Heinlein covered this in "Methuselah's Children" back in 1941. The non-methuselahs set up cultured blood sources to bypass the deleterious effects on the young donors...
-Robert H
Document everything and make sure that everyone has access to the documentation you produce. Direct confrontation seldom yields favorable results, but if you document everything that is going on they will eventually read the status reports and documentation and come to a conclusion that either a) their fair haired child is being exposed to excessive risk through involvement in the project and needs to be moved away from the project or b) They need to get rid of the idiot before the idiot looses them their job when their management reads the documentation/reports. Plus, in the meantime the documentation can help protect you from backlash related to the idiots actions. (Make sure the documentation does not come out and state that the individual is an idiot. If they are an idiot then eventually the evidence of neutral statements of action will build up to the point that gets the point across. (Based on experience, I once caught serious flack for specifying "Individual X is the most significant risk to the project", it was true, but not what the customer wanted to see...)
Anyone remember the Microsoft Reader application?
They abandoned the application and all of the folks who purchased DRM protected material for it when they came out with the Windows Phone. Let's hope that they don't make the same mistakes again.
So, doesn't that give Bing 7.4% or something along those lines, since Yahoo just front-ends the bing search engine? (Or did I miss something in the past couple of years of drinking the cool-aid)
I'd say to go with a quad array of helical antennas. (See http://www.slvrc.org/902band/quadhelix.htm) High gain and if you design for 800Mhz it'll cover both the 700 and 850 in a reasonable size range, plus they are extremely forgiving (Yagis tend to be somewhat picky with regards to the design frequency and don't do real with wide-bandwidth signals). Hunt up any Amateur radio operator and they will talk your ear off regarding antenna design, and if you luck into one who has done ATV (Amateur TV) work they probably have some experience designing antennas up in that range. Many folks will tell you that "microwave is hard", but it's become much easier over the past few decades, plus there is the fact that conventional antenna designs that worked well for frequencies below 800Mhz just don't do real well at the higher frequencies (Wide 4 MHZ bandwidth support at 144MHz just doesn't translate well up at 2Ghz...)
Robert
Actually, Windows 95 was a significant improvement over Windows for Workgroups 3.12. Yes it had some failings compared to Unix, but compared to what preceded it there was significant improvement. Every OS out there falls short of being good if you compare it against an OS with different design goals (Venturing outside the computer world a ferarri truly sucks when compared with a dumptruck due to it's inability to efficiently carry rubble and tendency to catastrophically fail when you attempt to use it in more than 1 inch of mud). I realize I don't have a number that's low enough to qualify as legitimate on/. , but I also agree with DudemanX in that I have enjoyed using most of the Windows operating systems since Windows 95, though since 2000 I've spent more time on the server side than on the client side. I've also owned/used every version of the Windows Mobile/Windows Phone OS, as well as Blackberry and the occasional Android device. They all have their flaws and if you dig enough you'll find an ugly baby (Bugs/Lockups/Reboots/Poor signal) in almost every product during the first several months after release. All that being said, Windows Phone 8 looks like a pretty good setup, and yes I've run into some bugs with my Lumia 920, but I'm looking forward to where it is going.
FYI: Yes I am a MS drone, no I am not in marketing or product development and no, I am not a MS shill.
Robert
You're only having to worry about getting folks off of Windows Server 2003? I'm currently on a consulting gig where they are working to get some of their users off of Windows NT 4.0....:)
Yes, the MS Bashing gets a bit old after a while, but in this case the blatent inaccuracy of the article is grating even before you add the MS Bashing.
Despite what some may maintain based on the general tone of comments on/. not everyone who participates here is a Linux advocate. For my part I'm over in the BSD camp and daily curse the Linux Heretics who are working resolutely to corrupt our great institutions:) Only a fraction of the articles here are so Linux oriented as to not have relevance to the computer and geek communities outside of the Linux realm.
I'll have to dissagree here, holding a certification does not make you underqualified. I hold several certifications and am somewhat quallified. Many of my certifications were obtained at the behest of my employers (Something along the way of 'We need an A+ certified tech so we can do Compaq warranty service, Robert go out and get it'), others I obtained 'Just for fun' (If you test well and know your subject you can get most certifications with minimal prep). Many companies will pay for you to get job related certifications, so why not? I was up in Redmond last week and half the folks I spoke with had certifications, and ALL of them were quite competent. Yes, certifications don't guarantee the knowledge (I hold certifications for several fields I know little to nothing about), but they do aid in satisfying the HR folks who increasingly are saying 'If they don't have a degree at least make sure they have appropriate certifications'. Experience + Certifications + Interview + Degree, if these four add up then you have a good chance for a job, but in the current market if you have neither certifications nor degree then you are going to see very few calls for an interview at the upper levels.
Just my $.02
That is what this article is. It fails to address some of the most significant issues to be considered when selecing an anti-spam product:
1. What percentage of incoming SPAM does it catch?
2. What percentage of the messages caught were "Non-SPAM" messages?
3. What is the message volume the product can handle?
Instead they gloss over catch rates and false positive rates with a "Everything does a similar job" type statement. FALSE. I just spent the past 8 months evaluating anti-spam solutions for my workplace and they are not all the same when it comes to spam catch rates. I don't really care how pretty it looks or how easy it is to install. Nor do I give a hoot about the buzzwords a particular product incorporates, give me the spam blocking accuracy and the volume it will handle. It is all fine and dandy to ignore volume when you are running a 200 user ISP, but when you get up to 50000 users with over a million messages a day it becomes slightly important.
Robert H.
Houston, TX
For an Interesting coverage of this concept and its implications, go out and acquire a copy of "The Complete Venus Equilateral" by George O. Smith (Amazon.com link to the book (I'm afraid it is out of print, but used copies are availiable). It was published in the 70's and is actually a collection of science-fiction short-stories published in various "pulp" Mmagazines in the 40s. While I often think this would be a 'neat' Idea, some of the Implications of the Star Trek style replicator are frigtening... What would it do to the economy? What about the effects of this sort of thing on the 'Social Contract' which when you get down to nuts and bolts is held together by the concept of labor and materials having inherent value? Would we end up switching from worrying about Global warming due to freed-up CO2 to worrying about Lithosphere erosion as folks went out to their back yards to scoop-up some dirt to make their new car out of?
Definitely something which needs some thought.
Robert H.
A device similar to this already exists
Last time I went in to a new optometrist they had a gadget which they had me look into which 'automaticaly' determined my prescription by (I Assume) measuring the distortion experienced by a low power laser shined into my eye. The result was fairly close to my actual prescription and would be quite close enough especially if you didn't have ready access to the miscellaneous additional gadgets required to really fine-tune a prescription.
Another note is this, I'll use a nearsighted person with astigmatism for this example, The variables for each eye are:
Spherical Abberation: Negative number measured in.25 increments ranging from 0 (no correction) to -8 or more (lots of correction)
Astigmatism: Abberation measures in.25 increments ranging from 0 to the amount of spherical correction.
Axis: The axis along which the Astigmatism occurs (I don't know what the increment for this is, This one has been constant for me for the past 20 years so I haven't seen much in the way of samples... I do know that 70 degrees and 110 degrees are valid values)
Note that I am not an Optometrist, so someone who is more aware should feel free to correct me, but If I make the following assumptions we end up with quite a large problem to be placed on a chart:
Spherical: 0 to -8.5 -- 34 possible
Astigmatism: 0 to Spherical -- 0 to 34 possible
Axis: 0 to 180 degrees in 10 degree steps -- 18 possible
lots of combinations spring to mind, I'd say go with the existing automated machines. Possibly combine the marketing for the automated lens fabrication with a program to encourage optometrists to donate their older 'automated prescription baseline devices (or whatever they are officially called'.
A year and a half back AT&T was TDMA, I still see TDMA phones for sale on their web page. They have recently been shifting to GSM phones (At least that is what they have been selling my company. Cingular is TDMA and has been transitioning to GSM. No major compatibility Issues (In fact, for a time a while back both shared the Houston, TX market with the same equipment). While I was never happy with AT&T Wireless customer service, their network was quite good (Though in AK it was really horrible... Course in AK everyones Cell Network is horrible). Current AT&T Phones WILL work on Cingular networks (They just need an over-the-air update) and gaining AT&T towers will result in an improvement of the Cingular network. Not only that, but acquiring AT&T Wireless should improve the Cingular GSM coverage. Near as I can tell just about everyone but Sprint and Nextel are moving towards GSM which will give us the 'true choice' you reference.
Detritus is a Troll, not a zombie. The helmet was used to keep his brain cool which due to the increased processing speed this made possible made him more intellegent.
Robert H
They do have a Windows Server 2003 64bit for both Itanium and the AMD 64 bit stuff in Beta at this time. MSDN Subscribers will note it under the Platforms tree. I think they started making both availiable to MSDN subscribers about 6 months back. I haven't purchased a 64 bit box that is compatible yet, so I can't say anything about the stability, but the assumption is that the answer is "Yes they are working quite hard to get a server version out".
Robert H
Problem here is that if you mark, defang and deliver some people will get hundreds of e-mails in their inbox which consist entirely of the attachment removed due to virus infection message. They inevitably come back to the mail administrator and report it as a problem: 'all of my e-mail is getting the attachments removed'. Far better just to log the event and place the infected e-mail into the bit bucket, never to bother anyone again. This approach doesn't cause lots of 'shells' being sent to the recipient and does not toss lots of NDR messages to the alegged sender (who probably did not originate it anyways given the methodology being used by the newer mass-mailer worms).
Robert H
A few years back I was on the DirecTV Internet Service (don't recall what it was named then) and there was a particularly sneaky bit involved. They had a mysterious threshold for data transfered, beyond which they throttled your sat. connection down to something less than dialup. The support folks claimed to have no way of telling if you had passed the threshold and the threshold was not disclosed (they also did not discolose how long it took to get 'in the clear again'). They would refer you to their 'Fair Access Policy' and that would be it. Fortunately I moved somewhere where I could get a high speed wired connection.
Robert H
On a ship, directly above the engine room. Next to the Gausing coil cable... Always noisy, constant vibration, temperature ranging from 90 to 110, humid (from the steam), the screen skewing to the side from the magnetic field and displaying funky rainbow colors.
I have always had decent luck getting misc. plastic and other parts for Toshiba Laptops. There are several companies on the web offering plastic pieces, system boards, batteries, cd/dvd rom drives, etc at moderately reasonable prices.
These include:
www.mytoshiba.com
www.laptopparts.com (not just toshiba, appears to be a fair amount of dell stuff here)
http://www.priorityelectronics.com/toshiba.htm (limited selection)
I think that www.partsolver.com has a service of some sort to search for parts. Your best bet for insuring that replacement parts are availiable is to find a 'mom and pop' style store localy which is also a service center for the brand in question. Their prices for the laptop will be slightly higher, but you can 'check before you buy' by looking at the unit, picking out the things that look likely to break and asking them if they can come up with a part number for the component.
Robert H.
The key is to start out general and work down to more specific predictions as the methodology is improved and you can build an adequate database and figure out what parts of your model are hogwash and which parts contribute. If they can get one or more parts of the prediction accurate at the 9 month mark, then there is a chance that they can become even more accurate over lesser ranges as time progresses. Also, the ability to predict a major earthquake out at the 9 month mark would be quite welcome for municipalities who are planning emergency preparedness. Imagine being able to budget so that your emergency personnel have the materials on hand that they need. Imagine being able to say "Ok, no-one go on vacation during the August-September timeframe as we are probably going to need all the bodies we can lay our hands on. Just because in the past it has not been possible to predict this sort of thing accurately does not mean it will not be possible in the future and therefore is not worth spending money on.
Robert H
Reliability is good in my experience, though power drain is horrible. spinning a platter (moving a physicality through space) uses a lot more power than flashing memory cells.
Boot Camp. I had a six-pack a day Jolt habit in the late 80s... Joined the Navy, in boot camp we had lots of exercise, a 'healthy' diet and very little opprotunity to indulge in a caffine habit.
Robert H.
I have recently flown out of Houston Hobby, Houston Bush and St. Louis with two laptops, a pocket pc phone and a Shuttle PC without encountering any problems at all. I had to send all of the computer devices through seperate from their carying cases, but I was not asked to 'prove' that they were functional. Course on the trip out of Houston Bush my belt buckel set off the alarm, but they still didn't require me to turn anything on to 'prove it operates'
Ok, this is one of my pet peeves... Keep in mind that when you shift to Nuclear power from Coal power you can't just look at Nuclear waste and say 'Oh, my it will be dangerous for about a million years!' Coal plants produce quite a bit of waste every year in the form of ash and 'scrubber sludge' This waste contains arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium, sulfates, boron, and other contaminants. Many of these are toxic and hmm... Last a REALLY REALLY Long time (Anyone know the 'half-life' of a proton off the top of their heads?) So we are looking at the difference between Radioactive waste which people are somewhat irrationally afraid of and which will become somewhat safe in a Million years or so and Toxic Elements which will NEVER (Or at least virtually so) become safe.
Slashdot Mirror
Heinlein covered this in "Methuselah's Children" back in 1941. The non-methuselahs set up cultured blood sources to bypass the deleterious effects on the young donors... -Robert H
Document everything and make sure that everyone has access to the documentation you produce. Direct confrontation seldom yields favorable results, but if you document everything that is going on they will eventually read the status reports and documentation and come to a conclusion that either a) their fair haired child is being exposed to excessive risk through involvement in the project and needs to be moved away from the project or b) They need to get rid of the idiot before the idiot looses them their job when their management reads the documentation/reports. Plus, in the meantime the documentation can help protect you from backlash related to the idiots actions. (Make sure the documentation does not come out and state that the individual is an idiot. If they are an idiot then eventually the evidence of neutral statements of action will build up to the point that gets the point across. (Based on experience, I once caught serious flack for specifying "Individual X is the most significant risk to the project", it was true, but not what the customer wanted to see...)
Anyone remember the Microsoft Reader application? They abandoned the application and all of the folks who purchased DRM protected material for it when they came out with the Windows Phone. Let's hope that they don't make the same mistakes again.
V sbe bar, jrypbzr bhe snvel crathva bireybeqf gb gur vagrearg!
So, doesn't that give Bing 7.4% or something along those lines, since Yahoo just front-ends the bing search engine? (Or did I miss something in the past couple of years of drinking the cool-aid)
I'd say to go with a quad array of helical antennas. (See http://www.slvrc.org/902band/quadhelix.htm) High gain and if you design for 800Mhz it'll cover both the 700 and 850 in a reasonable size range, plus they are extremely forgiving (Yagis tend to be somewhat picky with regards to the design frequency and don't do real with wide-bandwidth signals). Hunt up any Amateur radio operator and they will talk your ear off regarding antenna design, and if you luck into one who has done ATV (Amateur TV) work they probably have some experience designing antennas up in that range. Many folks will tell you that "microwave is hard", but it's become much easier over the past few decades, plus there is the fact that conventional antenna designs that worked well for frequencies below 800Mhz just don't do real well at the higher frequencies (Wide 4 MHZ bandwidth support at 144MHz just doesn't translate well up at 2Ghz...) Robert
Actually, Windows 95 was a significant improvement over Windows for Workgroups 3.12. Yes it had some failings compared to Unix, but compared to what preceded it there was significant improvement. Every OS out there falls short of being good if you compare it against an OS with different design goals (Venturing outside the computer world a ferarri truly sucks when compared with a dumptruck due to it's inability to efficiently carry rubble and tendency to catastrophically fail when you attempt to use it in more than 1 inch of mud). I realize I don't have a number that's low enough to qualify as legitimate on /. , but I also agree with DudemanX in that I have enjoyed using most of the Windows operating systems since Windows 95, though since 2000 I've spent more time on the server side than on the client side. I've also owned/used every version of the Windows Mobile/Windows Phone OS, as well as Blackberry and the occasional Android device. They all have their flaws and if you dig enough you'll find an ugly baby (Bugs/Lockups/Reboots/Poor signal) in almost every product during the first several months after release. All that being said, Windows Phone 8 looks like a pretty good setup, and yes I've run into some bugs with my Lumia 920, but I'm looking forward to where it is going.
FYI: Yes I am a MS drone, no I am not in marketing or product development and no, I am not a MS shill.
Robert
You're only having to worry about getting folks off of Windows Server 2003? I'm currently on a consulting gig where they are working to get some of their users off of Windows NT 4.0.... :)
Yes, the MS Bashing gets a bit old after a while, but in this case the blatent inaccuracy of the article is grating even before you add the MS Bashing.
Despite what some may maintain based on the general tone of comments on /. not everyone who participates here is a Linux advocate. For my part I'm over in the BSD camp and daily curse the Linux Heretics who are working resolutely to corrupt our great institutions :) Only a fraction of the articles here are so Linux oriented as to not have relevance to the computer and geek communities outside of the Linux realm.
I'll have to dissagree here, holding a certification does not make you underqualified. I hold several certifications and am somewhat quallified. Many of my certifications were obtained at the behest of my employers (Something along the way of 'We need an A+ certified tech so we can do Compaq warranty service, Robert go out and get it'), others I obtained 'Just for fun' (If you test well and know your subject you can get most certifications with minimal prep). Many companies will pay for you to get job related certifications, so why not? I was up in Redmond last week and half the folks I spoke with had certifications, and ALL of them were quite competent. Yes, certifications don't guarantee the knowledge (I hold certifications for several fields I know little to nothing about), but they do aid in satisfying the HR folks who increasingly are saying 'If they don't have a degree at least make sure they have appropriate certifications'. Experience + Certifications + Interview + Degree, if these four add up then you have a good chance for a job, but in the current market if you have neither certifications nor degree then you are going to see very few calls for an interview at the upper levels.
Just my $.02
Robert
That is what this article is. It fails to address some of the most significant issues to be considered when selecing an anti-spam product: 1. What percentage of incoming SPAM does it catch? 2. What percentage of the messages caught were "Non-SPAM" messages? 3. What is the message volume the product can handle? Instead they gloss over catch rates and false positive rates with a "Everything does a similar job" type statement. FALSE. I just spent the past 8 months evaluating anti-spam solutions for my workplace and they are not all the same when it comes to spam catch rates. I don't really care how pretty it looks or how easy it is to install. Nor do I give a hoot about the buzzwords a particular product incorporates, give me the spam blocking accuracy and the volume it will handle. It is all fine and dandy to ignore volume when you are running a 200 user ISP, but when you get up to 50000 users with over a million messages a day it becomes slightly important. Robert H. Houston, TX
For an Interesting coverage of this concept and its implications, go out and acquire a copy of "The Complete Venus Equilateral" by George O. Smith (Amazon.com link to the book (I'm afraid it is out of print, but used copies are availiable). It was published in the 70's and is actually a collection of science-fiction short-stories published in various "pulp" Mmagazines in the 40s.
While I often think this would be a 'neat' Idea, some of the Implications of the Star Trek style replicator are frigtening...
What would it do to the economy?
What about the effects of this sort of thing on the 'Social Contract' which when you get down to nuts and bolts is held together by the concept of labor and materials having inherent value?
Would we end up switching from worrying about Global warming due to freed-up CO2 to worrying about Lithosphere erosion as folks went out to their back yards to scoop-up some dirt to make their new car out of?
Definitely something which needs some thought.
Robert H.
A device similar to this already exists Last time I went in to a new optometrist they had a gadget which they had me look into which 'automaticaly' determined my prescription by (I Assume) measuring the distortion experienced by a low power laser shined into my eye. The result was fairly close to my actual prescription and would be quite close enough especially if you didn't have ready access to the miscellaneous additional gadgets required to really fine-tune a prescription. Another note is this, I'll use a nearsighted person with astigmatism for this example, The variables for each eye are: Spherical Abberation: Negative number measured in .25 increments ranging from 0 (no correction) to -8 or more (lots of correction)
Astigmatism: Abberation measures in .25 increments ranging from 0 to the amount of spherical correction.
Axis: The axis along which the Astigmatism occurs (I don't know what the increment for this is, This one has been constant for me for the past 20 years so I haven't seen much in the way of samples... I do know that 70 degrees and 110 degrees are valid values)
Note that I am not an Optometrist, so someone who is more aware should feel free to correct me, but If I make the following assumptions we end up with quite a large problem to be placed on a chart:
Spherical: 0 to -8.5 -- 34 possible
Astigmatism: 0 to Spherical -- 0 to 34 possible
Axis: 0 to 180 degrees in 10 degree steps -- 18 possible
lots of combinations spring to mind, I'd say go with the existing automated machines. Possibly combine the marketing for the automated lens fabrication with a program to encourage optometrists to donate their older 'automated prescription baseline devices (or whatever they are officially called'.
A year and a half back AT&T was TDMA, I still see TDMA phones for sale on their web page. They have recently been shifting to GSM phones (At least that is what they have been selling my company. Cingular is TDMA and has been transitioning to GSM. No major compatibility Issues (In fact, for a time a while back both shared the Houston, TX market with the same equipment). While I was never happy with AT&T Wireless customer service, their network was quite good (Though in AK it was really horrible... Course in AK everyones Cell Network is horrible). Current AT&T Phones WILL work on Cingular networks (They just need an over-the-air update) and gaining AT&T towers will result in an improvement of the Cingular network. Not only that, but acquiring AT&T Wireless should improve the Cingular GSM coverage. Near as I can tell just about everyone but Sprint and Nextel are moving towards GSM which will give us the 'true choice' you reference.
Detritus is a Troll, not a zombie. The helmet was used to keep his brain cool which due to the increased processing speed this made possible made him more intellegent. Robert H
They do have a Windows Server 2003 64bit for both Itanium and the AMD 64 bit stuff in Beta at this time. MSDN Subscribers will note it under the Platforms tree. I think they started making both availiable to MSDN subscribers about 6 months back. I haven't purchased a 64 bit box that is compatible yet, so I can't say anything about the stability, but the assumption is that the answer is "Yes they are working quite hard to get a server version out". Robert H
Problem here is that if you mark, defang and deliver some people will get hundreds of e-mails in their inbox which consist entirely of the attachment removed due to virus infection message. They inevitably come back to the mail administrator and report it as a problem: 'all of my e-mail is getting the attachments removed'. Far better just to log the event and place the infected e-mail into the bit bucket, never to bother anyone again. This approach doesn't cause lots of 'shells' being sent to the recipient and does not toss lots of NDR messages to the alegged sender (who probably did not originate it anyways given the methodology being used by the newer mass-mailer worms). Robert H
A few years back I was on the DirecTV Internet Service (don't recall what it was named then) and there was a particularly sneaky bit involved. They had a mysterious threshold for data transfered, beyond which they throttled your sat. connection down to something less than dialup. The support folks claimed to have no way of telling if you had passed the threshold and the threshold was not disclosed (they also did not discolose how long it took to get 'in the clear again'). They would refer you to their 'Fair Access Policy' and that would be it. Fortunately I moved somewhere where I could get a high speed wired connection. Robert H
On a ship, directly above the engine room. Next to the Gausing coil cable... Always noisy, constant vibration, temperature ranging from 90 to 110, humid (from the steam), the screen skewing to the side from the magnetic field and displaying funky rainbow colors.
I have always had decent luck getting misc. plastic and other parts for Toshiba Laptops. There are several companies on the web offering plastic pieces, system boards, batteries, cd/dvd rom drives, etc at moderately reasonable prices. These include: www.mytoshiba.com www.laptopparts.com (not just toshiba, appears to be a fair amount of dell stuff here) http://www.priorityelectronics.com/toshiba.htm (limited selection) I think that www.partsolver.com has a service of some sort to search for parts. Your best bet for insuring that replacement parts are availiable is to find a 'mom and pop' style store localy which is also a service center for the brand in question. Their prices for the laptop will be slightly higher, but you can 'check before you buy' by looking at the unit, picking out the things that look likely to break and asking them if they can come up with a part number for the component. Robert H.
The key is to start out general and work down to more specific predictions as the methodology is improved and you can build an adequate database and figure out what parts of your model are hogwash and which parts contribute. If they can get one or more parts of the prediction accurate at the 9 month mark, then there is a chance that they can become even more accurate over lesser ranges as time progresses. Also, the ability to predict a major earthquake out at the 9 month mark would be quite welcome for municipalities who are planning emergency preparedness. Imagine being able to budget so that your emergency personnel have the materials on hand that they need. Imagine being able to say "Ok, no-one go on vacation during the August-September timeframe as we are probably going to need all the bodies we can lay our hands on. Just because in the past it has not been possible to predict this sort of thing accurately does not mean it will not be possible in the future and therefore is not worth spending money on. Robert H
Reliability is good in my experience, though power drain is horrible. spinning a platter (moving a physicality through space) uses a lot more power than flashing memory cells.
Boot Camp. I had a six-pack a day Jolt habit in the late 80s... Joined the Navy, in boot camp we had lots of exercise, a 'healthy' diet and very little opprotunity to indulge in a caffine habit. Robert H.
I have recently flown out of Houston Hobby, Houston Bush and St. Louis with two laptops, a pocket pc phone and a Shuttle PC without encountering any problems at all. I had to send all of the computer devices through seperate from their carying cases, but I was not asked to 'prove' that they were functional. Course on the trip out of Houston Bush my belt buckel set off the alarm, but they still didn't require me to turn anything on to 'prove it operates'
Ok, this is one of my pet peeves... Keep in mind that when you shift to Nuclear power from Coal power you can't just look at Nuclear waste and say 'Oh, my it will be dangerous for about a million years!' Coal plants produce quite a bit of waste every year in the form of ash and 'scrubber sludge' This waste contains arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium, sulfates, boron, and other contaminants. Many of these are toxic and hmm... Last a REALLY REALLY Long time (Anyone know the 'half-life' of a proton off the top of their heads?) So we are looking at the difference between Radioactive waste which people are somewhat irrationally afraid of and which will become somewhat safe in a Million years or so and Toxic Elements which will NEVER (Or at least virtually so) become safe.