Posts by Charles 9 16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"Also, how will they be able to tell if you are going international or domestic at screening and what you should or should not have?"
You show your boarding pass at the checkpoint AND at the gate. Both are potential gotcha points. Plus the reason many people insist on carry-on luggage is because they don't trust stuff to stay in the hold, and there's no way to ensure their security without risking another Lockerbie, so it's a no-win situation.
There's also a lot of commercial pressure to NOT have the batteries be replaceable, for the very reasons you describe. A phone that goes to the landfill means another phone to be sold which means KA-CHING for the phone maker (since phone sales are practically the ONLY way phone makers make money). Not to mention it stops aftermarket sales cold. And since every phone maker is in cutthroat competition with every OTHER phone maker, they won't agree on anything.
As for hiding bombs in things, you're noticing how ingenious bomb makers can be. The Lockerbie bomb, if you'll recall, was in a tape player. If they can't put it in a battery, they'll put it in the rest of the phone and keep moving around until they find something that can't be banned from the plane without making the flight lose its purpose. That's why I mentioned the dildo bomb. A woman kinky enough to wear a dildo bomb in a lower orifice pretty much represents no holds barred. The only ways you can reliably detect a women concealing a dildo bomb will render the whole air travel industry impractical. If someone wants to blow up a plane, they'll do it in spite of God, Man, or the Devil.
Which is why airlines have a general "verboten" attitude to potential fire starters. That's why most aerosols aren't allowed (because of their hydrocarbon propellants and/or their actual contents being easy to set light). That's also why lithium batteries can't go in the hold unless in a special containment unit. At least in the cabin flight attendants can quickly see to thermal runaways. Which raises a prickly question to those who MUST take some kind of computing device with them because they can't trust devces or Internet access to be available at the destination.
I think the big thing is, due to the ban on fluorocarbons, most aerosols use hydrocarbon propellants. Hydrocarbons (like gasoline) ARE flammable, and flammable containers are generally prohibited on planes due to the fire risk. They only provide exemptions for stuff like toiletries, and even then they expect you to be reasonable (so no economy-sized canisters).
That's an unacceptable tradeoff, though. There are only three techs powerful enough to get through the meat and water of a human body, and they ALL have strings attached. One of them (high-energy EMR like x-rays) is unavoidably carcinogenic (strong enough to penetrate tissue is also strong enough to mutate tissue: part and parcel). That's why it's only really used in prisons. Another (ultrasound) suffers from a terribly short range: particularly through air. The last (EM fields rather than radiation) is too unwieldy, not to mention dangerous for people with legitimate metallic things in their bodies (joint replacements, bone pins, metal skull plates, pacemakers).
"Better to not take a laptop at all and buy a disposable device at the other end. Maybe they are working with Google and Microsoft to get people to buy Chromebooks / Windows 10 S devices, once they land."
And if you're landing going to a not-zone, meaning you MUST have a local copy?
Last I checked, pressurized stuff like aerosols are already banned from the hold, specifically since there's no assurance checked baggage will always be pressurized. Temperature-sensitive stuff is not recommended for the same reason.
I'm still waiting for one of them to realize that a bomb small enough to be concealed inside a working laptop battery is also small enough to be put in something like a dildo. Meaning they can conceal the bomb from practically any scanner simply by being kinky enough to conceal it INSIDE themselves.
That's up to you, but privacy-conscious service providers like Scandinavian VPNs readily accept Bitcoin to create a degree of separation between buyer and seller (since the plods can't compel someone to divulge something about which they have zero knowledge). And more and more e-tailers will accept Bitcoin for payment. Even Steam takes Bitcoin.
Two problems:
One, the qualifications for being a politician are essentially at odds with the qualifications for being in the sciences. The latter requires a relatively objective look at things while the former is almost entirely SUBjective, owing to the fact politicians essentially are playing with other people. Essentially, in general, great scientists make poor politicians and vice versa.
Two, it goes to the general population. The average person doesn't want to know this stuff. They just want to get through their day, enjoy themselves afterward, have the occasional day off, and repeat ad nauseum. Worse, any attempt to install an academic or some other meritocratic qualification for being an actual citizen WILL (not may) get corrupted in some way.
Frankly, you have to wonder if the human race really is cut out for this kind of civilization.
You may actually be onto something. Why else do the movie companies NOT allow 4K BluRays to be played on computers, ONLY on purpose-built, secured-from-end-to-end dedicated players?
Perhaps the next step is that all computers will be considered dangerous devices requiring registration the same way cars are. And all software firms and programmers will likely have to sign legal oaths and probably even post surety bonds.
It's not the bomb victims you need to consider but the idea the government was complicit in the bombing given they were warned, specifically, multiple times. What's it going to take? Some YouTube video televising the exact time of the bombing? Heck, if you want REAL terror, I'd use that as a tactic to convey hopelessness; you know it's coming and you STILL can't stop it.
Nope, not in terms of a "hidden in plain sight" zero-knowledge system. Can you come up with a code-word system that doesn't require the other side to know what it is yet can be hidden in plain sight, not necessarily in steganography but like a message that looks like any other innocuous message (In other words, can you use a "Happy Birthday" message to tell others what to do even though they've never met before to establish a common code yet?).
By what standard, though? In terms of absolute time spent (which would make sense since the most time people spend in any one place is usually at home) or risk factors relative to time spent (which changes the emphasis to how risky is any given point you're located)?
Once thought of that, then remembered some of the devices have inconsistent reaction times. Like the TV, which like I said can't switch inputs on a single press. No, you have to press a button, press up and/or down a few times (and it sometimes doesn't react), then press ENTER when it's just right before it overshoots.
Slim TV has no top to speak of, and it's on a wall mount so nowhere else to put it. Several units on top of each other mean you can't put the right remote on top of the right thing (beside is not an option, either: too narrow a shelf). TV remote is required because the amp doesn't have unified output (still need to switch to component to use the one device that can ONLY use component, for example, instead of HDMI).
"Apply sticky labels for adding identifying information. And put a small "flag" of interestingly and distinctively coloured or patterned tape around the cable. With writing on the coloured tape, identifying the matching device."
Which is a fat lot of help since you frequently have to snake your arm and figure everything out by Braille.
Perhaps because the truth lies somewhere in between. Distribution is a tug-of-war between different transport costs. Too small an area and like you say you have goods scattered all over the place; however, too LARGE an area and you end up with lengthy in and/or out transportation costs as you reach too far. It's really quite complicated as you try to optimize the two legs of your distribution chain: the incoming and the outgoing. That's why locally-sourced products are a boon (they reduce the incoming transportation costs) as is location close to population centers (to reduce and average out the outgoing costs).
systemd-free Devuan hits stable 1.0.0 status
Except when it comes to modern sound renderers, that's TOO simple. Too raw. It's basically exclusive mode to a sound device, and we left that kind of sound world back in the 90's. You're going to need some kind of audio compositing layer on top of OSS to handle the more intricate matters of multiple streams, multiple targets, and so on. If PulseAudio isn't to everyone's liking, then we need an alternative.
"Would you move into a house that only had one electrical outlet in the kitchen?"
If you REALLY need additional ports, they would respond, "Get a powered hub!" And to use your kitchen analogy, you would not believe how many places I've seen using multi-plug orange extension cords strewn about the place...yet they STILL pass inspection.
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