2001 any more. Things have changed.
It's not possible to get any significant quantity of radioactive material through the border. And before you spew off your fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a "blind spot" again, let me make it clear: this is not just me saying that it's not possible. This is lots of very smart people spending billions of dollars to ensure that it's not possible. Understand now?
The 9/11 attacks were diabolically brilliant in their conception and their execution. Yes, I stand by that statement.
Disgusting.
If what you mean is that the people who planned 9/11 waged a successful attack, say so. Don't gush in admiration for those murdering motherfuckers and then try to back away from it when you get called on it.
Are you so blinded by your stubbornness that you can't see that meaning is in the eye of the beholder?
"Of surpassing excellence," "superb," "magnificent," "glorious," "splendid." Not attributes one should apply to the most devastating terrorist attack in all of human history.
I live in NYC and those ships sail up and down the Hudson everyday, unchecked until they arrive in port.
They're not unchecked. Any significant quantity of radioactive material is going to be detected miles offshore, or in the case of riverine shipping, miles from the US-Canada border. It's not that hard to figure out how. Just look up.
Radioactive material is--hello--radioactive. It can easily be detected. All you have to do is put a detector within [classified distance] of a source of radioactivity. And trust me, that classified distance is big and getting bigger. It's getting to the point where the newest detectors have to be used at or near sea-level because at altitude cosmic radiation can induce a false positive.
I have read this thread and no one has been expressing "admiration" for what happened.
Read again. Dumbass decided to call 9/11 "brilliant."
But we do have to admit that they beat us at a game we thought we had loaded
If you think that we were playing the counter-terrorism "game" before 9/11, you must not have been paying attention. We weren't in the game. Hell, we weren't even in the room. Because we had a big ol' blind spot. We didn't think we were vulnerable. We were wrong.
Saying that someone's winning strategy was clever or brilliant because it was successful is not the same thing as saying that it was great and good, which is why no one has said the latter.
I do think it's far more likely for someone to sail a nuke in a container on a ship up NYC harbour.
Take my word for it: that would be completely impossible. Do you really think that we didn't think of that one? Do you really think that the first thing we did after 9/11 was install sophisticated radiological detectors at ports, border crossings and other points of entry?
What do you think our guys are doing at Oak Ridge all day, anyway?
Brilliant doesn't imply any judgement on the morality of it.
I know you'd love to stand by that, but the simple fact is that it's not true. Expressing admiration for a terrorist act is repugnant, and you should repudiate that comment and clarify your position.
Just in case the plan was to do something like spray sarin gas into the ventillation system or something, then sieze control with everyone dead.
You've been watching way, way too many movies.
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass.
You've established a big ol' blind spot for yourself.
Use your brain for a minute. Think about it. It just wouldn't be that hard for a small group of determined and single-minded men to take control of a passenger plane in flight. It doesn't seem like a wise idea right now to lay out a game plan for how such an attack could be carried out, but suffice it to say that if you think about it for a few minutes, you'll understand. How many aisles are there on a plane? How many passengers sit in first class? How hard is it to control movement around the cabin? How many people would you need to utterly control a jet cabin filled with people who were trying their damnedest to kill you? The number is much smaller than you think. Hell, you can fill the plane with armed special forces troops if you want--that's how the people in charge of our security run their scenarios--and the number of terrorists required to control the front cabin is still depressingly small. Less than a dozen if they're even moderately well-trained, a bit more if not.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again.
Yes, they would. They were also stupid to do it the first time, but they did it anyway. Everything terrorists do is, by definition, stupid. But they just keep trying.
Nobody's ever going to make us safer by overestimating the intelligence of terrorists.
Besides, if you read the 9/11 Commission report, you saw just how close we came to losing Flight 93. And there were only five terrorists on that plane. If they put a dozen terrorists on a hundred-passenger flight, odds are excellent that they could once again seize control of the plane. And those precious locks on the cockpit doors that so many short-sighted people fought for will do an excellent job of keeping the passengers and crew out of the hijackers' way.
So instead we're supposed to engage in groupthink, join the Borg, and "be one" with one of the two major parties - despite the fact that we disagree with both of them on a number of fundamental issues?
Sigh.
Yes. You are supposed to participate in the political process despite the fact that you disagree with people. Wandering off and forming your own "my way or the highway" political party that nobody in his right mind would ever support is not a good way to participate in democracy. It's exactly the same as refusing to vote, only you're being snooty about it.
I deeply, deeply disagree with the Republican party on a number of important issues: education privatization through vouchers and charters, capital punishment, embryonic stem cell research, the Medicare entitlement, and so on. But you know what? I'm a Republican anyway. On those issues where I disagree with the party platform, I talk and write and try to persuade. When I get outvoted, I wait until the next time around and then talk and write and try to persuade again.
It wasn't that long ago that I could have written the same paragraph substituting the word "Democrat" for "Republican." Until 2001, I was an active member of the Democratic party, even though I disagreed with the platform on some key points (Social Security, abortion, fetal stem cell research). But since 9/11, the Democratic party has slowly, gradually gone completely insane, so I started going to the other meeting.
Ours is a participatory system. If you don't want to play nice with the other kids, that's fine, but don't get all uppity about how the system has failed you. You have failed the system.
If you want to be a dumbass about how our system works, that's fine. It's a free country. But I think it's pretty lame to opt out and then try to spin it into some kind of moral high ground.
that's like saying being able to kill people increases your freedoms.
In case you ever start wondering when it was, exactly, that people stopped paying attention to you, this was it. It was the moment when you compared the creation of commercial software to murder.
That's the precise instant when you went from being passionate but misguided to being a complete freak.
No. If you want to hide behind your lame excuses of money (the report costs $10) and time (yet you found time to pen this abortion), that's your problem. Not mine.
Wallow in your ignorance. Hell, you can even continue to feel smug about it if you want to. It's a free country.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the rights of a chinese worker worth less than the rights of an American worker?
To an American? Yes. To a Chinese person, it's the other way around.
I'm neither celebrating nor bemoaning this basic fact of human nature. But you seem to be either unaware of it or unwilling to acknowledge it.
Lots of bad things happen when people choose to ignore human nature.
Jesus fucking Christ. Stealing music isn't good enough for you any more, now you want people to deliver stolen music to you?
Holy fuck.
Come on, in this world of geeks, we can't live without color terminals for colorised ls directory listings, or funky prompts
You know what? You really, really can. Try it and see for yourself.
The only feature Snak brings to the table is that it has a GUI.
Um. It seems to me that what Snak brings to the table is that it works on your Mac.
I expect any unix based OS to support a term mapping thats used on a daily basis.
You ended your sentence prematurely. You were about to tell us by whom it's used on a daily basis. Then somebody else was going to point out that the group you cited was insignificantly small, and we all could have had a good laugh.
See what you spoiled?
You act likes its a dead emulation
Yes. That's exactly what I did. Glad you got it.
Load BitchX or irssi
I had to google those to even find out what they are. Turns out they're pitifully obsolete and user-hostile chat programs. Anybody who wants to use one of them should use Snak instead. Problem solved.
(Actually, anybody who wants to use one of them should take a long, hard look into his soul and ask himself why he wants to use this "IRC" thing at all. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.)
I can't believe OSX wouldnt support true ansi color with its default terminal.
I can't believe my G5 didn't come with a punch-card reader or a buggy-whip holder, either.
from the bedroom through the living room to the bathroom
Sounds like you need to re-think your interior design more than anything.
There are stretches of border and coast guarded by nothing but empty space.
No, there are not. Why would you think that there are? Do you think that the people in charge of HomeSec are idiots? Or are you the idiot? Which is more likely?
The gamma radiation can be shielded as well with a few inches of the proper materials
Wrong. A "few inches" of lead will stop a sizable fraction of gamma radiation, but in order to stop enough of it to avoid detection, we're talking about tons upon tons of lead, or even more concrete. Definitely possible, but a bomb thus shielded would be impossible to transport.
I'd call 1 kiloton a "tiny" nuclear blast. Small would be, say, 20 kiloton.
Thing is, though, that a 20-kiloton bomb would be the size of a Volkswagen. Shielded to avoid detection, it would be the size of a shipping container, but it would weigh as much as a jumbo jet. It's just not possible to get something like that across our border. And if the weapon were unshielded, it'd be impossible to get it across the border undetected. And if the core were removed somehow so the bomb could be assembled here, it would be impossible to get the core across the boarder undetected. It just can't happen. We're defended in ways that you, evidently, can't even imagine.
Since when is "jihadism" a completely uniform phenomenon with one black and white founding philosophy?
Since 1996. But beyond that, you're either sadly ignorant of or completely ignoring Islam itself. Islam is not a messianic or an apocalyptic religion.
There are, by any account, many Muslim terrorists who evoke Islam's eschatology to justify "suicidal martyrdom," whatever the hell that is. How exactly is that rejection of eschatology?
Okay, at this point it's obvious that you are using words without understanding what they mean. This is par for the course for Slashdot, but I don't think that's a very good excuse.
Martyrdom means sacrificing one's own life for a greater cause to ensure entry into Paradise. Eschatology is a system of beliefs regarding the end of the world. Messianic and/or apocalyptic cults (there's some overlap, but they can also be distinct) carry out acts of terror (Aum Shinrikio) or mass suicide (Heaven's Gate) with the belief that doing so will trigger the coming of a messiah or the end of the world.
Jihadists are not messianic or apocalyptic.
You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all.
In 2003 (most recent stat I can find) about 500 U.S. Border Patrol agents
Look again. There's no such thing as the Border Patrol any more. It got rolled into HomeSec a long time ago.
We've spent billions ensuring it's not possible to get drugs across the border.
And that's a perfect analogy, because drugs are also easily detectible with a device the size of an ice chest from 22,000 feet.
Seriously: are you just naturally a dumbass, or are you going out of your way to miss the point here?
Continue calling me arrogant and blind, though.
Oh, we've escalated way beyond that now. You left arrogant and blind behind a long time ago.
Hitler was brilliant in ways - brilliant orator, for one. Al Qaeda has its brilliant moments, too.
You just can't stop yourself, can you? You make me sick.
You are not e.e. fucking cummings. Learn to use capital letters, you illiterate mouth-breather.
nothing is impossible.
Okay, that's demonstrably untrue. Right out of the gate, too. Not a good way to start.
clandestine nuclear attack is clearly one of the most dangerous terrorist threats the US faces.
That's like saying that a meteor from space is one of the most dangerous threats we face. Sure, if such a thing were to happen it would be really bad, but you have to take the odds of it happening into consideration. It's simply not possible for radioactive material to make it into the United States. The border--land, sea and air--is under constant surveillance using detection equipment so incredibly sensitive that... well, it's really sensitive. More sensitive than you can imagine, I'd wager. Let's leave it at that.
neutron emissions from, say, fissile plutonium (so we are talking primarily about neutron spectroscopic detection in this case) can be shielded.
We're not talking about neutron radiation. Duh. Didn't you ever take physics in high school? Don't you know how a Geiger counter works? We're not using Geiger counters, obviously, but you really need to start somewhere if you're going to try to keep up with this discussion.
this would almost certainly fall under purple
Put down the Tom Clancy techno-thriller that you paid $6.95 for in the Atlanta airport Waldenbooks.
most of the above-sea energetic neutrons are actually generated in-atmosphere. they are not really cosmic rays. but you knew that, right?
I said exactly what I meant: cosmic rays. In particular, high-energy photons in the MeV range. These play holy hell with our most sensitive detectors. And if you still can't grasp the idea that we're not talking about neutrons here, you really need to reach between your knees, grab the handle, and bail out of this conversation. You're in over your head.
the bottom line is that it runs counter to common sense that the nuclear threat is eliminated, while for some reason we are still not safe from hijacked airplanes.
If you had a shred of common sense, you abandoned it when you decided to render your entire post in lower-case letters.
a crashed airliner or collapsed building is NOTHING compared to a nuke blast in even a modestly populated area.
It's nothing compared to a supernova, either. How worried about a supernova are you? Not very, because you know it's unlikely. A supernova is unlikely because natural laws dictate that it must be so. A nuclear detonation inside CONUS is unlikely because we have made it so.
there is no medical infrastructure anywhere that could cope effectively with even a small nuclear blast.
Okay, well, that's just stupid. Did you sleep through the Cold War? It's not like we rolled up all of our civil defense infrastructure after the USSR split.
Do you even know what a "small" nuclear blast would be? Clue #1: It'd be on the order of a kiloton. Probably much less, maybe as little as 0.1 kilotons. About three times the size of the Oklahoma City bomb, in other words. Sufficient to destroy a few city blocks. Not sufficient to overwhelm medical infrastructures.
the best bet for a national strategy is to throw energy into fighting the most dire national threats - country-collapsing threats - while maintaining a strong focus on foreign intelligence.
You'll pardon me if I don't get my national security strategy from a moron who doesn't even know the difference between "A" and "a."
(And "messianic terrorists?" You fucking tool. You don't even know what we're fighting against! Jihadism rejects eschatology! It is neither apocalyptic nor messianic! Fucking tool.)
Hypocrisy? Or just short memory?
Neither. Just another case of somebody failing to bring his reading comprehension game.
Have fun detecting the lead lined nuke in the container full of liquid...
Again with the too-much-television. Liquid is of no use. We're not talking about neutron radiation here. The kinds of detectors we're talking about don't even see neutrons. And lead? Do you have the foggiest idea how much lead would be required to stop the necessary fraction of ionizing radiation? We're not talking about the half-inch of lead that stops 50% of gamma radiation here. We're talking about feet of solid lead, or multiple feet of concrete. The hypothetical container in question would be over the gross weight limits by tons and so would never make it aboard the ship. It'd be stopped at the scale at the point of origin.
or detecting the one smuggled through the mostly unpatrolled Canadian border
"Mostly un-patrolled?" It's not 2001 any more. Things have changed.
It's not possible to get any significant quantity of radioactive material through the border. And before you spew off your fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a "blind spot" again, let me make it clear: this is not just me saying that it's not possible. This is lots of very smart people spending billions of dollars to ensure that it's not possible. Understand now?
The 9/11 attacks were diabolically brilliant in their conception and their execution. Yes, I stand by that statement.
Disgusting.
If what you mean is that the people who planned 9/11 waged a successful attack, say so. Don't gush in admiration for those murdering motherfuckers and then try to back away from it when you get called on it.
You know, I've changed my mind. The problem is no longer that you're expressing admiration for the terrorists.
The problem is that you feel admiration for them.
This should deeply concern you. It probably doesn't, but it should.
Are you so blinded by your stubbornness that you can't see that meaning is in the eye of the beholder?
"Of surpassing excellence," "superb," "magnificent," "glorious," "splendid." Not attributes one should apply to the most devastating terrorist attack in all of human history.
Piracy is a victimless crime. Like punchin' someone in the dark.
I live in NYC and those ships sail up and down the Hudson everyday, unchecked until they arrive in port.
They're not unchecked. Any significant quantity of radioactive material is going to be detected miles offshore, or in the case of riverine shipping, miles from the US-Canada border. It's not that hard to figure out how. Just look up.
Radioactive material is--hello--radioactive. It can easily be detected. All you have to do is put a detector within [classified distance] of a source of radioactivity. And trust me, that classified distance is big and getting bigger. It's getting to the point where the newest detectors have to be used at or near sea-level because at altitude cosmic radiation can induce a false positive.
I have read this thread and no one has been expressing "admiration" for what happened.
Read again. Dumbass decided to call 9/11 "brilliant."
But we do have to admit that they beat us at a game we thought we had loaded
If you think that we were playing the counter-terrorism "game" before 9/11, you must not have been paying attention. We weren't in the game. Hell, we weren't even in the room. Because we had a big ol' blind spot. We didn't think we were vulnerable. We were wrong.
Saying that someone's winning strategy was clever or brilliant because it was successful is not the same thing as saying that it was great and good, which is why no one has said the latter.
Wow. You just don't get it, I guess.
I do think it's far more likely for someone to sail a nuke in a container on a ship up NYC harbour.
Take my word for it: that would be completely impossible. Do you really think that we didn't think of that one? Do you really think that the first thing we did after 9/11 was install sophisticated radiological detectors at ports, border crossings and other points of entry?
What do you think our guys are doing at Oak Ridge all day, anyway?
Brilliant doesn't imply any judgement on the morality of it.
I know you'd love to stand by that, but the simple fact is that it's not true. Expressing admiration for a terrorist act is repugnant, and you should repudiate that comment and clarify your position.
Just in case the plan was to do something like spray sarin gas into the ventillation system or something, then sieze control with everyone dead.
You've been watching way, way too many movies.
But beyond that, your arrogance is disappointing. You're committing exactly the same sins that we all committed before 9/11: you believe it can't happen. You believe that there's something, some attack, some threat, that simply can't come to pass.
You've established a big ol' blind spot for yourself.
Use your brain for a minute. Think about it. It just wouldn't be that hard for a small group of determined and single-minded men to take control of a passenger plane in flight. It doesn't seem like a wise idea right now to lay out a game plan for how such an attack could be carried out, but suffice it to say that if you think about it for a few minutes, you'll understand. How many aisles are there on a plane? How many passengers sit in first class? How hard is it to control movement around the cabin? How many people would you need to utterly control a jet cabin filled with people who were trying their damnedest to kill you? The number is much smaller than you think. Hell, you can fill the plane with armed special forces troops if you want--that's how the people in charge of our security run their scenarios--and the number of terrorists required to control the front cabin is still depressingly small. Less than a dozen if they're even moderately well-trained, a bit more if not.
Oh, and that whole "9/11 was brilliant" thing? Disgusting. You should know better than to express admiration for mass murderers. That kind of thing just isn't okay.
Terrorists would be stupid to try to hijack planes again.
Yes, they would. They were also stupid to do it the first time, but they did it anyway. Everything terrorists do is, by definition, stupid. But they just keep trying.
Nobody's ever going to make us safer by overestimating the intelligence of terrorists.
Besides, if you read the 9/11 Commission report, you saw just how close we came to losing Flight 93. And there were only five terrorists on that plane. If they put a dozen terrorists on a hundred-passenger flight, odds are excellent that they could once again seize control of the plane. And those precious locks on the cockpit doors that so many short-sighted people fought for will do an excellent job of keeping the passengers and crew out of the hijackers' way.
If you're still stuck on a platform where you have to "install" Flash, maybe your problems run deeper than you know.
Join us in the 21st century.
So instead we're supposed to engage in groupthink, join the Borg, and "be one" with one of the two major parties - despite the fact that we disagree with both of them on a number of fundamental issues?
Sigh.
Yes. You are supposed to participate in the political process despite the fact that you disagree with people. Wandering off and forming your own "my way or the highway" political party that nobody in his right mind would ever support is not a good way to participate in democracy. It's exactly the same as refusing to vote, only you're being snooty about it.
I deeply, deeply disagree with the Republican party on a number of important issues: education privatization through vouchers and charters, capital punishment, embryonic stem cell research, the Medicare entitlement, and so on. But you know what? I'm a Republican anyway. On those issues where I disagree with the party platform, I talk and write and try to persuade. When I get outvoted, I wait until the next time around and then talk and write and try to persuade again.
It wasn't that long ago that I could have written the same paragraph substituting the word "Democrat" for "Republican." Until 2001, I was an active member of the Democratic party, even though I disagreed with the platform on some key points (Social Security, abortion, fetal stem cell research). But since 9/11, the Democratic party has slowly, gradually gone completely insane, so I started going to the other meeting.
Ours is a participatory system. If you don't want to play nice with the other kids, that's fine, but don't get all uppity about how the system has failed you. You have failed the system.
If you want to be a dumbass about how our system works, that's fine. It's a free country. But I think it's pretty lame to opt out and then try to spin it into some kind of moral high ground.
that's like saying being able to kill people increases your freedoms.
In case you ever start wondering when it was, exactly, that people stopped paying attention to you, this was it. It was the moment when you compared the creation of commercial software to murder.
That's the precise instant when you went from being passionate but misguided to being a complete freak.
I have many better things to do than to read the report you keep talking about.
"The report you keep talking about?" Are you unfamiliar with it? It's, you know, important. One would think you'd at least have heard of it.
My time isn't free.
And yet you have no problem finding plenty of time to post here. Funny, huh?
Stop trying to hide behind "eeh, I'm busy, eeh." Drop the façade and speak the truth: that you just can't be bothered to give a damn.
I just realized that you're named after a troll.
Jesus Christ. With a user ID like 13204, you'd think you'd have been paying attention for, oh, the past two years or so.
The hijacking tactic stopped working...
Unsurprisingly, you've missed the point completely. Of course nobody would be able to pull of a Flight 93-style attack again.
Which is why they will try something else.
"Failure of imagination," you see.
This particular passage indicates that the 'security measure' of requiring identification would have only stopped one of the 19 hijackers.
One would have helped. One would have been great. One would have been far better than none.
(It's quite effective at tracking US citizens, however.)
UPC codes, fluorinated water, blood-donation needles, black helicopters, blah blah blah.
No. If you want to hide behind your lame excuses of money (the report costs $10) and time (yet you found time to pen this abortion), that's your problem. Not mine.
Wallow in your ignorance. Hell, you can even continue to feel smug about it if you want to. It's a free country.
IDs might stop the casual, "oh, I think I'll blow up a building today" terrorist
Which is good enough for me.