Thats to say... I agree that biker gangs are about as ridiculous of a thing to worry about harming your family as video games.
Unless you have lots of contact with a biker gang, or have 1%er in the family, or have some other factor which makes you more likely to be involved in biker gang violence (maybe you are a meth addict with a penchant for not havening the money?) or maybe if you live next door to a particularly disliked gang member or chapter president, then... really.... what a stupid thing to worry about.
Theres what, maybe, one biker gang member per couple of million per capita here. Are they like 15%ers in Australia? Are biker gangs like soccer hooligans? Do the outlaw bikers have a national political party?
I mean seriously.... why not compare the danger of video games to lightning strikes or shark attacks as dangers to your family. How do they rate against.... dust mites! I garauntee bed bugs are worst!
It is amusing how often this is held up as a triumph for law enforcement. Its pretty pathetic, if you ask me, that they would put "punishing the guy that we know is bad, but can't prove up to the standards of our legal system" above all else. Isn't that just, kind of a cop out?
If you never would have bothered him, gotten into his business, and prosecuted his tax evasion except that you believe he is guilty of some other crime completely, that you can't prove, then isn't he, in fact, being punished for a crime that you can't prove up to the legal standards that he committed?
Not to defend Capone or anything, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, from all I hear, but, its still no win for high minded justice.... afterall... he is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Actually.... I can't see the supreme court ruling that this holds water without overturning current precedent.
This is NOT DIFFERENT from the argument as to why IR cameras need a warrent. The technology has the potential to reveal personal information (the example used in the case was the heat signature indicitive of when you are in the shower, thus revealing when you shower to an outside observer) that the average person would think unreasonable for any person on the street to be able to divine about them. Its obvious that such information COULD be intrusive information.
As such, the court made NO attempt to differenciate amongst technologies that could or could not produce that level of detail. (thats important here, I think). Since technology advances and this technology could be used in that way, the court felt that it would be a violation of the 4th ammendment to allow it without a warrent.
This data has been demonstrated to be able to tell a persons location WITHIN THEIR OWN HOME. The very fact that it can, even in some limited circumstances, give off that information, it has to be assumed that it can, and thus, its certainly a 4th amendment violation.
Then again, the court can overturn precedent. Maybe we will lose other protections here too.
Yet, they still operate in secret, so there is no way for me to verify that they don't do all those things still. I see no reason to believe that they have changed.
Also, some of it was far more recent. The Kidnapping in Italy (I forget who) was in the past few years. A search of the vacated room where one of the kidnappers stayed was found to have a note pad with a phone number in langley VA on it. Further evidence continued to point to the CIA, including one of the names on a phone registration (oops)
MKULTRA was the 60s. Iran-Contra/cocaine smuggling was the 80s. Kidnapping/Torture, past 5 years....
As for extra-judicial killing of foreign nationals or conducing secret flights to move them to countries where they can be tortured... well... that seems like evidence to me that they haven't changed. Sounds like a continued pattern of criminal behavior to me.
> It's called Ecstasy. > > Makes you happy and warm and fuzzy, then you crash and are left depressed and stupid (which doesn't totally wear off).
Actually, thats not always the case. I, and several others, have experienced "ecstasy afterglow" where the next 2-3 days after the experience were actually quite pleasant. In fact, I was in a much happier mood than normal, and less depressed for that period.
Now, when you say ecstasy do you mean MDMA or do you mean "pills called ecstasy". I have had it offered to me, and taken it, about 4 times (and not in several years at this point). Twice it was almost certainly MDMA, based on effect and duration, once it was almost certainly MDA, and once just speed. The time that I was most sure that it was real MDMA is the only time that I got the afterglow effect, but its been reported to me by a few other people.
I seem to remember them working illegal deals for arms through third parties, helping to ship cocaine into the US, doing mind control experiments on people in New York City (Operation Midnight Climax), Kidnapping people (and being sloppy about it), Torture. Let's not forget that they attempted to assassinate one world leader enough times to get him into the guiness book of world records (add multiple counts of attempted murder).
Exactly the sort of sociopaths I want on the payroll that I pay my taxes into.
I tend to be anti-death penalty for various reasons (what ever happened to redemption?) however, punishment? Sure.
There is an element of hypercriticality to this...when the US runs their own spys (something which I, as a citizen, do not support, and firmly believe the CIA should have been disbanded forever after the MKULTRA affair)
In short.... Punish the spys.... ALL OF THEM. Every single one of them, no matter who they work for, is a criminal in some way.
The funny thing is, the post right before yours answers this...and the answer is no, they don't have it now:
A lot of our clients are already hurting for money and as such have scaled back their server footprint. We're pushing servers (disk IO) a lot harder than before -- one easy solution we have is to just disable access logs. Writing 1GB+ of log data per hour swamps disks and just adds huge amounts of overhead.
I can think of some other services that I know of with similar issues. I know of one AD domain, for example, where the access logs pile in so fast, that they have to rotate them every 10 minutes or so. (which made ldap troubleshooting a bitch, let me tell you)
So run the server in another state in colo run the server there, and proxy all of your traffic through it.
Thats what I do...well partially. I am not actually paranoid enough to proxy all my traffic through it, and I mostly run a tor node because I get 600 GB/transfer included in my agreement and I, personally, use about 2 GB of it.... may as well put it to good use eh?
Ok, so we can't buy electronics from the Chinese and be safe. Sure.... so lets say that I accept that.
Now, let's cross off all those dirty foreigners. What makes other Americans so trustworthy? Can't an American just as easily hide backdoors in products? Is Ken Thompson a Chinaman?
Application of this to Chinese goods as opposed to goods made ANYWHERE else (including by your own neighbors) is FUD and truthfully, irrationally Xenophobic (as are many of the scare stories about China, which is sad since the truth about both them and us does have so many real problems that needs to be fixed, all this useless political chest pounding and accusation flinging is counterproductive)
The simple fact is, that, unless you designed the entire component, personally, from the ground up, there will always be a layer of abstraction between what it does and how it does it that will allow the designer to add hidden consequences to the product. In this case, ones that may be hard if not impossible to detect. There is no reason to believe that any particular chineese manafacturer has any more reason to do this than any American one.
A back door installed by the NSA, IBM, or some rogue worker is just as bad of a backdoor, and just as likey to exist.
If you don't think it happens, I have a great keyboard that I could dust off for you that occasionally types the string "WELCOME DATACOMP" on its own. Apparently some firmware programmers idea of a prank. (I was not amused)
Yes, apparently so. Still, this is an absolutely mindless level of stupidity on its face. Whatever the reasons are, any reasons that add up to this situation are ridiculous. This level of mindless adherence to the illusions of order can have only one response. He should have not blacked out their phone numbers... because it leaves me calling for a JAKE!
Thinking this shouldn't wait unti Jake day. How about valentine's day, so they know its being done out of love?
Actually, I tend to go with symptom rather than cause.
Though there may be contributing factors, it is a sedentary activity, the amount of exercise that you engage in has a pretty powerful effect on mood, as does food intake, etc.
I have been through bouts of severe depression myself, and always spent a lot of time online. What I notice from reading this is that the habbits shown as stereotypical of a depressed person, line up pretty well with what I did when I was depressed. Today I spend many hours online (partially due to my job, partially hobby projects), but, spend hardly any time on gaming sites (I still game but prefer to do it on my 360), rarely seek out porn (nearly every day while depressed).
Another thing, I used to keep online journals (predating lj). The more severe the depression, the more I wanted to write about and and log what a miserable bastard I was becoming. As soon as I started feeling better about my life, and the racing spiraling thought patterns went away.... so did my desire to keep any manner of journal.
Now I spend as many hours online. Now I tend to be pissed off about something politically, writing/debugging code on a personal project, or reading up on something that fascinates me. I hit up the occasional social networking site, or try to arrange a date with someone new. Though since I am mostly happy in my primary relationship, and not feeling like I NEED external validation to feel good, well... its hardly a priority. (actually, sometimes I wish she would see her secondaries just a bit more so I could have some more xbox time and/or get a bit more coding done... two gamers and one xbox is probably not a long term strategy for a happy marriage)
Thats because there is no limit what you can bring on board. Its simply a limit on what you can bring past the checkpoint in as a single person. You and three friends can bring on three four the limit. If you choose the right paths of connecting flights and layovers, a relatively small group could smuggle a fair amount on... and then take off on different paths to leave one person to use the final result.
They haven't reduced the feasible size of the device unless you believe that it takes more mental prowess to do basic algebra and travel logistics than it does to produce explosives.... and have no remote hope of ever doing so. Its security theater plain and simple.
I dunno, I ran into the bully from grade school a few years back in a bar. I stood up to him once and got my ass thoroughly whooped. BTW, fuck you to the people who put out that story for kids about the kid who stood up to the bully and challenged him to a fight and the bully didn't show up because he was scared too... I tell you, from experience, the bully shows up... and is a better fighter than you.
Anyway, he recognized me, hugged me, and almost started crying and apologizing for being such a rotten ass. I couldn't help but sizing him up and realizing that he wasn't the big tall kid in class anymore.
Though, I don't know if I totally blame him. Childhood is a strange time and its easy to look back as adults on that very black and white world with our more nuances sensibilities and greater understanding and pass judgment. In the end, both of them are just kids, and still learning. Blame is almost always a cop out. Who did what is always less important than how we move on from where we are. (isn't that conflict resolution 101?)
If the Bully singles himself out as an aggressor and does so by singling out a kid who needs work on his social skills (as this study seems to suggest), isn't the most good done by helping them both?
Actually, I advocate teaching them both to fight. It will give the weaker kid confidence and an environment to interact with his peers thats structured enough to not require social skills to be needed, but with enough interaction to teach them. It will help the bully by letting him work out some aggression and bond with the other kids around him... and through structured violence they all learn their own strength and how much they can hurt and be hurt.
I, for one, never really had more than one or two friends at a time, and was much more of a loaner and social outcast before I joined the high school wrestling team. A few of the guys on the team had some bully tendencies, but, once I stuck it out on the team for a while, and bonded a bit with them, I found they actually started to respect me.
Bullying happens, its a natural part of our society. Why is it so important to you that the victim has no part in his own selection?
People are not exactly rational beings much of the time, children doubly so. You don't blame a cat for killing a mouse any more than you should blame a child for acting poorly. Perhaps their parents if they don't do anything to correct their child's behavior but, the animal is what it is.
I think this is a very positive study. There is no bully without a victim. If the victims of bullying show a lack of social skills compared to those who don't, then there is an opportunity to help them, both to avoid further bullying and later on in life when it comes time to start dating and making friends after they get out of school.
This is not to say that the kids who bully shouldn't also be studied and also have their behaviors fixed, but, if they receive all of the attention, then I think we can see with this study, we have opted to try and help one child normalize his social interactions and missed the opportunity to help a second.
Though, I think we also need to be more open minded about violence. I think you could help a lot of this by teaching kids to fight in a structured environment as part of phys ed. Don't just take away aggression and expect to help everyone, give them a context where its ok and where they can channel it more constructively.
Actually, one of the changes since 9/11 thats been mentioned by a number of experts is, this has been done already BY THE 9/11 HIJACKERS.
On 9/11 19 guys with boxcutters hijacked 4 planes. 1 person on each "team" had to be a pilot to fly the plane. That leaves 3-4 people per team to control an entire cabin full of full grown adults. How did they do it?
Certainly nobody wants to get sliced and maybe killed by a guy with a boxcutter. However, it takes more than that to hijack a plane. It takes one other ingredient...it takes the vast majority of passengers believing in a relatively bloodless outcome. Generally either planes got blown up, or hijacked, downed, and eventually a rescue or hostage exchange.
There was no reason for anyone to resist at all, since everyone believed this would all be sorted out and everyone was going home. By the time the first 3 planes were downed, the ploy had already ceased to work on the 4th plane. The passengers proved the new security model. This particular threat was eliminated and demonstrated to be eliminated when that plane crashed.
Now as to the point about explosives. I doubt this can be done. Adding weight to reinforce the plane will also help contain anything like an explosion. A good old fashioned firebomb should still do a pretty good job. I have seen pictures of IRA firebombs (so thats going back a few years) that ran off 2 AAA batteries, and the whole device was little more than 1 AAA battery square in flat area. It would be trivial to hide any number of ways... and thats hardly state of the art. (when was the last IRA firebombing?)
I have brought this exact point up several times on the TSA blog. Admittedly, it would make about as much of a difference to bring it up to the floor tiles in one of the ogan airport bathroom, as they seem to show more signs of intelligent life than the Transportation Security Theater Administration.
Making explosives is just not hard for a dedicated person with basic reading comprehension and math skills. Your best bet is to ban education and close libraries, and well, the internet is right out.
The total lack of things blowing up all around us, combined with the relative ease by which an adversary could do so, tends to poke a giant fucking whole in the theory that specific measures to protect against all these people who aren't blowing anything up.
Its not about the right to blow stuff up. Its about the right to be secure in your person and have a little privacy. This invasion is unjustified. If i thought there was even a small chance that a full on "finger in the ass" cavity search meant the difference between me landing safely and dieing ina fireball, I would assume the position without a second thought. No machine needed.
I simply don't buy it. I don't care if this "feels" less invasive. Its still my privacy going away, for what I see as no benefit to anyone, not even myself as a flyer.
All I see is my privacy being taken away and my tax dollars being wasted to do it for some authoritarian wet dream.
I refuse to fly under these conditions. It has nothing to do with body image. I wouldn't feel terribly uncomfortable walking naked through the airport (except maybe for the breeze). However, it would be my choice to do so.
Whats in my pockets is my business. Its never been your business. Why don't we just mandate that all storage containers be transparent? How about the doors to your house? the Walls? Maybe just your bedroom?
When does it end? Why must we constantly be asked, and give in, to giving away our personal privacy in futile attempts to prevent rare tragedy. Your best case scenarios, if you accept a dedicated adversary, is to move attacks to other venues and kill different people.
This is not a cause worthy of giving up the privacy of my pockets. In fact, I see no evidence that even the level of security throughout the 90s was needed. I personally feel airport security hit the point of diminishing returns before they instituted ID checks (mid 90s) OR banned passengers from having guns in their carry on (1980s).
You will excuse me if I am not enthused by the latest in mass strip search technology.
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
on
Review: Mass Effect 2
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· Score: 1
Define traditional RPG guys? I only once played a game involving rolling D20 to attack (physically speaking, plenty of games that simulated it under the covers), and have been a fan of final fantasy since the day I killed Garland (the first time).
Now, as much as I like futzing around with items and figuring out what armor is best... removal of much of that complexity has not been a buzzkill for me, it was never a major part of the game. For me, the RPG is kind of more about the movie, especially these sort of "choose your own adventure" types where you get to make decisions, and choose a "path".
It still retains the "talk to everyone" aspects (though there seem to be less people to talk to than in ME1, but I am still only 12 hours in). It still lets you choose many conversation points, and choose to get more info or not, still has side quests, added the paragon and renegade interrupts...
It seems on par, if not ahead of, many of the FF games, even going back to 7 or so, when the first 10 hours or so became very much a marginally interactive movie.
I never saw RP as being about inventory management, and more about the story/ movie aspects.
When you say small metal spheres, it makes me think of stealth technology. If I remember right, the "radar absorbing coating" contains small metalic spheres that cause the radar signal to be diminished as it is dispersed into the medium and begins bouncing off the spheres.
So, I have to wonder, if a layer of this material would have a similar effect for reducing your radar signature. If so, that plus a laser jammer (legal in most states for non-commercial vehicles) would make for a pretty sweet rig.
-Steve
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
on
Review: Mass Effect 2
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Its funny how harsh of a review you can give and still give it an 8. I think that's kind of the point though. All of those negatives, still add up to a good time. Admittedly, I liked the variety of options in ME1, choosing my rounds, who carried which guns etc. However, once I figured out what I liked, I was done, I hardly ever switched it up.
So overall, the simplification takes out something, but nothing that made a huge difference overall. The lack of inventory management is actually nice.
I started ME2 one notch down from the top, and its pretty challenging. I think I have to restart the first collectors mission now because I am at the praetorian battle with no medi gel, as an inflitrator with the salarian doctor and jack. Its been...rough.
So far though, it seems to be mostly improvements over ME1.
I kind of expected to come up unique. Running linux cuts out a huge swath, then add in the addons that I use, etc. I was kind of shocked that my wife (windows firefox, probably few or no extensions) also came up as unique at around the 18k level.
Hopefully the sample size is just too small still?
Or actually, I read that wrong... looks like a huge win for open browsing and scripts off, and huge loss for torbutton with scripts off... especially at under 20k tested so far.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he is!
Thats to say... I agree that biker gangs are about as ridiculous of a thing to worry about harming your family as video games.
Unless you have lots of contact with a biker gang, or have 1%er in the family, or have some other factor which makes you more likely to be involved in biker gang violence (maybe you are a meth addict with a penchant for not havening the money?) or maybe if you live next door to a particularly disliked gang member or chapter president, then... really.... what a stupid thing to worry about.
Theres what, maybe, one biker gang member per couple of million per capita here. Are they like 15%ers in Australia? Are biker gangs like soccer hooligans? Do the outlaw bikers have a national political party?
I mean seriously.... why not compare the danger of video games to lightning strikes or shark attacks as dangers to your family. How do they rate against.... dust mites! I garauntee bed bugs are worst!
-Steve
It is amusing how often this is held up as a triumph for law enforcement. Its pretty pathetic, if you ask me, that they would put "punishing the guy that we know is bad, but can't prove up to the standards of our legal system" above all else. Isn't that just, kind of a cop out?
If you never would have bothered him, gotten into his business, and prosecuted his tax evasion except that you believe he is guilty of some other crime completely, that you can't prove, then isn't he, in fact, being punished for a crime that you can't prove up to the legal standards that he committed?
Not to defend Capone or anything, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, from all I hear, but, its still no win for high minded justice.... afterall... he is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
-Steve
Actually.... I can't see the supreme court ruling that this holds water without overturning current precedent.
This is NOT DIFFERENT from the argument as to why IR cameras need a warrent. The technology has the potential to reveal personal information (the example used in the case was the heat signature indicitive of when you are in the shower, thus revealing when you shower to an outside observer) that the average person would think unreasonable for any person on the street to be able to divine about them. Its obvious that such information COULD be intrusive information.
As such, the court made NO attempt to differenciate amongst technologies that could or could not produce that level of detail. (thats important here, I think). Since technology advances and this technology could be used in that way, the court felt that it would be a violation of the 4th ammendment to allow it without a warrent.
This data has been demonstrated to be able to tell a persons location WITHIN THEIR OWN HOME. The very fact that it can, even in some limited circumstances, give off that information, it has to be assumed that it can, and thus, its certainly a 4th amendment violation.
Then again, the court can overturn precedent. Maybe we will lose other protections here too.
-Steve
Yet, they still operate in secret, so there is no way for me to verify that they don't do all those things still. I see no reason to believe that they have changed.
Also, some of it was far more recent. The Kidnapping in Italy (I forget who) was in the past few years. A search of the vacated room where one of the kidnappers stayed was found to have a note pad with a phone number in langley VA on it. Further evidence continued to point to the CIA, including one of the names on a phone registration (oops)
MKULTRA was the 60s. Iran-Contra/cocaine smuggling was the 80s. Kidnapping/Torture, past 5 years....
As for extra-judicial killing of foreign nationals or conducing secret flights to move them to countries where they can be tortured... well... that seems like evidence to me that they haven't changed. Sounds like a continued pattern of criminal behavior to me.
-Steve
> It's called Ecstasy.
>
> Makes you happy and warm and fuzzy, then you crash and are left depressed and stupid (which doesn't totally wear off).
Actually, thats not always the case. I, and several others, have experienced "ecstasy afterglow" where the next 2-3 days after the experience were actually quite pleasant. In fact, I was in a much happier mood than normal, and less depressed for that period.
Now, when you say ecstasy do you mean MDMA or do you mean "pills called ecstasy". I have had it offered to me, and taken it, about 4 times (and not in several years at this point). Twice it was almost certainly MDMA, based on effect and duration, once it was almost certainly MDA, and once just speed. The time that I was most sure that it was real MDMA is the only time that I got the afterglow effect, but its been reported to me by a few other people.
-Steve
Maybe we aren't talking about the same people...
I seem to remember them working illegal deals for arms through third parties, helping to ship cocaine into the US, doing mind control experiments on people in New York City (Operation Midnight Climax), Kidnapping people (and being sloppy about it), Torture. Let's not forget that they attempted to assassinate one world leader enough times to get him into the guiness book of world records (add multiple counts of attempted murder).
Exactly the sort of sociopaths I want on the payroll that I pay my taxes into.
I tend to be anti-death penalty for various reasons (what ever happened to redemption?) however, punishment? Sure.
There is an element of hypercriticality to this...when the US runs their own spys (something which I, as a citizen, do not support, and firmly believe the CIA should have been disbanded forever after the MKULTRA affair)
In short.... Punish the spys.... ALL OF THEM. Every single one of them, no matter who they work for, is a criminal in some way.
-Steve
The funny thing is, the post right before yours answers this...and the answer is no, they don't have it now:
I can think of some other services that I know of with similar issues. I know of one AD domain, for example, where the access logs pile in so fast, that they have to rotate them every 10 minutes or so. (which made ldap troubleshooting a bitch, let me tell you)
-Steve
So run the server in another state in colo run the server there, and proxy all of your traffic through it.
Thats what I do...well partially. I am not actually paranoid enough to proxy all my traffic through it, and I mostly run a tor node because I get 600 GB/transfer included in my agreement and I, personally, use about 2 GB of it.... may as well put it to good use eh?
-Steve
You cahn tell which wuns ahh tha clonnes by tha dot in theyah eyehlids. Oh Fahk I already did that movie!
Ok, so we can't buy electronics from the Chinese and be safe. Sure.... so lets say that I accept that.
Now, let's cross off all those dirty foreigners. What makes other Americans so trustworthy? Can't an American just as easily hide backdoors in products? Is Ken Thompson a Chinaman?
Application of this to Chinese goods as opposed to goods made ANYWHERE else (including by your own neighbors) is FUD and truthfully, irrationally Xenophobic (as are many of the scare stories about China, which is sad since the truth about both them and us does have so many real problems that needs to be fixed, all this useless political chest pounding and accusation flinging is counterproductive)
The simple fact is, that, unless you designed the entire component, personally, from the ground up, there will always be a layer of abstraction between what it does and how it does it that will allow the designer to add hidden consequences to the product. In this case, ones that may be hard if not impossible to detect. There is no reason to believe that any particular chineese manafacturer has any more reason to do this than any American one.
A back door installed by the NSA, IBM, or some rogue worker is just as bad of a backdoor, and just as likey to exist.
If you don't think it happens, I have a great keyboard that I could dust off for you that occasionally types the string "WELCOME DATACOMP" on its own. Apparently some firmware programmers idea of a prank. (I was not amused)
-Steve
Yes, apparently so. Still, this is an absolutely mindless level of stupidity on its face. Whatever the reasons are, any reasons that add up to this situation are ridiculous. This level of mindless adherence to the illusions of order can have only one response. He should have not blacked out their phone numbers... because it leaves me calling for a JAKE!
Thinking this shouldn't wait unti Jake day. How about valentine's day, so they know its being done out of love?
Actually, I tend to go with symptom rather than cause.
Though there may be contributing factors, it is a sedentary activity, the amount of exercise that you engage in has a pretty powerful effect on mood, as does food intake, etc.
I have been through bouts of severe depression myself, and always spent a lot of time online. What I notice from reading this is that the habbits shown as stereotypical of a depressed person, line up pretty well with what I did when I was depressed. Today I spend many hours online (partially due to my job, partially hobby projects), but, spend hardly any time on gaming sites (I still game but prefer to do it on my 360), rarely seek out porn (nearly every day while depressed).
Another thing, I used to keep online journals (predating lj). The more severe the depression, the more I wanted to write about and and log what a miserable bastard I was becoming. As soon as I started feeling better about my life, and the racing spiraling thought patterns went away.... so did my desire to keep any manner of journal.
Now I spend as many hours online. Now I tend to be pissed off about something politically, writing/debugging code on a personal project, or reading up on something that fascinates me. I hit up the occasional social networking site, or try to arrange a date with someone new. Though since I am mostly happy in my primary relationship, and not feeling like I NEED external validation to feel good, well... its hardly a priority. (actually, sometimes I wish she would see her secondaries just a bit more so I could have some more xbox time and/or get a bit more coding done... two gamers and one xbox is probably not a long term strategy for a happy marriage)
-Steve
MY short and easy answer is no.
Thats because there is no limit what you can bring on board. Its simply a limit on what you can bring past the checkpoint in as a single person. You and three friends can bring on three four the limit. If you choose the right paths of connecting flights and layovers, a relatively small group could smuggle a fair amount on... and then take off on different paths to leave one person to use the final result.
They haven't reduced the feasible size of the device unless you believe that it takes more mental prowess to do basic algebra and travel logistics than it does to produce explosives.... and have no remote hope of ever doing so. Its security theater plain and simple.
-Steve
I dunno, I ran into the bully from grade school a few years back in a bar. I stood up to him once and got my ass thoroughly whooped. BTW, fuck you to the people who put out that story for kids about the kid who stood up to the bully and challenged him to a fight and the bully didn't show up because he was scared too... I tell you, from experience, the bully shows up... and is a better fighter than you.
Anyway, he recognized me, hugged me, and almost started crying and apologizing for being such a rotten ass. I couldn't help but sizing him up and realizing that he wasn't the big tall kid in class anymore.
Though, I don't know if I totally blame him. Childhood is a strange time and its easy to look back as adults on that very black and white world with our more nuances sensibilities and greater understanding and pass judgment. In the end, both of them are just kids, and still learning. Blame is almost always a cop out. Who did what is always less important than how we move on from where we are. (isn't that conflict resolution 101?)
If the Bully singles himself out as an aggressor and does so by singling out a kid who needs work on his social skills (as this study seems to suggest), isn't the most good done by helping them both?
Actually, I advocate teaching them both to fight. It will give the weaker kid confidence and an environment to interact with his peers thats structured enough to not require social skills to be needed, but with enough interaction to teach them. It will help the bully by letting him work out some aggression and bond with the other kids around him... and through structured violence they all learn their own strength and how much they can hurt and be hurt.
I, for one, never really had more than one or two friends at a time, and was much more of a loaner and social outcast before I joined the high school wrestling team. A few of the guys on the team had some bully tendencies, but, once I stuck it out on the team for a while, and bonded a bit with them, I found they actually started to respect me.
-Steve
Blame? Where does blame come into it?
Bullying happens, its a natural part of our society. Why is it so important to you that the victim has no part in his own selection?
People are not exactly rational beings much of the time, children doubly so. You don't blame a cat for killing a mouse any more than you should blame a child for acting poorly. Perhaps their parents if they don't do anything to correct their child's behavior but, the animal is what it is.
I think this is a very positive study. There is no bully without a victim. If the victims of bullying show a lack of social skills compared to those who don't, then there is an opportunity to help them, both to avoid further bullying and later on in life when it comes time to start dating and making friends after they get out of school.
This is not to say that the kids who bully shouldn't also be studied and also have their behaviors fixed, but, if they receive all of the attention, then I think we can see with this study, we have opted to try and help one child normalize his social interactions and missed the opportunity to help a second.
Though, I think we also need to be more open minded about violence. I think you could help a lot of this by teaching kids to fight in a structured environment as part of phys ed. Don't just take away aggression and expect to help everyone, give them a context where its ok and where they can channel it more constructively.
-Steve
Actually, one of the changes since 9/11 thats been mentioned by a number of experts is, this has been done already BY THE 9/11 HIJACKERS.
On 9/11 19 guys with boxcutters hijacked 4 planes. 1 person on each "team" had to be a pilot to fly the plane. That leaves 3-4 people per team to control an entire cabin full of full grown adults. How did they do it?
Certainly nobody wants to get sliced and maybe killed by a guy with a boxcutter. However, it takes more than that to hijack a plane. It takes one other ingredient...it takes the vast majority of passengers believing in a relatively bloodless outcome. Generally either planes got blown up, or hijacked, downed, and eventually a rescue or hostage exchange.
There was no reason for anyone to resist at all, since everyone believed this would all be sorted out and everyone was going home. By the time the first 3 planes were downed, the ploy had already ceased to work on the 4th plane. The passengers proved the new security model. This particular threat was eliminated and demonstrated to be eliminated when that plane crashed.
Now as to the point about explosives. I doubt this can be done. Adding weight to reinforce the plane will also help contain anything like an explosion. A good old fashioned firebomb should still do a pretty good job. I have seen pictures of IRA firebombs (so thats going back a few years) that ran off 2 AAA batteries, and the whole device was little more than 1 AAA battery square in flat area. It would be trivial to hide any number of ways... and thats hardly state of the art. (when was the last IRA firebombing?)
I have brought this exact point up several times on the TSA blog. Admittedly, it would make about as much of a difference to bring it up to the floor tiles in one of the ogan airport bathroom, as they seem to show more signs of intelligent life than the Transportation Security Theater Administration.
Making explosives is just not hard for a dedicated person with basic reading comprehension and math skills. Your best bet is to ban education and close libraries, and well, the internet is right out.
The total lack of things blowing up all around us, combined with the relative ease by which an adversary could do so, tends to poke a giant fucking whole in the theory that specific measures to protect against all these people who aren't blowing anything up.
Its not about the right to blow stuff up. Its about the right to be secure in your person and have a little privacy. This invasion is unjustified. If i thought there was even a small chance that a full on "finger in the ass" cavity search meant the difference between me landing safely and dieing ina fireball, I would assume the position without a second thought. No machine needed.
I simply don't buy it. I don't care if this "feels" less invasive. Its still my privacy going away, for what I see as no benefit to anyone, not even myself as a flyer.
All I see is my privacy being taken away and my tax dollars being wasted to do it for some authoritarian wet dream.
I refuse to fly under these conditions. It has nothing to do with body image. I wouldn't feel terribly uncomfortable walking naked through the airport (except maybe for the breeze). However, it would be my choice to do so.
Whats in my pockets is my business. Its never been your business. Why don't we just mandate that all storage containers be transparent? How about the doors to your house? the Walls? Maybe just your bedroom?
When does it end? Why must we constantly be asked, and give in, to giving away our personal privacy in futile attempts to prevent rare tragedy. Your best case scenarios, if you accept a dedicated adversary, is to move attacks to other venues and kill different people.
This is not a cause worthy of giving up the privacy of my pockets. In fact, I see no evidence that even the level of security throughout the 90s was needed. I personally feel airport security hit the point of diminishing returns before they instituted ID checks (mid 90s) OR banned passengers from having guns in their carry on (1980s).
You will excuse me if I am not enthused by the latest in mass strip search technology.
Define traditional RPG guys? I only once played a game involving rolling D20 to attack (physically speaking, plenty of games that simulated it under the covers), and have been a fan of final fantasy since the day I killed Garland (the first time).
Now, as much as I like futzing around with items and figuring out what armor is best... removal of much of that complexity has not been a buzzkill for me, it was never a major part of the game. For me, the RPG is kind of more about the movie, especially these sort of "choose your own adventure" types where you get to make decisions, and choose a "path".
It still retains the "talk to everyone" aspects (though there seem to be less people to talk to than in ME1, but I am still only 12 hours in). It still lets you choose many conversation points, and choose to get more info or not, still has side quests, added the paragon and renegade interrupts...
It seems on par, if not ahead of, many of the FF games, even going back to 7 or so, when the first 10 hours or so became very much a marginally interactive movie.
I never saw RP as being about inventory management, and more about the story/ movie aspects.
-Steve
When you say small metal spheres, it makes me think of stealth technology. If I remember right, the "radar absorbing coating" contains small metalic spheres that cause the radar signal to be diminished as it is dispersed into the medium and begins bouncing off the spheres.
So, I have to wonder, if a layer of this material would have a similar effect for reducing your radar signature. If so, that plus a laser jammer (legal in most states for non-commercial vehicles) would make for a pretty sweet rig.
-Steve
Its funny how harsh of a review you can give and still give it an 8. I think that's kind of the point though. All of those negatives, still add up to a good time. Admittedly, I liked the variety of options in ME1, choosing my rounds, who carried which guns etc. However, once I figured out what I liked, I was done, I hardly ever switched it up.
So overall, the simplification takes out something, but nothing that made a huge difference overall. The lack of inventory management is actually nice.
I started ME2 one notch down from the top, and its pretty challenging. I think I have to restart the first collectors mission now because I am at the praetorian battle with no medi gel, as an inflitrator with the salarian doctor and jack. Its been...rough.
So far though, it seems to be mostly improvements over ME1.
-Steve
I kind of expected to come up unique. Running linux cuts out a huge swath, then add in the addons that I use, etc. I was kind of shocked that my wife (windows firefox, probably few or no extensions) also came up as unique at around the 18k level.
Hopefully the sample size is just too small still?
-Steve
Or actually, I read that wrong... looks like a huge win for open browsing and scripts off, and huge loss for torbutton with scripts off... especially at under 20k tested so far.