Forrest Mimms On Modern Air Travel With a Bag Full of Electronics 169
Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics; he writes at Make about his experiences, both before and after 2001. A relevant slice:
After police were called when I was going through security at the San Antonio International Airport and after major problems going through security in Kona, Hawaii, I finally realized the obvious: Most people who don’t make things have no idea how to evaluate homemade equipment. Some are terrified by exposed wires and circuit boards, maybe because of bomb scenes in movies.
So I gave up. Now my carryon bag is only half stuffed with electronics; the rest is shipped ahead via FedEx.
To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, I'm a nerd whose been reading Slashdot since 2000, and I have no idea who Forrest Mimms is either.
Re: To be fair (Score:1, Funny)
Hand your nerd card in at the door.
Re: To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're apart of the reason why geeks and nerds are always looked down upon and constantly viewed as elitist self-centered asshats. Obligatory XKCD as reference: https://xkcd.com/1053/ [xkcd.com]
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Yeah, because geeks and nerds are never looked down upon by elitist self-centered asshats who play sports or do other non-nerdy things.
Re: To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)
I have found out that often by the time jocks are adults they end up being more polite than nerds. This is because the jocks had coaches that kept teaching about sportsmanship. Many nerds on the other hand had no mature mentors and so they think that teabagging your opponent is the height of wit.
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No, it's because they peaked. When they're at the top of their game, they're the worst of the worst. After high school and no sport scholarship they don't have much choice but to become amicable.
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Well of course. Unlike the nerds, they were likely well liked and had their natural talents encouraged by the group. Jocks have their own insecurities, too, but they had nerds to use as shitkickers when they were feeling down. In many cases, it's the coaches that encouraged this (esp when they had to double as gym teachers) as they saw the nerds as sacrificial lambs to reenforce team bonding.
It's really hard to fault the nerds in this case, but as you have helped show, society always tries its hardest to d
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..or maybe the 'rapid technical talk' is an example of the nerd's best game, no different than a quarterback scoring yet another touchdown, the difference being the latter isn't criticized as arrogant for his ability.
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And you're apart of the reason why geeks and nerds are always looked down upon and constantly viewed as elitist self-centered asshats. Obligatory XKCD as reference: https://xkcd.com/1053/ [xkcd.com]
Yep, that's us.
I'm also a budding grammar Nazi.
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And you're apart of the reason...
Grammar-nazis assemble! \o/ "apart"?
Re: To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Hand your nerd card in at the door.
There are many flavors of nerdism. You can be a software nerd without being a hardware nerd. I remember buying books by Forrest Mimms from Radio Shack when I was a teenager, and those books got me started in electronics. But quite a few software oriented people don't even own a soldering iron, and have no idea what to do with an oscilloscope. They are still nerds.
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Re:To be fair (Score:5, Informative)
Forrest Mimms is the man who wrote the book that got me started in electronics. Getting Started In Electronics. The greatest beginner electronic book EVER!(In my not so humble opinion.) He also wrote the Engineers Mini Notebooks that sold in radio shack to teach us about opamps and 555 timers and all the other things we needed to learn before ardweenies hit the world.
Mims, two (not three) m's [Re:To be fair] (Score:2, Insightful)
Forrest Mimms is the man who wrote the book that got me started in electronics.
What a coincidence! Forrest Mims also wrote a book on electronics. Wonder if they're related?
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yes.
young. compared to what?
Earth. yup, he's totally on Earth
creationist. yup, he's totally into creating things.
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Of course not, his name is Forrest Mims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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You seem to be suggesting that dimothy can't even spell the guy's name right, despite actually linking to an article that has it in the URL.
Withdraw that insidious libel, sir, or there shall be fisticuffs.
Re:To be fair (Score:5, Informative)
Now hand in your nerd card, it's important that nerds have a basic understanding of Nerd History.
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... which wasn't available in my country.
Which I've never seen on a news stand in this country. And indeed, doesn't seem to be available here.
Actually, I've got a pretty good understanding of Nerd history, I just don't pay large amounts of attention to foreigners
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nobody cares about the altair. it was a box with switches on it. it didn't have a monitor or even a keyboard. yawn.
True, but it was available a year or two before home computers with monitors and keyboards were available. And you could attach a standard teletype machine to it and have a hardcopy terminal. The BASIC language was also available from Microsoft. In a way, this computer gave Microsoft its start. This was a hugely revolutionary technology.
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I'd imagine that would be a line from Star Trek, "My God, they're still using logic circuits made from transistors and they think they have an advanced civilization!"
Most of industry gets by with simple logic processing using just integers or fixed point calculations. Start processing audio or video and you need a DSP chip. For heavy duty stuff like industrial computer vision, a multi-core DSP chip is available. For user interaction, a single touchscreen is enough. It's really only desktops and workstations
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Re:To be fair (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, a lot of people have written a lot of books, that Slashdot readers should have read. Not remembering a name, other than the context "guy who carries lots of electronics with him", is perfectly acceptable.
The electronics kit you're referencing is too new for some of us. My kit was from the late 1970s or early 1980s. I say that because that's when I used one of those "### in 1" electronics kits. I haven't seen mine for over 20-some years. I have no idea who the author of the accompanying book was.
If you pretentious enough to say anyone worthy of being here should know Mr. Mims [forrestmims.org], you should also be aware that you're spelling his name wrong.
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To be fair, I'm a nerd whose been reading Slashdot since 2000, and I have no idea who Forrest Mimms is either.
No, you are not a Nerd. (From my TV Typewriter)
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Maybe that's because his name is Forrest MIMS, not "Mimms". Apparently, timothy couldn't be bothered to do the most basic job of an editor, which is to make sure a proper name in a headline is spelt write.
And thank god Forrest Mims III is a white man, because if he was hispanic, black or muslim going through an airport with a bag "half-full" of electronics, he's be under the jail.
Merry Christmas ev
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Yeah, we can tell you're a frakin' n00b by your SEVEN digit user ID #! :) J/K :) Merry Christmas.
Hahaha. Back to the A/V room with you!
Forrest Mimms wrote some very cool books that explained a lot about electronic components, how they operated, and what you could build with them. I had some of those pages memorized.... Some of them still over my head, though, sadly.
I think the most advanced project he drew that I built was a small 1-transistor oscillator that made nearby AM radios receive some clicks or buz
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To be fair, I'm a nerd whose been reading Slashdot since 2000, and I have no idea who Forrest Mimms is either.
Neither did I - and, even after clicking on the link, I am still not sure why the submitter thinks this guy should be known to the average person. We're not exactly talking about Steven Hawking here.
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okay im just going to assume that you have never even held a soldering iron or looked at any of the common (via RadioShack) project books and leave you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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If he were either black or Muslim then he would have instead gotten an invite to the White house. Different standards for crackers though.
Yeah because if there's one group of people in America that truly knows what oppression is, it's the white folk. /s
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Actually I lived and worked in California for a while, first in the bay area then SoCal. I dont have much too good things to say about San Francisco (too much like the North East where I came from), but I have almost nothing but good things to say about SoCal. I loved every day living in San Diego, which is more conservative than other parts, but people white and otherwise were either friendlier, or at least just more more respectful.
I left for work and love (married someone back east) but hope to eventuall
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SoCal is nice.
As long as your AC is working.
Then again, why should the AC if nobody else is...
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AC in SoCal? You must be joking. There's no need for AC in SoCal. It's naturally cool and non-humid in summer. That's a part of the reason it's so overpopulated (climate).
Drive a few hours east. That's where the hot weather is.
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I come from a place where "hot summers" are characterized by the warning from your mom that you should not go skating 'cause the ice might not be thick enough to carry you.
Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics"
Who?
I looked him up, and have no idea how anyone who isn't really into his books would know who he is (and probably not even then). He's literally not famous at all.
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Forrest Mims is the most widely read electronics author in the world. His sixty books have sold over 7.5 million copies and have twice been honored for excellence by the Computer Press Association. His "Engineerâ(TM)s Notebook" series of books for RadioShack are entirely hand-lettered and hand-illustrated to re-create the look of Forrestâ(TM)s own laboratory notebooks.
http://www.forrestmims.org/bio... [forrestmims.org]
Re:Who? (Score:4)
No offense to Forrest Mins -- I know who he is and I admire him -- but selling 7.5 million copies total of 60 titles (average of 125,000 copies per book) is hardly major bestseller status. I just checked Wikipedia's list of books which have sold over 10 MILLION copies, including authors who have multiple popular books, and there are a number of authors on there whose names I wouldn't recognize.
Basically, if you're into hobbyist electronics or at least read some about it, you may have heard of him. But GP is right -- if you aren't within that small group (probably MUCH less than 1% of the population), you likely won't know his name or what he's known for.
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Do you know who Fowler, Beck and Cunningham are? Or the three amigos? The Gang of Four? Have you read your Brooks, your McConnell, your Hunt and Thomas?
Me, I've never heard of this Mims bloke, but that's probably because Radio Shack were never big in these parts and I do my best to avoid hardware.
He might be your personal hero but to most of us he's very much on the "who?" list.
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Or in America? There is a difference. For example, Radio Shack is IN AMERICA.
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Or in America? There is a difference. For example, Radio Shack is IN AMERICA.
There were formerly 338 rat shacks in the UK. Well, Tandy stores. Their bankruptcy filing earlier this year did not not include the company's more than 1,000 stores in 25 other countries, stores operated by its Mexican subsidiaries, or its Asia operations. (quote courtesy daily fail)
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he thinks that laws of physics become obsolete
lol probably couldnt lite an led without blowing it up
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Hand in YOUR ID. A real nerd wouldn't need a book to teach anyone about Boolean logic.
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Hand in YOUR ID. A real nerd wouldn't need a book to teach anyone about Boolean logic.
Hey AC, do YOUR kids believe anything you say if it's not written down somewhere else?
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There are many flavors of nerds/geeks/computer lovers who weren't tinkering in the early 1980s, or weren't buying books at Radio Shack. And there are plenty more who don't pay a lot of attention to who's writing their tech books.
As evidenced by the other comments here, plenty of us have no idea who he is. He's certainly not "get recognized in an airport" famous.
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As evidenced by the other comments here, plenty of us have no idea who he is. He's certainly not "get recognized in an airport" famous.
I agree with that. I'll note also that other than the book I bought at RS 'way back in 1980 or '81, I hadn't heard much of him in the intervening 30-plus years. Good to know, though, that he has stayed in the electronics amateur/enthusiast space and is still doing somewhat relevant publishing on the Web and elsewhere. I think that for those that were in the hardware side of circuits and computers in the pre-electronic-databook era, there are a bunch of authors whose work was instrumental in conveying the e
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He's from the generation where 'experimenting with computers' involved building and tinkering with them, not ordering prebuilt parts from NewEgg and plugging them together.
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He's from the generation where 'experimenting with computers' involved building and tinkering with them, not ordering prebuilt parts from NewEgg and plugging them together.
First computer I owned: CDP1802 project from the Popular Electronics article, expanded to 8KB of 2114 static RAM, serial I/O (AY-5-1013 chip), and integer BASIC in two 2708 EPROMs, everything hand-wired on perfboard. Used a model 33ASR Teletype that I got broken from a local highschool (repaired it myself) as the terminal, and loaded the I/O for the integer BASIC interpreter from paper tape. Good times..
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Cool story. Now why would the average TSA agent know or care? Not everyone lives in your nerd bubble.
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Something is wrong here... (Score:1)
I have traveled numerous times, both domestic and international, carrying all manner of electronic prototypes. Including systems with a 12V lead acid battery, which looks, on the xray, like a dark blob with 2 wires going to it, which has to look as much like a bomb as anything else. Or a backpack with a bunch of boxes, cables, and radios.
I occasionally get a question about "what is it?", and then a "ok, move along". I occasionally (25% of time) have to get it swabbed for the ion-mobility tester.
I have ne
i ship my next-day clothes by FedEx (Score:2)
It's happened to me too (Score:2)
Yep, I took a LittleBits Synth Kit with me on a flight earlier this year, got pulled off for extra screening and had to explain the thing to them.
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Similar, but not quite as extreme incident... (Score:2)
I was flying from LA to New Orleans to VFX supervise Big Momma's House 2 (ok, not the best film ever.) Among the things I brought with me was a pelican case of LEDs and batteries, we used to put tracking marks on walls and other things. I'll admit that seeing it go through the x-ray machine, it looked a little iffy.
The TSA agent then took the case, and extended his arms as far as he could, closed one eye, before slowly opening the box and peeking inside. Which, of course, I found insulting. No respect.
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Closing one eye is really going to help if its a bomb
Fuck the Patriot act (Score:2)
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Fuck the Patriot act
No comrade, you have it backwards. In Soviet America, Patriot Act fucks you.
How unfamous in Forrest Mims? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfamous enough that even the submitter didn't know how to spell his name. "Mims", not "Mimms". Kinda undermines your point.
Why is this news?
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No problems (Score:2)
Reason I left my Raspberry Pi at home. (Score:1)
Traveled from Austin to Breckenridge for the holidays but decided against taking my Raspberry Pi I got for Christmas and other assorted cables and hardware for this very reason.
Shipping luggage ahead is hardly new ... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not the first to discover the uses of the commercial shipping companies like Fedex, etc. At least since the mid 90s, people have been doing just that. Part of it was in response to all the airport security that was being developed using poorly-paid, and thus unqualified examiners. The other part was the airlines' growing limits on "excess" baggage, plus their tendency to fly your luggage to some place remote from where they were flying you. People reported that handing it over to the package-shipping people to deliver to your destination did an end run around the airlines' lost luggage issue and the government's incompetent security theater. And the cost was often less than what the airlines would charge for the excess luggage. Others read those reports, tried it, found that it worked, and switched to the same process. And on arrival, they had just the one carry-on bag, didn't have to deal with the airlines' slow luggage-delivery schemes, and could just grab a ride to wherever they were headed, where their luggage, equipment, etc. would be waiting for them.
The airlines should just say the hell with it, convert the bottom of the plane to a second deck of seats, and subcontract the luggage delivery with the folks who know how to do it right. Lots of the frequent-traveller crowd does it that way already.
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You're actually more likely to have your packages lost [amazon.com] than have the airlines lose your luggage [travelandleisure.com]. A loss rate of 0.5%-1.2% for package delivery v
Easy International Flights... (Score:2, Funny)
For the last 4 years, ever since selling my software start-up, I have had incredibly easy international flights and always have a wonderful seat. Now, if I could just do something about the fuel costs and the luxury tax on my private jet.
Sometimes it comes unexpected (Score:2)
Before a holiday flight (I think Germany to Switzerland), I was put aside behind X-ray screening for some extra checks and questions. The reason was, that I was carrying -among other things- a point'n'shoot digital camera and an extra battery (smallish 1500mAh) for my smartphone in my bag. The extra battery and the camera's image sensor happened to overlap in the first X-ray screening pass, triggering some false positive detection.
Toolbox (Score:2)
In my opinion a toolbox on board of an airplane is more dangerous than a gun.
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In my opinion a toolbox on board of an airplane is more dangerous than a gun.
Your opinion clearly isn't worth much.
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Necessary quote: "For a job like getting rid of the drug dealer next door, I'll take a hardware store over a gun any day. Guns make you stupid. Better to fight your wars with duct tape. Duct tape makes you smart."
- Michael Westen
Maccarran airport post-DefCon? (Score:2)
Sheeeeeit. You want to get a bomb on a plane? Just fly out of Maccarran after DefCon is over. I stay until the end; by the time I fly the out (with all my exposed-wire-paraphenalia) TSA's collective mind is more completely blown than usual. They don't even look twice.
There's always some lovely stories at the talks about attendees' experiences at their origin airports, though. I can't imagine what those guys must think.
And, to all you naysayers: Forrest M. Mims is indeed the man, and quite famous. Jus
That's what the NSA wants (Score:2)
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Yes because it is for private citizens to inconvenience themselves for the sake of a useless government bureaucracy that does a great imitation of invasiveness one would normally only find under tyranny. If you don't declare your sinful lack of conformity in advance, it's your fault - you were dre^Wpacking provocatively.
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Oh bullshit it's an inconvenience. There've been enough actual bombs that anyone not understanding because they feel themselves 'elite' is trolling for attention or just being pompous. Bag it and notify. Nothing inconvenient about it.
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Bombs are made with chemicals. All the electronics in the world won't blow up a toothpick. The sight of wires should alert you to... the presence of electronics.
Which is to say -- a bag full of wires is likely harmless. Something that looks like a birthday cake could probably take down the building you're in.
Re:He caused his own inconvenience (Score:4, Informative)
As a former security officer with relevant training, the chemicals are the thing to look for more than anything else. You usually need several components to have a bomb that works and detonates when you want to, but chemicals are really the common denominator. Even if you're homebrewing on the plane, you still have to have chemicals whereas the rest of it is potentially optional
Most airports I've flown in and out of don't give a shit about wires, but they get really uptight about batteries and unknown liquids. A wire without a battery is completely benign. You're not going to be triggering a bomb with wires that aren't hooked up to a power source. Wires don't work that way otherwise we'd have all the free electricity we wanted.
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Re: He caused his own inconvenience (Score:2)
Battery packs are considered electronics but increasingly they are very unstable packages of chemical energy. If you combine just one or two laptop batteries easy to get on board, short them out or puncture them could blow a nice hole in an aircrafts hull.
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Oh go wet the bed. It's nothing to do with being elite. I worked in central London through the Troubles, and flew regularly with development kit for work and homebrew stuff as a radio amateur. I know what "enough actual bombs" in a First World nation looks like (thank god I'm not living somewhere with a real war), I was twice seconds from being blown up (as were many Londonners two-three decades ago), and there was never the need for this level of government interference.
Re:He caused his own inconvenience (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen the same disgusting proceedings in my own country: if an agency makes a mistake against an individual, whether it is a wrongful arrrest, an incorrectly denied zoning permit, or a bloody traffic fine: if they know they can make you back down instead of having to admit their own mistake, by making your life a living legal hell at the taxpayers' expense with zero risk or inconvenience to themselves, they will. And the sad thing is: even if these cases and the sickening behaviour of the officials driving them become publicly known, nothing ever happens to these officials or to those ultimately responsible.
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Making people take off their shoes and get rid of their liquids is useless government bureaucracy. Getting suspicious of electronic devices that really do look suspicious is not Of all the bad things the TSA does, you had to pick on the one thing that they actually should be doing.
If they're going to be stopping people with bombs at all, they necessarily have to do it based on whether they appear to have a bomb, even if they also catch some innocent people who happen to have bomb-like equipment. It's not
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Actually they do have a 'tricorder to point at someone and get a reading that says "bomb"' only they don't call it a tricorder they call it an explosive residue detector. I don't care how much electronics you're carrying if it doesn't set off the explosive residue detector then it should go.
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To be fair, if it's battery powered it can easily become a bomb. But they don't confiscate all the cell phones.
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No, it isn't incumbent on *everyone*. However, it is part of the basic job description of a TSA agent to recognize what is a threat and what is not. If you can't recognize basic electronics, maybe this career isn't for you.
In any case - why would it be against any form of regulations to travel on an airplane with a bomb timer? The timer itself is completely harmless; TSA should be looking for explosive substances, not other random components that could possibly be assocated with a bomb. If you watch TV, it
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Good thinking. But re-read your post and you'll see that you have also inadvertently identified the thing that your bombing conspirators have in common, which makes them so easy to identify.
So now we really know what to do: stop letting people onto planes.
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Absolutely Correct (Score:4, Interesting)
I did the same on the flight back with the same result. No problems whatsoever and some curiosity as to what the demo was. I expect that if you explain that you have scientific equipment in your bag, why you have that equipment and that it might look a bit strange to the X-ray in advance you'll not have any problems. If you want to use actually a scientific device on the plane then the best thing to do is ask permission beforehand and not just state that you are going to use it to some random check-in person who probably has no technical background whatsoever. If this guy put even the tiniest amount of thought into getting his gear through security and getting permission to use it on a plane then I expect he would not have half the problems he claims to.
Re: Absolutely Correct (Score:2)
Last time I flew with an entire suitcase stuffed with electronics going to a lab
They got massively pissed cause I put my phone in the same bin as my laptop
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They were afraid one device would get good pictures of them stealing the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Off-topic?? (Score:2)
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You have exactly two anecdotes about having no problem. How can you compare that to somebody who has flown with his equipment probably hundreds of times and only has a half-dozen anecdotes of problems?
Well there are also many of my physics colleagues who have, from time to time, flown with equipment and none of them has ever had trouble with security that I remember hearing about (although a few have had issues with customs forms). We do this quite a lot in particle physics so I think I can compare quite well with his anecdotes which are clearly very old since he mentions being invited to the cockpit which has not been possible since 2001 on a commercial plane. Besides if he has flown "hundreds of times
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Sorry, no. Once the TSA imposed itself on everyone and claimed the purpose was safety, they accepted the responsibility for knowing what is and is not safe. If they're not up to it, they should go home.
Re:He caused his own inconvenience (Score:5, Interesting)
What's kind of strange is that up until the early 1970s there wasn't *any* security for air travel. At all. Some of the shuttle flights didn't even require you to buy a ticket in advance, they sold them on the plane.
Even after the first few hijackings, the airlines were stridently opposed to security screening, thinking it would turn off customers and make the airport experience a nightmare. They would have rather just paid the fucking ransoms and moved on.
I can remember in the late 1970s we used to ride our bikes to MSP and walk the gates. I'm sure we must have had to have gone through metal detectors, but they clearly didn't give a shit about a couple of 13 year old boys walking to the gates.
It's kind of hard to fathom why air security got so extreme relative to how lax it had been and how much the airlines resisted increasing it, even when their planes were pretty regularly getting hijacked.
(For great background, read "The Skies Belong to Us" -- a great review of both skyjackings generally and the Western Flight 701 hijacking to Algeria in particular).
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And the sad thing about it is that the 9/11 hijackers were people who'd entered the country legally and would have been have been detected had the 1970's level air security laws actually been enforced.
Instead of correcting that, however, we got new laws and new restrictions on travel and association with those who travel and a much more intrusive screening process that notoriously doesn't catch people with ill intent, so thank goodness for alert passengers!
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Damn straight, how DARES he make anything himself? Doing anything yourself, that's so Un-American, can't he buy some crap made in China like every normal person?
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But it is incumbent on people whose professional job is apparently to scream "it's a bomb, it's a bomb! Everybody, we all need to freak out and assault this person, now!!" to have some idea about when to freak out and throw all their reason out the window, vs not freak out.
You don't call TSA ahead of time about your items, do you? And yet they are every bit as bomb-like as this guy's sensors. Electroni
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Gaming computers apparently also classify as "terrorist weaponry".
No. They were probably just wondering what you were doing out of your parents' basement.