Yeah, because a boxcutter is superior to a couple of rounds of frangible ammo at close range. Not. The terrorists would have had guns as well...they were not stupid, just fanatical.
Didn't happen that way on Flight 93 though, did it? If accounts are correct, it was one trained judoka and a couple of other guys taking on the "superior" terrorists. The terrorists would have taken them out in a matter of minutes. The Flight 93 passengers had a long time to figure out what was going on and make a plan. They were brave, but it took them some time to gather their courage and attempt an assault.
A single trained shooter may have made a difference. You have zero way of knowing otherwise. How many trained shooters were on the hijacked planes? How many people with concealed weapons permits? Assume one trained shooter per plane (and assume I just won the lottery), you still had three or four trained hijackers. The trained shooter takes out one or two hijackers, and then is shot dead. Now we have two or three fully armed hijackers who still control the plane.
Sorry, it's an incredible stretch to state that allowing handguns on commercial flights would have prevented 9/11.
Flight 93 proves that "superior training in combat" still results in hijackers losing when the passengers fight back. Flight 93 also proves that passengers fighting back without weapons may result in the total loss of the airplane and everyone on board. The Flight 93 passengers were very heroic, but it took time for them to figure out what was happening and get their courage up to attempt an assault. More than anything else I think the fact that the real reason they were "successful" was because they had both time and information that passengers on the other flights did not get.
So what percentage of the passengers on the four hijacked planes had concealed weapon permits? Many people have permits so they can carry a gun while going to the bank with cash from their business, so at least 50% of people with concealed weapons permits are likely not usually carrying their gun. Also remember that the flights originated in Newark, Boston, and Washington DC where gun laws and concealed weapons permits are harder to obtain than other areas of the country (Florida, Texas, etc.).
If we assume that 5% of the passengers had permits AND carried their gun on the plane with them (a very, very generous estimate) that would have meant that between two and four passengers on each flight would have had handguns. Remember that the flights were not very full so there were not a lot of passengers to deal with. One would assume that the hijackers would have obtained concealed weapons permits (they were pretty thorough) and so that means that they would have all had guns. Giving the hijackers the element of surprise along with their military and physical training (as well as their fanaticism) they still would have easily overpowered the passengers. I believe that with guns the hijackers would likely have just shot each and every passenger and then crashed the planes. In fact, handguns on board a plane would have allowed the hijackers to kill all the passengers on Flight 93 before the passengers had time to figure out what was happening (phone calls). Remember that as heroic as the Flight 93 passengers were it still took them some time to organize and work up to the attack on the cockpit. So for Flight 93 it would have had the same end result for the passengers, but might have caused even more death on the ground.
Now this is all hypothetical...obviously if handguns had been permitted on board then airlines and pilots would have insisted that pilots also carry guns and have secure cockpits. My point was to call BS on the statement that passengers with guns would have prevented 9/11.
I can see why we would want to prevent explosives, but I fail to see why banning guns actually helps us. If the passengers aboard the planes on 9/11 had guns, the attacks could not have happened. The presence of guns by average citizens is often a deterent to certain types of crime. While you could argue that gun ownership does sometimes deter crimes you're really making a stretch when you say that guns on a plane would have stopped the attacks on 9/11. The terrorists had superior training in combat and weapons and would have merely massacred all the passengers on the plane before taking the cockpit. Firearms on aircraft would be a BAD thing except in the hands of fully trained air marshals.
Forgot about the fluff...interesting to consider that the local store could sell ad space on DVD's they burn for consumers. So instead of a few trailers for upcoming DVD and movie releases the DVD you rent might have an ad for Bob's Dry Cleaning Service.
Instead of a 5,000 square foot store Blockbuster and Netflix can work out deals with Walgreens, Wal*Mart, and other retail storefronts to place a DVD-burning kiosk in their stores. All they need is power and a high speed net connection and they'll be good to go. Blockbuster could also eliminate in-store inventory altogether....bring the empty DVD case to the checkout and the clerk burns you a DVD to take home in a paper sleeve. When you're through watching the movie you toss the DVD. No shortages of the top hits, and the customer never needs to come back to return the DVD and pay a late fee.
You can't tax Windows users unless you start clamping down on all the open relays and misconfigured email servers. SMTP is broken, and patchwork solutions like SPF are only helping a small amount. There are servers with no reverse DNS, no MX records, all sorts of invalid configurations. As an admin running several mail servers I have to choose between enforcing all the RFC's (and rejecting email from hundreds of legitimate but broken servers) or leaving the door open and being swamped by spam (which is then trapped by processor intensive sieve, filters, etc). If I turn up the security too high my users start complaining about rejected email from clueless organizations that are running perfectly good Linux/Mac/Windows mail server boxes that are not set up correctly.
Most of those smaller lock cylinders use the same key patterns. Those desk drawer keys and cabinet keys use a very common key blank (usually a Y11 based on a Yale brand cylinder) and from that point there are only a few combinations of cut. Cash drawer manufacturers and receipt printer companies use the same common key, so that explains why you can open McDonald's cash registers..you can likely open mine as well. For cash drawers the key is really just functioning as a latch...same wtih desk drawers and cabinets. A determined thief will get in anyway so it's just to keep the casual thief from pulling the drawer open without delay.
For a voting machine one would hope that they would have used more secure cylinders like the round 7-pin cylinders or maybe Medeco style. The voting machine locks should be at least as secure as unattended machines that hold money, like soda machines, slot machines, even pay phones. Those machines have secure locks with tough-to-duplicate keys. I guess protecting Pepsi is more important than our protecting electoral process.
My concern with using RFID to track pedophiles is where it would stop? Seems likely that schools and day care centers would install tracking systems on their perimeter, but how about libraries? Would a shopping mall want to install pedophile detection at the entrance? How about fast food restaurants? How about DisneyLand?
If schools decided to install detection systems, who foots the bill? Do schools in poor neighborhoods skip the RFID detection system (but keep the metal detectors)?
This is still all theoretical, but it definitely is a slippery slope.
The ASR projects don't have to be original research...the student will usually just work on an existing project in cooperation with their mentor. Seriously, what amazing research project would a high school student do in genetics, cancer, astronomy, etc.? Cryptography is certainly "hard" but solving some encryption puzzle is not necessarily tougher to comprehend than decoding DNA or curing cancer or AIDS.
Luckily we live in the NY Metro area within driving distance of a large number of universities. We found a few online lists of programs ( here and here) via a post in the sci.crypto newsgroup.
Once again someone has stolen my original concept. Several companies (Loudeye/Overpeer for one) are selling this type of service to the major labels so now someone has probably sold a BitTorrent version to the major movie studios (major labels = major studios in most cases anyway). Too bad I didn't attempt to patent the concept back in 2000.
Zork was my first exposure to computer games. I was at MIT from 1977-79 and spent many late nights exploring the "Great Underground Empire". In those days, they were coding the dungeon so it grew as time went by. There were bugs to fix, and a number of inside jokes (MIT specific) that got left out of the commercial version released by Infocom.
When playing the game, you usually had to use the printing terminals (Decwriters?) and log in via Arpanet to the computer running Zork (command was something like "@o AI" where AI was the machine you were connectint to). If too many people were already logged in to Zork you'd get a message like "A large burly troll hacks at you with an axe and thunders 'None shall pass'" (or words to that effect. Eventually I had a TI thermal printing terminal with a 300 baud modem built in (with the little cups that you squeezed the phone handset into after manually dialing the system). I was able to dial-in and play from the dorm which saved a trek over to one of the labs (where the terminals were often occupied with people doing actual work).
Slashdot Mirror
There were between 40 and 88 people on each of the hijacked 9/11 planes, so that drops the odds considerably.
Sorry, it's an incredible stretch to state that allowing handguns on commercial flights would have prevented 9/11.
So what percentage of the passengers on the four hijacked planes had concealed weapon permits? Many people have permits so they can carry a gun while going to the bank with cash from their business, so at least 50% of people with concealed weapons permits are likely not usually carrying their gun. Also remember that the flights originated in Newark, Boston, and Washington DC where gun laws and concealed weapons permits are harder to obtain than other areas of the country (Florida, Texas, etc.).
If we assume that 5% of the passengers had permits AND carried their gun on the plane with them (a very, very generous estimate) that would have meant that between two and four passengers on each flight would have had handguns. Remember that the flights were not very full so there were not a lot of passengers to deal with. One would assume that the hijackers would have obtained concealed weapons permits (they were pretty thorough) and so that means that they would have all had guns. Giving the hijackers the element of surprise along with their military and physical training (as well as their fanaticism) they still would have easily overpowered the passengers. I believe that with guns the hijackers would likely have just shot each and every passenger and then crashed the planes. In fact, handguns on board a plane would have allowed the hijackers to kill all the passengers on Flight 93 before the passengers had time to figure out what was happening (phone calls). Remember that as heroic as the Flight 93 passengers were it still took them some time to organize and work up to the attack on the cockpit. So for Flight 93 it would have had the same end result for the passengers, but might have caused even more death on the ground.
Now this is all hypothetical...obviously if handguns had been permitted on board then airlines and pilots would have insisted that pilots also carry guns and have secure cockpits. My point was to call BS on the statement that passengers with guns would have prevented 9/11.
John
Forgot about the fluff...interesting to consider that the local store could sell ad space on DVD's they burn for consumers. So instead of a few trailers for upcoming DVD and movie releases the DVD you rent might have an ad for Bob's Dry Cleaning Service.
The DRM mechanism in the DVD will prevent it from being played more than a few times. The average consumer won't mess with any available cracks.
Instead of a 5,000 square foot store Blockbuster and Netflix can work out deals with Walgreens, Wal*Mart, and other retail storefronts to place a DVD-burning kiosk in their stores. All they need is power and a high speed net connection and they'll be good to go. Blockbuster could also eliminate in-store inventory altogether....bring the empty DVD case to the checkout and the clerk burns you a DVD to take home in a paper sleeve. When you're through watching the movie you toss the DVD. No shortages of the top hits, and the customer never needs to come back to return the DVD and pay a late fee.
Access also uses the same new Office "ribbon" interface.
You have an automatic storm door opener?
You can't tax Windows users unless you start clamping down on all the open relays and misconfigured email servers. SMTP is broken, and patchwork solutions like SPF are only helping a small amount. There are servers with no reverse DNS, no MX records, all sorts of invalid configurations. As an admin running several mail servers I have to choose between enforcing all the RFC's (and rejecting email from hundreds of legitimate but broken servers) or leaving the door open and being swamped by spam (which is then trapped by processor intensive sieve, filters, etc). If I turn up the security too high my users start complaining about rejected email from clueless organizations that are running perfectly good Linux/Mac/Windows mail server boxes that are not set up correctly.
IMHO it ultimately comes down to fixing SMTP.
John
Most of those smaller lock cylinders use the same key patterns. Those desk drawer keys and cabinet keys use a very common key blank (usually a Y11 based on a Yale brand cylinder) and from that point there are only a few combinations of cut. Cash drawer manufacturers and receipt printer companies use the same common key, so that explains why you can open McDonald's cash registers..you can likely open mine as well. For cash drawers the key is really just functioning as a latch...same wtih desk drawers and cabinets. A determined thief will get in anyway so it's just to keep the casual thief from pulling the drawer open without delay.
For a voting machine one would hope that they would have used more secure cylinders like the round 7-pin cylinders or maybe Medeco style. The voting machine locks should be at least as secure as unattended machines that hold money, like soda machines, slot machines, even pay phones. Those machines have secure locks with tough-to-duplicate keys. I guess protecting Pepsi is more important than our protecting electoral process.
John
My concern with using RFID to track pedophiles is where it would stop? Seems likely that schools and day care centers would install tracking systems on their perimeter, but how about libraries? Would a shopping mall want to install pedophile detection at the entrance? How about fast food restaurants? How about DisneyLand?
If schools decided to install detection systems, who foots the bill? Do schools in poor neighborhoods skip the RFID detection system (but keep the metal detectors)?
This is still all theoretical, but it definitely is a slippery slope.
Thanks for the encouraging words. :-)
The ASR projects don't have to be original research...the student will usually just work on an existing project in cooperation with their mentor. Seriously, what amazing research project would a high school student do in genetics, cancer, astronomy, etc.? Cryptography is certainly "hard" but solving some encryption puzzle is not necessarily tougher to comprehend than decoding DNA or curing cancer or AIDS.
John
Thanks for the book suggestion. She covered a lot of history this past summer at the JHU course, especially about WWII and the Enigma machine.
Luckily we live in the NY Metro area within driving distance of a large number of universities. We found a few online lists of programs (
here and here) via a post in the sci.crypto newsgroup.
Thanks for the suggestions! I had someone else direct her to the eprint.iacr.org as a place to browse for topics as well as potential contacts.
Causing a tremendous amount of damage? WTF? He's not DDoSing Air Traffic Control.
Yes, but what if there was a snow day announcement and nobody could access the web site to check if school was open. Oh, the inhumanity!
Yeah, but their home page is still up.
Uh oh...did you just commit a felony?
What is this license you speak of and why would I need one for software?
So in this situaion, Windows systems updated with the most recent patch are more secure than machines running WINE.
TGIF cause stuff like this makes my head hurt.
Once again someone has stolen my original concept. Several companies (Loudeye/Overpeer for one) are selling this type of service to the major labels so now someone has probably sold a BitTorrent version to the major movie studios (major labels = major studios in most cases anyway). Too bad I didn't attempt to patent the concept back in 2000.
Yeah, you probably also drank until you puked. The difference was I was drinking Yukon Jack while you were drinking formula. :-)
Zork was my first exposure to computer games. I was at MIT from 1977-79 and spent many late nights exploring the "Great Underground Empire". In those days, they were coding the dungeon so it grew as time went by. There were bugs to fix, and a number of inside jokes (MIT specific) that got left out of the commercial version released by Infocom.
When playing the game, you usually had to use the printing terminals (Decwriters?) and log in via Arpanet to the computer running Zork (command was something like "@o AI" where AI was the machine you were connectint to). If too many people were already logged in to Zork you'd get a message like "A large burly troll hacks at you with an axe and thunders 'None shall pass'" (or words to that effect. Eventually I had a TI thermal printing terminal with a 300 baud modem built in (with the little cups that you squeezed the phone handset into after manually dialing the system). I was able to dial-in and play from the dorm which saved a trek over to one of the labs (where the terminals were often occupied with people doing actual work).