Exactly. Firefox is annoying as hell. Look, I wanted to see a damn webpage.
Obviously Firefox checked for the new versions before it shut down, so it knew they were there. But didn't bother to download the new extensions, or start the install, or anything. Um, thanks.
There's an extension to fix this idiotic behavior.
The problem is when every Tom, Dick, and Harry software company decides they need an update client of their own. "Small enough" times a few dozen stops being so small. Plus, the odds that any one client is buggy or insecure goes up by the same factor. We are talking about daemons running 24x7 that can remotely fetch and execute arbitrary code here.
I would really like the ability to disable all applications checking for newer versions. I check almost my entire system for newer versions on my own schedule.
Exactly. DNA evidence should work the other way around. It should be 'We have a suspect, check and see if his DNA matches any DNA found at the crime scene'.
The only exception should be when the DNA clearly and unequivocally came from the criminal, like semen from a rapist or blood from a fight. Then, and only then, should be able to run it through a search of all collected DNA.
Until there are rules keeping police from picking up a hair near a murder victim, and running through the entire DNA database, to come up with someone who lives nearby, has no alibi, and whose crime was walking by the front door of the building two months earlier and having his hair tracked in, I have to say 'No' to any sort of national DNA database.
Doing it the other way around is going to result in a huge list of suspects who have to 'prove' they didn't do it.
Yes, yes, I know that most cases would fall through, but innocent people shouldn't be made suspects in the first place. Motive first, and then means and opportunity.
Asking to look in your bags in Sams or Costco or such is legal. You've signed an agreement to let them do it.
Asking to look in your bags anywhere is legal. I can walk up to random people on the street and ask to look in their bags. (This sounds like a job for the Chaser's War on Everything, wandering up to random people on the street and asking to look in their bags to make sure they aren't stealing things.)
However, no one has to consent. Even at Sams or Costco. Even if you signed a contract to do so. If the store feels you have violated the terms of the contract, they are welcome to notify you that you have done so, and consider the contract canceled. They are even able to sue you for damages if they wish.
But they don't get to look in the bag even if you previously agreed they could. They could sue to look in your bag, I guess. But it doesn't matter until a judge hears a case and decides against you and issues a court order requiring you to show them the contents of your bag.
But in no circumstances is a random store allowed to stop you on the way out to check your bags, your receipt, or anything else.
They aren't allowed to check your bags, but they are allowed, if they witness you committing a crime, to detain you and call the police. Just like anyone else. (And you are allowed to sue them if they're wrong.)
But that's not what stores are doing, of course. And even then they wouldn't be allowed to look in your bags. (It's a 'citizen's arrest', there's no such thing as a 'citizen's search and seizure'.)
In most states, people can detain people they actually witness committing crimes. It's called 'citizen's arrest'. You can restrain them and call the police.
However, in most stores, the store would not only be legally liable for being sued for false arrest, kidnapping, or assault, if you did that wrongly, but could be sued by you if you were injured while attempting that.
Hence they have specially trained people to do it. People who they have insurance on.
Although this 'special people' comes at a cost. You can only detain people if you witnessed them committing a crime. Not if other people saw it and told you, if you, specifically, in person, witnessed it.
Ergo, the security people can't be told by you that someone is shoplifting and do anything about it except watch the person closely.
It's interesting to note that a lot of actual security guards are now being told not to attempt to detain people, even ones where it's fairly obvious someone is committing a crime. (Like someone wandering around a warehouse at night is obviously trespassing at a minimum, even if they weren't observed breaking and entering.) They have been told just to call the police, simply because the security company doesn't want to pay to insure their actions.
See, that's the real problem. It's not a DNA database, most of us wouldn't have actual problems with that, if one thing were true:
Under no circumstances, should DNA evidence be used to locate criminals unless there's a high probability that such DNA is actually from the criminal.
They shouldn't be able to take a hair from the crime scene, which could have come from anyone at any time, and run the DNA on it.
Now, blood samples, sure. Semen in a rape case, sure. Piece of skin caught inside the safety of the murder weapon, sure. Something that has a high priority of being of the criminals. (Or at least left during the crime, by someone not know to be there.) They should be able to run that against the whole database.
But everything else, they should have to get suspects beforehand, and compare their DNA, and only their DNA, to all evidence found at the crime scene. I.e., they don't get to say 'Here's the evidence, find me a list of matches', they'd have to say 'Here's some suspects, compare their DNA to the evidence found at the scene.'.
I don't know what standard of evidence it would be, to ask for a check, but think 'probable cause' is the right one. They need to be able to state some sort of logical reason that such a person is a suspect, and only then should they be able to check that person's DNA.
The danger of having large quantities of DNA in databases is that that cops could, and some of them would, simply run any DNA found at the scene against everyone on the planet, take the matches and find the first few who live nearby, and construct a flimsy case against one of them. Probably the one who's been in trouble with the law the most, and doesn't have an alibi.
Also there's the fact that no one's bothered to update DNA matching. They're still comparing to 14 points or something like they were two decades ago, and claiming '1 out of a million' matches. There's absolutely no excuse for not checking hundreds of points.
I don't think I said I had any evidence at all for anything.
I said there wasn't evidence that they had box cutters, or combat knives, or six Bismarck class battleships hidden in their socks. Nor was there any evidence they didn't have those things.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Actual dangerous bat'leths, while they do exists, are very rare and fairly expensive.
Just like swords, most of the ones that people purchase are dull replicas. Unlike swords, most of the replicas are aluminum, because, frankly, they're about three times as much metal as a sword, and steel would make them pretty damn heavy.
Unlike replica short swords, which can be swung by anyone who can swing a baseball bat, there's no way in hell an average Star Trek fan could swing a 'real but dull' bat'leth in a realistic manner. Not even as a weapon, I just mean in play-fighting. You simply can't swing around that much metal. So most are made of a a lightweight metal. (Which is why they are more expensive. Aluminum is more expensive than cheap steel.)
So there were three options:
1) This was a lightweight fake bat'leth that, frankly, is less useful than a tree limb as a weapon. Or a heavy book.
2) This was a 'real', but dull, bat'leth.
3) This was a real, sharp, bat'leth.
Either of the later two require a hell of a lot of strength to use as a weapon (Although it's worth pointing out that dull 'real' bat'leths are almost as good a weapon as sharp ones.), and it's possible that that the clerk simply figured that out.
Bat'leths, as weapons for human beings, are slightly above two-hand broadswords in the amount of strength they require, and if I had some skinny guy trying to rob me using a frickin four-foot long broadsword I might be a little suspicious that their 'weapon' wasn't very effective either.
In theory, you'd need to be close enough to plausibly injury someone with a weapon for it to be a threat. So, in theory, you probably could wave a sword around in places you couldn't wave a gun around, as a sword has a shorter reach.
In practice, however, waving a sword around in a public park, even if you're fifty feet away from the nearest other person, would probably result in the police having a discussion with you. (Whereas waving a rifle around in the public park would immediately get you arrested.)
Now people will fight back hard and fast when something happens. That alone is the safest thing we have in our favor preventing another 9/11 attack.
This is why I've always, even before 9/11, argued that, when people take hostages, police should just charge in and kill the hostage takers, regardless of any collateral damage. They get one phone call giving them one minute to surrender to police by walking out the front door with their hands up, and that's it. No 'demands', no nothing. At one minute, the police will storm the building and kill anyone hold a gun.
Yeah, some people would die, but give it about two well publicized events where bank robbers took hostages and all of them, and three hostages, immediately ended up dead, and I suspect hostage takers would start...rethinking...their strategy.
After 9/11, I realized that such a change in policy might result in differing behavior of hostages, too. Maybe not in crowd-situations, their best bet would still be to lay on the floor and wait for the inevitable gun-battle overhead.
But for people who grab other people and hold guns to their head...the hostages might react a bit differently if they know the response of the police will be to shoot the person behind them, even if their body happens to be in the way.
Exactly. 'Box cutters' has no basis in reality whatsoever. There is absolutely no evidence or reports of 'box cutters'.
Box cutters was picked by the airlines because it was one of those things that it actually was legal to bring on an airplane, and they wanted it to be a failure of regulations.
In reality, they probably, indeed, had combat knives. But the airlines didn't like that, because it would be their failure to keep illegal weapons off airplanes.
In fact, there's not actually any evidence they didn't have guns. The passengers on Flight 93 thought they only had knives, but considering their attack failed, it's entirely possible it failed because, duh, they got shot. And even then, no guns on 93 didn't mean there weren't guns elsewhere.
But 'box cutters' is now ingrained on American mythos.
The hole punch does better. The corkscrew is likely to bend. It is, indeed, a much sharper point, but it's not pointed directly out.
I can stab the hole punch on my pocketknife through the top of an aluminum can, and it's a cheap three dollar pocketknife. (It's such a cheap knife I've had the big blade flip past 'straight' and bend backwards, which is slightly disconcerting.)
The hole punch, BTW, is the blade on the back that doesn't have a hole in the middle of it (That's a 'needle' thingy) or a one with the file on it. The one with the file on it is almost as sharp as first, but gets wider faster, so isn't as good a weapon. On my knife, it's right next to the screwdriver.
Of course, the other fun weapon on a pocketknife is the can opener. Open that up and swing it sideways. Slightly shorter range but it will tear into people. And you don't have to worry about it closing on you. (Well, you do, but it won't cut you.) Or, as the big blades can do on cheaper knifes, breaking off when it hits something hard.
At some point real soon, there is going to be a backlash against the 'protect the children from video games' crap.
We're hitting the ~25 year mark for video games in people's houses, both in computers and consoles like the Atari and NES, which means that almost everyone under 35 grew up with them to some extent. Even if they didn't have any, they knew people who did, and played them.
If we assume that 'children who need protecting' are children 10-18, and that people have kids when they're 20-30, the young end of those parents are already people who grew up with video games and understands the demonization for what it is.
And that group will just continue to grow over the next decade as the older people fall off the end of being parents. We're already at the point in time where very few people who did not grown up with games will become new parents. (That is, people who didn't grow up with video games are past the general child-bearing age now. At least the women, the men have another five years or so.)
At some point, parents are going to stop responding to the dangers of video games. They'll know damn well that different games are different and aimed at different people and ages, and that any moderately competent parent can tell them apart.
Politicians don't get this, as the most powerful ones are almost uniformly older than 35.
Any parent using a rating system is a fool. It's a useful tool to let parents start with knowledge of a game, and in some cases that's enough...if your 14 year old wants to buy a G-rated (Or whatever the equiv is.) game, you can just let them. But you might want to check on the next level up. And if they show up with an 'R' game you'll need to go specifically go and find out why it got that rating and if you're okay with it.
No, the point of the rating systems, the only reason they shouldn't be scrapped altogether, is to keep kids from buying the games without their parent's knowledge.
And, no, that doesn't really require 'irresponsible' parents. No parent can keep track of how much money their children have if said children have any sort of allowance, and games get pretty cheap when they're a year old. And no parent can be 100% sure that their children will never have the opportunity to purchase said game, or just get a friend to buy it for them.
And I know, in theory, that parents should monitor their children's computer use, and that works for 12 year olds, but not for kids who are old enough to, and do, stay home by themselves. There are levels of responsibility, and it's entirely likely that children would be trusted enough to do that, and yet their parents would still not like them playing GTA.
Of course, it's a somewhat silly system, consider that kids just pirate the games. But whatever.
Did you just make the argument that games should not include content that you don't like?
Are you a total moron, or a troll?
Before anyone purchases any fictional material, they should check to see if it's the sort of thing they might enjoy. Um, duh. In fact, that's true of everything that's sold.
In fact, we even assume children will be able to do this. The reason we have ratings for children isn't because they might stupidly buy content they don't like, but because their parents might not approve, and such content can, in theory, be harmful to them. It's not to keep them from buying stuff they'll end up not liking.
Video games actually are much easier than many things to figure out, considering that many of them have free demos, and videos of gameplay, and almost always have dozens of reviews before they come out. Those reviews might not actually tell you if the game is any good, but they'll certainly tell you what sort of game it is.
Whereas with movies, often reviews don't come out until after the movie does, and they often have misleading trailers.
The only thing that we should require warning adults consumers about (as opposed to children, or adults purchasing for children) are actual health risks. Which in the case of video games are basically limited to possible triggers of epilepsy.
Well, yeah, but I was pointing out that even if you take the Garden of Eden story literally, there's plenty of stuff it just glosses over.
Also if only Cain and Able were born, and Cain killed Able, then I guess that we are ALL descendants of Cain.
No, Adam had another son later, called Seth. And then had 'other sons and daughters'. But no one is the descendant of Cain, or from the other children (Except by possible incest), as they logically all died in the flood. Not that there is any indication that the 'Mark of Cain' is genetic, despite what racist loons think.
(And who did he think was going to bother him for having the "mark of Cain" on his forehead?)
Exactly. At that time Cain and Abel are stated to be the only sons of Adam, with Seth, who is the third son, to be born later.
But Cain was worried that others were going to kill him when he went to live in the 'land of Nod'.
Now, in theory, it is possible that Adam and Eve had a bunch of daughters that, in the absurdly sexist manner of the bible, did not get mentioned. But probably not enough to to populate a 'land', and it makes Cain look a bit silly to be worried about a few sisters seeing the mark and killing him. (Plus...um...wouldn't they know anyway? Why would they need to see the mark? Why would they be living in another 'land'?)
Please note I don't actually believe this crazy story, I was just pointing out that even the most literal creation story interpretation glosses over plenty, like suddenly Cain 'lays with his wife' and has a kid, despite no other human being beside Adam, Eve, Cain, and now-murdered Abel being mentioned as existing before that point.
Anyone who says aliens can't exist because they aren't in the Bible is full of it. The Bible didn't mention Cain's wife until she became relevant, too.
I think you've missed the point of 'automated self-replicators'.
Now, to be technically, they'd have to send out one that worked. It is entirely possible that they have the intelligence of slugs and sent out only one and that one failed somewhere. But, um, not really.
Right. That's the problem with the Fermi paradox. Fermi was right in that any race could easily spread out through the galaxy even without any sort of FTL, and if life is anywhere common, this logically should have happened millions of years ago and they should be all over the place.
That is all correct. Sure, some races might not spread out, but if life-forming planets are as likely as they appear to be, there's no way that all races could be 'home bodies'. Someone would start expanding....millions of years ago, and be here by now.
The failure, though, is the idea that they would a) be using broadcast medium b) close enough for us to hear. Neither of those is required to be true.
We don't even need some amazing advance in science to avoid that, either. Forget quantum entanglement or 'subspace', perhaps all civilizations stop operating huge transmitters and start operating wired-networks with tiny relay, like we do with cell phones and wifi.
This actually looks like where the human race is going. We're already phasing out more and more 'broadcast to everyone' spectrum. In two decades I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of generic, world-wide protocol that operates over a few miles, and relays everything internet, phone, radio, and TV to 'the internet', or an internet-like thing, and this thing uses most of the available spectrum. (Aka, we stop segregating by spectrum and instead everything negotiates onto the same network, using different protocols over it.)
And, as an accidental side effect, almost every bit of transmitted data will only travel a few dozen miles at most before it's static. (And will be encoded so highly that such signal degradation would mean you get nothing from it.) It's not implausible that all aliens have been using this forever, and thus their signals are barely making it into their orbit.
And, yes, they could still hear us, if they were listening, but the point of Fermi's paradox is that they should have been out there, moderately near us, for millions of years, and thus we should see their signals. If we're waiting for them to see us, that's only a 50 light-year expanding bubble.
Even if you take the creation story 100% literally, nothing would preclude the existence of life elsewhere. (Although the Fermi paradox would not work at all, as it's easily to imagine that any aliens are roughly the same, or lower, level of tech we are, with a 6000 year old universe.)
I mean, the Bible doesn't document everything God has done, and even the most literal reading of it wouldn't support that.
Not to mention the small problem of where all the other people besides Adam and Eve came from. Obviously, if that story is literally true, God made a bunch of other people he (or, rather, his documenter) didn't bother to mention making, so it's hard to see why he'd mention making life hundreds of lightyears away.
Exactly. UAC is a very good idea, although prompts telling the user that copying files is going to trigger UAC, and then the actual UAC prompt, is somewhat stupid. (Warning, we're about to ask you a question! Can we ask you that question, yes or no?)
However, the 'protected screen' idea is very very good, and puts Vista miles ahead of, um, everyone else, where malware can not only put up their own boxes to get permission, but, hell, have stolen the root password while they're at it.
Yes, malware is not supposed to be actively running on Linux, but, then again, it's not supposed to be running on Windows either. UAC is designed to stop the harm caused by already running malware, and any criticism of it that ignores the framework it's supposed to be operating in is idiotic.
Although the entire thing is undermined by the bug mentioned in this article that MS seems unwilling to fix. A security system that intruders can turn off without warning is not actually a security system.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Firefox is annoying as hell. Look, I wanted to see a damn webpage.
Obviously Firefox checked for the new versions before it shut down, so it knew they were there. But didn't bother to download the new extensions, or start the install, or anything. Um, thanks.
There's an extension to fix this idiotic behavior.
The problem is when every Tom, Dick, and Harry software company decides they need an update client of their own. "Small enough" times a few dozen stops being so small. Plus, the odds that any one client is buggy or insecure goes up by the same factor. We are talking about daemons running 24x7 that can remotely fetch and execute arbitrary code here.
Exactly. I personally use FileHippo's thingy.
As Microsoft seems unable to build a basic update checker in, it's up to third parties.
Three words: FileHippo's Update Checker.
I would really like the ability to disable all applications checking for newer versions. I check almost my entire system for newer versions on my own schedule.
Exactly. DNA evidence should work the other way around. It should be 'We have a suspect, check and see if his DNA matches any DNA found at the crime scene'.
The only exception should be when the DNA clearly and unequivocally came from the criminal, like semen from a rapist or blood from a fight. Then, and only then, should be able to run it through a search of all collected DNA.
Until there are rules keeping police from picking up a hair near a murder victim, and running through the entire DNA database, to come up with someone who lives nearby, has no alibi, and whose crime was walking by the front door of the building two months earlier and having his hair tracked in, I have to say 'No' to any sort of national DNA database.
Doing it the other way around is going to result in a huge list of suspects who have to 'prove' they didn't do it.
Yes, yes, I know that most cases would fall through, but innocent people shouldn't be made suspects in the first place. Motive first, and then means and opportunity.
Asking to look in your bags in Sams or Costco or such is legal. You've signed an agreement to let them do it.
Asking to look in your bags anywhere is legal. I can walk up to random people on the street and ask to look in their bags. (This sounds like a job for the Chaser's War on Everything, wandering up to random people on the street and asking to look in their bags to make sure they aren't stealing things.)
However, no one has to consent. Even at Sams or Costco. Even if you signed a contract to do so. If the store feels you have violated the terms of the contract, they are welcome to notify you that you have done so, and consider the contract canceled. They are even able to sue you for damages if they wish.
But they don't get to look in the bag even if you previously agreed they could. They could sue to look in your bag, I guess. But it doesn't matter until a judge hears a case and decides against you and issues a court order requiring you to show them the contents of your bag.
But in no circumstances is a random store allowed to stop you on the way out to check your bags, your receipt, or anything else.
They aren't allowed to check your bags, but they are allowed, if they witness you committing a crime, to detain you and call the police. Just like anyone else. (And you are allowed to sue them if they're wrong.)
But that's not what stores are doing, of course. And even then they wouldn't be allowed to look in your bags. (It's a 'citizen's arrest', there's no such thing as a 'citizen's search and seizure'.)
In most states, people can detain people they actually witness committing crimes. It's called 'citizen's arrest'. You can restrain them and call the police.
However, in most stores, the store would not only be legally liable for being sued for false arrest, kidnapping, or assault, if you did that wrongly, but could be sued by you if you were injured while attempting that.
Hence they have specially trained people to do it. People who they have insurance on.
Although this 'special people' comes at a cost. You can only detain people if you witnessed them committing a crime. Not if other people saw it and told you, if you, specifically, in person, witnessed it.
Ergo, the security people can't be told by you that someone is shoplifting and do anything about it except watch the person closely.
It's interesting to note that a lot of actual security guards are now being told not to attempt to detain people, even ones where it's fairly obvious someone is committing a crime. (Like someone wandering around a warehouse at night is obviously trespassing at a minimum, even if they weren't observed breaking and entering.) They have been told just to call the police, simply because the security company doesn't want to pay to insure their actions.
See, that's the real problem. It's not a DNA database, most of us wouldn't have actual problems with that, if one thing were true:
Under no circumstances, should DNA evidence be used to locate criminals unless there's a high probability that such DNA is actually from the criminal.
They shouldn't be able to take a hair from the crime scene, which could have come from anyone at any time, and run the DNA on it.
Now, blood samples, sure. Semen in a rape case, sure. Piece of skin caught inside the safety of the murder weapon, sure. Something that has a high priority of being of the criminals. (Or at least left during the crime, by someone not know to be there.) They should be able to run that against the whole database.
But everything else, they should have to get suspects beforehand, and compare their DNA, and only their DNA, to all evidence found at the crime scene. I.e., they don't get to say 'Here's the evidence, find me a list of matches', they'd have to say 'Here's some suspects, compare their DNA to the evidence found at the scene.'.
I don't know what standard of evidence it would be, to ask for a check, but think 'probable cause' is the right one. They need to be able to state some sort of logical reason that such a person is a suspect, and only then should they be able to check that person's DNA.
The danger of having large quantities of DNA in databases is that that cops could, and some of them would, simply run any DNA found at the scene against everyone on the planet, take the matches and find the first few who live nearby, and construct a flimsy case against one of them. Probably the one who's been in trouble with the law the most, and doesn't have an alibi.
Also there's the fact that no one's bothered to update DNA matching. They're still comparing to 14 points or something like they were two decades ago, and claiming '1 out of a million' matches. There's absolutely no excuse for not checking hundreds of points.
I don't think I said I had any evidence at all for anything.
I said there wasn't evidence that they had box cutters, or combat knives, or six Bismarck class battleships hidden in their socks. Nor was there any evidence they didn't have those things.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Actual dangerous bat'leths, while they do exists, are very rare and fairly expensive.
Just like swords, most of the ones that people purchase are dull replicas. Unlike swords, most of the replicas are aluminum, because, frankly, they're about three times as much metal as a sword, and steel would make them pretty damn heavy.
Unlike replica short swords, which can be swung by anyone who can swing a baseball bat, there's no way in hell an average Star Trek fan could swing a 'real but dull' bat'leth in a realistic manner. Not even as a weapon, I just mean in play-fighting. You simply can't swing around that much metal. So most are made of a a lightweight metal. (Which is why they are more expensive. Aluminum is more expensive than cheap steel.)
So there were three options:
1) This was a lightweight fake bat'leth that, frankly, is less useful than a tree limb as a weapon. Or a heavy book.
2) This was a 'real', but dull, bat'leth.
3) This was a real, sharp, bat'leth.
Either of the later two require a hell of a lot of strength to use as a weapon (Although it's worth pointing out that dull 'real' bat'leths are almost as good a weapon as sharp ones.), and it's possible that that the clerk simply figured that out.
Bat'leths, as weapons for human beings, are slightly above two-hand broadswords in the amount of strength they require, and if I had some skinny guy trying to rob me using a frickin four-foot long broadsword I might be a little suspicious that their 'weapon' wasn't very effective either.
Hey! I drive a fifteen year old Sunbird, and I'm not a nerd.
Wait, damn, yes I am.
Yeah. There are a lot of non-nerds who might know what Klingons look like, and might recognize their swords, but, seriously, knowing the name of them?
In theory, you'd need to be close enough to plausibly injury someone with a weapon for it to be a threat. So, in theory, you probably could wave a sword around in places you couldn't wave a gun around, as a sword has a shorter reach.
In practice, however, waving a sword around in a public park, even if you're fifty feet away from the nearest other person, would probably result in the police having a discussion with you. (Whereas waving a rifle around in the public park would immediately get you arrested.)
Now people will fight back hard and fast when something happens. That alone is the safest thing we have in our favor preventing another 9/11 attack.
This is why I've always, even before 9/11, argued that, when people take hostages, police should just charge in and kill the hostage takers, regardless of any collateral damage. They get one phone call giving them one minute to surrender to police by walking out the front door with their hands up, and that's it. No 'demands', no nothing. At one minute, the police will storm the building and kill anyone hold a gun.
Yeah, some people would die, but give it about two well publicized events where bank robbers took hostages and all of them, and three hostages, immediately ended up dead, and I suspect hostage takers would start...rethinking...their strategy.
After 9/11, I realized that such a change in policy might result in differing behavior of hostages, too. Maybe not in crowd-situations, their best bet would still be to lay on the floor and wait for the inevitable gun-battle overhead.
But for people who grab other people and hold guns to their head...the hostages might react a bit differently if they know the response of the police will be to shoot the person behind them, even if their body happens to be in the way.
Exactly. 'Box cutters' has no basis in reality whatsoever. There is absolutely no evidence or reports of 'box cutters'.
Box cutters was picked by the airlines because it was one of those things that it actually was legal to bring on an airplane, and they wanted it to be a failure of regulations.
In reality, they probably, indeed, had combat knives. But the airlines didn't like that, because it would be their failure to keep illegal weapons off airplanes.
In fact, there's not actually any evidence they didn't have guns. The passengers on Flight 93 thought they only had knives, but considering their attack failed, it's entirely possible it failed because, duh, they got shot. And even then, no guns on 93 didn't mean there weren't guns elsewhere.
But 'box cutters' is now ingrained on American mythos.
The hole punch does better. The corkscrew is likely to bend. It is, indeed, a much sharper point, but it's not pointed directly out.
I can stab the hole punch on my pocketknife through the top of an aluminum can, and it's a cheap three dollar pocketknife. (It's such a cheap knife I've had the big blade flip past 'straight' and bend backwards, which is slightly disconcerting.)
The hole punch, BTW, is the blade on the back that doesn't have a hole in the middle of it (That's a 'needle' thingy) or a one with the file on it. The one with the file on it is almost as sharp as first, but gets wider faster, so isn't as good a weapon. On my knife, it's right next to the screwdriver.
Of course, the other fun weapon on a pocketknife is the can opener. Open that up and swing it sideways. Slightly shorter range but it will tear into people. And you don't have to worry about it closing on you. (Well, you do, but it won't cut you.) Or, as the big blades can do on cheaper knifes, breaking off when it hits something hard.
At some point real soon, there is going to be a backlash against the 'protect the children from video games' crap.
We're hitting the ~25 year mark for video games in people's houses, both in computers and consoles like the Atari and NES, which means that almost everyone under 35 grew up with them to some extent. Even if they didn't have any, they knew people who did, and played them.
If we assume that 'children who need protecting' are children 10-18, and that people have kids when they're 20-30, the young end of those parents are already people who grew up with video games and understands the demonization for what it is.
And that group will just continue to grow over the next decade as the older people fall off the end of being parents. We're already at the point in time where very few people who did not grown up with games will become new parents. (That is, people who didn't grow up with video games are past the general child-bearing age now. At least the women, the men have another five years or so.)
At some point, parents are going to stop responding to the dangers of video games. They'll know damn well that different games are different and aimed at different people and ages, and that any moderately competent parent can tell them apart.
Politicians don't get this, as the most powerful ones are almost uniformly older than 35.
Correct.
Any parent using a rating system is a fool. It's a useful tool to let parents start with knowledge of a game, and in some cases that's enough...if your 14 year old wants to buy a G-rated (Or whatever the equiv is.) game, you can just let them. But you might want to check on the next level up. And if they show up with an 'R' game you'll need to go specifically go and find out why it got that rating and if you're okay with it.
No, the point of the rating systems, the only reason they shouldn't be scrapped altogether, is to keep kids from buying the games without their parent's knowledge.
And, no, that doesn't really require 'irresponsible' parents. No parent can keep track of how much money their children have if said children have any sort of allowance, and games get pretty cheap when they're a year old. And no parent can be 100% sure that their children will never have the opportunity to purchase said game, or just get a friend to buy it for them.
And I know, in theory, that parents should monitor their children's computer use, and that works for 12 year olds, but not for kids who are old enough to, and do, stay home by themselves. There are levels of responsibility, and it's entirely likely that children would be trusted enough to do that, and yet their parents would still not like them playing GTA.
Of course, it's a somewhat silly system, consider that kids just pirate the games. But whatever.
Did you just make the argument that games should not include content that you don't like?
Are you a total moron, or a troll?
Before anyone purchases any fictional material, they should check to see if it's the sort of thing they might enjoy. Um, duh. In fact, that's true of everything that's sold.
In fact, we even assume children will be able to do this. The reason we have ratings for children isn't because they might stupidly buy content they don't like, but because their parents might not approve, and such content can, in theory, be harmful to them. It's not to keep them from buying stuff they'll end up not liking.
Video games actually are much easier than many things to figure out, considering that many of them have free demos, and videos of gameplay, and almost always have dozens of reviews before they come out. Those reviews might not actually tell you if the game is any good, but they'll certainly tell you what sort of game it is.
Whereas with movies, often reviews don't come out until after the movie does, and they often have misleading trailers.
The only thing that we should require warning adults consumers about (as opposed to children, or adults purchasing for children) are actual health risks. Which in the case of video games are basically limited to possible triggers of epilepsy.
From a procedural perspective, censorship is, indeed, easy to fix. Simply stop doing it.
That doesn't make it not be censorship.
Well, yeah, but I was pointing out that even if you take the Garden of Eden story literally, there's plenty of stuff it just glosses over.
Also if only Cain and Able were born, and Cain killed Able, then I guess that we are ALL descendants of Cain.
No, Adam had another son later, called Seth. And then had 'other sons and daughters'. But no one is the descendant of Cain, or from the other children (Except by possible incest), as they logically all died in the flood. Not that there is any indication that the 'Mark of Cain' is genetic, despite what racist loons think.
(And who did he think was going to bother him for having the "mark of Cain" on his forehead?)
Exactly. At that time Cain and Abel are stated to be the only sons of Adam, with Seth, who is the third son, to be born later.
But Cain was worried that others were going to kill him when he went to live in the 'land of Nod'.
Now, in theory, it is possible that Adam and Eve had a bunch of daughters that, in the absurdly sexist manner of the bible, did not get mentioned. But probably not enough to to populate a 'land', and it makes Cain look a bit silly to be worried about a few sisters seeing the mark and killing him. (Plus...um...wouldn't they know anyway? Why would they need to see the mark? Why would they be living in another 'land'?)
Please note I don't actually believe this crazy story, I was just pointing out that even the most literal creation story interpretation glosses over plenty, like suddenly Cain 'lays with his wife' and has a kid, despite no other human being beside Adam, Eve, Cain, and now-murdered Abel being mentioned as existing before that point.
Anyone who says aliens can't exist because they aren't in the Bible is full of it. The Bible didn't mention Cain's wife until she became relevant, too.
I don't know who you think you're arguing against, but it's not me.
Think how many they'd have to send out.
One?
I think you've missed the point of 'automated self-replicators'.
Now, to be technically, they'd have to send out one that worked. It is entirely possible that they have the intelligence of slugs and sent out only one and that one failed somewhere. But, um, not really.
Right. That's the problem with the Fermi paradox. Fermi was right in that any race could easily spread out through the galaxy even without any sort of FTL, and if life is anywhere common, this logically should have happened millions of years ago and they should be all over the place.
That is all correct. Sure, some races might not spread out, but if life-forming planets are as likely as they appear to be, there's no way that all races could be 'home bodies'. Someone would start expanding....millions of years ago, and be here by now.
The failure, though, is the idea that they would a) be using broadcast medium b) close enough for us to hear. Neither of those is required to be true.
We don't even need some amazing advance in science to avoid that, either. Forget quantum entanglement or 'subspace', perhaps all civilizations stop operating huge transmitters and start operating wired-networks with tiny relay, like we do with cell phones and wifi.
This actually looks like where the human race is going. We're already phasing out more and more 'broadcast to everyone' spectrum. In two decades I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of generic, world-wide protocol that operates over a few miles, and relays everything internet, phone, radio, and TV to 'the internet', or an internet-like thing, and this thing uses most of the available spectrum. (Aka, we stop segregating by spectrum and instead everything negotiates onto the same network, using different protocols over it.)
And, as an accidental side effect, almost every bit of transmitted data will only travel a few dozen miles at most before it's static. (And will be encoded so highly that such signal degradation would mean you get nothing from it.) It's not implausible that all aliens have been using this forever, and thus their signals are barely making it into their orbit.
And, yes, they could still hear us, if they were listening, but the point of Fermi's paradox is that they should have been out there, moderately near us, for millions of years, and thus we should see their signals. If we're waiting for them to see us, that's only a 50 light-year expanding bubble.
Even if you take the creation story 100% literally, nothing would preclude the existence of life elsewhere. (Although the Fermi paradox would not work at all, as it's easily to imagine that any aliens are roughly the same, or lower, level of tech we are, with a 6000 year old universe.)
I mean, the Bible doesn't document everything God has done, and even the most literal reading of it wouldn't support that.
Not to mention the small problem of where all the other people besides Adam and Eve came from. Obviously, if that story is literally true, God made a bunch of other people he (or, rather, his documenter) didn't bother to mention making, so it's hard to see why he'd mention making life hundreds of lightyears away.
Exactly. UAC is a very good idea, although prompts telling the user that copying files is going to trigger UAC, and then the actual UAC prompt, is somewhat stupid. (Warning, we're about to ask you a question! Can we ask you that question, yes or no?)
However, the 'protected screen' idea is very very good, and puts Vista miles ahead of, um, everyone else, where malware can not only put up their own boxes to get permission, but, hell, have stolen the root password while they're at it.
Yes, malware is not supposed to be actively running on Linux, but, then again, it's not supposed to be running on Windows either. UAC is designed to stop the harm caused by already running malware, and any criticism of it that ignores the framework it's supposed to be operating in is idiotic.
Although the entire thing is undermined by the bug mentioned in this article that MS seems unwilling to fix. A security system that intruders can turn off without warning is not actually a security system.