Just as with any other field or profession, hacking is getting more specialized. It's not that the "superhacker" does not exist, but that such an animal's existence is getting harder and harder to maintain merely because of the expanding skillset and knowledge it takes to be a "hack anything" hacker.
That said, a lot of exploits don't come from being a super techie hacker with the skillz to defeat any system through sheer programming ingenuity or brute force. A lot of them still come from social engineering... convincing foolish people to give you enough information that a middle manager could hack them using nothing more than a standard login.
Where the "superhacker" mainly exists is in the movies. The guy who can pull out his laptop at any given location and hack into any given location on demand and with no preparation or research into the target. He's the human equivalent of the gun that doesn't run out of bullets and hair that dries into a perfectly coiffed do within seconds of getting out of the water.
If you're in the military and in a war zone, you can buy beer at the PX, even if you're under 21, AFAIK.
The legal drinking age is controlled by state laws. In many states, it *used* to be 18, which is one of the reasons my father went out of state for college in the '60s. For my 18th birthday, he took me to New York, instructing me to bring my fake ID (he'd never seen it nor had I told him about it, but he assumed that as a freshman in college I had one), and he took me to the bars he went to in college (those that still survived 25+ years later). His thinking was: "If I was drinking when I was 18, why should I have a problem with you doing it when you're 18?"
And I don't think the laws actually stop 18 year olds from drinking. When I was 18, I was social chair of my fraternity (one of the few things I have in common with Dubya) and had a well stocked bar in my room at the fraternity house. By 19, I was a pretty fair mixologist and had created a few "can't taste the alcohol" punches for serving to sorority girls. My favorite was my "Shirley Temple On Drugs" (a Kamikaze dilluted with 7-Up and grenadine).
IIRC, the Federal Government strongarmed many states into raising it to 21 back in the 1970s by threatening to withhold federal highway funds for states that didn't comply.
I think this deals more with the broader issue of whether schools can regulate or impose disciplinary actions related to a studen's off-campus activities. While it's long been shown that when students are on campus, they surrender a number of their constitutional rights (free speech, search and seizure, right to bear arms, etc.), the courts seem to be recognizing that just being a student doesn't make you a second class-citizen 24/7. And that has broader implications than just online activities.
It's interesting because the guy gets it. In the end, it's all about the relationships. In 1998, I was MPAA accredited and the newly-hired "Senior Editor" for the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). That and $2.50 got me a latte when I started calling studio publicists.
When it comes to getting access it's about 4 things:
The size of your audience
The composition of your audience
How well you write
How well you shmooze
I don't care if you're the only blogger covering any topic. I don't care if you've got 10 times more comprehension of a topic than the guy who writes about it for a major paper. If you're not firing on all four of those cylinders, you're not getting access.
The bloggers with big audiences, good writing, known style, and who make the rounds of the conferences... they get access. But they've earned it by playing the same game the old media guys have... writing well, building a reputation, and shmoozing contacts. Some old media players may still consider them bastard stepchildren of media, but the PR world understands online media a lot better now than it did in 1998.
It's a four cylinder game... Audience Size, Audience Composition, Writing Quality, Shmoozing Skill. Fire on all four and you'll get what you need, blogger or "journalist".
I find that when someone sends me a word doc that has used layout and form fields, it doesn't translate well into OO.o and I have to boot up Word on my old PC (I recently switched to Mac and run OO.o on it) to fill out the form.
"Word is not a text editor... using it as such is like using a nuclear bomb to cut down a tree, or something."
Like the analogy. Back before Flash was popular and people were using Java to do simple text effects, I once said it was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
>"Yes, you pirates. You need to find another way to make money by leeching off the honest work of others."
Set up a record company??
Exactly, or become agents, or managers. Showbiz is all about finding a hot property, helping sell it, and taking as big a chunk of that sale as you legally can for yourself. It's just all aboveboard and any theft is done contractually instead of piratically.
'Course, Tony was a software pirate. What's the equivalent of a sleazy agent in the software biz? "Licensing advisor"?
Don't be a Tony. Overhaul your business model. Quickly.
Yes, you pirates. You need to find another way to make money by leeching off the honest work of others. Art forgery perhaps? Maybe consider a payday loan business... legally charge loan shark interest rates by calling them "service fees".
My first thought when I read about this was the process of draftine IEEE standards for things like 802.11n. Delay after delay occurs, and according to some of the press on the matter, a lot of it is just due to infighting, each member of the committee trying to prevent another member from gaining any advantage... i.e. Company 1 has been developing a technology and proposes to add it to the standard, but it gets blocked because Companies 2-20 think that adding it will make it possible for Company 1 to bring out their 802.11n products faster because of their head start on manufacturing processes for the technology. And thus a standard that should have been completed years ago and brought new technology to consumers remains in committee as petty infighting causes countless delays.
As much as international cooperation can help prevent re-inventing the wheel in space projects, will scientific or jingoistic jealousies over who controls what aspects of a project cause delays as the parties negotiate compromises that have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with ego? Are we going to see a really cool project stall halfway to the launch pad because one of the countries got peeved, took their ball, and went home?
I'm all for international cooperation. I'm just afraid that most of the parties involved won't be very cooperative.
Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.
The cross-platform web services method of delivering applications is growing. Adobe's about to release a web-based PhotoShop (a "lite" version). Google's got their web-based office suite. Java, JavaScript, and Flash are available in every major browser that runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
I released a flash-based drawing app that has *some* similarities to Print Shop, called FunDraw.
I'll probably get clobbered when Adobe releases an online version of Illustrator. But for now, it's a pretty cool app and I'm working diligently to improve it.
I don't believe Hollywood speculation about global warming will stop us from taking the threat seriously.
The Hollywood speculation about evil robots has not stopped certain dedicated men and women from taking seriously all threats of domination by artificial life forms. For example, I recently caught my Roomba building an IED. When I shared that information on a forum that shall remain nameless, there were people who believed and recruited me for the Roomba Resistance.
To make any dent in the Windows dominance it doesn't only need to be better than
Vista, it need to be significantly better.
It's not just being better, it's making the move more painless. Face it, even if your application is better, if there's a learning curve to do simple things, people won't switch. If your life revolves around ACT!, you'll be using the OS that supports ACT! (or more pointedly, the OS that ACT! supports).
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Most people don't learn to operate computers and software from a conceptual and fluid point of view that allows them to adapt easily. Then learn it by rote, step-by-step in a sequence of operations. They may not understand why they perform those operations. They just know if they follow the steps they've been taught, they'll get the result they want/expect.
Some people see life as an adventure of learning, but they're a minority. Having to learn new programs (via learning new steps) scares people. It makes them unhappy. And if they've been doing a set of steps for a few years, those steps have become habitual. So you not only have to teach them the new steps, you have to break them of the old ones. Breaking habits is unhappy work.
Furthermore, if you read TFA, look at the various driver problems she had. If the hardware and software don't play nicely "out of the box", the deal is off for most people. And you can angrily tell them to buy different hardware, but Joe Shmoe is going to buy what looks neat to him. If Linux won't run on it, Windows probably will, and since he knows Windows already, it's just the path of least resistance.
Being "better" is immaterial. Either sticking with Windows has to get so painful that people exceed their tolerance level and will switch to anything that promises (and delivers) less pain, or Linux has to make it SO easy and painless to switch over, that people will do it just to save a few bucks.
And the avatar of the "I want it free" crowd is another terrible twos kid shouting "GIMME!" Your point?
Actually, they don't shout "gimme" (at least my terrible twoster doesn't). They just grab what they want and declare it theirs, or point at what they want and grunt.
But my point is that as we mature, we learn the benefits of cooperation and sharing, we can see the bigger picture and know when giving up some control will be to our benefit.
They're not offering the book search out of the goodness of their hearts. They're offering it because they believe it will drive revenues. But, because they're afraid of losing control, they try to keep that search within their own little fiefdom where they can keep an eye on it. But by keeping it exclusive of other searches, they limit its usefulness. And by doing that, they diminish the potential benefit to themselves, because fewer people will use it.
Probably just that correlation doesn't imply causation. There's a strong (negative) correlation between the number of pirates plying the seas and global warming, too, but that doesn't mean the solution to global warming is to increase piracy on the high seas.
I hear there is a huge piracy problem around Asia. Maybe you need to be more specific, such as requiring an increase in Pirates of the Caribbean to combat global warming.
Great, so they'll let you search their books... through their interface on their site. So if I wanted to search through multiple publishers, if they all follow this example, I'll have to go search each publisher separately. Pardon me if I'm not doing cartwheels.
I'd say that eventually someone will engineer a metasearch that hits each publisher's search engine with queries and then either screenscrapes or does some other jujumagumbo to try to extract pertinent info from each set and create some semblance of organization, but I'll bet you that the Terms and Conditions on each publisher's site prohibit this and IF someone creates such a beast, they'll be seeing the C&D's come flying in.
When all is said and done, searching one publisher's catalog at a time is of limited usefulness. And while this may represent a step in the right direction, it also shows that the avatar of most major IP owners is still a kid in the midst of its terrible twos, shouting "MINE!"
The basic theme of this seems to be "patch! patch! patch!". A lot of the scripts they discussed (AWStats, phpBB, etc.) are ones where the people who use them don't have the expertise to dig into their code and fix problems themselves (or possibly even understand what the problems are).
The three rules of running a web app you didn't write:
1: Subscribe to the announcements mailing list
2: Apply patches immediately
3: Back-up your shit regularly, because even if you do 1 and 2, you might get hit and then you're going to need your backups.
Rule three is sort of universal for any webmaster, whatever they're running, even if they wrote it all themselves and have security certifications up the wazoo. Not running back-ups is about as wise as putting your 401k funds into lottery tickets.
Been a long time since I typeset anything, but I used Adobe Pagemaker when I typeset a couple of college magazines in the mid-90s and FrameMaker when I was maintaining courseware in the late '90s for Nortel.
HTML + CSS vs. Word vs. OO.o seems to me to be an argument related to formatting documents, not a "book". It's not that you couldn't do it, but I'd consider using Quark or InDesign (what seems to be Adobe's successor to PageMaker) or even Tex and its variants (haven't used any Tex-based stuff, but heard wonderful things) for typesetting.
Arguments about standards aside, proof of concepts aside, I'd think that the real issue when it comes to any job is using the best tool for it. It's not a question of whether you can use these tools to typeset a book, but if you should.
The point of the proof of concept is to prove that the system is flexible or capable enough to go beyond its original intended use. I get that. But proving a chainsaw can be used to spread butter, doesn't mean it's inherently superior to a coping saw.
IIRC, the concept of zero has Arabic roots, and prior to the crusades, there were some pretty bad-ass universities (for the time) in Arabic lands. Between Mongols (let's not forget that the "white man" can't be held responsible for *all* the destruction of art and culture across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East) and European crusaders, a lot of impressive cultural development was trashed across the Islamic world.
I would like to see the attemp though, what's the harm?
There's no harm, just the gamble of time. The reason people read most major magazines is because they trust them to provide quality content that they're going to enjoy. The biggest differences between the user-generated content and the glossy magazines is that the user-generated content is a much larger grab-bag of varying quality... a lot more signal, but an order of magnitude more noise too.
It looks like the Wikia sites are using a DIGG sort of voting system to help elevate the most popular content, which help improve the "signal to noise" ratio, while building a broad content library. Dunno how well this will work. The possibility of succeeding is good, but the possibility of sucking hovers near.
I would treat them like small signs and take them down if the necessary authorizations had not been filed properly.
A powered device has been mounted in a public place. It is big enough to contain an explosive charge and projectiles. The person who mounted it is nowhere to be found.
Your answer is to have someone mess with it as people walk by. If you're wrong and it explodes, the person messing with it definitely dies. The people walking by are injured or killed. And you're left answering questions like "why didn't you clear a perimeter" and "why didn't you have a qualified person inspect it before it was touched"? The money it would have cost to approach this with caution is 1/100th of the dollar value of the variety of wrongful death lawsuits being filed against the city. What's your answer?
Put yourself in the position where if it is a bomb, but it gets anyone, you're on the rack. If it isn't, but you've inconvenienced people, you're on the rack. In fact, there are thousands of people not in your city who criticize your decisions in forums and chatrooms across the internet. And the ONLY time you even partially win is when it's a real bomb, but you keep it from getting anyone (and even then, Monday morning quarterbacks will still nitpick how you kept it from getting anyone). Then tell me again what you'd do if you were "the decider."
They won't be leaving fucking light-brites at the side of the road.
If they thought we'd ignore them, why wouldn't they? It's easy to Monday morning quarterback and criticize the actions of others when you've never been in that position or had that responsibility.
If you knew that if you screwed up, people could die, would you be as as cavalier about an incident like this?
And while some of you say you'd rather die than have to put up with this paranoia, I say fuck you, you narcissistic pricks. I've got a kid. And if a little overreaction means the difference between drawing flowers with him and placing flowers on his grave, then I'm all for a little overreaction.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, everyone knows the last "superhacker" died off when Zero Cool married Acid Burn.
Nah, it wasn't Acid Burn what killed him. It was a vampire.
- G
Just as with any other field or profession, hacking is getting more specialized. It's not that the "superhacker" does not exist, but that such an animal's existence is getting harder and harder to maintain merely because of the expanding skillset and knowledge it takes to be a "hack anything" hacker.
That said, a lot of exploits don't come from being a super techie hacker with the skillz to defeat any system through sheer programming ingenuity or brute force. A lot of them still come from social engineering... convincing foolish people to give you enough information that a middle manager could hack them using nothing more than a standard login.
Where the "superhacker" mainly exists is in the movies. The guy who can pull out his laptop at any given location and hack into any given location on demand and with no preparation or research into the target. He's the human equivalent of the gun that doesn't run out of bullets and hair that dries into a perfectly coiffed do within seconds of getting out of the water.
- Greg
If you're in the military and in a war zone, you can buy beer at the PX, even if you're under 21, AFAIK.
The legal drinking age is controlled by state laws. In many states, it *used* to be 18, which is one of the reasons my father went out of state for college in the '60s. For my 18th birthday, he took me to New York, instructing me to bring my fake ID (he'd never seen it nor had I told him about it, but he assumed that as a freshman in college I had one), and he took me to the bars he went to in college (those that still survived 25+ years later). His thinking was: "If I was drinking when I was 18, why should I have a problem with you doing it when you're 18?"
And I don't think the laws actually stop 18 year olds from drinking. When I was 18, I was social chair of my fraternity (one of the few things I have in common with Dubya) and had a well stocked bar in my room at the fraternity house. By 19, I was a pretty fair mixologist and had created a few "can't taste the alcohol" punches for serving to sorority girls. My favorite was my "Shirley Temple On Drugs" (a Kamikaze dilluted with 7-Up and grenadine).
IIRC, the Federal Government strongarmed many states into raising it to 21 back in the 1970s by threatening to withhold federal highway funds for states that didn't comply.
- Greg
I think this deals more with the broader issue of whether schools can regulate or impose disciplinary actions related to a studen's off-campus activities. While it's long been shown that when students are on campus, they surrender a number of their constitutional rights (free speech, search and seizure, right to bear arms, etc.), the courts seem to be recognizing that just being a student doesn't make you a second class-citizen 24/7. And that has broader implications than just online activities.
- Greg
By the way, do you have stairs in your house?
Yes, the Roomba levitates up them like a Dalek. Should that be a cause for concern?
- Greg
When it comes to getting access it's about 4 things:
I don't care if you're the only blogger covering any topic. I don't care if you've got 10 times more comprehension of a topic than the guy who writes about it for a major paper. If you're not firing on all four of those cylinders, you're not getting access.
The bloggers with big audiences, good writing, known style, and who make the rounds of the conferences... they get access. But they've earned it by playing the same game the old media guys have... writing well, building a reputation, and shmoozing contacts. Some old media players may still consider them bastard stepchildren of media, but the PR world understands online media a lot better now than it did in 1998.
It's a four cylinder game... Audience Size, Audience Composition, Writing Quality, Shmoozing Skill. Fire on all four and you'll get what you need, blogger or "journalist".
- Greg
I find that when someone sends me a word doc that has used layout and form fields, it doesn't translate well into OO.o and I have to boot up Word on my old PC (I recently switched to Mac and run OO.o on it) to fill out the form.
"Word is not a text editor... using it as such is like using a nuclear bomb to cut down a tree, or something."
Like the analogy. Back before Flash was popular and people were using Java to do simple text effects, I once said it was like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
- Greg
>"Yes, you pirates. You need to find another way to make money by leeching off the honest work of others."
Set up a record company??
Exactly, or become agents, or managers. Showbiz is all about finding a hot property, helping sell it, and taking as big a chunk of that sale as you legally can for yourself. It's just all aboveboard and any theft is done contractually instead of piratically.
'Course, Tony was a software pirate. What's the equivalent of a sleazy agent in the software biz? "Licensing advisor"?
- Greg
Don't be a Tony. Overhaul your business model. Quickly.
Yes, you pirates. You need to find another way to make money by leeching off the honest work of others. Art forgery perhaps? Maybe consider a payday loan business... legally charge loan shark interest rates by calling them "service fees".
- Greg
My first thought when I read about this was the process of draftine IEEE standards for things like 802.11n. Delay after delay occurs, and according to some of the press on the matter, a lot of it is just due to infighting, each member of the committee trying to prevent another member from gaining any advantage... i.e. Company 1 has been developing a technology and proposes to add it to the standard, but it gets blocked because Companies 2-20 think that adding it will make it possible for Company 1 to bring out their 802.11n products faster because of their head start on manufacturing processes for the technology. And thus a standard that should have been completed years ago and brought new technology to consumers remains in committee as petty infighting causes countless delays.
As much as international cooperation can help prevent re-inventing the wheel in space projects, will scientific or jingoistic jealousies over who controls what aspects of a project cause delays as the parties negotiate compromises that have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with ego? Are we going to see a really cool project stall halfway to the launch pad because one of the countries got peeved, took their ball, and went home?
I'm all for international cooperation. I'm just afraid that most of the parties involved won't be very cooperative.
- Greg
Try to find a replacement for something as basic as Print Shop.
The cross-platform web services method of delivering applications is growing. Adobe's about to release a web-based PhotoShop (a "lite" version). Google's got their web-based office suite. Java, JavaScript, and Flash are available in every major browser that runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
I released a flash-based drawing app that has *some* similarities to Print Shop, called FunDraw.
I'll probably get clobbered when Adobe releases an online version of Illustrator. But for now, it's a pretty cool app and I'm working diligently to improve it.
- Greg
Zonkdogfology, zimpogrit, ibbytopknot.
I don't believe Hollywood speculation about global warming will stop us from taking the threat seriously.
The Hollywood speculation about evil robots has not stopped certain dedicated men and women from taking seriously all threats of domination by artificial life forms. For example, I recently caught my Roomba building an IED. When I shared that information on a forum that shall remain nameless, there were people who believed and recruited me for the Roomba Resistance.
But perhaps I've said too much.
- Greg
To make any dent in the Windows dominance it doesn't only need to be better than Vista, it need to be significantly better.
It's not just being better, it's making the move more painless. Face it, even if your application is better, if there's a learning curve to do simple things, people won't switch. If your life revolves around ACT!, you'll be using the OS that supports ACT! (or more pointedly, the OS that ACT! supports).
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Most people don't learn to operate computers and software from a conceptual and fluid point of view that allows them to adapt easily. Then learn it by rote, step-by-step in a sequence of operations. They may not understand why they perform those operations. They just know if they follow the steps they've been taught, they'll get the result they want/expect.
Some people see life as an adventure of learning, but they're a minority. Having to learn new programs (via learning new steps) scares people. It makes them unhappy. And if they've been doing a set of steps for a few years, those steps have become habitual. So you not only have to teach them the new steps, you have to break them of the old ones. Breaking habits is unhappy work.
Furthermore, if you read TFA, look at the various driver problems she had. If the hardware and software don't play nicely "out of the box", the deal is off for most people. And you can angrily tell them to buy different hardware, but Joe Shmoe is going to buy what looks neat to him. If Linux won't run on it, Windows probably will, and since he knows Windows already, it's just the path of least resistance.
Being "better" is immaterial. Either sticking with Windows has to get so painful that people exceed their tolerance level and will switch to anything that promises (and delivers) less pain, or Linux has to make it SO easy and painless to switch over, that people will do it just to save a few bucks.
- Greg
It's not that humans got crabs from gorillas. One human did. Skeezy McTarzan.
And the avatar of the "I want it free" crowd is another terrible twos kid shouting "GIMME!" Your point?
Actually, they don't shout "gimme" (at least my terrible twoster doesn't). They just grab what they want and declare it theirs, or point at what they want and grunt.
But my point is that as we mature, we learn the benefits of cooperation and sharing, we can see the bigger picture and know when giving up some control will be to our benefit.
They're not offering the book search out of the goodness of their hearts. They're offering it because they believe it will drive revenues. But, because they're afraid of losing control, they try to keep that search within their own little fiefdom where they can keep an eye on it. But by keeping it exclusive of other searches, they limit its usefulness. And by doing that, they diminish the potential benefit to themselves, because fewer people will use it.
- Greg
Probably just that correlation doesn't imply causation. There's a strong (negative) correlation between the number of pirates plying the seas and global warming, too, but that doesn't mean the solution to global warming is to increase piracy on the high seas.
I hear there is a huge piracy problem around Asia. Maybe you need to be more specific, such as requiring an increase in Pirates of the Caribbean to combat global warming.
Great, so they'll let you search their books... through their interface on their site. So if I wanted to search through multiple publishers, if they all follow this example, I'll have to go search each publisher separately. Pardon me if I'm not doing cartwheels.
I'd say that eventually someone will engineer a metasearch that hits each publisher's search engine with queries and then either screenscrapes or does some other jujumagumbo to try to extract pertinent info from each set and create some semblance of organization, but I'll bet you that the Terms and Conditions on each publisher's site prohibit this and IF someone creates such a beast, they'll be seeing the C&D's come flying in.
When all is said and done, searching one publisher's catalog at a time is of limited usefulness. And while this may represent a step in the right direction, it also shows that the avatar of most major IP owners is still a kid in the midst of its terrible twos, shouting "MINE!"
- Greg
The three rules of running a web app you didn't write:
- 1: Subscribe to the announcements mailing list
- 2: Apply patches immediately
- 3: Back-up your shit regularly, because even if you do 1 and 2, you might get hit and then you're going to need your backups.
Rule three is sort of universal for any webmaster, whatever they're running, even if they wrote it all themselves and have security certifications up the wazoo. Not running back-ups is about as wise as putting your 401k funds into lottery tickets.- Greg
Been a long time since I typeset anything, but I used Adobe Pagemaker when I typeset a couple of college magazines in the mid-90s and FrameMaker when I was maintaining courseware in the late '90s for Nortel.
HTML + CSS vs. Word vs. OO.o seems to me to be an argument related to formatting documents, not a "book". It's not that you couldn't do it, but I'd consider using Quark or InDesign (what seems to be Adobe's successor to PageMaker) or even Tex and its variants (haven't used any Tex-based stuff, but heard wonderful things) for typesetting.
Arguments about standards aside, proof of concepts aside, I'd think that the real issue when it comes to any job is using the best tool for it. It's not a question of whether you can use these tools to typeset a book, but if you should.
The point of the proof of concept is to prove that the system is flexible or capable enough to go beyond its original intended use. I get that. But proving a chainsaw can be used to spread butter, doesn't mean it's inherently superior to a coping saw.
- Greg
IIRC, the concept of zero has Arabic roots, and prior to the crusades, there were some pretty bad-ass universities (for the time) in Arabic lands. Between Mongols (let's not forget that the "white man" can't be held responsible for *all* the destruction of art and culture across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East) and European crusaders, a lot of impressive cultural development was trashed across the Islamic world.
- Greg
I would like to see the attemp though, what's the harm?
There's no harm, just the gamble of time. The reason people read most major magazines is because they trust them to provide quality content that they're going to enjoy. The biggest differences between the user-generated content and the glossy magazines is that the user-generated content is a much larger grab-bag of varying quality... a lot more signal, but an order of magnitude more noise too.
It looks like the Wikia sites are using a DIGG sort of voting system to help elevate the most popular content, which help improve the "signal to noise" ratio, while building a broad content library. Dunno how well this will work. The possibility of succeeding is good, but the possibility of sucking hovers near.
I would treat them like small signs and take them down if the necessary authorizations had not been filed properly.
A powered device has been mounted in a public place. It is big enough to contain an explosive charge and projectiles. The person who mounted it is nowhere to be found.
Your answer is to have someone mess with it as people walk by. If you're wrong and it explodes, the person messing with it definitely dies. The people walking by are injured or killed. And you're left answering questions like "why didn't you clear a perimeter" and "why didn't you have a qualified person inspect it before it was touched"? The money it would have cost to approach this with caution is 1/100th of the dollar value of the variety of wrongful death lawsuits being filed against the city. What's your answer?
Put yourself in the position where if it is a bomb, but it gets anyone, you're on the rack. If it isn't, but you've inconvenienced people, you're on the rack. In fact, there are thousands of people not in your city who criticize your decisions in forums and chatrooms across the internet. And the ONLY time you even partially win is when it's a real bomb, but you keep it from getting anyone (and even then, Monday morning quarterbacks will still nitpick how you kept it from getting anyone). Then tell me again what you'd do if you were "the decider."
Shmuck.
They won't be leaving fucking light-brites at the side of the road.
If they thought we'd ignore them, why wouldn't they? It's easy to Monday morning quarterback and criticize the actions of others when you've never been in that position or had that responsibility.
If you knew that if you screwed up, people could die, would you be as as cavalier about an incident like this?
And while some of you say you'd rather die than have to put up with this paranoia, I say fuck you, you narcissistic pricks. I've got a kid. And if a little overreaction means the difference between drawing flowers with him and placing flowers on his grave, then I'm all for a little overreaction.