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Comment Re:Where are the buggy whip dealers? (Score 1) 544

But the data was improperly restricted to people with experience with both slideout keyboards and virtual keyboards. You can't say anything about the general phone population with this restriction in place.

Why is this a big deal?

...

I would assume that most people have had experience with more than one phone and probably most people
have considered a physical keyboard at some point. The ones who have actually bought them are probably
more likely to be heavy typers/texters so that biases it a little bit but if 30% of the population...

The first half of your second paragraph shows why it's a big deal. In order to make any sense out of the numbers we have to know how many people have owned slide out keyboards (not just physical keyboards in general) vs the total population, and we don't.

Saying 20% of people who have tried both prefer pepsi over coke makes alot
more sense that saying 95% of people who have tried pepsi like it.

Neither of these answers the question of the viability of the market, so they are both equally poor choices if that is what you are looking for.

There might just be too small of market for people who type/text alot and also are willing to pay for an
expensive phone

I can agree with this.

Comment Re:Oh please. . . (Score 1) 183

You seem to think that Pathfinder Society is Pathfinder. That's like saying the RPGA is D&D. Pathfinder as a system can be run any number of ways by any number of GMs, like many other RPGs. However, it may be that you've not met a Pathfinder GM that will run the game like a sandbox, which it sounds like you prefer.

Now, given your other comments, Pathfinder has a similar feel to 3.5 and 4th so you probably wouldn't like it on those grounds.

Comment Re:Diabetic and Cancer patient - sign me up (Score 1) 253

A bunch of big-pharma executives are plowing their hookers extra hard tonight. A "cure" that you have to keep taking for the rest of your life, for a relatively common disease. If anything, they are slightly worried the tip of their penis will pop off.

Yay! It's the crazy person who believes in crazy things. Next up, vaccines don't cure anything. They're a method of mind control, and that's why research takes forevar!

I am hoping that this drug does work. If it does, then because of U.S. drug patents it will be relatively expensive for the foreseeable future. It has the potential to be the next Viagra, a drug that has to be taken frequently and is very common. Which, would be a sincere reason to celebrate for the executives of the company that brought it to market, no conspiracy/craziness required.

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1) 702

Are you arguing that they can keep their security procedures static because the results are good enough?

Yes, there are many sayings about both corner cases and not fixing what isn't broken. Do you honestly think we can improve on a rate of 6-9's? Do you honestly believe the routine humiliation and violations are worth it?

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1) 702

How effective does it need to be for you? 1%, 10%, 90%? There aren't numbers on how effective the screening is, but there are numbers on flights and bombings (and that's all bombs, not just shoe bombs of which there was one). Roughly 0.00005% (about 10 in 19 million) of all flights (where part of the flight lands in the US) are at risk of bombing annually.

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1) 702

This source seems to think differently. In either event, explosives aren't something you really want passengers to have, and multiple passengers could have multiple shoes. Are you seriously suggesting that they not screen shoes now?

The linked source agrees with me, 50g would not be enough to do serious damage, you need to have 100g to do serious damage to a car, which (for explosives as opposed to impact) is not much stronger than an airplane fuselage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/854...

Being required to check your own bag is OK. Although some of the searches bags are subject to is questionable, but that's a slightly different topic.

Shoe screening has never been acceptable, especially because it's ineffective.

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1) 702

If the measures were actually successful, the TSA should be tooting it's own horn. From what I can tell all of the bombing plots in the 2000s were avoided by either misfires or security measures in place since the mid 90s. Also 50g of PETN in a shoe bomb would have been ineffective even if it had detonated.

Comment Re:Christmas is coming early this year (Score 1, Insightful) 702

So putting "non-existent" as a criteria means that you will always fail.

That is exactly my point. Security does not have to be perfect to be valuable.

And you will never know if the money being spent is not being wasted because there incidents are so rare already.

There are many places where traditional methods of statistical research will fail. This is one of them. Instead we have to learn from our experience. For instance: some incompetent people were recruited to light bombs in their shoes - now shoes go through the x-ray machine. People found a way to mix the explosives behind security - now we can't have substantial amounts of liquids. People hijacked airliners with box cutters - now we have reinforced doors and pocket knife restrictions.

Now I'll concede that it is entirely possible that this latest regulation is based upon some scenario in some bureaucrat's mind. It is also possible that, like the liquids regulation, it is done for a perfectly good reason. Only time will tell.

None of the regulations you cited are actually reasonable. The vanishingly small amount of security we gained is not worth the large amount of freedom we've given up for it.

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