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Comment Re:vs gasoline cars (Score 1) 388

Separate sewers are much better from an environmental point of view because they don't wastefully put surface water through the sewage treatment system and are much less likely to end up releasing raw sewage during storms but are rather hard to retrofit.

Except that a separate system means you have twice as many underground pipes to build and maintain.

Comment Re:vs gasoline cars (Score 1) 388

Gasoline doesn't burst into flames the second it touches air, you know. The vast majority of tank punctures in gasoline/diesel vehicles end with an empty tank and a stinky mess on the road.

Leaking diesel is very hard to ignite (so is aviation turbine fuel). They tried this on Mythbusters. Thery've also tried multiple times to create fuel tank explosions. Even gasoline typically only burns as a gas mixed with air. (With the resulting radiant heat tending to help boil any nearby which is in its liquid state.) One thing fuel leaks are good at is damaging asphalt road surfaces.

Comment Re:Great idea! Let's keep it going: (Score 1) 266

A new California law will require local bars to eliminate any alcohol consumed by minors from their bodies on demand. Supporters say this new law will reduce the amount of drunk-driving and poor decisions made by drunk minors. It might help them avoid personal and work-related problems.

Maybe a simpler option would be only to allow adults to drive.

Comment Re:Not as stupid as it sounds (Score 1) 266

"Googeling" somebody is not as easy as you make it sound. It already requires careful checks to make sure you have the right person and it requires interpretation by experienced experts.

It also depends on how common a name someone has. If they have a very common name it can be difficult finding the right person at all.
This has been an issue even since the invention of the telephone directory. With the added complication that the distribution of names of telephone subscribers, Facebook users, "Tweeters", etc need not be that of the general population.

Comment Re:Riiiiight. This will be effective, no doubt. (Score 1) 266

The open internet does not forget widely shared information. Closed, walled-garden systems such as facebook are capable of forgetting.
Don't believe me? Lets test it. I will delete a picture from facebook in the next ten minutes. Try and recover it.


Are you issuing that challenge to Facebook and/or NSA? Since Facebook is a closed system only a few people have any way of knowing what might happen when a user tries to "delete" something. (Even if this differs depending on user attributes...)

Comment Re:Thin edge of the wedge! (Score 1) 266

The better question is "How do you scrub something off the Internet?" Barbra Streisand wants to know...

The NSA wants to be sure they can collect all "tried to erase this" metadata. (Together with the original data in the unlikely event that Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc will actually really delete it.)

Comment Re:Identify it (Score 1) 491

Our Founders (and for that matter, the Supreme Court) acknowledged that a Democratic form of government is not possible without free and anonymous speech, and anonymous voting.

Democracy, as invented in classical Athens, does not require any kind of voting. Government using elected representatives appears to be a Roman invention.

Comment Re:Identify it (Score 1) 491

Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.

You'd first need a clear definition of what a "real name" actually is. Even when someone uses one name in all contexts this need not be the same as their "birth name" or "legal name". Someone's legal name may in some cases be a "pseudonym" anyway.
It is also a false assumption that everyone has exactly one legal (or even birth) name. IIRC there's a site which debunks a rather large list of common assumptions about names which are simply wrong. Incorrect assumptions about names have been important ever since people started using computers to store names...

Comment Re:For those of you that don't RTFA... (Score 1) 378

And yet, it still then didn't add up to a statistically significant enough threat to bother with additional security.
Simple.... all those grenades....0 of them in the hands of terrorists. That should tell you this is a stupid issue.


Or possibly some are in the hands of terrorists who's only interests in planes is as a means of transport.

Comment Re:Traffic Intercept and VPN (Score 1) 251

When AT&T was providing cable Internet to me, there was a time when my IPSEC VPN did not work. The VPN apparently connected, but data traffic never made it though. Other people complained, but AT&T claimed they were doing nothing to VPNs. Using tcpdump at both ends, I could see that the media (udp/500) was not getting though while the AH and ESP packets (required to set up the connection) were getting though. Clearly AT&T was blocking VPNs, but in such a way that it would not be obvious to the average user what was wrong. Pure evil.

Or they blocked everything unless they knew it was needed. Possibly only at one (or a few points) in their network.
e.g. they only let IP protocols 1, 6 & 17 through because someone didn't realise the other 253 were perfectly valid. Even though many which are assigned are, in practice, hardly ever used.

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