Looking for a good portable linux system
Fred
puissante at biz.puissante.com
Sun Dec 19 09:44:01 EST 2004
On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 06:27, Chris Brenton wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 16:40, Fred wrote:
> >
> > Are you sure you can trust the TSA to leave it alone and not steal it or
> > think it's a bomb?
>
> I will second Fred's comments but not because of TSA. I think it has
> more to do with the baggage handlers. I've had stuff stolen out of my
> checked luggage (cables, hub, laser pointer, etc.) about a half dozen
> times when flying Delta and once with US Air. I've logged 200K+ with
> United and never had a problem. If it was TSA, I would expect it to be
> more consistent or tied to certain airports.
>
> Even if you are not worried about theft, you still need to be concerned
> with baggage delay. When I've had baggage go missing its taken 4-30
> hours for me to receive it on the opposite end. I would have been hosed
> if what was delayed was my computer...
I've been toying around with the possibility of an option to checking
the entire computer along. Just bring the hard drives instead, and be
sure there is an identical computer available at your destination and
all you have to do is slap in the hard drives and off you go.
Come to think of it, for demos and the like you could put Knoppix along
with your demoware/software on a bootable DVD-R, and that, at least,
would not raise eyebrows. Not sure how the TSA types would react to hard
drives -- and if they insist of disassembling the darn things, you're
hosed of course, and if you are forced to check them you're back at the
same problems with theft by the TSA or baggage handling personnel.
Of course, if you can actually USE the laptop as an option, that would
be best since they are *used* to seeing these. It's the "unusual" stuff
-- to them, anyway -- that will catch their attention. Can they look at
the x-ray of a hard drive and know it's not a bomb? I don't think so. Oh
well.
Come to think of it, I could probably build a bomb into a hard drive and
make it look nearly identical to what they would see on the x-ray
anyway, so maybe I am being too hard on their moronic status. Then
again, it would not be too hard to build a bomb into anything electronic
and make it pass x-ray inspection.
I'm scaring myself here. I never thought of this before, and now it
seems all too obvious. To a clever terrorist, there is no way to catch
all the ways he could circumvent the security types.
Then again, the chances of any of us being blown to bits by a terrorist
bomb is much much less than the chances of being killed in an auto
accident, even if the terrorists were bombing one plane per year.
So it's better to just travel and not fret about such things. It also
means that all this extra (in)security and bother at the airports is
worthless, giving most people a false sense of security. The way to fix
the terrorism issue is with US Foreign Policy, not by harassing everyone
at airports. But I digress...
> If you can't do a carry on computer (likely from your requirements),
> what works well for me is to pack it all up in a Pelican case and just
> ship it to yourself at the remote hotel via UPS. Cases can be found
> here:
>
> http://www.pelican-case.com/
Maybe that's the way to go after all.
--
Fred -- fred at lrc.puissante.com -- place "[hey]" in your subject.
The mass of humans on planet Earth -- regard them as the ebbing
seas in the winds of change. They ebb, they flow, they know not
where to go.
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