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Home Defense, Geek Style?
Yo Maing writes "So my mom got lives alone, and got her car broken into last night. We have a motion sensor light in the driveway, and the car has an alarm but apparently both of these deterrents were ineffective. Crime has been rising around her neighborhood, and only action the police can take is to file a report. So I ask you, Geeks of Slashdot, what tricks do you guys have to defend yours and your loved ones homes against crimes like this? Not looking for anything that would get someone injured, but more in the area of detection and repulsion. Anyone have a holographic Yeti generator to scare away intruders? :)"
Only one defense needed.
Insurance.
If you still worry then you might as well cancel the insurance and save the money.
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
Haha! You got modded flamebait for giving sound advice!
Though, a smarter person might have qualified it with "and take some lessons on how to properly use it", since a stupid metrosexual with a gun would probably shoot hi...he... itself before it shot an intruder.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
are just afraid of law-abiding citizens having guns
You're damn straight I am. If you live on my street and you own a gun, my life expectancy drops. Thanks asshole.
Quite right. These American's are crazy. Bowling for Columbine gave them a chance to see themselves the way the rest of the world sees them - as gun toting idiots. But the ones who are stupid enough to be in love with their gun are also too stupid to recognise themselves as they are.
I don't have to post anything since I've never said that violence does not solve anything. I don't mind being flagged as a troll or flame-bait, but please read the article before commenting. All the examples you mention are conflicts of war; not violence against burglars or anything (ok, that might be difficult to give a well known example of, but still).
In fact it's exactly because criminals are cowards that they would fire. They would get startled, scared and instinctively fire.
Back it up with credible statistics, asshole. If you can.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If she had "milfness" I'd guard the house 24/7 myself. No fee, just room and board :)
Deny them to your own people, but make sure you sell them to the Saddam Hussein.
Don't forget to ban Muslim children from wearing head scarves while you're at it.
What a ridiculous, backwards place. Between stories like this and the extremely high execution rate, it almost seems like Texans enjoy the idea of killing people.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I sure as hell do.
In fact, I'd prefer cops to be actually SHOT with guns carried by civilians.
Shot and KILLED, in fact.
TODAY, if possible.
Worldwide, also.
Was I clear? Did I make my point?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"tippie-toeing through those countries."
Nobody said it wouldn't cost a hundred thousand lives if the US attempted mass genocide on a country. Hell, the US could just nuke Baghdad - and no doubt a lot of rightwing morons would like to see it happen. The result would be the US condemned by every nation on Earth (except Israel, of course.)
But to say the US has killed upwards of ten thousand civilians in Iraq alone is "tippy-toe" is just braindead.
And it's irrelevant. The US has around 140,000 troops in Iraq. Less than 20,000 are actual combat troops if the usual ratio of support to combat is still in existence. The rest can wield a firearm if they have to, but that's not their primary job and if they have to, then their primary job doesn't get done - which means vehicles don't move because they aren't repaired or there's no fuel for them or food and water for the troops.
It is standard theory that you need ten soldiers for every insurgent to suppress an insurgency. The US doesn't have anywhere near that number in Iraq compared to the estimated 5,000 to 30,000 insurgents (and hundreds of thousands of supporters) there presently are in Iraq. Compared to a mass national resistance, that is itself a pittance. Ayatollah Sistani could put another hundred thousand insurgents on the street with a word, should he so choose. The US would need to send the ENTIRE US military to Iraq in that case to defeat the insurgency. It would cost the Iraqis a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand lives, but they would win in the end. And the US would lose ten or twenty thousand troops before evacuating the country.
The ONLY reason this hasn't happened yet is because Ayatollah Sistani and the Hawza and the major tribal heads are holding back waiting to see which way the wind blows come the January elections. One head of a two-million-strong tribe said a few months ago that he could stop the insurgency immediately - but he wouldn't. He also said that IF it became necessary, they could make Vietnam look like a picnic.
When the US screws them out of the elections and leaves them all being ruled by some puppet strongman like Allawi, all hell will break loose.
Iraq is no longer under the careful control of a competent dictator with a party organization and an established secret service. Iraq is now DESTABILIZED - BADLY. Anything is possible - but for a puppet government to regain control of the country in the same manner as Hussein did is highly unlikely - even backed up by the US military and the CIA. Whether a civil war will erupt once the US is forced out is uncertain, but what IS certain is that virtually ALL Iraqis want the US out ASAP. The ONLY thing holding back a mass national resistance is the promise of elections in January.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I will anyway.
A society which puts Consumption and Competition on such high pedestals, deserves all the crime it gets.
If you have something I want, then the best way to get it is to blow your head off and take it. That's competition baby! What? Don't like that? Think there ought to be government controls in place to stop me? What are you? A Communist?
I was talking with a fellow I know who has been studying social and political science for the last five years at his university, and he was telling me about Australia. .
All the criminals were shipped down under, right? Big penal colony. But because the land was so big, everybody who wanted, could have a stretch of their own. During this period where virtually everybody had property, theft was apparently virtually non-existent. Correlation. . ?
On the same time scale, it appeared that only when the evenly-spread wealth began to 'clump' and sneak into the hands of manipulative money-grower types, and some people got rich and other people were left out on the street with nadda, did crime start to rise again. Now ain't that interesting?
This is not to say that there aren't people who are naturally stupid and likely to screw up their holdings and end up in the street by following the pale lights of their own dim wits. But that's a different thing from actively pressing an undue and huge portion of otherwise good and able people into the gutter through the unnecessary promotion of such axioms as, "Greed is Good" and "Winning is Everything".
All those Losers are going to feel pretty awful, and violence and disrespect for others is a great way to express feeling awful. Crime is a direct result of societal structure.
Or I suppose you could live in a walled community and give lots of money to security companies and live with a nice back-ground buzz of perma-fear in your gut. I wonder what that does to voting trends and foreign policy. . ?
But as is also said. . , "Water Seeks its Own Level". Service to Self will always lead to complications and misery, and the U.S. is today the capitol of Self-Service on the planet. --Which is why it's goin' down as hard and fast as it is; I'd get the heck out before it's too late, (which it almost is), but then I don't live there.
Although, on a purely techno-clever basis, I do like the Fog Trap and Crunchy Gravel ideas for preventing property theft.
-FL