Take for instance an electric iron. It might just be clogged up from hard water deposits that could be removed with some solution like CLR or LimeAway. The problem is, in order to get to the parts that are clogged you have to deal with sonic welding, adhesives and fasteners that were designed to be one-way. The only way to disassemble the unit is to break it and glue it back together, which is not very elegant nor safe when dealing with mains current plus heating elements.
The problem is, if you actually have a clue, you'd realize that you don't need to disassemble an iron (or a coffee maker, which is how I know this) to clean hard-water deposits. Instead, you fill it with vinegar and let that run through the internals a couple of times. The vinegar (acetic acid) dissolves the hard-water deposits and flushes them out. I used this technique on my shower drain last week, in fact. The point of TFA (well, TFS at least, since I'll admit I didn't RTFA yet) is that a lot of things are easily repairable, and with on-line resources like wiki-how or instructables, and real-world resources like the Dutch repair cafe, it's not that difficult to learn how to perform some of these repairs yourself.
It's not that they can't see past the shelf in Walmart; it's that the price tag on the shelf in Walmart says $15.99 and the repairman says, "$50 per hour, one hour minimum."
I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you -- I prefer to repair than replace when possible -- but do the math. If it's going to cost three times as much to repair an item than to buy a newer, less power-hungry, more powerful device, guess which choice most people will make, most of the time?
I've got a vision for something similar for motorcycling. Lots of people travel to my home state to ride. Since it's about 2000 miles through Canada to get to Alaska from pretty much anywhere else in the U.S., and since many of the roads in NW Canada or Alaska are kind of tough on tires, many of those people who arrive here need new tires when they arrive, and/or need to replace tires before they leave. Additionally, lots of people like to add gadgets and accessories to their bikes (known as "farkling" though I quite honestly hate that word for some reason). None of that stuff is difficult to do; I've changed my own tires, added additionalstorage, installed crashbars and a skidplate, upgraded the lighting and otherelectricalgadgets, for example (warning -- those are all shameless plugs to my blog;)
However, a lot of people are nervous about hacking on their bikes, especially at first. I wasn't too thrilled the first time I had to make a non-reversible mod to my bike (cutting turn signal wires and drilling holes to route the wires somewhere else so I could install the side carrier racks), nor when I had to cut off the grips to install the heated grips (I found out later that I could have used compressed air to remove them without cutting, sigh). A little hand-holding and wisdom from those who have "already been there and done that" can go a long way in such cases, as well as to provide advice on better ways of doing things (why do I need to remove the brake calipers to pull my front wheel?!?! Oh...the rim is too wide to fit between the calipers while they are still installed...)
If that isn't a compelling enough reason, there are a lot of tools that are too expensive for a single user -- for example, tire balancing equipment, tire stands, engine cranes, etc. Having a collective that splits the cost of $$$ equipment and a garage or warehouse for people to share can make these tools available to the average home mechanic.
I knew you weren't arguing a point you seriously believed in -- the [TSA] tags made that obvious. Nevertheless, I thought the point was worth vivisecting;)
Regarding the underwear bombers, you are correct -- that wasn't a TSA failure, and in hindsight, I worded my post...imprecisely. It did sound like I was implying TSA had a one in 388 million chance of catching a terrorist, when what I meant was that only one passenger in 388 million actually *had* any terrorist intent, and since TSA has a far less than 100% success rate at catching contraband, they've got their success rate (which I've seen estimated at 30%) multiplied by the one in 388 million chance of any given passenger having hostile intent...making TSA's odds of actually catching a terrorist roughly 1 in one BILLION (and even that is a generous estimate, since one of those 18 people was allegedly a double agent and never, in fact, got on board an airplane with an explosive device).
I call B.S. on that logic. If we assume that all 631,939,829 passengers who flew in 2010 is a fair average for how many people fly per year (and according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics it seems to be accurate for 2011 and the projected 2012 stats), then that's over 7,000,000,000 passengers since 9/11. On 9/11, there were what, fifteen hijackers? We've seen two underwear bombers and one shoe bomber since then. Am I missing any other would-be terrorists? If not, that makes a grand total of...
Wait for it...
18 out of over seven billion passengers who are (were) terrorists. In other words, stopping and searching every airline passenger gives you a one in 388 million chance of actually catching a terrorist. Pick any other crime and tell the public that you'll have a one in 388 million chance of catching a bad guy if they would just allow the cops to stop and search people at random, and there would be torches and pitchforks marching towards D.C. Yet we think that's "reasonable" when we want to get on an airplane?!?!
Am I the only one that feels sorry for the guy/gal that actually has to sit all day and watch naked blue bodies?
Yes, for the exact same reason I don't feel sorry for peeping toms and child molesters in prison. If you want to abuse others, then screw you. You get what you deserve.
How can the screener ever have sex again after staring at these blobs going by day in, day out?
I'm hoping they don't. I don't want the genes passed on.
Now tell me that the "over the clothes pat-downs performed in public spaces" isn't traumatic to a rape or molestation survivor, particularly when performed by someone with the sensitivity (or lack thereof) of your average TSO. There may very well have been some hyperbole in the GPP, but the point is still valid. Even clothed, in public, *NO ONE* should be routinely touching my children (or me or my wife, for that matter) in that manner without a really fricken' good reason -- and just to be clear, purchasing an airline ticket is NOT "a really good reason."
Explain to me why any government employee has the right to touch anyone's genitals, breast or buttocks without at least having probably cause that contraband might be hidden there? Suppose I were to walk up to a stranger on the street and give them a "public pat down." Would that, in itself, not be outrageous? I would expect to either get slapped or arrested for sexual assault (and rightly so). Yet we submit to that in order to get on an airplane? Considering how many TSO's have been arrested for sexual assault, rape, running prostitution rings or possession of kiddie porn on their off-time (Google it; the information isn't hard to find), I quite frankly am adamant that none of those pervs will touch me or my family. If you're cool with a minimum-wage Barney Fife with no pre-employment background checking running his or her hands all over you and your family, then that's your choice. But I'm not, and I deeply resent being barred from flying because I refuse to be sexually assaulted as a precondition to boarding an airliner.
No, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance (--Thomas Jefferson). In that regard, we citizens of America have failed horrendously.
This is but an interesting sideline, however, since I believe what you were trying to say is that the price of safety and security (or at least, "the appearance of...") is freedom, since we seem to have offered our freedom up wholesale for TSA's security theater.
First, a drone can also capture footage of you in your yard, behind the eight foot high privacy fence that you thought would keep prying eyes out. At least if they were spying on you from an airplane, you'd have a good chance of seeing and/or hearing the airplane as it approached. With a drone...not so much. Second, as far as the average American goes, you are right. They aren't going to follow all 300 million or so of us 24x7 in the hopes of finding something juicy. However, if they have a *reason* to be interested in you -- and keep in mind, that does not necessarily mean "if you are a bad guy"* -- then it might be worth their time and effort to sift through the footage looking for something useful.
*A couple of tin-foil-hat ideas, right off the top of my head: 1) a well-known activist: they follow you and collect information on where you go, who you meet, and then harass the people you have been seen associating with, or perhaps just add them to a list of "suspicious" people for more investigation. 2) a senator or representative who isn't friendly to DoD budget requests: again, they follow you and look for things (prostitution, drugs, etc.) that they can use to blackmail you into voting for a better budget.
The 4th Amendment says that "We, the People" are free from unreasonable search and seizure without due process. Spying can be construed to be a "search." Therefore, the U.S. government is not allowed to spy on it's own people without due process. However, the Air Force now has a loophole that says, if you just happen to have a drone in the air near (a) person(s) of interest, and if you accidentally had the camera running while the drone was in the air, and just coincidentally happen to catch footage of something "interesting," you can keep and inspect that footage for up to 90 days without providing the due process that is required by the Bill of Rights.
In other words, they've just thrown out the protections afforded by the 4th Amendment (not that they've haven't already been watered down and defecated upon already with things like the Patriot Act, NSL's, NSA wiretapping and TSA, but I digress). It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could lead to all sorts of abuses.
I rather suspect that it will become S.O.P. to fly drones with the cameras "accidentally" left on, if it isn't already.
Re: a car body as a shield for MW radiation. Just think it through. To show up on radar, the car must reflect the radiation back at the cop, right? How does it do that if the radiation passes through the car to the medical device inside?
Something doesn't add up. The post I replied to claimed that radar guns have to be more powerful than mm wave scanners because they have to operate over a long distance. You tell me that radar guns don't attenuate geometrically because the beam is focused. But it can't be both ways. Either radar attenuates with distance and therefore radar guns have to be significantly more powerful than the scanners (and therefore it is accurate to say that a radar gun at close range proves that MW radiation is harmless to insulin pumps) or they are focused beams and the difference in radio energy at 1 yard and 1000 yards (for example) is negligible (in which case radar guns aren't significantly more powerful than the airport scanners because they don't need to be).
Sigh...I won't continue to argue the point with you. The CNN link I provided above quotes TSA's security director stating that walking away from security screening once you have started it is a violation of federal law. You can make whatever assertions you want, but until you provide evidence that Aguilar was either lying or mistaken, youropinionisn't worth the paper it's printed upon.
Yep, that's what he's saying. Neither you nor I have the clout to force the government into actually, you know, following the Constitution (what a concept...). But if the airlines start to feel the hit in their pocketbooks, you can bet they'll start lobbying for reasonable airport security.
And if you think not flying is tough for you, try living without the airlines where I live: I can't even *get* to the rest of the country without driving through Canada for three to five days...oh yeah, that's one way.
You know, as adults, we should have already fixed this god damned problem with our government - not expect our children to have to rise up against the man for something as simple and common place as a plane flight.
^^THIS!!!^^
If you really want to "think of the children!" then maybe it's time to start trying to create a world that we can be proud of instead of taking the path of least resistance all the time.
Yes, but I *know* my doctor, and if he begins to act in a way that I think is unreasonable, I can tell him to kindly screw off without getting threatened with an $11K fine. None of those conditions apply to the TSA.
Cry me a river. It takes me five days to get to Washington, and I don't believe I can catch a train through Canada (although I could take a ferry to Washington, at roughly double the cost of an airplane flight, and four times as long). I still won't fly. It pisses my wife off, but I tell her if a TSA goon were to touch her or my daughter, she'd better be able to make the mortgage payment (she can't) because I'll be in jail. TSA "inspected" my wife's underwire bra in 2006, I think it was. I vowed *never* to let that happen to my family again.
...nothing says I cannot walk right back out the front door.
Wanna bet? I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but google "John Tyner." When he made his famous "Don't touch my junk!" comment to the TSA screener, they threatened him with an $11,000 fine* because it is a violation of federal law to exit the screening area (not just proceed to the gate, but also to leave the airport through the front doors) without completing the screening process once you have begun. Ostensibly, that's to prevent a terrorist from bailing once he realizes he's about to be caught; the tin-foil-hat in me suspects it's to coerce people into submitting to things they would ordinarily deck someone for doing (or attempting to do).
*IIRC, they dropped the charges against him, and in a similar fashion, Sharon Cissna of Alaska was allowed to leave once they determined who she was, but there was a woman in Texas who was, in fact, arrested for refusing to complete the screening (she had been raped several years earlier and would not allow TSA to touch her).
Slashdot Mirror
Take for instance an electric iron. It might just be clogged up from hard water deposits that could be removed with some solution like CLR or LimeAway. The problem is, in order to get to the parts that are clogged you have to deal with sonic welding, adhesives and fasteners that were designed to be one-way. The only way to disassemble the unit is to break it and glue it back together, which is not very elegant nor safe when dealing with mains current plus heating elements.
The problem is, if you actually have a clue, you'd realize that you don't need to disassemble an iron (or a coffee maker, which is how I know this) to clean hard-water deposits. Instead, you fill it with vinegar and let that run through the internals a couple of times. The vinegar (acetic acid) dissolves the hard-water deposits and flushes them out. I used this technique on my shower drain last week, in fact. The point of TFA (well, TFS at least, since I'll admit I didn't RTFA yet) is that a lot of things are easily repairable, and with on-line resources like wiki-how or instructables, and real-world resources like the Dutch repair cafe, it's not that difficult to learn how to perform some of these repairs yourself.
It's not that they can't see past the shelf in Walmart; it's that the price tag on the shelf in Walmart says $15.99 and the repairman says, "$50 per hour, one hour minimum."
I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you -- I prefer to repair than replace when possible -- but do the math. If it's going to cost three times as much to repair an item than to buy a newer, less power-hungry, more powerful device, guess which choice most people will make, most of the time?
I've got a vision for something similar for motorcycling. Lots of people travel to my home state to ride. Since it's about 2000 miles through Canada to get to Alaska from pretty much anywhere else in the U.S., and since many of the roads in NW Canada or Alaska are kind of tough on tires, many of those people who arrive here need new tires when they arrive, and/or need to replace tires before they leave. Additionally, lots of people like to add gadgets and accessories to their bikes (known as "farkling" though I quite honestly hate that word for some reason). None of that stuff is difficult to do; I've changed my own tires, added additional storage, installed crashbars and a skidplate, upgraded the lighting and other electrical gadgets, for example (warning -- those are all shameless plugs to my blog ;)
However, a lot of people are nervous about hacking on their bikes, especially at first. I wasn't too thrilled the first time I had to make a non-reversible mod to my bike (cutting turn signal wires and drilling holes to route the wires somewhere else so I could install the side carrier racks), nor when I had to cut off the grips to install the heated grips (I found out later that I could have used compressed air to remove them without cutting, sigh). A little hand-holding and wisdom from those who have "already been there and done that" can go a long way in such cases, as well as to provide advice on better ways of doing things (why do I need to remove the brake calipers to pull my front wheel?!?! Oh...the rim is too wide to fit between the calipers while they are still installed...)
If that isn't a compelling enough reason, there are a lot of tools that are too expensive for a single user -- for example, tire balancing equipment, tire stands, engine cranes, etc. Having a collective that splits the cost of $$$ equipment and a garage or warehouse for people to share can make these tools available to the average home mechanic.
I knew you weren't arguing a point you seriously believed in -- the [TSA] tags made that obvious. Nevertheless, I thought the point was worth vivisecting ;)
Regarding the underwear bombers, you are correct -- that wasn't a TSA failure, and in hindsight, I worded my post...imprecisely. It did sound like I was implying TSA had a one in 388 million chance of catching a terrorist, when what I meant was that only one passenger in 388 million actually *had* any terrorist intent, and since TSA has a far less than 100% success rate at catching contraband, they've got their success rate (which I've seen estimated at 30%) multiplied by the one in 388 million chance of any given passenger having hostile intent...making TSA's odds of actually catching a terrorist roughly 1 in one BILLION (and even that is a generous estimate, since one of those 18 people was allegedly a double agent and never, in fact, got on board an airplane with an explosive device).
I call B.S. on that logic. If we assume that all 631,939,829 passengers who flew in 2010 is a fair average for how many people fly per year (and according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics it seems to be accurate for 2011 and the projected 2012 stats), then that's over 7,000,000,000 passengers since 9/11. On 9/11, there were what, fifteen hijackers? We've seen two underwear bombers and one shoe bomber since then. Am I missing any other would-be terrorists? If not, that makes a grand total of...
Wait for it...
18 out of over seven billion passengers who are (were) terrorists. In other words, stopping and searching every airline passenger gives you a one in 388 million chance of actually catching a terrorist. Pick any other crime and tell the public that you'll have a one in 388 million chance of catching a bad guy if they would just allow the cops to stop and search people at random, and there would be torches and pitchforks marching towards D.C. Yet we think that's "reasonable" when we want to get on an airplane?!?!
Am I the only one that feels sorry for the guy/gal that actually has to sit all day and watch naked blue bodies?
Yes, for the exact same reason I don't feel sorry for peeping toms and child molesters in prison. If you want to abuse others, then screw you. You get what you deserve.
How can the screener ever have sex again after staring at these blobs going by day in, day out?
I'm hoping they don't. I don't want the genes passed on.
Now tell me that the "over the clothes pat-downs performed in public spaces" isn't traumatic to a rape or molestation survivor, particularly when performed by someone with the sensitivity (or lack thereof) of your average TSO. There may very well have been some hyperbole in the GPP, but the point is still valid. Even clothed, in public, *NO ONE* should be routinely touching my children (or me or my wife, for that matter) in that manner without a really fricken' good reason -- and just to be clear, purchasing an airline ticket is NOT "a really good reason."
Dang it...sed "s/probably cause/probable cause/"
I even previewed first, and still didn't catch it until I had already submitted the comment.
Explain to me why any government employee has the right to touch anyone's genitals, breast or buttocks without at least having probably cause that contraband might be hidden there? Suppose I were to walk up to a stranger on the street and give them a "public pat down." Would that, in itself, not be outrageous? I would expect to either get slapped or arrested for sexual assault (and rightly so). Yet we submit to that in order to get on an airplane? Considering how many TSO's have been arrested for sexual assault, rape, running prostitution rings or possession of kiddie porn on their off-time (Google it; the information isn't hard to find), I quite frankly am adamant that none of those pervs will touch me or my family. If you're cool with a minimum-wage Barney Fife with no pre-employment background checking running his or her hands all over you and your family, then that's your choice. But I'm not, and I deeply resent being barred from flying because I refuse to be sexually assaulted as a precondition to boarding an airliner.
No, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance (--Thomas Jefferson). In that regard, we citizens of America have failed horrendously.
This is but an interesting sideline, however, since I believe what you were trying to say is that the price of safety and security (or at least, "the appearance of...") is freedom, since we seem to have offered our freedom up wholesale for TSA's security theater.
First, a drone can also capture footage of you in your yard, behind the eight foot high privacy fence that you thought would keep prying eyes out. At least if they were spying on you from an airplane, you'd have a good chance of seeing and/or hearing the airplane as it approached. With a drone...not so much. Second, as far as the average American goes, you are right. They aren't going to follow all 300 million or so of us 24x7 in the hopes of finding something juicy. However, if they have a *reason* to be interested in you -- and keep in mind, that does not necessarily mean "if you are a bad guy"* -- then it might be worth their time and effort to sift through the footage looking for something useful.
*A couple of tin-foil-hat ideas, right off the top of my head:
1) a well-known activist: they follow you and collect information on where you go, who you meet, and then harass the people you have been seen associating with, or perhaps just add them to a list of "suspicious" people for more investigation.
2) a senator or representative who isn't friendly to DoD budget requests: again, they follow you and look for things (prostitution, drugs, etc.) that they can use to blackmail you into voting for a better budget.
The 4th Amendment says that "We, the People" are free from unreasonable search and seizure without due process. Spying can be construed to be a "search." Therefore, the U.S. government is not allowed to spy on it's own people without due process. However, the Air Force now has a loophole that says, if you just happen to have a drone in the air near (a) person(s) of interest, and if you accidentally had the camera running while the drone was in the air, and just coincidentally happen to catch footage of something "interesting," you can keep and inspect that footage for up to 90 days without providing the due process that is required by the Bill of Rights.
In other words, they've just thrown out the protections afforded by the 4th Amendment (not that they've haven't already been watered down and defecated upon already with things like the Patriot Act, NSL's, NSA wiretapping and TSA, but I digress). It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could lead to all sorts of abuses.
I rather suspect that it will become S.O.P. to fly drones with the cameras "accidentally" left on, if it isn't already.
Maybe we have too many politicians and they're stinking up the place. Give a few away, suddenly things are smelling better.
FTFY :)
Re: a car body as a shield for MW radiation. Just think it through. To show up on radar, the car must reflect the radiation back at the cop, right? How does it do that if the radiation passes through the car to the medical device inside?
Something doesn't add up. The post I replied to claimed that radar guns have to be more powerful than mm wave scanners because they have to operate over a long distance. You tell me that radar guns don't attenuate geometrically because the beam is focused. But it can't be both ways. Either radar attenuates with distance and therefore radar guns have to be significantly more powerful than the scanners (and therefore it is accurate to say that a radar gun at close range proves that MW radiation is harmless to insulin pumps) or they are focused beams and the difference in radio energy at 1 yard and 1000 yards (for example) is negligible (in which case radar guns aren't significantly more powerful than the airport scanners because they don't need to be).
Technically, she had the right not to be microwaved regardless, but yes, your point is otherwise spot on.
Sigh...I won't continue to argue the point with you. The CNN link I provided above quotes TSA's security director stating that walking away from security screening once you have started it is a violation of federal law. You can make whatever assertions you want, but until you provide evidence that Aguilar was either lying or mistaken, youropinionisn't worth the paper it's printed upon.
IIRC, there is no obligation to be screened, you just won't fly.
And you are wrong:
Anything more no longer borders on a police state.
I agree with you. But that does not disprove my point, although it does neatly summarize my objection to the existing laws.
Yep, that's what he's saying. Neither you nor I have the clout to force the government into actually, you know, following the Constitution (what a concept...). But if the airlines start to feel the hit in their pocketbooks, you can bet they'll start lobbying for reasonable airport security.
And if you think not flying is tough for you, try living without the airlines where I live: I can't even *get* to the rest of the country without driving through Canada for three to five days...oh yeah, that's one way.
You know, as adults, we should have already fixed this god damned problem with our government - not expect our children to have to rise up against the man for something as simple and common place as a plane flight.
^^THIS!!!^^
If you really want to "think of the children!" then maybe it's time to start trying to create a world that we can be proud of instead of taking the path of least resistance all the time.
Yes, but I *know* my doctor, and if he begins to act in a way that I think is unreasonable, I can tell him to kindly screw off without getting threatened with an $11K fine. None of those conditions apply to the TSA.
Every time there's a story about the TSA making life unpleasant for Americans, a terrorist gets his wings..
This is why we no longer need TSA. By now, the terrorists should have their own fricken' air force...
You think it's bad now? wait until it's private security force and you have no recourse what so ever.
When it's a federal security force and you have no recourse whatsoever? I don't see much difference.
Cry me a river. It takes me five days to get to Washington, and I don't believe I can catch a train through Canada (although I could take a ferry to Washington, at roughly double the cost of an airplane flight, and four times as long). I still won't fly. It pisses my wife off, but I tell her if a TSA goon were to touch her or my daughter, she'd better be able to make the mortgage payment (she can't) because I'll be in jail. TSA "inspected" my wife's underwire bra in 2006, I think it was. I vowed *never* to let that happen to my family again.
...nothing says I cannot walk right back out the front door.
Wanna bet? I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but google "John Tyner." When he made his famous "Don't touch my junk!" comment to the TSA screener, they threatened him with an $11,000 fine* because it is a violation of federal law to exit the screening area (not just proceed to the gate, but also to leave the airport through the front doors) without completing the screening process once you have begun. Ostensibly, that's to prevent a terrorist from bailing once he realizes he's about to be caught; the tin-foil-hat in me suspects it's to coerce people into submitting to things they would ordinarily deck someone for doing (or attempting to do).
*IIRC, they dropped the charges against him, and in a similar fashion, Sharon Cissna of Alaska was allowed to leave once they determined who she was, but there was a woman in Texas who was, in fact, arrested for refusing to complete the screening (she had been raped several years earlier and would not allow TSA to touch her).