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Yeah, we have "hemvärnet" aswell, althought I have no idea how large any of our military stuff is nowadays. I think we are down to little over 200 airplanes to begin with.
The swedish defence whatever informs me that Hemvärnet got around 40.000 people of which 1.500 is musicans ;)
Well, atleast our subs kicks american ass ;/

A short shock of pain is better than being shot

If someone were going to shoot me, I'd much prefer that they hit me with a "pain ray" than a bullet. That's so obvious it goes without saying, which is why most people tend to think that non-lethal weapons are a good thing with no downside.

There is a huge downside. Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons have a massive potential for abuse. Let me relate a few stories:

I saw some cops who had caught a shoplifter outside a supermarket. They had him in cuffs and he was being verbally obnoxious, though not physically dangerous. He made an admittedly very offensive racial insult at one of the cops. She walked right up to him, got out her mace, and blasted him right in the face. He collapsed choking, vomiting, unable to breathe, but the EMTs on the scene were prohibited from helping the guy because it was a non-lethal weapon: his health wasn't actually being threatened.

A student at UCLA who committed the non-violent, non-threatening offense of refusing to show ID, was restrained and shocked repeatedly with a taser. It was caught on video, and the cops were very obviously using the taser as a tool for forcing compliance, not defending themselves against danger. The officer's comment in that article "If he was able to walk out of here, I think he was OK," is especially telling about the police attitude toward taser use.

Non-lethal weapons have the potential to be used in the same way as lethal weapons - namely using force to prevent someone from harming you. But they can also do something that lethal weapons cannot - they can be used for what is effectively torture: the inflicting of serious pain for very minor reasons. Lethal weapons cannot be used this way because shooting or stabbing someone has a very severe, permanent, and noticeable effect.

Officers or soldiers who shoot someone have a lot of explaining to do. There is an identifiable wound, a permanent harm done to them, and because it's easier to hold someone accountable for shooting someone, officers and soliders are much more reserved and judicious in their use of lethal weapons. By contrast, non-lethal weapons are used essentially at a whim, because the perceived severity of their action is both to themselves and the public eye, much lower.

Non-lethal pain-inducing weapons are torture - there's simply no way around it. There are undeniably certain circumstances when torture is preferable to execution, but we must think very carefully about how and where we introduce tools of torture to be used by our military and police - their use must be taken every bit as seriously as lethal weapons.

Wrong on both counts, asshole!. The slightest bit of research shows that the man who was shot was in fact Latino, and he survived.
I guess this kind of negates your point, huh?

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/6813509/detail.html

but it's not the one its designer intended. Indeed, on a segway, you look like a total dork and you're dangerous (I was passed by one on the sidewalk, I can attest to this).

But there's one area where segways excel, and that's giving a lot of freedom for disabled people to move around. Each time I hear about a segway story, it's about some handicapped person who finds it marvellous. Like this story for example, or this one which are rather typical.

So in short: I reckon segways should be banned on public thoroughfares, and allowed anywhere for disabled people.

"On May 5, 1970, over 1,000 protestors came together on I-5, blocking southbound lanes, to speak out against the US's invasion of Cambodia, and the death of four Kent State antiwar protestors, shot by members of the National Guard." - http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_ id=2271

March 2, 2003: Peace activists took to the streets by the thousands yesterday in cities from Olympia to Bellingham as well as several locations in Seattle. Spurred by the first salvos in Iraq that pierced the uncertainty about what for months has been a potential war, yesterday's rallies had a decidedly more aggressive tenor than those just a few days earlier. ... In Bellingham, 300 to 500 peace activists made their way onto Interstate 5, temporarily blocking freeway traffic for two miles in either direction. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/113604_wpeace2 1.shtml

November 30, 1999: WTO - http://www.urban75.com/Action/seattle.html

April 30, 2004: LOS ANGELES -- Independent truckers protested mounting diesel fuel prices Friday by abandoning trucks in rush-hour traffic on one of the region's busiest freeways and staging rallies at two of the largest ports on the West Coast. - http://www.nbc4.tv/traffic/3255276/detail.html

March 27, 2006: LOS ANGELES -- More than 36,000 students from throughout Los Angeles County skipped classes and marched through streets and on various freeways Monday to protest an immigration bill being debated in Congress. - http://www.nbc4.tv/news/8289535/detail.html

Find more here: http://www.google.com/search?q=freeway+protest

Now which issue was it that you deem unworthy? Was it one of these? Your advice to protestors to be forgettable seems unlikely to bring attention to their cause -- something that was achieved by the disruptive, dangerous and memorable protests above. With the exception of the truckers opposed to $2.50/gal gas, the protesters seem to achieved both national attention and lasting results: Seattle is certainly never going to host the WTO again. Congress is working on the immigration law as I type this. We all know how Cambodia worked out (a sad story, that. By getting their way the nonviolent protestors indirectly killed about 1/4th of all Cambodian men, women and children. A heavy burden for people of conscience. *). Perhaps you could offer something more helpful. Are you by chance a protest organizer? Do you have a history of success in nonviolent promotion of social change? If so, the organization is almost certainly eager to have your contribution.

* - The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people (from an estimated 1972 population of 7.1 million), through execution, starvation and forced labor. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

I think my point is that protestors should be tolerated as much as possible, but they should be reminded be careful which causes they take up.

"On May 5, 1970, over 1,000 protestors came together on I-5, blocking southbound lanes, to speak out against the US's invasion of Cambodia, and the death of four Kent State antiwar protestors, shot by members of the National Guard." - http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_ id=2271

March 2, 2003: Peace activists took to the streets by the thousands yesterday in cities from Olympia to Bellingham as well as several locations in Seattle. Spurred by the first salvos in Iraq that pierced the uncertainty about what for months has been a potential war, yesterday's rallies had a decidedly more aggressive tenor than those just a few days earlier. ... In Bellingham, 300 to 500 peace activists made their way onto Interstate 5, temporarily blocking freeway traffic for two miles in either direction. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/113604_wpeace2 1.shtml

November 30, 1999: WTO - http://www.urban75.com/Action/seattle.html

April 30, 2004: LOS ANGELES -- Independent truckers protested mounting diesel fuel prices Friday by abandoning trucks in rush-hour traffic on one of the region's busiest freeways and staging rallies at two of the largest ports on the West Coast. - http://www.nbc4.tv/traffic/3255276/detail.html

March 27, 2006: LOS ANGELES -- More than 36,000 students from throughout Los Angeles County skipped classes and marched through streets and on various freeways Monday to protest an immigration bill being debated in Congress. - http://www.nbc4.tv/news/8289535/detail.html

Find more here: http://www.google.com/search?q=freeway+protest

Now which issue was it that you deem unworthy? Was it one of these? Your advice to protestors to be forgettable seems unlikely to bring attention to their cause -- something that was achieved by the disruptive, dangerous and memorable protests above. With the exception of the truckers opposed to $2.50/gal gas, the protesters seem to achieved both national attention and lasting results: Seattle is certainly never going to host the WTO again. Congress is working on the immigration law as I type this. We all know how Cambodia worked out (a sad story, that. By getting their way the nonviolent protestors indirectly killed about 1/4th of all Cambodian men, women and children. A heavy burden for people of conscience. *). Perhaps you could offer something more helpful. Are you by chance a protest organizer? Do you have a history of success in nonviolent promotion of social change? If so, the organization is almost certainly eager to have your contribution.

* - The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people (from an estimated 1972 population of 7.1 million), through execution, starvation and forced labor. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

I think my point is that protestors should be tolerated as much as possible, but they should be reminded be careful which causes they take up.

Well sometimes it does happen that a missing child will be carrying a cell. Of course it won't do any good if the cell phone carrier won't reveal the location.
http://www.nbc4.tv/news/6001336/detail.html

I really don't know what the facts are in the alleged beating but if in fact the professor is fabricating the story, it wouldn't be the first time in recent history that a prof has gone over the edge to "make their case". Here's a link to some information about visiting professor Kerri Dunn of Claremont McKenna College.

http://www.nbc4.tv/wednesdayarchive/3998600/detail .html

As a point of clarification that article kind of makes it sound as if she was a former prof at the college when the incidents where to have taken place. She was in fact on the faculty at the time of the incident.

I wonder when it is determined that the beating was a hoax he perpitrated to gain sympathy like Kerry Dunn did if we will see a slashdot article that says "Anti Intelligent Design professor sentenced in false police report."

...obviously a device designed to kill or maim human beings...

Killing human beings in a very few circumstances, is permitted by law -- most notably self-defense. There have been many cases of criminals wearing body armor.

In the courts opinion, it is reasonable to think that a citizen may have a legitimate usage for armor-piercing bullets. If a ammo manufacturer advertized their bullets as being "cop-killers" then they would be more analogous to the people who distribute a p2p system with the advertizing of "find any song, movie, show etc."

You're arguing about gun-control in general, which is actually counter to what you're (I think) advocating. The same defense that keeps guns legal -- there is in certain circumstances a legal reason to have a gun -- is the same arguement that will protect p2p as a whole. There IS a set of circumstances in which p2p can be legally justified, and thus the whole technology cannot and will not be banned. Just as legally, there ARE restrictions on how guns can be used, there are going to be legal restrictions on how p2p can be used.

Do I agree with this p2p ruling? Not really, I don't personally support the current copyright law, but as a member of the Supreme Court, I'll answer your question. We don't value anything more than individual liberty, because life without liberty is an abhorrent concept. We ruled against people promoting breaking the law, and not against p2p. How else COULD we have ruled?

If date[sic] is being transported via a 3rd party carrier, wouldn't it make sense to encrypt the data first?

It would, which is why they did:
The spokeswoman also said the tapes weren't marked and the compressed data couldn't be accessed without special equipment. Ameritrade Loses 200,000 Client Files

try telling that to this guy... http://www.nbc4.tv/news/4076936/detail.html

You're more right than you know....

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg ?articleid=54629&format=

But then, why do you need to go outside at all?

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/3938951/detail.html

Every time somebody says we should have a licence for people to be able to use computers, I get to thinking: Yeah? What good have licences for cars done us for keeping the incompetents off the roads?

On the total reversal, if Kerry had won, a Replublican STILL wouldn't have tipped a reporter off.. at least in my opinion.

Cheers,
Craig

Here is some proof:

Piracy--> DirecTV pirate to possibly get 30 years

Murderer--> Reckless skier homicide gets 90 days jail

Piracy--> Pirate to get 50 months prison

Drugs and Prostitution--> Darryl Strawberry get 18months for drugs and prostitution solicitation.

Priorities are in line, wouldn't you agree?

From another article:

Girardi wants a court order to prevent Google from using PageRank. He said members of a class action could include anyone also allegedly libeled by the search engine.

But I agree with Oscar Wilde that if there's anything worse than being talked about it's not being talked about. Since Google isn't libeling me, I'm going to sue!

The quote was from http://www.nbc4.tv/news/2937016/detail.html

Find a way to get BPM 37093 or just a large part of it returned to Earth, and you'll have DeBeers out of business instantly...

All you have to do is claim that its against your religion to be exactly on time, and then file a suit for religious discrimination. Earnt $2million in punitive damages for this guy: nbc news.

Except of course this guy wasn't making it up. Thought I'd make that clear.

In case anyone's interested in how it's being presented to people in the outside world: http://www.nbc4.tv/technology/2487587/detail.html

With Tax-deducatable Lap-Dances?

And there were some very very good reviews of nemesis as well!

What about me?