James Robinson - FriendFeed

You can now run up to 3 apps concurrently! One on your iPad, one on your iPhone, and one on your iPod Touch.

January 27, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

Ben Dalton, Rob Schonberger, Rodfather and 6 other people liked this

Why are you limiting yourself? You can buy as many of them as you want. - Robert W. Anderson

Up to 5 computers per account - Jesse Stay

Israelification of airport security: http://www.thestar.com/iphone.... Sounds like nirvana to a US based traveler like myself. Is that really how it's like flying through Israel?

January 1, 2010 - Comment - Like - Share

Michael R. Bernstein and Joel Webber liked this

That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes. - James Robinson

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There's a novel concept -- actually try and solve the problem, rather than engaging in BS security theatre. And for whatever reason, almost no one (who has any authority) is willing to step up and say "This is stupid. Fix it." - Joel Webber

The reasons posited at the end of the article are true, but aren't the whole story. In the US, screeners are relatively untrained and *cheap* (though standards have been raised a bit post 9/11, so no convicted felons). You can 'train' a screener to examine possessions and give them a rulebook about items that aren't permitted, but it is time-consuming and expensive to train in behavioral profiling. There is also a *huge* CYA factor involved. - Michael R. Bernstein

Oh, and to answer your question, James: Yes, that is what it's like. - Michael R. Bernstein

There are 12 airports open to the general public in Israel. There are _5,000_ airports open to the general public in the US. While the Israeli approach to airport security works for them, it would not scale in the US. Behavioral profiling takes a modicum of intelligence. The people smart enough to perform well in that role aren't going to put their lives in possible danger and work for... more... - EricaJoy

Erica, these security measures do *not* get applied to every airport in Israel (at least, not to the same degree). - Michael R. Bernstein

How do they choose which ones get the full treatment? - EricaJoy

But if your point is that it is cheaper to do meaningless and ineffective security theater than it is to invest in effective security, that is certainly true, as long as you don't count the productivity cost to the economy of lost time. - Michael R. Bernstein

Only one, Ben-Gurion Airport, gets the full treatment described here. After all, the other airports are far less attractive targets. - Michael R. Bernstein

No my point is that while the Israeli method of security will work for a small number of airports, it will not scale to thousands of airports, especially in the US, for the reasons I wrote about. I think to remove the human resistance barrier (no you can't raise my ticket prices, no you can't invade my privacy, no you can't raise my taxes, etc), US citizens would have to be a lot more... more... - EricaJoy from IM

You need to make the comparison of airports per-capita, then, not absolute numbers. - Michael R. Bernstein

We have 3.5x more airports per capita. - EricaJoy from IM

Sure, if you count *all* of them. There are a lot of smaller US airports with practically no security. - Michael R. Bernstein

But even conceding that comparison is valid, that means the US would have to spend 3.5x as much on airport security as Israel, per capita. Is that *really* out of the question? Note that a lot of the money currently being spent is *wasted* and does *not* actually improve security. - Michael R. Bernstein

I'm ok with that. There are plenty of others that would not be. - EricaJoy from IM

I don't think the Israeli model of security will work well outside of small homogeneous societies. Ask any cop if you can reliably profile and detect suspicious activity by just observing behavior and looking for non-verbal cues. This is rife with false-positives and false negatives that don't scale when the volume of traffic is large. The rigorous baggage screening techniques, on the... more... - no name

Bill, Israeli society is hardly homogeneous, and even if it were you're ignoring the flow of international tourists through that same airport. So, you'll have to modify your theory somewhat. - Michael R. Bernstein

I guess a fairer comparison would be passengers/year vs GDP. Ben Gurion (Israel's busiest airport) handles 11.5m passengers per year, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (America's busiest) handles 90m for a factor of 7.8. GDP is roughly $200b for Israel vs $14.2 trillion for USA, for a factor of 71. Obviously, I expect that the amount of passengers travelling in the second-busiest airport, third-busiest, etc is larger in the US than it is in Israel but is it a factor of 10x? - James Robinson

The Worst Ideas of the Decade: Vaccine Scares http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...

December 21, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Ray Cromwell, Bruce Johnson and Joel Webber liked this

javascript:window.alert("does \"Z\" === \"Z\"? " +!! ("Z"==="Z") + " does +\"Z\" === +\"Z\"? " + !!(+"Z" === +"Z"))

December 13, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Once you figure that out, puzzle this expression: var s="abc123"; var t=0; for (var i in s) { t += s[i] << 1; }; t - James Robinson

http://code.google.com/webtool...

December 8, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Ray Cromwell and Joel Webber liked this

http://golang.org/

November 10, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Not much better than the smell of bread baking.

September 27, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Grand Central Dispatch in OS X 10.5.8 looks pretty nice: http://arstechnica.com/apple...

September 8, 2009 - Comment - Like - Share

Kelly Norton liked this