I never intended to claim that binary explosives themselves are a myth, just that liquid ones, specifily powerful ones that can be smuggled in bottles and can easily be combined in such an environment, are.
The only 'binary' explosives involving liquids that I have heard of being used in the field are along the lines of 'gas+lighter'. Such liquid explosives are difficult to mix and require not only lab equipment but careful temperature control and significant time. There is no way these people could have actually mixed such a thing on a moving plane. The cell in question had no idea what they were doing.
That is correct. Mixing such an explosive requires very precise temperature and time controls, as well as having the problem of producing significant fumes. It requires a significant amount of equipment and space to do correctly, and if you are even a little off it is pretty worthless.
So... we have a fake problem based off what was essentially a hoax, but now the public and TSA are so heavily invested in the myth that when everyone realizes how stupid the policy is, rather then just saying 'ok, start carying liquids', they have to go with some expensive face-saving device so they can maintain the facade that this whole policy was worthless in the first place.
You know.. I really should have just tried to sell them dowsing rods instead... they are already being sold as bomb detectors... I am sure I could repurpose a couple sticks for detecting combinations of liquids that when mixed will blow up planes. I wonder if I can set them up so they poke the user in the eye in order to indicate a positive.....
You kidding? That would be awesome! If someone started offering a service where you were knocked out at boarding and woke up at your destination I would so use it!
But yeah, people are scared of the bad reporting surrounding the original 'liquid bomb' hoax, and too much has been invested as treating it like it was an actual threat... so now they need a new bit of theater to deal with the inconvenience that was created.
*nods* no arguments there... the issues of corruption and pork are a huge issue with any large public research project, with NASA being one of the shining examples of just how bad it can get, at least with its big projects (like as you say, the shuttle program).
Though I think it is an excellent example of risk... such pork is not unique to government, in fact it could be said to be one of the inherent costs/risks of engaging on such larger projects. When you look inside private companies you see the same kind of corruption, kickbacks, pork, etc.. sub contracts going to buddies, or cousins, people who might hire the person later, or someone who gave the particular executive a night on the town, etc... production of movies being a nice visible example. Such problems really limit what private companies can do because, as you point out, there is a good chance they can ruin the company. The risk of corruption and the cost of it are just to high, so private companies generally do not even try to work on that scale.
Well, there is 'should' (which I disagree with) and 'could' (which is, of course, an option).
In the OP's rather apocalyptic take on things, there seems to be the idea that if content providers can not run ads, then they can not provide content, so he kinda denies the 'could' part.
I suspect that if 'do not track' became so common that it actually effected ad dollars to any measurable degree (which I doubt unless FF/Chrome/IE all bundle it by default), we would probably see a rise of people providing content for other reasons, reasons that do not require ad-type dollars. This would probably be sad since it could potentially result in a less rich internet... though I question that, since I think there are more people who want the attention then get it, so there would probably be no shortage of people willing to move into that vacuum for their own reasons (fun, status, attention, etc.. just look at OSS)..
Which actually kinda makes me see the OP in a similar light to those who claim OSS (or freeware before that) will destroy commercial software or something.
*nods* esp when it comes to dealing with corruption. Though this is so rampent with things like land rights already, they could probably just scrap the buecracy and get a net win...
That is a pretty big leap of logic you have there... 'average people do not understand the benefit, therefor the government shouldn't fund it!'.
I am always shocked by this type of comment.. coming from someone on a computer.. across the internet.. two technologies developed using public funds that neither private industry nor average people saw a benefit to. Oh, and the whole space program. Private companies did not start becoming 'interested' till public funds did a lot of the high risk basic development for decades.
Not sure I would say the 'rest of the world'. Some companies seem to be playing with cloud computing and it is a popular buzz word, but most companies still choose between mainframe or a rack full of servers. Cloud stuff is not known for reliability or flexibility of application.
Few decimal places, but lots of rules and interactions with banking systems. Though the big element is reliability, mainframes are pretty unmatched in their ability to keep running. There are mainframes that literally go decades between reboots or other failures.
Not everyone wants to put a general purpose computer in their living room. Plus, there are many games that play fine on consoles but have rather suckey gamepad support on PCs since the developer assumes PC players will want a mouse/keyboard combination.
Console games are also more likely to support multiple players on the same screen, while PC games often do not.
Not really. Research does not move all that quickly. New setups might have moved to GPGPUs, but those PS3 clusters are still getting a lot of use and probably will be for another few years.
Actually you see multi-platform games because of reusable middleware that does indeed take advantage of the predictable nature of consoles. So the major benefit does hold true.
Actually, if you read the piece, they bought the name off the company before they started marketing the iPad, but now the company is coming back and claiming that Apple only purchased the name for use outside China. So either they did a real dumb, or this company is trying to use local corruption to shake money out of a foreign company that they backstabed and are trying to double dip on the deal.
Ah.. ha.. an American company lost in Chinese court to a Chinese company? A Chinese company that Apple paid for the trademark... yeah... never saw that one coming...
I suspect many of the people encoding professionally simply do not care. One of the things I have found frustrating over the years is that many older shows, torrents ripped from DVDs are often higher quality then DVDs produced by studios (with, I would assume, masters) mining their back catalog... you can really see that whoever the studio put to go encoding some old TV show really didn't care one way or the other (or was under heavy time pressure) while the amateur pirate puts real time into doing it right...
And on the extreme end you have whoever Netflix has doing their rips... poor quality, mislabeled or out of order episodes, episodes completely missing.. etc..
Actually, before the Manning stuff made them a household name in the US, they had a long track record of reporting crimes and corruption in repressive governments in eastern europe.. they did embarrass the 'bad guys' quite a bit.. sadly now those people are working with the US to close them down. Kinda like how now the US is looking the other way (or even going after ourselves) when Russia goes after terrorist groups that previously only impacted them. Recall when the US media was filled with sympathy for seperatists in Russia? But now that we are on 'good' terms those same people have become 'evil terrorists' and we have a common enemy.
Eh, give them a few months to spin Sealand as some type of pirate haven and the PR will go just fine. Crow, they would probably just flood the media with descriptions of it as simply being UK separatists like sovereign citizens in the US, and raiding them is handled just fine.
Take a look at the various territorial arguments over the north sea. The question of man made (or even portable) structures imparting territorial ownership over natural gas reserves is a hot topic.
Sealand has territory, it just happens to be covered in water. Countries fight over such territory all the time, just look at the conflicts between Japan and China over underwater islands outside both of their immediate waters.
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I never intended to claim that binary explosives themselves are a myth, just that liquid ones, specifily powerful ones that can be smuggled in bottles and can easily be combined in such an environment, are.
The only 'binary' explosives involving liquids that I have heard of being used in the field are along the lines of 'gas+lighter'. Such liquid explosives are difficult to mix and require not only lab equipment but careful temperature control and significant time. There is no way these people could have actually mixed such a thing on a moving plane. The cell in question had no idea what they were doing.
That is correct. Mixing such an explosive requires very precise temperature and time controls, as well as having the problem of producing significant fumes. It requires a significant amount of equipment and space to do correctly, and if you are even a little off it is pretty worthless.
Ok, that would be kinda cool too,.. but mostly I would assume they wouldn't bother with flight attendants at that point. No one to attend to.
So... we have a fake problem based off what was essentially a hoax, but now the public and TSA are so heavily invested in the myth that when everyone realizes how stupid the policy is, rather then just saying 'ok, start carying liquids', they have to go with some expensive face-saving device so they can maintain the facade that this whole policy was worthless in the first place.
You know.. I really should have just tried to sell them dowsing rods instead... they are already being sold as bomb detectors... I am sure I could repurpose a couple sticks for detecting combinations of liquids that when mixed will blow up planes. I wonder if I can set them up so they poke the user in the eye in order to indicate a positive.....
You kidding? That would be awesome! If someone started offering a service where you were knocked out at boarding and woke up at your destination I would so use it!
But yeah, people are scared of the bad reporting surrounding the original 'liquid bomb' hoax, and too much has been invested as treating it like it was an actual threat... so now they need a new bit of theater to deal with the inconvenience that was created.
*nods* no arguments there... the issues of corruption and pork are a huge issue with any large public research project, with NASA being one of the shining examples of just how bad it can get, at least with its big projects (like as you say, the shuttle program).
Though I think it is an excellent example of risk... such pork is not unique to government, in fact it could be said to be one of the inherent costs/risks of engaging on such larger projects. When you look inside private companies you see the same kind of corruption, kickbacks, pork, etc.. sub contracts going to buddies, or cousins, people who might hire the person later, or someone who gave the particular executive a night on the town, etc... production of movies being a nice visible example. Such problems really limit what private companies can do because, as you point out, there is a good chance they can ruin the company. The risk of corruption and the cost of it are just to high, so private companies generally do not even try to work on that scale.
Well, there is 'should' (which I disagree with) and 'could' (which is, of course, an option).
In the OP's rather apocalyptic take on things, there seems to be the idea that if content providers can not run ads, then they can not provide content, so he kinda denies the 'could' part.
I suspect that if 'do not track' became so common that it actually effected ad dollars to any measurable degree (which I doubt unless FF/Chrome/IE all bundle it by default), we would probably see a rise of people providing content for other reasons, reasons that do not require ad-type dollars. This would probably be sad since it could potentially result in a less rich internet... though I question that, since I think there are more people who want the attention then get it, so there would probably be no shortage of people willing to move into that vacuum for their own reasons (fun, status, attention, etc.. just look at OSS)..
Which actually kinda makes me see the OP in a similar light to those who claim OSS (or freeware before that) will destroy commercial software or something.
*nods* esp when it comes to dealing with corruption. Though this is so rampent with things like land rights already, they could probably just scrap the buecracy and get a net win...
That is a pretty big leap of logic you have there... 'average people do not understand the benefit, therefor the government shouldn't fund it!'.
I am always shocked by this type of comment.. coming from someone on a computer.. across the internet.. two technologies developed using public funds that neither private industry nor average people saw a benefit to. Oh, and the whole space program. Private companies did not start becoming 'interested' till public funds did a lot of the high risk basic development for decades.
Not sure I would say the 'rest of the world'. Some companies seem to be playing with cloud computing and it is a popular buzz word, but most companies still choose between mainframe or a rack full of servers. Cloud stuff is not known for reliability or flexibility of application.
Few decimal places, but lots of rules and interactions with banking systems. Though the big element is reliability, mainframes are pretty unmatched in their ability to keep running. There are mainframes that literally go decades between reboots or other failures.
Not everyone wants to put a general purpose computer in their living room. Plus, there are many games that play fine on consoles but have rather suckey gamepad support on PCs since the developer assumes PC players will want a mouse/keyboard combination.
Console games are also more likely to support multiple players on the same screen, while PC games often do not.
Not really. Research does not move all that quickly. New setups might have moved to GPGPUs, but those PS3 clusters are still getting a lot of use and probably will be for another few years.
Actually you see multi-platform games because of reusable middleware that does indeed take advantage of the predictable nature of consoles. So the major benefit does hold true.
They did search. And paid the company for use of the name. The Chinese company seems to be trying to double dip.
Actually, if you read the piece, they bought the name off the company before they started marketing the iPad, but now the company is coming back and claiming that Apple only purchased the name for use outside China. So either they did a real dumb, or this company is trying to use local corruption to shake money out of a foreign company that they backstabed and are trying to double dip on the deal.
Ah.. ha.. an American company lost in Chinese court to a Chinese company? A Chinese company that Apple paid for the trademark... yeah... never saw that one coming...
I suspect many of the people encoding professionally simply do not care. One of the things I have found frustrating over the years is that many older shows, torrents ripped from DVDs are often higher quality then DVDs produced by studios (with, I would assume, masters) mining their back catalog... you can really see that whoever the studio put to go encoding some old TV show really didn't care one way or the other (or was under heavy time pressure) while the amateur pirate puts real time into doing it right...
And on the extreme end you have whoever Netflix has doing their rips... poor quality, mislabeled or out of order episodes, episodes completely missing.. etc..
Actually, before the Manning stuff made them a household name in the US, they had a long track record of reporting crimes and corruption in repressive governments in eastern europe.. they did embarrass the 'bad guys' quite a bit.. sadly now those people are working with the US to close them down. Kinda like how now the US is looking the other way (or even going after ourselves) when Russia goes after terrorist groups that previously only impacted them. Recall when the US media was filled with sympathy for seperatists in Russia? But now that we are on 'good' terms those same people have become 'evil terrorists' and we have a common enemy.
Eh, give them a few months to spin Sealand as some type of pirate haven and the PR will go just fine. Crow, they would probably just flood the media with descriptions of it as simply being UK separatists like sovereign citizens in the US, and raiding them is handled just fine.
I wonder what would happen if they tried to jon NATO....
extra-legal and illegal are not the same thing.
Take a look at the various territorial arguments over the north sea. The question of man made (or even portable) structures imparting territorial ownership over natural gas reserves is a hot topic.
Sealand has territory, it just happens to be covered in water. Countries fight over such territory all the time, just look at the conflicts between Japan and China over underwater islands outside both of their immediate waters.