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LAN_403

HV Enthusiast

Fri Jan 02 2009, 06:33PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Geesh. McCarthyism all over again. This country is really getting out of control.

rp181

Fri Jan 02 2009, 06:35PM

Registered Member #1062 Joined: Tue Oct 16 2007, 02:01AM
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Posts: 1529

=/ i blame the people who complained about them more than the FBI.

HV Enthusiast

Fri Jan 02 2009, 07:15PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

rp181 wrote ...

=/ i blame the people who complained about them more than the FBI.

As i said, "this country." Too much paranoia.

aonomus

Fri Jan 02 2009, 09:40PM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

This previous summer, I had to travel to Hong Kong to attend a funeral, and the only flight that we could get in the timeframe was one that connected through the US. I honestly didn't have any issues, however I personally will avoid travelling through US connected flights simply because one or 2 of the passengers must have been held up for security.... and the plane departure was delayed a good half hour....

The last time I went across the border to shop in Buffalo, they asked me to submit my laptop for 'screening', its a *land* border crossing which makes no sense other than for them to data mine for personal information. Fortunately I ninjabooted to ubuntu and the agents had no idea what to do :D

uzzors2k

Fri Jan 02 2009, 10:57PM

Registered Member #95 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308

I always try to avoid the states when going to or fro Canada. Always delays, poor service and overly strict security preformed by incompetent airline workers. Once we were leaving from Winnipeg, Manitoba headed for Chicago on our way through to Oslo. Since we used Norwegian passports they sent us through a special line (we were the only ones in it) to check through all our baggage and smell our shoes. Seriously, they had some lady with latex gloves smelling and prying through our shoes while a couple of guys watching were chuckling. (It was very hot that day and I had been wearing the shoes for 4 hours already.) And that was before boarding to leave Winnipeg. Like wtf, heading to Norway and stopping through nowhere-important, and we face the most strict security I've ever encountered in the dozen over seas flights I've been on. And to top it off I was able to smuggle a Venus Flytrap wrapped in a sweater the whole way through!

aonomus

Sat Jan 03 2009, 12:45AM

Registered Member #1497 Joined: Thu May 22 2008, 05:24AM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 801

Looks like its made /.

Also they received a refund and apology:

teslacoolguy

Sat Jan 03 2009, 06:52PM

Registered Member #1107 Joined: Thu Nov 08 2007, 10:09PM
Location:
Posts: 792

heh, i got a good one for you. Me, my parents and my grandparents were coming from italy this spring and we transfered planes in Boston. We had to go through securityy again and my grandfather who is 84 was held up in security for a while because they coulden't find what kept beeping. After about 15 minutes of searching him it was a couple euro's in a inside pocket in his pants. what the saddest part is, is they treated him like a absolute criminal trying to smuggle something on the plane. I mean come on he's 84 years old. This article

and im sure some of you have seen it before is another very good example of how out of control things are getting. It's also the reason that i dont take ANY homemade circuits on the plane with me.

Dr. Drone

Sat Jan 03 2009, 07:29PM

Registered Member #290 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 08:24PM
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Posts: 1673

Cesiumsponge

Sat Feb 07 2009, 02:25AM

Registered Member #397 Joined: Wed Apr 19 2006, 12:56AM
Location: Western Washington
Posts: 125

I have flown to Hong Kong and China over a dozen times. Security there is more obvious, and more competent. TSA agents here don't know their own regulations. They refused to let my dad take a jar of locally produced, sealed, organic honey for an interstate flight because it was "suspicious". My uncle's laptop was scanned four times through the x-ray. They don't know firearm regulations. Everyone has a TSA horror story. US domestic flights have old stewardesses, you get 4 peanuts in a bag, 15 pieces of ice with a teaspoon of drink, and no customer service.

Security detail at the HK international airport involves obvious olive uniforms and MP5s. My uncle was also in the Royal Hong Kong Regiment and served in the security industry for decades, including detail at the exclusive The Penninsula hotel, which is one of the highest regarded hotels in the world.

The fact that we're justifying incompetent security by "well we're better than THIS place here" does not help your own cause. It's like saying "Guantanamo Bay isn't that bad. At least it's not like Auschitwz!"

Hon1nbo

Sat Feb 07 2009, 03:43AM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

LINK

in the US, some MIT Student decided to wear a homemade blinky LED shirt to welcome someone back when she picked him up from the terminal... she did the circuit on a breadboard and glued it to her shirt (from other reports I have seen)... others at the airport did not take it very well... they were prosecuting her for "creating a hoax" but I don't know how it ended...

and the article had a reference I saw multiple stories on, an advertising company that used "brute force methods" decided to make battery powered lite-brites of characters from Cartoon Network shows (the adult swim ones), and created a huge bomb scare...

But while airports paronoia is something that I have gotten used too, I still cannot believe the chaos coming to science and technology classes in the US... in some High School chemistry labs, they don't have chemicals, bunsen burners, or anything... and they make you put on safety goggles to inflate a balloon that only the instructor is allowed to pop!
They pass laws that supposedly damages illegal drug production (like the law in Texas that states that no one, that is not an educational or industrial/business entity, may buy laboratory glassware without filling out, sending, and having granted an application for each piece of glassware... do these lawmakers not understand that making the glassware illegal does nothing, as you can just get the stuff off of eBay or some other similar place... actually, I am near positive that at least one major supply company that serves Texas sells it without checking... it does NOT work! It only places difficulty on those who have legitimate purposes, because if the police were to raid our houses under such suspicions, we would have the paper work, but if they raided an actual drug lab why would the people making it bother if they didn't want their equipment to be found? (funny little detail: the initial version of the law was so vague, that it technically outlawed the Mr. Coffee Machines in everyone of their offices lol)

Some blame the schools for not being educational enough, others say that all science is dangerous, but I can bet that the people who made it impossible for someone to get a hold on science project parts, anything from lasers to chemicals to even simple beakers, has some false misconception about what they claim to understand, and refuse to properly understand it either because they are afraid, are bad at science, or want to seem like they are doing something important by restraining proper education

Here's a real situation, and it apparently has already taken effect in current generations, if someone is never introduced to something that might normally be dangerous in a controlled environment, like Bunsen Burners, then in later life they do things like repetitively try to manually light a propane grill over the course of a minute, with the lid down (but with the air hole that almost all grill covers have)... now, if someone had taken an even semi-in depth Chemistry course, they would have known just how hard it can be to light a gas on first try, and to stop, turn the gas off, let the gas dissipate, then try again... I know someone who did not know that information in practice (just being told it will not give someone the experience of knowing "hmm... I have tried to light this for too long, better wait.") and that person had some facial hair removed... not the best example, but an accurate one

who here can honestly say that they would know what to do for their own safety by only being told what to do? I assume not many. think about it: fire/tornado drills, driving safety lessons by driving with an instructor, CPR practice on a dummy, cops have to learn to safely use a taser by being tasered, and there are many more... only first hand experience can properly train someone..

many people who do not have the good fortune of a competent chem class, as many public schools are rapidly losing in the US, then not only is this country going to sink deeper into the charts of international education, but many people who will be leaving into a heavily science based economy (and not everyone goes into something like retail or office type business, but even they should know some basic chem, such as in retail if there is a vapor coming from a bottle of Muriatic Acid, people who walk by have instant irritation in nose, and the seal is damaged, Get Help! (NOTE: I was the person who noticed that happen... never saw those bottles again at that store, likely because the person assumed all of the bottles were bad and not just the one with the damaged seal...)

I admit, I ranted for quite a long time, which I sometimes tend to do on such topics when someone asks me something like if I will get arrested by feds for my chemical experiments (and when they just read labels for what may be the most commonly known things in the field of chemistry, at the middle school level... if that even exists anymore), but if anyone disagrees, please feel free to speak...

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