If it were me, I'd quit if I could get reimbursed for the relocation package.
I've worked a few jobs, and there was one where I ended up being given the option of resigning or them letting me go (this was a fairly complicated situation involving an ineffective direct manager and an unresponsive director over him). I spent 18 months at that company, was hired by the VP, and then the director and manager jobs were backfilled. I even recommended the boss be hired as a technician when he interviewed because he had very good technical skills.
He was then promoted to manager, and the team, in my estimation (and that of several of my teammates, all of whom I understand have left since then) everything went to hell. The boss would take credit for our work, but was quick to mete out blame when things went wrong. It was the most miserable job I have ever had - working on a team with *no* morale is no fun. The boss even showed up to a going-away party *uninvited* and the departee and the boss (who were friends before the departee was hired) got into it in the resturaunt. It was not pretty.
This is not to say the people I worked with (other than my immediate boss) were terrible people to work with; I liked them rather a lot, and that's part of the reason I stuck my neck out and said there was a serious problem that needed to be fixed.
In the end, I opted for 3 months of unemployment as opposed to staying with the company. I was only asked to leave because I made waves about there being a problem - they were always happy with my work (I got good job performance reviews). Mr. Director said basically that he could lose one person or he could lose two people - and he assumed that when I told him I wasn't sure if I'd stay if he got rid of Mr. Boss that I was really saying that I'd leave. I would actually have stayed if Mr. Boss had left - but when it came down to it, it was a huge weight off my shoulders when I walked out of there for the last time, and I've never ever looked back.
Three months later, I landed a job through a contracting company with a Fortune 50 company. The F50 company bought out the contract before my first day on the job, and I spent 6 years there as a full-time employee. Got almost twice the money of the previous job (a very nice surprise in the offer letter). It was a good job until an opportunity at my current employer came up that I couldn't refuse.
From my own experience, dreading to get up and go into work is even worse than getting up and realizing that you're not collecting a paycheck. Even with mortgage payments being missed and the mortgage company threatening foreclosure, I'd take that over going back to the hell-hole of a job I worked in any day of the week.
About the only good thing to come out of the experience was that - as a technical instructor (something I regularly did for a couple years), I had plenty of good examples about how *not* to motivate people and how *not* to approach troubleshooting. There were some *really* bad techniques in use there.
Just remember this: Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted. You will walk away with something useful.
Stallman has said unequivocally that Novell has not violated GPLv2. He's said there should be something in GPLv3 to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but very clearly has said that there is no Section 7 violation.
"but subject to a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying)"
If you can play it, you can copy it. End of story. The point of DRM is to limit usage by preventing format shifting, time shifting, or playback on different devices.
The question is based on a false premise - that you can control only illegal copying but allow legal copying. If copying is allowed, legal and illegal copying will occur - and there's no way around that.
What solves the DRM "problem" is for the price point to be *fair* to consumers, rather than based in price fixing and unreasonable usage restrictions. Back that up with legal action (and not the types of crap **AA are doing, but go after the ones who are making illegal copies and selling them for a profit on the black market rather than the grandmothers who don't have computers and can't download stuff via P2P because they don't know what it even is).
Like it or not, Microsoft controls Microsoft's source code. I despise that they use their "weight" (as the 800-pound gorilla does) to force people to use "their" standards, but the reality of IT today is - unfortunately - that if you want to interoperate with Microsoft, you have to play by their rules, no matter who you are.
In an ideal world, Microsoft would use open standards the way they were intended, without perverting them into something proprietary that means they're interoperable with only themselves. It's a pity we don't live in an ideal world. But I see this agreement as a step in the right direction, just as the EU ruling was a step in the right direction. Pressure can be brought to bear in many different ways.
Will it be sucessful? Who knows. But at least someone's trying to highlight the problems of interoperating with Microsoft solutions in a way that's never really been tried before. That it's a company that has a long history of trying to do so (and having had some success in the proprietary software envrionment, I might add) is probably better than someone who doesn't know the "Microsoft Ropes(tm)" of dealing with them as a partner.
Hey now, you work for Novell, disagree with her take on the Novell/MS deal, and now accuse her of bias because of that? I don't think that's very fair at all. I disclosed my bias, and have on Groklaw as well in the posts I've made there.
Make no mistake, I've worked for Novell for almost 4 years; I was a customer for about 15. I grew up in IT on NetWare, and absolutely despise (note present tense) what Windows has done to IT. I've been using Linux for about 10 years now. I'm about as anti-Microsoft as you can get, and I've never made a secret about that. I've had occasion to work very closely with Microsoft consulting services on a deployment project and I've seen up-close and personal how truly awful the technology is, especialy on a large scale, and I had no problem telling the consultants that what they proposed the company I worked for at the time do were not merely bad ideas, but were in fact so monumentally untenable given the network infrastructure in place that to even suggest such a design was a very clear demonstration that, smart though they were, they had no understanding as to what it was they were proposing.
When I heard the announcement on November 2, I was just as shocked and surprised as anyone. I've read the transcripts from the MS Antitrust Trial for Eric Schmidt's depositions, and I personally know people who had to deal with MS' bad behaviour in the GINA chain and how they mucked around with MUP.SYS to prevent third party requesters from working efficiently.
You assume a lot in your post here as well; you have to because you don't know what's in the agreement. I don't know what's in the agreement as well, but I do have a little more trust that what they're doing is going to preserve my employment (and perhaps that's biased of me, I admit that).
Then again, you work for Novell. Care to tell me what private parts of the contract I'm not taking into consideration? Just what clause is in there that makes their agreement something other than a sell-out of the Linux community? What part of it wasn't intended to be used by Microsoft for software patent FUD? Even if it doesn't violate the GPL v2, what about it makes it a good idea? Even if I knew, I couldn't disclose what's in the contract - and I suspect you know that.
What makes it a good idea? Read what IBM had to say about it. Or Goldman Sachs. It's about interoperability - something Novell built a reputation on starting with the very earliest versions of NetWare. I've worked in IT, and without exception, knowing that I had to deal with Microsoft components in the infrastructure at some point, it was absolutely frustrating beyond belief knowing that I *had* to have them (because people decided MS technology was necessary and refused to look at anything else) and to know that Microsoft was going to make it as difficult as possible for me to use anything in addition to their technology. I fought for *years* to get people to look at better technologies than the stuff MS puts out in order to get the job done in a better way.
I look at the agreement as an opportunity. Is there a possibility of badness? Absolutely, there always is when competitors try to cooperate, especially when one of them is notorious for being a bad partner, and who has burned Novell in the past.
But what really burns me about PJ's posts is that they make the assumption that all of the developers who work for Novell suddenly gave up their OSS scruples and are going to "inject trojan code" into the projects they work on. What message does *that* send about the OSS community - that their principles are for sale?
Talk about giving Microsoft fodder to spread more FUD about OSS...
If I had mod points to give, you'd get them all for that post (yes, I know you can't do that, but still). +5 Informative at least.
There was a comment about PJ spreading FUD, to which she replied that she was guessing because the details of the MS-Novell agreement aren't public so she has to guess. That's all fine and dandy, but then an editorial opinion shouldn't be reported as a fact.
She claims to be a journalist, yet doesn't follow good journalistic practice, IMNSHO.
The tag ("duh") really drives the point home. Obviously those who are engaged in any illegal activity aren't afraid of getting caught. If they were, they wouldn't engage in the activity - or they're just plain stupid. Maybe instead of being "from the they-are-masters-of-disguises dept." this one should've been "from the stating-the-bleeding-obvious dept."
If you believe that a president's power should be controlled by a constitutional series of checks and balances, check D. If you believe that the president's power should be unchecked and he should be allowed to place himself above the law, check R.
There are pockets of opposition pretty much everywhere you look, even in Provo/Orem, UT, there are pockets of Democrats. Hell, you can actually buy beer in Provo! (shock!)
What Pete didn't mention is that the mayors of both Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are democrats. Most of the SLC City Council is also democratic, as I recall.
Increase File Sharing -> Lower CD Sales due to piracy
It's
Increased File Sharing -> RIAA Lawsuits -> Lower CD Sales due to boycotts
I don't share copyrighted material that I don't own the copyright for, but I stopped buying CDs when RIAA started suing individuals in protest over their tactics.
It's a fairly well-known fact that most of the people who pirate (software, music, movies, whatever) weren't going to spend the money to begin with, so it's something of a false arguement to make that every downloaded song translates to a lost sale. Similarly, it's not uncommon for someone who downloads a track from a CD to decide they want to support the artist and thus go out and purchase the disc. Things are not as clear-cut (vis-a-vis the supposed inverse relationship between revenue and piracy) as the RIAA and their mouthpieces would have us believe. Things *are* as clear-cut as RIAA wants us to believe when it comes to copyright law, however, and I have to give credit where it's due. It's their tactics that I protest, not their "enforcement" (outside of reasonable fair use) tactics that I have an issue with.
As it happens, since they started their new business model of suing individuals, it struck me that most of the stuff that they were selling was crap anyways, so I don't feel I'm missing out on much. There's a few things that I've wanted to purchase, like the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings movies, but until they change their strategy, I'll have to listen to the music while I watch the film or from audio tracks I rip from the DVDs I purchased.
For the most part, they are adults. If the professor is concerned about attendence, they can take roll. If the goal is for the student to learn the material, then how the student learns the material is immaterial.
"Good" students aren't students who show up to class; "Bad" students aren't the ones who skip out. "Good" students are ones who understand the material and get the job done, "bad" students are the ones who don't.
Many of the students who are in college are there because they're either paying their way or they've received student loans/grants, or their parents help out. If they don't perform to acceptable standards, the money well dries up in many - if not most - cases. What I'm trying to say is that for the "bad" students, this problem should be self-correcting. If the podcasts don't give them enough to pass the class and they rely on it, they'll eliminate themselves from the degree program by underperforming.
Yes, it isn't true now, not until some whack job tries it or even is caught in an apartment that's nowhere near an airport with a baby bottle full of explosive liquid. Then the government will ban them on flights as well.
They've banned toothpaste in carry-ons. Yay, now the terrorists just have to switch to something that is allowed. The only way that you'll prevent the terrorists from bringing a container filled with an explosive liquid is to ban anything that can be used as a transportation device for that liquid. One exception to the rule of "no containers that can hold dangerous liquids" renders the prohibition ineffective. That means no baby bottles, no medication bottles, *nothing*. No exceptions, otherwise the terrorists will just use what is allowed.
That's how they create fear, and that's their aim. We've made it so nobody even has to die, we're collectively so willing to be afraid.
Only until some terrorist decides to bring a baby on board and fill the bottle with a liquid explosive.
If a determined terrorist has no regard for human life, do you really think the fact that they're bringing an infant on board is going to change their determination to blow the plane up? I don't.
I guess we shouldn't be whining about the "convenience" we should be whining about our fucking right to set our shoes on fire.
I agree with the earlier sentiment in your post, but the above quote caught my eye.
Yeah, because one fucking incompetent asshole tried it once, we should change the list of allowed items.
Let me say that again for the grandparent post. ONE...FUCKING...INCOMPETENT...ASSHOLE...
Yeah, that makes a lot of rational sense. One person in six billion+ on this planet tried to ignite his shoes on an airplane, so we (a) ban matches on planes, and (b) require everyone take their shoes off (well, at some airports - this isn't standardized procedure at different airports) and run them through an X-Ray machine.
That's rational? What must it be like to be so frightened all the time?
Before you jump all over me - I *have* been delayed at an airport (Dulles) because TSA couldn't identify items in my suitcase as being non-dangerous. I carried an electric razor out to DC with me and it was dead when I got there; I purchased another one, and left the old one in my bag. I carried the bag on on both flights (the flight out and my return flight) with the same contents, except the return flight had one extra electric razor in it. Other contents were clothes, toothpaste/toothbrush, and a couple cases of CDs of software I was going to use.
Apparently, two electric razors and two packs of CDs are identifiable as an explosive device when viewed on the X-Ray machine. You heard me right - they identified two electric razors and two packs of CDs as an explosive device. I was delayed - at the checkpoint - for 45 minutes, most of that time the bag was in the X-Ray machine. The TSA personnel were very professional and even apologetic for the delay - even the head guy, who asked me directly "is there anything in your bag that might look like a bomb?", which took me aback a little bit. (The correct answer, BTW, is "I wouldn't know what a bomb looks like, sir.") After I recited a complete list of the contents of my bags from memory to them, they decided it was safe to open it, found out what the objects really were, and I was on my way.
I didn't mind the delay at the time - told them I had plenty of time before the flight, but they offered to have the flight held for me rather than for me to miss the flight if it was close to departure. To this day, I still don't mind that particular delay, because they were professional about the situation and it didn't get out of hand. I also returned that courtesy, recognizing that they're doing a job that at the best of times can be difficult.
But changing the procedures/list of banned items because one incompetent asshole does something that's never been done before? That's completely irrational. That puts the power in the hands of the terrorists - they don't even have to pull off a successful attack to instill terror (why do you think they call it "terrorism"? I'll give you a clue: it's not because of the big fireballs in the sky; it's because of the fear that the idea instills in their targets.) - all they have to do is come up with an idea nobody's ever thought of before, and we'll dance for them. We'll change our way of living just so no Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist will ever have the chance of bringing a tube of toothpaste into an airplane lavatory in order to mix it with water because who knows, it might just explode!
Next it'll be a ban on any Diet Coke and Mentos in the hold, because of the potential of blowing out the cargo door on the plane from the combination of those two deadly ingredients. Or, better yet, a ban on vinegar because it's mildly corrosive and might eat through the airframe. Or, no, wait, I've got it - anyone with hands. You can kill a person with your hands in a number of ways - so only persons who have had both arms amputated can board planes now. No, wait, you can still kick someone to death if you know what you're doing. OK, only people with no arms and no legs
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA:
Does NoScript make Firefox safer? Sure. Is it worth the hassle? No. For some reason, paranoia seems to be cool among Web geeks
I guess they think that having your system pwned and turned into a spam-spewing zombie DoS machine of death is what really makes one cool.
If it were me, I'd quit if I could get reimbursed for the relocation package.
I've worked a few jobs, and there was one where I ended up being given the option of resigning or them letting me go (this was a fairly complicated situation involving an ineffective direct manager and an unresponsive director over him). I spent 18 months at that company, was hired by the VP, and then the director and manager jobs were backfilled. I even recommended the boss be hired as a technician when he interviewed because he had very good technical skills.
He was then promoted to manager, and the team, in my estimation (and that of several of my teammates, all of whom I understand have left since then) everything went to hell. The boss would take credit for our work, but was quick to mete out blame when things went wrong. It was the most miserable job I have ever had - working on a team with *no* morale is no fun. The boss even showed up to a going-away party *uninvited* and the departee and the boss (who were friends before the departee was hired) got into it in the resturaunt. It was not pretty.
This is not to say the people I worked with (other than my immediate boss) were terrible people to work with; I liked them rather a lot, and that's part of the reason I stuck my neck out and said there was a serious problem that needed to be fixed.
In the end, I opted for 3 months of unemployment as opposed to staying with the company. I was only asked to leave because I made waves about there being a problem - they were always happy with my work (I got good job performance reviews). Mr. Director said basically that he could lose one person or he could lose two people - and he assumed that when I told him I wasn't sure if I'd stay if he got rid of Mr. Boss that I was really saying that I'd leave. I would actually have stayed if Mr. Boss had left - but when it came down to it, it was a huge weight off my shoulders when I walked out of there for the last time, and I've never ever looked back.
Three months later, I landed a job through a contracting company with a Fortune 50 company. The F50 company bought out the contract before my first day on the job, and I spent 6 years there as a full-time employee. Got almost twice the money of the previous job (a very nice surprise in the offer letter). It was a good job until an opportunity at my current employer came up that I couldn't refuse.
From my own experience, dreading to get up and go into work is even worse than getting up and realizing that you're not collecting a paycheck. Even with mortgage payments being missed and the mortgage company threatening foreclosure, I'd take that over going back to the hell-hole of a job I worked in any day of the week.
About the only good thing to come out of the experience was that - as a technical instructor (something I regularly did for a couple years), I had plenty of good examples about how *not* to motivate people and how *not* to approach troubleshooting. There were some *really* bad techniques in use there.
Just remember this: Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted. You will walk away with something useful.
As soon as MS *successfully* sue someone. Which would mean there was patent-encumbered code in Linux.
How likely is that, really?
Got a link to back that statement up? Yes. Link.
Stallman has said unequivocally that Novell has not violated GPLv2. He's said there should be something in GPLv3 to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but very clearly has said that there is no Section 7 violation.
"but subject to a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying)"
If you can play it, you can copy it. End of story. The point of DRM is to limit usage by preventing format shifting, time shifting, or playback on different devices.
The question is based on a false premise - that you can control only illegal copying but allow legal copying. If copying is allowed, legal and illegal copying will occur - and there's no way around that.
What solves the DRM "problem" is for the price point to be *fair* to consumers, rather than based in price fixing and unreasonable usage restrictions. Back that up with legal action (and not the types of crap **AA are doing, but go after the ones who are making illegal copies and selling them for a profit on the black market rather than the grandmothers who don't have computers and can't download stuff via P2P because they don't know what it even is).
Amen to that! Using a mix is for lazy people....And doing it right really doesn't take that much effort.
Like it or not, Microsoft controls Microsoft's source code. I despise that they use their "weight" (as the 800-pound gorilla does) to force people to use "their" standards, but the reality of IT today is - unfortunately - that if you want to interoperate with Microsoft, you have to play by their rules, no matter who you are.
In an ideal world, Microsoft would use open standards the way they were intended, without perverting them into something proprietary that means they're interoperable with only themselves. It's a pity we don't live in an ideal world. But I see this agreement as a step in the right direction, just as the EU ruling was a step in the right direction. Pressure can be brought to bear in many different ways.
Will it be sucessful? Who knows. But at least someone's trying to highlight the problems of interoperating with Microsoft solutions in a way that's never really been tried before. That it's a company that has a long history of trying to do so (and having had some success in the proprietary software envrionment, I might add) is probably better than someone who doesn't know the "Microsoft Ropes(tm)" of dealing with them as a partner.
From what I understand, Novell has been involved in discussions about GPLv3, like may other companies that are involved in Open Source.
Make no mistake, I've worked for Novell for almost 4 years; I was a customer for about 15. I grew up in IT on NetWare, and absolutely despise (note present tense) what Windows has done to IT. I've been using Linux for about 10 years now. I'm about as anti-Microsoft as you can get, and I've never made a secret about that. I've had occasion to work very closely with Microsoft consulting services on a deployment project and I've seen up-close and personal how truly awful the technology is, especialy on a large scale, and I had no problem telling the consultants that what they proposed the company I worked for at the time do were not merely bad ideas, but were in fact so monumentally untenable given the network infrastructure in place that to even suggest such a design was a very clear demonstration that, smart though they were, they had no understanding as to what it was they were proposing.
When I heard the announcement on November 2, I was just as shocked and surprised as anyone. I've read the transcripts from the MS Antitrust Trial for Eric Schmidt's depositions, and I personally know people who had to deal with MS' bad behaviour in the GINA chain and how they mucked around with MUP.SYS to prevent third party requesters from working efficiently.
You assume a lot in your post here as well; you have to because you don't know what's in the agreement. I don't know what's in the agreement as well, but I do have a little more trust that what they're doing is going to preserve my employment (and perhaps that's biased of me, I admit that). Then again, you work for Novell. Care to tell me what private parts of the contract I'm not taking into consideration? Just what clause is in there that makes their agreement something other than a sell-out of the Linux community? What part of it wasn't intended to be used by Microsoft for software patent FUD? Even if it doesn't violate the GPL v2, what about it makes it a good idea? Even if I knew, I couldn't disclose what's in the contract - and I suspect you know that.
What makes it a good idea? Read what IBM had to say about it. Or Goldman Sachs. It's about interoperability - something Novell built a reputation on starting with the very earliest versions of NetWare. I've worked in IT, and without exception, knowing that I had to deal with Microsoft components in the infrastructure at some point, it was absolutely frustrating beyond belief knowing that I *had* to have them (because people decided MS technology was necessary and refused to look at anything else) and to know that Microsoft was going to make it as difficult as possible for me to use anything in addition to their technology. I fought for *years* to get people to look at better technologies than the stuff MS puts out in order to get the job done in a better way.
I look at the agreement as an opportunity. Is there a possibility of badness? Absolutely, there always is when competitors try to cooperate, especially when one of them is notorious for being a bad partner, and who has burned Novell in the past.
But what really burns me about PJ's posts is that they make the assumption that all of the developers who work for Novell suddenly gave up their OSS scruples and are going to "inject trojan code" into the projects they work on. What message does *that* send about the OSS community - that their principles are for sale?
Talk about giving Microsoft fodder to spread more FUD about OSS...
I've been meaning to do something about that, really. ;-)
Jim
If I had mod points to give, you'd get them all for that post (yes, I know you can't do that, but still). +5 Informative at least.
There was a comment about PJ spreading FUD, to which she replied that she was guessing because the details of the MS-Novell agreement aren't public so she has to guess. That's all fine and dandy, but then an editorial opinion shouldn't be reported as a fact.
She claims to be a journalist, yet doesn't follow good journalistic practice, IMNSHO.
Fair disclosure: I do work for Novell.
The tag ("duh") really drives the point home. Obviously those who are engaged in any illegal activity aren't afraid of getting caught. If they were, they wouldn't engage in the activity - or they're just plain stupid. Maybe instead of being "from the they-are-masters-of-disguises dept." this one should've been "from the stating-the-bleeding-obvious dept."
Mono isn't "embedded" in GNOME - I run GNOME desktops, and Mono isn't even *installed* on several of them.
There's one missing from here:
If you believe that a president's power should be controlled by a constitutional series of checks and balances, check D. If you believe that the president's power should be unchecked and he should be allowed to place himself above the law, check R.
Then you've just not looked in the right places in SLC. There are plenty of good places to eat here.
I've been to lots of restaurants in Boise - there's some good ones, no doubt. There's also good ones throughout Utah (and particularly in SLC).
There are pockets of opposition pretty much everywhere you look, even in Provo/Orem, UT, there are pockets of Democrats. Hell, you can actually buy beer in Provo! (shock!)
Did I *say* SLC was representative of the whole state?
OBTW, I have been to Boise, guessing you haven't, because Boise is pretty right-wing in and of itself from what I recall.
What Pete didn't mention is that the mayors of both Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are democrats. Most of the SLC City Council is also democratic, as I recall.
But the article's also missing a link. It's not:
Increase File Sharing -> Lower CD Sales due to piracy
It's
Increased File Sharing -> RIAA Lawsuits -> Lower CD Sales due to boycotts
I don't share copyrighted material that I don't own the copyright for, but I stopped buying CDs when RIAA started suing individuals in protest over their tactics.
It's a fairly well-known fact that most of the people who pirate (software, music, movies, whatever) weren't going to spend the money to begin with, so it's something of a false arguement to make that every downloaded song translates to a lost sale. Similarly, it's not uncommon for someone who downloads a track from a CD to decide they want to support the artist and thus go out and purchase the disc. Things are not as clear-cut (vis-a-vis the supposed inverse relationship between revenue and piracy) as the RIAA and their mouthpieces would have us believe. Things *are* as clear-cut as RIAA wants us to believe when it comes to copyright law, however, and I have to give credit where it's due. It's their tactics that I protest, not their "enforcement" (outside of reasonable fair use) tactics that I have an issue with.
As it happens, since they started their new business model of suing individuals, it struck me that most of the stuff that they were selling was crap anyways, so I don't feel I'm missing out on much. There's a few things that I've wanted to purchase, like the soundtracks for the Lord of the Rings movies, but until they change their strategy, I'll have to listen to the music while I watch the film or from audio tracks I rip from the DVDs I purchased.
For the most part, they are adults. If the professor is concerned about attendence, they can take roll. If the goal is for the student to learn the material, then how the student learns the material is immaterial.
"Good" students aren't students who show up to class; "Bad" students aren't the ones who skip out. "Good" students are ones who understand the material and get the job done, "bad" students are the ones who don't.
Many of the students who are in college are there because they're either paying their way or they've received student loans/grants, or their parents help out. If they don't perform to acceptable standards, the money well dries up in many - if not most - cases. What I'm trying to say is that for the "bad" students, this problem should be self-correcting. If the podcasts don't give them enough to pass the class and they rely on it, they'll eliminate themselves from the degree program by underperforming.
I should have thought that was obvious.
Yes, it isn't true now, not until some whack job tries it or even is caught in an apartment that's nowhere near an airport with a baby bottle full of explosive liquid. Then the government will ban them on flights as well.
They've banned toothpaste in carry-ons. Yay, now the terrorists just have to switch to something that is allowed. The only way that you'll prevent the terrorists from bringing a container filled with an explosive liquid is to ban anything that can be used as a transportation device for that liquid. One exception to the rule of "no containers that can hold dangerous liquids" renders the prohibition ineffective. That means no baby bottles, no medication bottles, *nothing*. No exceptions, otherwise the terrorists will just use what is allowed.
That's how they create fear, and that's their aim. We've made it so nobody even has to die, we're collectively so willing to be afraid.
Where does the insanity stop?
Only until some terrorist decides to bring a baby on board and fill the bottle with a liquid explosive.
If a determined terrorist has no regard for human life, do you really think the fact that they're bringing an infant on board is going to change their determination to blow the plane up? I don't.
I guess we shouldn't be whining about the "convenience" we should be whining about our fucking right to set our shoes on fire.
I agree with the earlier sentiment in your post, but the above quote caught my eye.
Yeah, because one fucking incompetent asshole tried it once, we should change the list of allowed items.
Let me say that again for the grandparent post. ONE...FUCKING...INCOMPETENT...ASSHOLE...
Yeah, that makes a lot of rational sense. One person in six billion+ on this planet tried to ignite his shoes on an airplane, so we (a) ban matches on planes, and (b) require everyone take their shoes off (well, at some airports - this isn't standardized procedure at different airports) and run them through an X-Ray machine.
That's rational? What must it be like to be so frightened all the time?
Before you jump all over me - I *have* been delayed at an airport (Dulles) because TSA couldn't identify items in my suitcase as being non-dangerous. I carried an electric razor out to DC with me and it was dead when I got there; I purchased another one, and left the old one in my bag. I carried the bag on on both flights (the flight out and my return flight) with the same contents, except the return flight had one extra electric razor in it. Other contents were clothes, toothpaste/toothbrush, and a couple cases of CDs of software I was going to use.
Apparently, two electric razors and two packs of CDs are identifiable as an explosive device when viewed on the X-Ray machine. You heard me right - they identified two electric razors and two packs of CDs as an explosive device. I was delayed - at the checkpoint - for 45 minutes, most of that time the bag was in the X-Ray machine. The TSA personnel were very professional and even apologetic for the delay - even the head guy, who asked me directly "is there anything in your bag that might look like a bomb?", which took me aback a little bit. (The correct answer, BTW, is "I wouldn't know what a bomb looks like, sir.") After I recited a complete list of the contents of my bags from memory to them, they decided it was safe to open it, found out what the objects really were, and I was on my way.
I didn't mind the delay at the time - told them I had plenty of time before the flight, but they offered to have the flight held for me rather than for me to miss the flight if it was close to departure. To this day, I still don't mind that particular delay, because they were professional about the situation and it didn't get out of hand. I also returned that courtesy, recognizing that they're doing a job that at the best of times can be difficult.
But changing the procedures/list of banned items because one incompetent asshole does something that's never been done before? That's completely irrational. That puts the power in the hands of the terrorists - they don't even have to pull off a successful attack to instill terror (why do you think they call it "terrorism"? I'll give you a clue: it's not because of the big fireballs in the sky; it's because of the fear that the idea instills in their targets.) - all they have to do is come up with an idea nobody's ever thought of before, and we'll dance for them. We'll change our way of living just so no Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorist will ever have the chance of bringing a tube of toothpaste into an airplane lavatory in order to mix it with water because who knows, it might just explode!
Next it'll be a ban on any Diet Coke and Mentos in the hold, because of the potential of blowing out the cargo door on the plane from the combination of those two deadly ingredients. Or, better yet, a ban on vinegar because it's mildly corrosive and might eat through the airframe. Or, no, wait, I've got it - anyone with hands. You can kill a person with your hands in a number of ways - so only persons who have had both arms amputated can board planes now. No, wait, you can still kick someone to death if you know what you're doing. OK, only people with no arms and no legs