Idiocy vs Common Sense
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Speaking of common sense: a) there are no significant results of those investigations, no arrests, no gurantees it won't happen again (how could they really, it's impossible) b) Do you really believe that a post office clerk asking people *who bring mail up to the counter* if there is any liquid in the envelope constitutes even a remotely realistic security measure of *any* kind? (If so I have a bridge you might be interested in buying) That's a clear absurdity worth laughing at in my not so humble opinion c) Approximately 40,000 people a year die in automobile related accidents, 5 people died from Anthrax in that incident, I choose to not be one of those people who are "dead at 25 and buried at 75" as the old saying goes. I understand you are living in what is rapidly becoming a fear based economy, something easy to see from the outside but perhaps not so easy to see from the inside, but that is no reason to succumb to it, life is a fatal condition, no one gets out of it alive, a little humor and acceptance that there is really nothing in the end that can gurantee anyone's safety 100% goes a long way. More people die each year from worry than from anthrax or lightning strikes or airplane crashes etc. Remember when governments felt responsible to reassure their populace? Not make them afraid? "The only thing we have to fear is fear it'self - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." ---- FDR - First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 The postal clerk in the post is a visible sign of a very old political tactic "We must be seen to be doing something", not actually doing anything realistic, just being seen to be doing something. It's funny and sad all at the same time, but more funny than sad.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
It's along the lines of 'did you pack this bag yourself?' at airport check-in. Everyone knows by now that answering 'no' leads to a long delay while they search it. And a terrorist may well have packed the bomb into the bag themselves anyway, so can quite honestly answer 'yes'. It's security theatre.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
It's along the lines of 'did you pack this bag yourself?' at airport check-in. Everyone knows by now that answering 'no' leads to a long delay while they search it. And a terrorist may well have packed the bomb into the bag themselves anyway, so can quite honestly answer 'yes'. It's security theatre.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991 -
Speaking of common sense: a) there are no significant results of those investigations, no arrests, no gurantees it won't happen again (how could they really, it's impossible) b) Do you really believe that a post office clerk asking people *who bring mail up to the counter* if there is any liquid in the envelope constitutes even a remotely realistic security measure of *any* kind? (If so I have a bridge you might be interested in buying) That's a clear absurdity worth laughing at in my not so humble opinion c) Approximately 40,000 people a year die in automobile related accidents, 5 people died from Anthrax in that incident, I choose to not be one of those people who are "dead at 25 and buried at 75" as the old saying goes. I understand you are living in what is rapidly becoming a fear based economy, something easy to see from the outside but perhaps not so easy to see from the inside, but that is no reason to succumb to it, life is a fatal condition, no one gets out of it alive, a little humor and acceptance that there is really nothing in the end that can gurantee anyone's safety 100% goes a long way. More people die each year from worry than from anthrax or lightning strikes or airplane crashes etc. Remember when governments felt responsible to reassure their populace? Not make them afraid? "The only thing we have to fear is fear it'self - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." ---- FDR - First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 The postal clerk in the post is a visible sign of a very old political tactic "We must be seen to be doing something", not actually doing anything realistic, just being seen to be doing something. It's funny and sad all at the same time, but more funny than sad.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
John Cardinal wrote:
that a post office clerk asking people *who bring mail up to the counter* if there is any liquid in the envelope constitutes even a remotely realistic security measure of *any* kind?
Actually it does, as small as it is. The potential for disaster in those investigations was revealed to be exceedingly high. Much higher than the person who did that realized, luckily for all of us. Yes, asking seems silly. But it is actually something more than you would believe. I make light of it also primarily because of the chances of catching someone. However, it is true that more criminals are caught in stupid things like traffic accidents and speeding. Primarily because the person knows they were doing something wrong and the risks, and adrenaline from stress pushes them too hard to do something. This ignores the dedicated, the calm "believer" who absolutely believes they are doing something right. However, to lie you give signals, when you know you are lying. Although I bet half the individuals at the post office ignore the training, they get it the same as other groups. If they believe you are lying they can and will ask you more questions. If you continue to get more nerveous, they will reject your mail or call someone. And yes, joking about it is a common, a VERY common method of lying. Instead of lying, you tell the truth, but tell it as a joke hoping to be ignored. They are told specifically to ALWAYS accept a joke as truth. Had the postal workers not ignored their training, the letter would have been refused and authorities notified of a possible incident. I used to joke about the border patrol agents who ask if you are a citizen. It seems silly, and I travel through the checkpoints often. But when I went up for my grandfather's funeral, they asked, and my responses were verbally acceptable, but too slow. They asked more questions, the responses were verbally okay again but secondary responses were not what they would have expected. I got pulled out of line and investigated in detail. When the commanding officer in questioning me in more detail found out I was going up for a funeral, and that this person was the man who raised me, equivalent emotional loss of a father, he stopped the search and sent me on my way. I had triggered their warnings because my verbal responses were 100% acceptable in words, but not in tone and secondary action. Something was amiss, they had to find out what. This is how most of the drug busts at the check p
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I went to the post office to drop off regular white envelope mail which it had 3 pieces of paper. The post cleric felt the envelope from different spots and asked me the regualr "any thing liquid, fragile, hazardous, perishable ....";P. I decided to take it light and joked by saying "Yea! it has liquid":confused: now this is flat envelope and he felt it there is no plastic in it. He freaked out and told me I can not mail it. I told him I was kidding and the second cleric reminded me I am not suppose to joke. I asked him, "how in the world, could I put liquid in the envelope with no plastic in it?" :omg: Then there is this supermarket I frequently visit. Usually I like to take the self-check-out lane and do it by my self. It is all automated and I pay using my credit card. One day I decided to go to a cashier. The cashier want to see my ID and verify my signature. After his was done his verification, I asked the manager "who verifies the card and the signature in the self-check-out lane?":confused: Look, I am not against policy or procedure. But common sense should be rule #1, or is it?
/* I can C */ // or !C Yusuf
I hate it when that sort of thing happens....and (annoyingly) one happened today. Beth and I are travelling to Cologne at the end of next week for the European Software Conference[^], and we've not got around to booking the flights until today (no biggie; it's a short hop). The tricky bit is that we need to take three laptops with us (one of them a hulking great widescreen beast to run a rolling demo on). At first glance, no problem...carry one each as hand luggage (you're allowed one bag on UK flights) and check the other into the hold in a (very) padded case with the rest of the luggage. Easy. No go. Easyjet informed me (after 15 mins of fruitless chasing around their crappy "customer service" line) that they have a policy of not allowing any electrical goods to be checked into the aircraft hold. Not even with the battery removed. Given that and the one bad hand luggage restriction, the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine. The end result? It will cost twice as much, but we're going by EuroStar instead. Much more civilised...:cool:
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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I hate it when that sort of thing happens....and (annoyingly) one happened today. Beth and I are travelling to Cologne at the end of next week for the European Software Conference[^], and we've not got around to booking the flights until today (no biggie; it's a short hop). The tricky bit is that we need to take three laptops with us (one of them a hulking great widescreen beast to run a rolling demo on). At first glance, no problem...carry one each as hand luggage (you're allowed one bag on UK flights) and check the other into the hold in a (very) padded case with the rest of the luggage. Easy. No go. Easyjet informed me (after 15 mins of fruitless chasing around their crappy "customer service" line) that they have a policy of not allowing any electrical goods to be checked into the aircraft hold. Not even with the battery removed. Given that and the one bad hand luggage restriction, the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine. The end result? It will cost twice as much, but we're going by EuroStar instead. Much more civilised...:cool:
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine.
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it). We Fed-Ex our electronics so they don't need to be carried. This also means we can take our big 32 to 52 inch plasma screens to demos by shipping them ahead of the flight. We generally ship one computer, full sized, and carry on a laptop as backup to important demonstratons/events. I have once been required to fed ex the laptop back from a convention, I forget the reasoning now, it was so long ago. So theoretically this should work for any unit you can't take on the plane. Just mail it. Ironically, if you mail it at the right time, it has an small chance of being sub-contracted as cargo on the same plane you are on. :doh: Even though you can't put it in the hold. :doh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine.
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it). We Fed-Ex our electronics so they don't need to be carried. This also means we can take our big 32 to 52 inch plasma screens to demos by shipping them ahead of the flight. We generally ship one computer, full sized, and carry on a laptop as backup to important demonstratons/events. I have once been required to fed ex the laptop back from a convention, I forget the reasoning now, it was so long ago. So theoretically this should work for any unit you can't take on the plane. Just mail it. Ironically, if you mail it at the right time, it has an small chance of being sub-contracted as cargo on the same plane you are on. :doh: Even though you can't put it in the hold. :doh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it).
Lost as in fell off the back of the truck while going past the drivers house, or lost as in airdropped without a parachute into your parking lot? :laugh:
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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I hate it when that sort of thing happens....and (annoyingly) one happened today. Beth and I are travelling to Cologne at the end of next week for the European Software Conference[^], and we've not got around to booking the flights until today (no biggie; it's a short hop). The tricky bit is that we need to take three laptops with us (one of them a hulking great widescreen beast to run a rolling demo on). At first glance, no problem...carry one each as hand luggage (you're allowed one bag on UK flights) and check the other into the hold in a (very) padded case with the rest of the luggage. Easy. No go. Easyjet informed me (after 15 mins of fruitless chasing around their crappy "customer service" line) that they have a policy of not allowing any electrical goods to be checked into the aircraft hold. Not even with the battery removed. Given that and the one bad hand luggage restriction, the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine. The end result? It will cost twice as much, but we're going by EuroStar instead. Much more civilised...:cool:
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
A potentially cheaper option for next time might be to look for a bag fitted to carry two laptops not just one. I think I've seen them online somewhere but don't have URL handy.
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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El Corazon wrote:
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it).
Lost as in fell off the back of the truck while going past the drivers house, or lost as in airdropped without a parachute into your parking lot? :laugh:
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
dan neely wrote:
or lost as in airdropped without a parachute into your parking lot?
more like that.... though I expect they "punched" it with a forklift. We ship in corner/edge reinforced shipping containers and about 6-8 inches of foam between the front of the container and the contents. So a flat-screen 32" plasma, about 3 inches deep was shipped with about 8 inches of foam front of hte screen, and 7-8 inches behind. The base was slipped into the center of the foam behind the monitor along with the powercord and cables. The foam in front of the screen was uncut, and nothing packed in it. Nice solid packing. The screen returned from Washington DC following (luckily) an important brief. Nothing looked amiss other than some material scrapped off the front of the shipping container near center. The monitor had a star shatter from a point impact at that same spot. How Fed Ex managed to do that is still a mystery. In another instance, two computers were shipped to our ship in San Fran. I arrived to install software on them. They didn't work, none of them powered up, I was on the phone to the ship as I was driving there (hands free), and caught in traffic near one of the tunnels. I asked if there was any sign of damage to the machines. The reply was, no, we bent it all back into place. :wtf: Rack-mountable steel cabinet about 1/4 inch thick, was bent about 2 inches. It took 4 people and a lot of hammering to "put it back in place." I stopped by fry's on the way to the ship and picked up spare parts. I spent the week rebuilding those computers. In that particular case, I do think they air-dropped it to the dock near the ship, without bothering with the parachute. Everything inside was bent from a fairly strong impact event. Unfortunately those computers had been shipped in the vendor cardboard and styrofoam packing.... The boxes looked like they had been routed through Iraq on the way to San Fran. I've since talked to shipping about better packing. However, out of the hundreds of times we have shipped things around the country, two major incidents is not bad. Not sure how many minor incidents were avoided by just decent packing crates.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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A potentially cheaper option for next time might be to look for a bag fitted to carry two laptops not just one. I think I've seen them online somewhere but don't have URL handy.
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
Hi Dan, We looked into that briefly today, but it looked unlikely that they wouldn fit within EasyJet's dimension/weight restrictions for cabbin baggage. We may revisit this approach it in future if the need arises, however.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
the only ways around it I could see would be to leave behind one of the other machines or bring along a third person to carry the demo machine.
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it). We Fed-Ex our electronics so they don't need to be carried. This also means we can take our big 32 to 52 inch plasma screens to demos by shipping them ahead of the flight. We generally ship one computer, full sized, and carry on a laptop as backup to important demonstratons/events. I have once been required to fed ex the laptop back from a convention, I forget the reasoning now, it was so long ago. So theoretically this should work for any unit you can't take on the plane. Just mail it. Ironically, if you mail it at the right time, it has an small chance of being sub-contracted as cargo on the same plane you are on. :doh: Even though you can't put it in the hold. :doh:
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
There is another method. We have used it several times, though it resulted in the loss of a screen once (I still haven't figured out how they managed it). We Fed-Ex our electronics so they don't need to be carried.
We actually got a quote for doing exactly that today. However, on reflection we decided we'd rather not have the additional complexity when we could just hop on the train instead. ;) The next time we have to do it, it's a method we'll certainly consider.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"