Hell there was a case where police raided a home looking for someone who wasn't even there. In the process tossed a flashbang in a kids crib....then disclaimed all responsibility and said it might even lead to charges against the...PERSON WHO WASN'T THERE!

Thats right, if the police have reason to suspect you of something, they are of the opinion its your fault they are investigating and you are responsible for any harm they cause to anyone else by their own actions.

> (a) it must be possible to determine whether someone's actions are actively harming another person and (b) that
> unless "privacy violation" equals "active harm", and it doesn't, any privacy violation is allowed.

Except that assumes that the law is always correct. Privacy is, fundamentally, a restriction on the reach of the law; an a necessary and right one. Why, not too long ago privacy was the best defense homosexuals had from persecution.

Society has always been full of people who disagree with the law, and break it to little consequence. Why shouldn't they? The law is just a few rules written by aristocrats....it needs serious limits on its reach, more so than we have.

Um I said something about attackers? You responding to the right comment? I mean I agree there are so vanishingly few real terrorists that even 36 a year would be a massive overstatement...agreed. However, those tiny vanishing few, those tiny number who do exist....they plan, and can and will tailor their plans to whatever security measures are in place.

So yes its true, this will prevent a terrorist from using a phone shell which has been simply hollowed out as a bomb. However, it will ONLY do that because, in the highly unlikely event that anyone was actually planning to do that, they would now revise their plan....slightly.....

So its a measure which is unlikely to be effective against a scenario which is unlikely to happen.

You miss my point, I say no two Christians even have the same imaginary friend, since each of them has an independent imagination in which to instantiate their friend.

I mean yes, you can give two kids the same model of barbie doll, but if one cuts the hair on theirs, the other will not have short hair, they may be the same class of doll, but they are not the same doll.

You are missing my point though, finding the best path is not actually required. Not only that but the game itself has mechanics by which paths are made and points that might need to be pathed to are created. Paths could be pregenerated as the map is dug out and items built within it, individuals could pick from pre-defined paths and then follow them.

A few examples of where this is actually better....

Currently lets say a dwarf plans to go down hallways A B and C to D. But he could go A B E D instead. Now as he enters B, a door in C is locked, dissallowing him to move C to D.

Under a "I path find every step" scenario, He immediately starts moving towards E and then D. This is highly unrealistic unless they all have walkie-talkies, but then, it "works" for invaders too.

Now under a less rigid scenario, maybe he chooses A B C D. Then gets all the way to C and sees the path is blocked, so he turns around and repaths. It is less efficient but more realistic, and potentially requires less expensive pathing.

No they each imagine a different imaginary man in the sky, but their stories all have common origin so they pretend he actually exists and thus is a single being. Far more accurate that way.

Sure but with a little cleverness I think the problem can be simplified since the same paths are going to be used a lot with significant overlap and repetition. It could even lead to more realistic behaviour. Real creatures don't do mathametical best path finding from a real map, they choose from amongst routes they know weighted by some hueristics, then if one of them fails, try to adjust. Its potentially a much simpler problem. It would mean less efficiency in situations where a prefered path ends up not being accessible....but thats normal isn't it? I have that problem all the time when streets get closed for maintenance.

This is actually pretty unlikely. People hate shopping for auto insurance. I know people who sell it for a living, and they tell me that many people don't even know the details of their insurance and have just had the same one for years, even when they could save money by switching to another agency.

Generally, when insurance companies raise someones prices, they just pay it. You may be the exception, of course, but, most people don't shop around much.

I can't answer that question since I didn't actually make that assumption, I was responding to it.

Why would you assume any part of the phone is suspect? People carry phones, including discharged ones all the time. there is nothing the least bit suspect about a phone, even one that is discharged.

Frankly, a bomb can be hidden anywhere, including inside your anus, so clearly anyone with an anus needs their inspected visually. In fact, any scar on a persons body could be where a bomb was inserted surgically....so full body searches must be conducted on everyone, and all scars opened up or medically imaged to show that there is no device inside....anytime a device is found, it must be disassembled to prove it really is a medical device, and not simply marked "pace maker" and placed next to someones heart.

Not sure why people keep brinigng this up. Saying this is saying that it is the passengers responsibility to carry a charged device; when no such responsibility exists elsewhere; and there is no real justification for. Whether or not it would be easy to comply is not relevant, many people will, for one reason or another, forget, regardless of how easy you think it may have been for them to comply without any knowledge or consideration of their life up to that point.

Well its apparently not entirely broken, probably just out of calibration.

You are correct, it was a response to the suggestion in the previous post, not the story. The TSA is threatening extra screening, not simple battery confiscation, as the previous post had suggested.

> Does the TSA expect that most of their enemies are as dumb as they are

No, they expect the public will not listen to their enemies about how stupid it all is. They are not worried about their enemies because they already won and the public will fund whatever staffing levels they can justify.

To think that the TSAs real enemies are terrorists is laughable, they are a theater troupe doing security plays. Their enemy is the guy calling them out for being actors.

Right because having your fucking phone die at the airport isn't inconvenient enough; you clearly are not having a bad enough day that you can't easily call people when you reach your destination, or get notices about flight delays on your way to the airport....no.... you need to lose your battery too! Another $50 on your trip asshole for doing something boneheaded that only ever was a problem for you before now.

Certainly there are so vanishingly few legitimate reasons a persons phone would be discharged.... that there wont be too many false positives with this....never. I am sure they will mostly only inconvinence terrorists, and not, so many people as to justify maybe....a full time position or two at each airport.

Oh totally but honestly the problem is just that.... expectations. People come to expect cars stop, hell I saw someone walk out into the crosswalk as I, in my car, was already crossing it....she was face down in her smart phone....you should have seen the look on her face when she suddenly looked up and saw that she almost walked right into the side of a moving car.

Frankly, when I took drivers ed, the instructor was an off duty cop who had gone on an exchange program to Russia. He was telling us that their law worked differently.... cars take a lot more energy to stop than pedestrians and have a much longer stopping distance, so they have right of way. I kind of like that.