"If... you were Holder and Obama, what sort of deal would you try to strike with everybody's favorite secrets-leaker?"

I'd offer him pardon on almost everything, leaving only a trivial (1-2 months) jail sentence left over. Then I'd have him murdered while he was in prison.

The intelligence community is happy because I've sent a clear message of what happens to whistleblowers, and I can continue to play innocent and act pro-whistleblower as I have for ages, letting accusations of it being an assassination fade into conspiracy theory while most of my voting base continues to ignore the problem or is glad I got rid of another "terrorist lover". Seriously, what are the pro-privacy advocates going to do? Vote against me on this issue by voting for a Republican who wants to peek into their bedrooms to make sure there's no sinning going on? Ha!

What? It's not what I personally want to see done, but then I'm not hypocritical, power-hungry, interest-beholden, and immoral enough to ever want to be President. If I were President, obviously that would not be the case.

You do NOT want to fiddle with white powder on airport, nor do you want to carry a bit of it on you when travelling.

Oh come on.

This is about someone who just could not put down recoding device in enviroment in which it is big issue. And tries to use novelty of said device to his advantage.

Police, etc... they are used to being recorded on cellphones or dash cams or security cameras or by eyewitnesses. This is nothing new for them. They do dislike it - but everyone does.

There is another side of coin: The more footage of every person there is, the more opportunities you have to find something incriminating or blackmail worthy. I am not afraid of cops getting free pass on some assaults.

I am afraid of future where anyones life is easily pieced together from footage gathered from hundreds/thousands walking cameras, analyzed for weaknesses and exploited. Anytime you run afoul of little pointless law, anytime you do something that can easily be taken out of context to villify you, any secret you might want to keep secret.

That is future "glassholes" are working to bring and it is freaking nightmare.

I am not afraid of cop dropping "resisted" or "was unccoperative" on me, I am afraid of some nice man visiting me with dosier on my life and explaining dozen different ways they can easily ruin various parts of it if I will not cooperate or if I will resist.

And if you pass real thing off as a joke?

People bearing the cost will be dead victims. Good luck with that.

How much time has passed since marathon bombings, pray tell? I kinda wish you were in charge, recieved warning and ignored it as you suggest is such good idea.

When you are in charge, rational thing to do is to take threat seriously amd act on it.

Why? Because if you are wrong about it being hoax, you are the one who has been responsible for preventing any and all deaths or injuries related to bomb going off.

Your life would be instantly ruined - you failed to do your job and people died. Media and Internet would make sure everyone knows for year (up untill your deaths).

Best thing to do is to do your job properly and when someone tries to abuse that, kick the fucker in the nuts enough so that it is not worth it for him.

Did you not go to high school?

There are thousands of jet aircraft in the air above the U.S. at any given time. There are satellites taking pictures of my house, cameras on many stoplights, in every police car and on everyone's phone. Dozens of planes overfly my house daily on takeoff or landing approaches. I don't see that delivery drones erode my privacy any more.

As for the capability, I bet it could use some refining, but in our lifetimes we're going to see automated flying become more prevalent. Already pilots of modern planes going to/from large airports don't *have* to do much. They can punch a few buttons, turn a few dials and the computer can perform takeoff, level flight, maneuvering and landing all automatically, and more smoothly than most pilots. If you have a bumpy landing it's probably because the first officer wanted some practice. I figure increasingly the pilot will be there just to make the passengers feel good, and in 10-20 more years you can put a flight attendant there instead and save some money on the pilot training. I don't know how long it will take for people to knowingly and willingly ride drones, though.

Hmm, I'm losing my steam and getting distracted. Point is, stop freaking out over delivery drones. They won't be 100% everywhere all at once, and fuck yeah I'd take a pizza from one.

It's comin' right at us!

Ah, some of the stuff is coming back to me now. I audited declarations and filled out Form 390 Part A'a and Part B's and ensured dangerous goods were loaded safely. For example, you can't put too much dry ice on a plane lest it suffocate the pilots, and really we kept it out of the main cabin, anyway. Some classes of goods couldn't be placed near others, and there were limits on amounts per vehicle.

It seems like there were three Radioactive classifications, and we didn't transport the most intense one. I don't think it was required to keep the radioactive stuff away from the pilots, but we did it anyway because pilots are whiny pansies. Same with infectious agents.

It's all in Title 49 CFR for U.S. domestic transport, and IATA publishes international regulations.

But that was over 20 years ago I did this stuff.

USDOT requires hazardous materials being transported to be marked. One of many reasons is that if there is an accident first responders are alerted to the presences of hazardous material and can take the correct action. For example, you don't want to hose down a shipment of alkali metals with water if the container catches fire. I used to audit hazmat paperwork for aircraft and trucks. I don't recall the amounts, but radioactive materials had to be declared, and there were handling restrictions and limits on the amounts.

I find it somewhat unlikely that there are trucks full of radioactive stuff secretly roving unmarked about the U.S. streets.

OTOH, I know nothing about Mexico's hazmat regulations.

IDE:

Eventually, projects get complex and you do need ide not to tame language but to keep being productive without having to cross check documentation of different modules. But have fun managing to write ~150 entities relating project in plain text.

Verbosity:

1-line-in-20 is usually just lack of knowledge of how to do something right in one language paired abuse of highly specialized construct in another.

I have seen people complain how terrible i.e. (regxex, xml, etc.) is in java, but their problem was solved by single utility method call instead of about 15 lines of usage of raw engine.

Eventually you will need to start using raw engive anyway when you need advanced features - and then oneliners end everywhere.

Also, in my experience those line savers are inconsequential - "Hip" oneliners generally solve non-problems, they only make it look "Clever".

And "Clever" or "Hip" code is major pain to support once hype dries up.

I'm sorry, are you talking about healthcare.gov or slashdot.org here?

Some years ago I was listening to a radio program where they mentioned some company in Australia(?) planning to dismantle the urban POTS and replace it with something newer. But the reasoning wasn't just for upgrading: It was because they couldn't get the parts anymore.

Some of the manufacturers had stopped making the relays and whatnot that the POTS used, so the options were to convert to a new set of POTS hardware (an expensive Red Queen's race), get a huge order of compatible components custom-made (ditto), or upgrade-and-cannibalize the urban network to get them enough parts to maintain the rural POTS for another couple of decades and hope the entire system could be upgraded before they emptied their supply.

But this is not even technology.

This is fashion statement as form matters more than function.

That is a bit anti-nerdy.

Tyrell: Would you... like to be upgraded?
Batty: I had in mind something a little more radical.
Tyrell: What... what seems to be the problem?
Batty: Death.
Tyrell: Death; ah, well that's a little out of my jurisdiction. You...
Batty: I want more life!