Word: foolproof
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability - above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof...
...face-recognition software foolproof. The robo-cam was thrown by decoys such as posters of TIME magazine covers, and it had an almost offensive tendency to ignore human subjects with dark skin tones. The WX1 in particular had trouble establishing what Sony refers to as "optimal picture composition," zooming in and out repeatedly on a motionless subject, like a morally divided Peeping Tom. And it can have fickle taste, sometimes snapping 20 shots of one target, sometimes ignoring someone standing right in front...
Given the size of the Indian bureaucracy, with 18 million public employees serving more than a billion people, "you can never create a foolproof system," says Ajay Behera, an assistant professor at Jamia Millia Islamia who has written extensively about regional security. But in such a porous system, he says, a small group of relatively uneducated people can organize a major operation. "Almost anyone can do anything here," Behera says. "It doesn't require that high a level of sophistication...
Some good news though: these rankings are not foolproof. The Daily Beast admits that information portrayed may not necessarily be 100 percent accurate due to imperfections in the numbers reported by schools to the Department of Education. Some schools reportedly "game the system"—downplaying their crime rate for fear of bad reputation, while other schools remain "steadfastly honest." Congress is soon expected to make the Clery Act's guidelines more stringent. Let's all hope that once that's done, Harvard may strip itself the honor of being on this list. If not, the only solution that...
What's more, the abstinence-only model is far from foolproof: 90% of alcoholics do not get sober on their first attempt, and most rehab programs report a more than 50% relapse rate in their patients within months. First attempts to quit smoking cold turkey fail just as often. So, helping drinkers and smokers cut down, even if they can't quit immediately, may have significant value, says Teri Franklin, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you can prevent people from inhaling the 4,000 chemicals in just one cigarette, over 400 of which are carcinogenic...