> Yes, over time they could switch, and we'll follow suit and limit the > availability of that chemical next.
which is the point isn't it, as long as you keep duping people into thinking you are solving a problem, you will always have a job. Thats the real point here. Its not going to save any lives at all, its just ensuring jobs for consultants.
Kind of reminds me of what the guy making thise fake bomb detectors was said to have commented when asked about the fact that they don't work "they do exactly what they were designed to do, they make money"
Well I will be damned, the man page agrees with you, this would tend to imply the -e ssh is obsolete too.
For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
> Mabe 70 seems impossibly fast in New York or California but it's not for us.
Not in most of NY, nor in MA, where the traffic hums along on most highways (even the ones marked 55) at 72-76 MPH... not during rush hour of course... but most other times.
> The number one cause of accidents is distracted drivers. The number one cause of distractions is cell phones. > Over half of all accidents involve cell phones. Look it up.
Yet banning their use is verified to reduce that use, but has yet to be shown to decrease accidents. Also, drivers who get in accidents with cell phones, still get in more accidents without them. In fact, while most drivers slow down while using the cell phone and drive more cautiously.... the group of drivers that gets in accidents using them, drives faster and more recklessly.
> People also pay attention more at higher speeds. This isn't theory, it's emperical.
Same is true of rotaries,...they are even safer than similarly sized intersections. People seem to hate them though. I have a theory as to why...its because you HAVE to pay attention. Cars are weaving in and out in a pattern, and it works really well... but when it works it constantly looks like you are about to hit eachother, so it forces everyone to pay attention and...well... people hate it and think its dangerous.
I have lived most of my life on a main road right by one.... a significant portion of the accidents I have ever seen in it have been drunk drivers crashing into it in the middle of the night. Seen more accidents up the street from it than in it.
And thats before we get into the whole, cover your body with sand trout and begin the slow transformation into the worm... with their sort of life span.
Though as far as a map for the future, I can't help but think of the basic similarities between Leto II's Golden path and Hawking suggesting it is of primary importance that we move off this rock. Is it a valid and fundamental function of government, and healthy for us as a species, to make some portion of us want to leave for new frontiers and spread beyond any existing groups ability to control?
> I totally agree with you but the argument here is that they could > prevent attacks. I find that argument specious and foolhardy in that a > bomb could be disguised as anything and a suicide bomber (as these > individuals clearly had no intention of surviving a police encounter) > would simply continue to wear the explosive into the crowd.
This is exactly the point. Prevention is impossible. Not because any specific scheme couldn't have been prevented but, because an attacker is not limited by what schemes can be imagined.
Shit, for a few hours work and a few craigslist ads, and maybe a few hundred bucks, I bet a particularly clever terrorist could convince some unsuspecting people to wear explosive backpacks into the crowd thinking they were there for some other purpose
Its a game of whack a mole where all you can do is catch the people for whom you guessed properly what they would do, where they would do it, and implemented the right measure to stop them.... and it only continues to work as long as they keep doing the same thing.
Of course, how available do they have to get before you do? Given the study someone else posted showing that there is already a fair supply of livers, and increasing availability may not decrease mortaility.... perhaps a surplus of livers means that the availability of transplant can be opened to more people.
The most heartbreaking thing about that, I was just reading the story of someone who died after being delisted. Delisted because he was a cancer patient on medical marijuana, and testing positive for marijuana disqualified him for a liver.
The rationale? A positive on the drug test may indicate drug abuse and smoking increases exposure to aspergillius fungus, both of which are risk factors for the implanted organ.
seriously... and to think there is actually not a shortage of livers.... thats just terrible.
> how it can even be doubted when and if the dog does uncover something substantive in a search.
Oh I didn't address this.... never forget there are multiple parts to a trial. If the use of a dog is considered improper, and not something which gives probable cause. Look at the study there, only a small fraction of searches found nothing, even though none of the searches had anything to find.
That is how its doubted. Its not about whether or not there were drugs, its about whether the method to detect them is reliable. In this case, its not reliable and is expected to get false positives at a high rate. Where is the probable cause there?
So showing this should....SHOULD (not saying that any court has ruled this way...yet) be enough reason to toss out any evidence found from the subsequent search. Assuming that is all the evidence (like you didn't then confess), then that is all decided before the jury even gets shown the evidence.
This is, of course, what is supposed to prevent the police from doing things like that... because it invalidates evidence. Imagine if they found the bodies of 6 kids in your trunk but then could find no other evidence pointing to you in their murders? That evidence gets tossed out if the search is invalidated.... nobody wants to be the cop who fucked that up.
On the other hand, most people confess easily and talk before ever getting a lawyer....so it seldom comes into play.
No no, my point is its not a search because it doesn't indicate anything that the officer didn't already know. As such, it should be said not only to not be a search, but also not probable cause.
Try it this way.... if a police officer thought you had drugs, and you refused a search. Now, the officer goes back to his car, pulls out a dowsing rod, and starts walking around your car. The dowsing rod points down at your trunk.
Was that a search? I would submit this mode of using dogs (which is different from situations where there is no existing bias in the handler) is no different from a dowsing rod, because it isn't a test for drugs, or explosives, its a test for bias in the officer.
Thing is, we know he thought there were drugs, thats why he got out the dog or dowsing rod. So no new information has been gained.
> They could have asked the dog, and he would tell them, but putting dogs on you without probable > cause is almost certainly illegal search violation.
I would argue the dog itself doesn't even constitute a search since they are so unrelaiable IN THIS CASE. There have been some great studies which have shown that dogs are only really useful in cases where their handler has no notion of what he might find or where. So border checkpoints, or random bomb searches, they are great....
The problem is, that when the handler suspects there may be something to find, the animal almost always "detects" something. A great study recently setup a course to test dogs and handlers. The handlers were told that there were drug and bomb scent samples throughout a church, some of which were marked, some which were not.
The trick: There were no drug scent samples. ALL of the marked spots were fakes, even some which included some meat for the dog to get him interested in it.
The result? Lots of "hits". Only a very small minority of search trials found no hits at all, and the highest percentage of hits were not in the places where there was meat for the dog, but where there was a flag for the handler to see:
In the realm of personal anecdotes, I have noticed something that dovetails well with this data. Bad drivers, that is, the people I know who get in more accidents and otherwise drive in ways that make me not want to be a passenger in their car.... they seem to also talk on the cell phone more and... they are the people who never seem to think they have a problem with it.
What I mean by that is, I have used my cell phone to talk, back when I had a flip phone with physical keys, i would even text. The thing is, I would be careful about WHEN i did these things, and would prioritize driving over them. Frequently if on the phone I would say things like "Hold on a second, I have to change lanes" or "Hold on, I have to drive for a second" to get some space to drive.... the bad drivers I know... I have never once heard them say that. Hell I have taken 5 minutes to type out a three or four word text, just because I didn't feel comfortable sparing more than 1 second at a time off the road....or waited until a red light....or... gotten over to the right lane with the slow pokes for a bit so I could chat.
On top of that, they tend to be the ones who don't signal, who cut people off, who pull stupid moves to get ahead... will pass people and wave through traffic while on the phone.
Most phone drivers are annoying because they drive extra slow. They sit at red lights longer than they need to.... exactly the opposite of what this study, and my experience, tell me that bad drivers do.
Similarly, look at the UK highway safety study that looked at marijuana use came to the conclusion that while they could measure impairment in reaction time... stoned drivers drove with an abundance of caution.
Or.... to put it the way I came to understand it from my motorcycle safety course.... if you are driving in such a way that your raw reaction time matters, you already fucked up.
However, the problem is that this study is only looking at reaction time, which is pretty limited of a measure. This is especially true since its also been found that cell phone accidents are likely not entirely caused by reaction time issues.
So, bad drivers, the ones who get in accidents don't just use cell phones, they drive more wrecklessly while using them. They choose to use them at particularly dangerous times. They do, exactly what most people choose not to do.
The problem, quite simply, is not cell phones. They are just the device people have chosen to measure. The problem is not cell phones because, the problem is not reaction time. The problem is judgement and the problem is risk assesment within certain individuals.
The first Gulf War was just about the time I first was able to watch the news and say "Hey wait, that sounds like bullshit.". I certainly didn't know the backstory until much later, but, its amazing what crap people just lap up. I remember the initial invasion, predicated on claims that Kuwait had been slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields. I am never a fan of actual war but, a cause for war is at least a point to discuss. I was fully expecting at least some claim this was untrue, or was being investigated or negotiated.... but when they glossed right over it into the beating war drums...it just stank. Turns out, it had been stinking for years.
In some ways, turning to oppose Sadam was, almost to their credit. They created him, and he was a monster then, realizing that the relationship had to end was, probably the most morally righteous thing that particular cabal of warhawks did over the decades that they operated. Not that I agree with how they did it, but if anyone deserved to be cut loose from any special relationship, it was that guy right there.
On the whole, I agree entirely, we have made so many fucking messes trying to meddle in affairs around the world, its really pretty sad. Whether it was returning Iran to the rule of a monarch, or supporting south viet nam's determination to not hold an election, or creating the world wide drug gangs in our insane quest to control basic human nature through hamfisted policy with no regard for the lives of anyone outside of our own middle and upper class neighborhoods.
Heaping unlikely and overly specific scenario on top of unlikely scenario is insightful?
I completely disagree. Or rather, if you meant he shouldn't try to find a situation, sure. However, if a situation begins unfolding in front of you, fuck leaving the anything to anyone, if you can jump in and help in the moment, you do it. Whether thats putting pressure on a wound, or dropping a shooter before he takes down someone else. Leave the manhunt to the professionals, when shit unfolds before your eyes, react to the situation however makes the most sense.
Seriously, its unlikely that he or any specific person will EVER end up in such a situation, but being prepared for it is no stupider than being prepared for a fire or earth quake. Seeking it out, thats crazy and stupid, but, there is a big difference between seeking it out, and seeking out the ability to be prepared should it happen.
Though, I tend to think guns are overkill, and as you point out, leave (open the possibility of further arming an assailent. I would advocate teaching everyone basic self defence.
Its wasn't a question of Open Source it was specifically about all of that "Free Software" ideology that Open Source, by its very nature, ignores.
So essentially you are saying YES, they have forgotten about copyleft, and have moved to less restrictive models.
Though, I tend to think the answer is more No, they never knew about it in the first place and likely don't even bother to think about licensing....and are just doing what programers have been doing since before licensing became an issue.... just sharing code.
Reminds me of talking to an environmental cleanup specialist about an oil tank I had that leaked. I asked if he had any idea what kind of total cost I was looking at, and his answer basically boiled down to, yes, we could study the spill and determine its extent.... but by the time we were done, it would cost a signficant fraction of what its likely to cost to clean up. (though, for a much larger spill that cost/benefit would flip)
what are you trying to accomplish? If its just to ease congestion and allow more people to get messages out, it might help. I don't know enough about the phone network to say for sure that it would.
On the other hand, if you want to deny the bomb maker a tool, it wont be effective at all because it requires that you appropriately guess what he is planning in real time. If there are no more devices, then it matters not...if there are, they could almost as easily be made to work as watchdogs that go off after a heartbeat signal is jammed.
A convoy is moving and is a very small target in a very large area. It is especially exposed, and an especially juicy target in a war zone. You can expect attacks fairly frequently, they have to find you/be ready for you.
This event is predefined, the attacker knows where and when the targets will be there. The attacker already has time to prepare and makes himself known on his time table.
This changes everything. In your convoy for example, there is no benefit to rigging bombs to blow when their signal is jammed or even to arm in response to signals from a jammer.... as the prowler is not the convoy and need not be all that close to them, arming or blowing in response to the jammer means wasted bombs or blowing up innocent bystanders, will almost never hit a convoy.
Here we have a totally different scenario. A secondary device triggered by a loss of signal could have huge impact. The devices are already at their pre-determined target. You don't jam, he can detonate, you do jam, they might detonate, point is....you have no way of ever knowing what he planned until its all over.
> There is no reason why the BPD, DHS or other agency would not have jammers for such an occasion.
Really? And why should they? The entire idea that they should have them is based on specific technical details of specific attacks, and requires both that they guess right that its the right time to use them and that the bomb maker didn't anticipate their use.
Additionally, with all the people involved, they generally want people to get the "Im safe" messages out, because it decreases overall mayhem and people trying to contact them for information.
> I would be surprised if they did not with all the money that was thrown around after 9/11
Well I wouldn't either, but, thats a different issue.
I was pretty resigned to the fact that nothing could be done before it happened. There are too many attack vectors and too many potential actors. The attacker gets to choose his time and place. If he is part of an organized network, you have some hope of infilitration and intelligence foiling some plots, sure.
Lone nutbags or spontaneous groups? Good luck. Seriously, they will just keep picking low hanging fruit and using whatever means they have available.
What could have stopped the "Killdozer"? (which was admittedly not terribly lethal to people, more property damage).
Nutbags using bombs or guns do so because its what they can use. To think they can't choose differently is to seriously underestimate their motivations. Do you really think anything can be done about explosives?
I had no doubt that some bombing like this would happen, and another school will get shot up too, and one bombed. Its going to happen. That knowledge however is not really actionable information, its impossible to predict the next event.
Why should I think we need to change regulations over something that I had already accepted would happen? I may not have known it would happen within 8 miles of my house. I didn't know it would be on patriots day at the marathon, but I knew somebody, someday would bomb a crowd of people. Don't get me wrong, its not comfortable to know how close to home it was, but no good comes of making changes based on every tragedy just to feel better.
You know thats exactly how we ended up with the patriot act. I laugh when I hear 9/11 was an "inside job" or "they allowed it to happen". The real truth is so much more subtle and worst. It was sitting in a drawer just waiting for the next tragedy so it could be brought out. Its not a matter of if, sometimes its only a matter of when, and it is only ever going to be.
Slashdot Mirror
> Yes, over time they could switch, and we'll follow suit and limit the
> availability of that chemical next.
which is the point isn't it, as long as you keep duping people into thinking you are solving a problem, you will always have a job. Thats the real point here. Its not going to save any lives at all, its just ensuring jobs for consultants.
Kind of reminds me of what the guy making thise fake bomb detectors was said to have commented when asked about the fact that they don't work "they do exactly what they were designed to do, they make money"
Well I will be damned, the man page agrees with you, this would tend to imply the -e ssh is obsolete too.
> Mabe 70 seems impossibly fast in New York or California but it's not for us.
Not in most of NY, nor in MA, where the traffic hums along on most highways (even the ones marked 55) at
72-76 MPH... not during rush hour of course... but most other times.
> The number one cause of accidents is distracted drivers. The number one cause of distractions is cell phones.
> Over half of all accidents involve cell phones. Look it up.
Yet banning their use is verified to reduce that use, but has yet to be shown to decrease accidents. Also, drivers who get in accidents with cell phones, still get in more accidents without them. In fact, while most drivers slow down while using the cell phone and drive more cautiously.... the group of drivers that gets in accidents using them, drives faster and more recklessly.
> People also pay attention more at higher speeds. This isn't theory, it's emperical.
Same is true of rotaries,...they are even safer than similarly sized intersections. People seem to hate them though. I have a theory as to why...its because you HAVE to pay attention. Cars are weaving in and out in a pattern, and it works really well... but when it works it constantly looks like you are about to hit eachother, so it forces everyone to pay attention and...well... people hate it and think its dangerous.
I have lived most of my life on a main road right by one.... a significant portion of the accidents I have ever seen in it have been drunk drivers crashing into it in the middle of the night. Seen more accidents up the street from it than in it.
And thats before we get into the whole, cover your body with sand trout and begin the slow transformation into the worm... with their sort of life span.
Though as far as a map for the future, I can't help but think of the basic similarities between Leto II's Golden path and Hawking suggesting it is of primary importance that we move off this rock. Is it a valid and fundamental function of government, and healthy for us as a species, to make some portion of us want to leave for new frontiers and spread beyond any existing groups ability to control?
Wow....no. Not. Never, will I allow anything in my car, app or human, that complains when I go over 70.
That is seriously how you get told to walk the rest of the way.
You threaten to kill me for being a heretic for saying otherwise, and I will happily tell you the earth is flat today.
> I totally agree with you but the argument here is that they could
> prevent attacks. I find that argument specious and foolhardy in that a
> bomb could be disguised as anything and a suicide bomber (as these
> individuals clearly had no intention of surviving a police encounter)
> would simply continue to wear the explosive into the crowd.
This is exactly the point. Prevention is impossible. Not because any specific scheme couldn't have been prevented but, because an attacker is not limited by what schemes can be imagined.
Shit, for a few hours work and a few craigslist ads, and maybe a few hundred bucks, I bet a particularly clever terrorist could convince some unsuspecting people to wear explosive backpacks into the crowd thinking they were there for some other purpose
Its a game of whack a mole where all you can do is catch the people for whom you guessed properly what they would do, where they would do it, and implemented the right measure to stop them.... and it only continues to work as long as they keep doing the same thing.
Prevention is a pipe dream.
That is hardly a fair choice you know.... it forces them to choose signatures since they haven't got brains.
Of course, how available do they have to get before you do? Given the study someone else posted showing that there is already a fair supply of livers, and increasing availability may not decrease mortaility.... perhaps a surplus of livers means that the availability of transplant can be opened to more people.
The most heartbreaking thing about that, I was just reading the story of someone who died after being delisted. Delisted because he was a cancer patient on medical marijuana, and testing positive for marijuana disqualified him for a liver.
The rationale? A positive on the drug test may indicate drug abuse and smoking increases exposure to aspergillius fungus, both of which are risk factors for the implanted organ.
seriously... and to think there is actually not a shortage of livers.... thats just terrible.
$ env |grep RSYNC
RSYNC_RSH=ssh
Worth putting right in /etc/profile so anyone who doesn't want it can disable it if they want.
It is an entirely sane default.
> how it can even be doubted when and if the dog does uncover something substantive in a search.
Oh I didn't address this.... never forget there are multiple parts to a trial. If the use of a dog is considered improper, and not something which gives probable cause. Look at the study there, only a small fraction of searches found nothing, even though none of the searches had anything to find.
That is how its doubted. Its not about whether or not there were drugs, its about whether the method to detect them is reliable. In this case, its not reliable and is expected to get false positives at a high rate. Where is the probable cause there?
So showing this should....SHOULD (not saying that any court has ruled this way...yet) be enough reason to toss out any evidence found from the subsequent search. Assuming that is all the evidence (like you didn't then confess), then that is all decided before the jury even gets shown the evidence.
This is, of course, what is supposed to prevent the police from doing things like that... because it invalidates evidence. Imagine if they found the bodies of 6 kids in your trunk but then could find no other evidence pointing to you in their murders? That evidence gets tossed out if the search is invalidated.... nobody wants to be the cop who fucked that up.
On the other hand, most people confess easily and talk before ever getting a lawyer....so it seldom comes into play.
No no, my point is its not a search because it doesn't indicate anything that the officer didn't already know. As such, it should be said not only to not be a search, but also not probable cause.
Try it this way.... if a police officer thought you had drugs, and you refused a search. Now, the officer goes back to his car, pulls out a dowsing rod, and starts walking around your car. The dowsing rod points down at your trunk.
Was that a search? I would submit this mode of using dogs (which is different from situations where there is no existing bias in the handler) is no different from a dowsing rod, because it isn't a test for drugs, or explosives, its a test for bias in the officer.
Thing is, we know he thought there were drugs, thats why he got out the dog or dowsing rod. So no new information has been gained.
> They could have asked the dog, and he would tell them, but putting dogs on you without probable
> cause is almost certainly illegal search violation.
I would argue the dog itself doesn't even constitute a search since they are so unrelaiable IN THIS CASE. There have been some great studies which have shown that dogs are only really useful in cases where their handler has no notion of what he might find or where. So border checkpoints, or random bomb searches, they are great....
The problem is, that when the handler suspects there may be something to find, the animal almost always "detects" something. A great study recently setup a course to test dogs and handlers. The handlers were told that there were drug and bomb scent samples throughout a church, some of which were marked, some which were not.
The trick: There were no drug scent samples. ALL of the marked spots were fakes, even some which included some meat for the dog to get him interested in it.
The result? Lots of "hits". Only a very small minority of search trials found no hits at all, and the highest percentage of hits were not in the places where there was meat for the dog, but where there was a flag for the handler to see:
https://www.erowid.org/freedom/police/police_article1.shtml
Its really pretty striking that these are allowed at all. Its not even clear why a judge would issue a warrant for something this unreliable.
In the realm of personal anecdotes, I have noticed something that dovetails well with this data. Bad drivers, that is, the people I know who get in more accidents and otherwise drive in ways that make me not want to be a passenger in their car.... they seem to also talk on the cell phone more and... they are the people who never seem to think they have a problem with it.
What I mean by that is, I have used my cell phone to talk, back when I had a flip phone with physical keys, i would even text. The thing is, I would be careful about WHEN i did these things, and would prioritize driving over them. Frequently if on the phone I would say things like "Hold on a second, I have to change lanes" or "Hold on, I have to drive for a second" to get some space to drive.... the bad drivers I know... I have never once heard them say that. Hell I have taken 5 minutes to type out a three or four word text, just because I didn't feel comfortable sparing more than 1 second at a time off the road....or waited until a red light....or... gotten over to the right lane with the slow pokes for a bit so I could chat.
On top of that, they tend to be the ones who don't signal, who cut people off, who pull stupid moves to get ahead... will pass people and wave through traffic while on the phone.
Most phone drivers are annoying because they drive extra slow. They sit at red lights longer than they need to.... exactly the opposite of what this study, and my experience, tell me that bad drivers do.
Similarly, look at the UK highway safety study that looked at marijuana use came to the conclusion that while they could measure impairment in reaction time... stoned drivers drove with an abundance of caution.
Or.... to put it the way I came to understand it from my motorcycle safety course.... if you are driving in such a way that your raw reaction time matters, you already fucked up.
However, the problem is that this study is only looking at reaction time, which is pretty limited of a measure. This is especially true since its also been found that cell phone accidents are likely not entirely caused by reaction time issues.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/why-cell-phone-bans-dont-work.html
So, bad drivers, the ones who get in accidents don't just use cell phones, they drive more wrecklessly while using them. They choose to use them at particularly dangerous times. They do, exactly what most people choose not to do.
The problem, quite simply, is not cell phones. They are just the device people have chosen to measure. The problem is not cell phones because, the problem is not reaction time. The problem is judgement and the problem is risk assesment within certain individuals.
The first Gulf War was just about the time I first was able to watch the news and say "Hey wait, that sounds like bullshit.". I certainly didn't know the backstory until much later, but, its amazing what crap people just lap up. I remember the initial invasion, predicated on claims that Kuwait had been slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields. I am never a fan of actual war but, a cause for war is at least a point to discuss. I was fully expecting at least some claim this was untrue, or was being investigated or negotiated.... but when they glossed right over it into the beating war drums...it just stank. Turns out, it had been stinking for years.
In some ways, turning to oppose Sadam was, almost to their credit. They created him, and he was a monster then, realizing that the relationship had to end was, probably the most morally righteous thing that particular cabal of warhawks did over the decades that they operated. Not that I agree with how they did it, but if anyone deserved to be cut loose from any special relationship, it was that guy right there.
On the whole, I agree entirely, we have made so many fucking messes trying to meddle in affairs around the world, its really pretty sad. Whether it was returning Iran to the rule of a monarch, or supporting south viet nam's determination to not hold an election, or creating the world wide drug gangs in our insane quest to control basic human nature through hamfisted policy with no regard for the lives of anyone outside of our own middle and upper class neighborhoods.
Heaping unlikely and overly specific scenario on top of unlikely scenario is insightful?
I completely disagree. Or rather, if you meant he shouldn't try to find a situation, sure. However, if a situation begins unfolding in front of you, fuck leaving the anything to anyone, if you can jump in and help in the moment, you do it. Whether thats putting pressure on a wound, or dropping a shooter before he takes down someone else. Leave the manhunt to the professionals, when shit unfolds before your eyes, react to the situation however makes the most sense.
Seriously, its unlikely that he or any specific person will EVER end up in such a situation, but being prepared for it is no stupider than being prepared for a fire or earth quake. Seeking it out, thats crazy and stupid, but, there is a big difference between seeking it out, and seeking out the ability to be prepared should it happen.
Though, I tend to think guns are overkill, and as you point out, leave (open the possibility of further arming an assailent. I would advocate teaching everyone basic self defence.
Its wasn't a question of Open Source it was specifically about all of that "Free Software" ideology that Open Source, by its very nature, ignores.
So essentially you are saying YES, they have forgotten about copyleft, and have moved to less restrictive models.
Though, I tend to think the answer is more No, they never knew about it in the first place and likely don't even bother to think about licensing....and are just doing what programers have been doing since before licensing became an issue.... just sharing code.
Reminds me of talking to an environmental cleanup specialist about an oil tank I had that leaked.
I asked if he had any idea what kind of total cost I was looking at, and his answer basically boiled down to, yes, we could study the spill and determine its extent.... but by the time we were done, it would cost a signficant fraction of what its likely to cost to clean up.
(though, for a much larger spill that cost/benefit would flip)
Another Bostonian here (well Somervillan)
what are you trying to accomplish? If its just to ease congestion and allow more people to get messages out, it might help. I don't know enough about the phone network to say for sure that it would.
On the other hand, if you want to deny the bomb maker a tool, it wont be effective at all because it requires that you appropriately guess what he is planning in real time. If there are no more devices, then it matters not...if there are, they could almost as easily be made to work as watchdogs that go off after a heartbeat signal is jammed.
Totally different threat profile.
A convoy is moving and is a very small target in a very large area. It is especially exposed, and an especially juicy target in a war zone. You can expect attacks fairly frequently, they have to find you/be ready for you.
This event is predefined, the attacker knows where and when the targets will be there. The attacker already has time to prepare and makes himself known on his time table.
This changes everything. In your convoy for example, there is no benefit to rigging bombs to blow when their signal is jammed or even to arm in response to signals from a jammer.... as the prowler is not the convoy and need not be all that close to them, arming or blowing in response to the jammer means wasted bombs or blowing up innocent bystanders, will almost never hit a convoy.
Here we have a totally different scenario. A secondary device triggered by a loss of signal could have huge impact. The devices are already at their pre-determined target. You don't jam, he can detonate, you do jam, they might detonate, point is....you have no way of ever knowing what he planned until its all over.
> There is no reason why the BPD, DHS or other agency would not have jammers for such an occasion.
Really? And why should they? The entire idea that they should have them is based on specific technical details of specific attacks, and requires both that they guess right that its the right time to use them and that the bomb maker didn't anticipate their use.
Additionally, with all the people involved, they generally want people to get the "Im safe" messages out, because it decreases overall mayhem and people trying to contact them for information.
> I would be surprised if they did not with all the money that was thrown around after 9/11
Well I wouldn't either, but, thats a different issue.
I was pretty resigned to the fact that nothing could be done before it happened. There are too many attack vectors and too many potential actors. The attacker gets to choose his time and place. If he is part of an organized network, you have some hope of infilitration and intelligence foiling some plots, sure.
Lone nutbags or spontaneous groups? Good luck. Seriously, they will just keep picking low hanging fruit and using whatever means they have available.
What could have stopped the "Killdozer"? (which was admittedly not terribly lethal to people, more property damage).
Nutbags using bombs or guns do so because its what they can use. To think they can't choose differently is to seriously underestimate their motivations. Do you really think anything can be done about explosives?
I had no doubt that some bombing like this would happen, and another school will get shot up too, and one bombed. Its going to happen. That knowledge however is not really actionable information, its impossible to predict the next event.
Why should I think we need to change regulations over something that I had already accepted would happen? I may not have known it would happen within 8 miles of my house. I didn't know it would be on patriots day at the marathon, but I knew somebody, someday would bomb a crowd of people. Don't get me wrong, its not comfortable to know how close to home it was, but no good comes of making changes based on every tragedy just to feel better.
You know thats exactly how we ended up with the patriot act. I laugh when I hear 9/11 was an "inside job" or "they allowed it to happen". The real truth is so much more subtle and worst. It was sitting in a drawer just waiting for the next tragedy so it could be brought out. Its not a matter of if, sometimes its only a matter of when, and it is only ever going to be.
Not only that but, it is a dangerous industrial solvent used in the production of heroin! And people let their kids drink it!
DHMO needs to be banned entirely!