But, it seems to me that if MS stopped working on superfluous bullshit, and concentrated on improving security, they might beat the malware people without ever going to court.
I think Microsoft can afford to do both. Besides, perfect security may be achievable only if the end user is not physically allowed to install or run *anything* that MS haven't signed. Obviously that isn't going to work - and if MS allows users to install 3rd party apps that's where malware people come into play. Scare the user, offer a free remedy, and have him install and run your zombie!
Sure it is melodramatic, but the problem exists. I personally know one businessman who were slaving away at his startup and one day he received the summons. Fortunately for him he wasn't selected (or even required to come) but if he were the damage would be very painful - his business, product of many years of hard work and employer of about 10 people, would crash and burn if the trial takes more than a week or two at most. I don't know if he'd be able to claim hardship or some other excuse since he didn't have to go through this.
You can look at other groups of people with same results. For example when I wrote "an independent contractor" I had a few specific people in mind, they do work at my house now and then. They have to "turn the crank" every day to earn their daily bread. Some go around and fix water pipes, other go around and fix wiring, and so on. If they go to jury duty nobody will be able to "keep their salary" because there isn't any money to do that with. Some complicated trials can take weeks or months, imagine the damage that does to their reputation and to their bank account. If they had some employees they may lose them; if they had projects in progress the house owner will be suing them by the time they are done; if they had a short term loan taken they may be getting nasty calls from the bank, and so on. Many small businesses live on a very narrow margin and just barely make the ends meet; many owners have to decide every payday if they need to declare bankruptcy right away or they have a reprieve of two more weeks. Taxes are rising, revenue is dropping, and life isn't getting any easier. Most of those folks just can't afford to take a month-long vacation to sit in the court and decide the fate of a stranger - they have their own fate to work on. You may say that it's not life and death issue because we have soup kitchens, but if you destroy someone's business he might just go and hang himself, for him it *will* be a life or death situation. First you lose your business, then you lose your house, then you lose your family, and then there isn't much else to live for if you are an older guy.
Personally I believe jury duty is an important civil responsibility so I never attempt to get out of jury duty.
If you are a wealthy retired businessman then more power to you, and thank you for the service. If, OTOH, you are an independent contractor and the only wage earner n a large family, your kids may starve to death during a 3-month trial. A lot of people find themselves in the latter category.
If it is essential to justice that the lawyers be paid $200/hr, maybe we can at least pay the jurors something in-line with their hourly income.
Lawyers are in the courtroom because they want to be there. They are volunteers; the money entices them to take the case. Jurors are in the courtroom because the man with a gun orders them to be there. They are essentially legal slaves, property of the court. There is no reason to pay them, they are captives and have no option to leave. Whatever pennies jurors get are paid just to keep up the appearance.
IMO, forced conscription of jurors should be replaced with use of voluntary jurors (perhaps up to some hours or cases per year) that are well paid for their time. I don't see much harm coming from using semi-professional jurors - we use professionals everywhere else (in the courtroom and outside of it.) They only need to be impartial to the case, and if some are not then they won't be deciding that case, someone else will.
If you are catching a mouse in a cardboard box with your bare hand then the cornered mouse will eventually bite. But in an open land any sane mouse will do its best to run away. Attempts to bite a creature 100x larger than the mouse will only force it to come closer to the danger, and most likely will not be effective.
I do think that employers need to be forced to pay increasingly larger wages per hour once the work day exceeds 8 hrs
In the USA that's how it is - but not for every worker. It is easy to see that if a baker works 10 hours instead of 8 he bakes 25% more of whatever he is baking because his output is firmly tied to the time spent at the oven. But a writer, artist or a programmer working 10 hours is not necessarily more productive in 10 hours than in 8. Some say that working 10 hours is less productive than working 8 hours and then having good rest. This is definitely true if in a thought experiment you extend 10 hours to 24 - you'd be dead or insane within a week, and then your output is zero.
Another catch is that a programmer is in control of his production rate, whereas a baker is not (each batch of bread sits 30 minutes in the oven, for example.) This, and lack of instant performance measurement, gives the programmer an ability to control his per-hour wage. For example, if an engineer wants a bit of extra cash he can just stay two extra hours, read Slashdot (since the boss already went home) and get paid at a higher rate. So in the USA workers with this type of jobs are not eligible for overtime pay.
They're selling 8 GB cards at the store I'm standing in for $25. And a pidgeon could easily carry 4 of these.
Most of the size and mass of those cards are plastic enclosure and connectors. A properly designed "card" for a pigeon would be an implantable chip with a very fast wireless link to write and read, with inductively supplied power for those operations. Not only there would be no card to lose, the pigeon would be indistinguishable from all other.
Besides, that would be a very ecologically friendly telecommunications channel. Birds are good.
I agree that hunters use silencers however there is no need for them to go around public land with silencers fitted.
Plenty of hunting is done on public lands. Since you don't own the land (or pay for its use) it is actually more desirable to be quiet on public lands than at a private hunting location.
This alone tells me you don't know much, if anything, about guns. Caliber is not an absolute measurement, it is a relative one.
The GP is correct. Firearms' caliber is an absolute measurement. From your own link:
In firearms, the caliber is the approximate diameter of bullet used. In a rifled barrel, the distance is measured between opposing lands or grooves; [...] For example, a small bore rifle with a diameter of 0.22 inch is a.22 cal;
Since we are not discussing artillery here, your objection seems to be out of place.
There are ~0 legitimate reasons for having a silencer attached on public land
I believe you have no idea how much noise a single supersonic round makes. Silencers would be greatly welcomed on public ranges, and maybe you don't even need to wear earmuffs then.
Hunters would use silencers too because gunshots scare the game away. Archers are very proud that their gear doesn't do that:-)
But in my house, there won't be guns. If there is going to be a gun in the house, it will belong to an Adult, and it will be with them at all times till they leave my house.
In my house there are guns. They belong to an adult, as it is the only way to be (you were somewhat redundant) and they are kept locked at all times, except when they are used.
I have a kid in the house, my kid might get curious, and though I will teach her about gun safety, I'm not going to risk her forgetting what she knows so she can get a good look at the business end.
The safest thing for you to do is to not only teach your kid the gun safety, but also to teach her how to shoot. This is an important factor in reducing the curiosity of children about guns. If you say "never touch" they will want to touch when you are not around (or when it's someone's else gun.) If you say "never touch without me" it's a different story. Once the child learns how guns work the curiosity will drop quick, and many children will never want to shoot a gun again, even when they get a chance. There is a web site all about this, and you might want to read it all.
Only now, if we had no guns, I won't have a deterrent for that kid, I can't tell them I have a gun, and I will shoot them if they enter my home.
The police, if promptly called, will need 20 minutes to get to my home. If someone decides to invade my home I have to keep that number in mind. If you have a child in the house you need to consider who and how will protect the child if an unlikely event happens.
But she won't even know I have a gun until (big IF) I have to use it to defend my family, or she is older
There is a reason to do it differently. What if she is to come across a gun outside? The safety rules will be probably too much for her to remember, especially if she is too young. A knowledge of a gun would do better. First, the gun will be recognized as such instantly (and not seen as a strange toy without a name.) Second, if you shoot a gun with a child she will remember that loud report that happens, and it will be a deterrent from exploring further. It will be a good deterrent because it will be in a different kind of memory - the memory that children use best. Safety rules, though important, depend on logical interpretation of what's happening, and we all know how good children are at that. Again I suggest reading that link above, it explains things better than I do.
I don't think gun control would work well in the US, mostly because of our combined 'I'm above the law' mindset, that makes the mass think they can do what ever they want.
Yes. The cat is not just out of the bag, it was never in the bag. And if you *magically* make all guns disappear overnight, the gangs will switch to knives. It's actually scarier than a gun. A gun works even in lightly trained hands of a housewife, but she would be a sitting duck against a knife-wielding attacker. The UK banned all guns, so knives are all the rage there.
Rimfire are not reloadable, unfortunately, and shooting squirrels with.30-06 is unreasonable:-) Some people do it, at least for longer effective range, but there is not much left of the squirrel (it explodes,) and the rounds are expensive to waste on such small and numerous critters. A single hillside can house a hundred of them easily.
One will appear at your local polling place next November.
It won't fix the past. Not only that, voting against a war-loving (D) and for a war-loving (R) is not very practical. 3rd parties are effectively eliminated from the political arena; even a strong candidate (Ron Paul, for one) can not get anywhere.
It is also worth mentioning that politicians are dispensable like paper cups. You don't like $A? Fine, kick him out and vote for $B, he is exactly like $A and receives his orders from the same source. Party does not matter, as we can see - D's are in power and the war rages on, as if there is something to fight for.
Considering that the poor pay little or no income tax, I don't see how they can be "entangled" in the safety net.
Poor phrasing on my part. People who contribute more (and earn more) may be hit with all kinds of progressive taxes which gradually reduce their desire to produce. For example, if you work 10 hours you earn $10/hr. But if you work another 10 hours you suddenly earn $5/hr - and though you do earn more in the end, you work much harder for each dollar. So a rational man would work just the bare minimum instead of working as much as he can, producing maximum wealth and making everyone richer. Progressive taxes tell people to sit on their hands instead of working.
In that case of Sweden that I mentioned not a single tax was above 100% - they were all small, but when they combined - for different people differently - the total tax was confiscatory. I work with a few Swedes, by the way, and they tell me that Sweden's prosperity is not as clear as you think it is. A lot of capital ran away from Sweden a couple decades ago, and it's not coming back. Just this spring, IIRC, Volvo was threatening the government that they will take their ball and leave if the government doesn't back down on some labor laws that apparently exceeded the boundaries of reasonable.
Your extensive comment definitely deserves a reply.
I described how government is supposed to work.
Then you are not the first in a long line of thinkers who discuss how an ideal government in, say, Utopia should work. Unfortunately those theories have no effect on current affairs of existing governments. I'm talking specifically about real world governments - those that are corrupt, inefficient and have goals that could be described as nefarious.
You seem to take it as a self-evidence axiom in the world that government is malicious, corrupt, inefficient, and ineffectual. I reject this axiom because it is patently false.
"All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - this was, is, and will be true. Claiming otherwise is just denying reality. How many governments were or are known that, even starting from a group of fine thinkers, didn't devolve into some sort of dictatorship? I think the French Revolution is a good example, or the Russian Revolution of 1917, though you can easily find many examples in the history of the USA also.
But how much satisfaction do you gain? Does having 50 laborers make you ten times happier than having five?
I should have been writing clearer: laborers are building the house, and a larger, costlier house requires larger construction crew. In any case, it's not important from the POV of economy how happy or satisfied an individual person is. I personally would be quite happy knowing that my money is well used and it feeds 50 families. But it's more important for the economy to just give those 5 (or 50) workers a job. Even if I don't need two yachts (or even one, as matter of fact, even if you give it to me for free) the construction and maintenance of those yachts will create jobs, and that is good. I definitely don't feel cheated when I pay a contractor to fix this or that at the house - they did a job that I could not, and I know that my money will be well spent.
You have the ability to influence the budget through many different political channels, the most powerful of which is the ballot box.
Pray tell where is (or was) that magical ballot box where I could cast my vote against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And against bailouts of banks. And against "cash for clunkers."
Are you seriously claiming that there's no incentive to work in a society with a safety net?
If the safety net entangles honest workers then there is no reason to work at all. Many people point out that the USA's social security programs, as they are set up, only make sure that poor people remain poor. In Sweden, for example, the security net was so extensive that taxes on those who dared to work exceeded 100% - and people refused to work for anything but cash. You couldn't get any service there at that time unless you pay cash.
Or is it that you're more upset that it's possible to survive without working? Are your sensibilities offended by the idea of someone not being punished for idleness by starving in the street? That's not a just punishment in a civilized nation.
I only want to reiterate - ability to survive without working leads to formation of ghettos where nobody works because only fools work. This is simple human psychology, and if you deny that then you are in the same boat as Lenin and Stalin who talked about "reshaping a human" into something that can live under communism. They had to talk about it because obviously no modern man [in sufficient quantities, outside of geeks w/o life] would work if he doesn't have to.
Sure, there is a need for a safety net, but a better design of that net is required. The intent should be not to pay you for not working, but to give you a job that will pay your bills. Humans must always work, or else their minds get lazy and people start expecting free stuff from the government (and that means from taxpayers.)
Just as it's better to acquit ten guilty men than to convict one wrongly, it's better to support ten
Let's make up our damn minds one way or the other already and stop waffling around for decades on end.
You can't have this because you need a government that is continuous over decades. The USA has a government that is permanently in "trolling for votes" mode, and in that mode persistence and steady hand do not pay if the results of today's investments will be visible only 10 or 20 years from now. A President would go down like a lead balloon once the opposition explains to voters that he took $10B of their money and "just burned it." The USA is probably doomed to achieving only short term goals (not longer than 8 years.) Leave long term goals to China, those guys know how to plan ahead and know what persistence of power means.
government's duty under our social contract is to ensure the utilitarian welfare of all.
I'm not sure the government is aware of this. An impartial observer would say that the US government is steadily working to expand its control over US citizens and over foreign lands and foreign resources, with benefits channeled to select few corporations. I'm sure the government would have a good laugh at the notion of "social contract" of any sort. Most of government bureaucracy is not even elected.
It's perfectly legitimate for government to tax you in order to benefit society as a whole.
Troubles begin when your definition of "benefits" does not match their. How would you like a federal tax that is used for killing foreign dark-skinned people because... [nobody remembers the cause any more.] How would you like a federal tax that takes your money and gives it to bankers? How would you like a federal tax that takes your money and gives it as free money to your lazy neighbor so that he can buy a better car? You are paying all of these taxes and many more, most of them are useless at best, but usually destructive. That's the problem.
Also, progressive taxation can be justified by observing that as one earns more, each dollar is less useful.
Even if we focus on personal income and personal taxes, how is it that each dollar is less useful? I can spend a $50K on a house and it keeps 5 laborers employed. Or I can spend $500K on a house, and it keeps 50 laborers employed. I think dollars just don't have the attribute of usefulness; each dollar is equally useful in the economy.
On top of that, all the progressive taxation does is gives more of your money to the government, where it will be misused in millions of ways. They might build a mega-school where none are needed, or they can build a bridge to nowhere, or they can build an international airport in a fishing village, or they can just burn the cash up in some war. The money is taken out of your hands, this means you are denied the right to decide how to spend it. This reduces the desire to earn more; the opposite end of the spectrum is to earn nothing at all and live on social security or some illegal income.
some Scandinavian countries have begun to issue fines for traffic violations [...] as percentages of the violator's income
Yet another way found to deincentivize honest work. Work for cash only (as a pimp, for example,) run red lights all you want, and pay nothing. Great idea, just as most governments' ideas are.
The capital gains tax is a price for sitting on wealth. It's something we should discourage.
I feel a disconnect here. An example may be helpful. Your school needs repairs. The city issues a bond for $10M, which is an offer to potential creditors. I decide to help out and lend them $1M. A year later the city pays me back $1.1M when the bond matures. I have $100K of capital gain as a fee for the risk I took and for the use of my money (I couldn't hire more workers for my business, for example, when the money was lent.) How is it that this use of my money is not socially welcome? Am I some sort of villain for letting you use my money when you needed it?
I'm not proposing "socialism" in the way you think I am. I'm proposing that we make a market economy that works better through forcing all the participants to play fair.
And, with the right value of "fair", that is the definition of socialism.
Because places with laws like that are wonderful places to live, and you live there too.
If you can live quite well in the USA on $100K/yr then you can live like a king on the same money in India or China. You'd have a palace and servants there; but in the USA you'd have a $1,000 sq.ft. house on a noisy street in a bad neighborhood, and you'd be mowing your lawn all by yourself.
This is especially important when you consider that if you move your business to, say, China your $100K of income can easily become $300K or even more. Asia now is the place where money is made; the USA today is the place where taxes are paid. You'd have to be totally insane to open a new business in California, for example - you'd need to hire a CPA and an HR director before you hire your first worker, and if by some miracle your widget has market you can't manufacture it here anyway, so why not to set the whole thing up abroad in the first place?
It is also important to understand that owners of a company do not have to live near the factory; those days are over - you have managers to crack the whip on the factory floor; you, on the other hand, are free to do other things - to relax on beaches of other countries, or to talk to Wall Street, or to wine and dine someone toward an acquisition.
Is there any substance that could exist on Mars which would make a round trip economically viable?
I'd approach this from a different angle. How much the conditions on Earth - both political and social and all other - have to worsen before the idea of an off-planet colony for like-minded individuals becomes an irresistible goal?
Are you really going to claim that in the entire solar system there isn't one single resource that could be profitably exploited by mankind?
IMO, asteroids offer far greater ROI. They are somewhat farther, but they have about zero gravity, so you can have space navigation there with minimal expense of reaction mass. It is theorized that asteroids have metals, water, and other valuable materials that will be in demand within the asteroid belt and outside of it. You can establish hundreds of colonies of miners in the Belt, and all of them could be self-sustaining and profitable, and they can trade and move around just as easily as a typical car owner goes to the grocery store. Microgravity will let you build surface objects with little structural strength (saving on materials) and you need those for greenhouses. Asteroids themselves may be solid enough to drill into and build bases under the surface, safe from solar radiation.
But planets... we can't handle planets yet - we don't have technology to land in anything but dense atmosphere (Earth, Venus) or vacuum (Moon.) Landing in all other atmospheres is tough because none of our technologies work well there. You need a new propulsion method to do that. That's why all Mars probes basically fall on the surface surrounded by airbags (and some just slam into the planet:-) I think all we can do with Mars now is to keep sending robotic probes; it's just common sense and rational thinking. You want to live somewhere off the planet - then build living quarters on LEO, send them to some asteroid and park there (no gravity to worry about.) If all is well, send the tenants; if they want to leave they maybe could get to the Earthbound orbit with just a single SRB - again no gravity to fight against. Once here they can be picked up by a separate vehicle that just services LEO.
Besides difficulties with landing on planets, there are too few of them within reach. We could land on Mercury, I guess, but it's pretty far and quite hot. Venus is just bad for your health. Earth we are on already. Moon is dead as a doornail. Mars is dead as a doornail. Asteroids are interesting. Jupiter itself is not even an option, its satellites - possibly, but they are too far, we need nuclear engines to get there and nuclear power to sustain life (too far from the Sun.) Saturn and beyond are the same story.
I understand that/. is probably not the best place to discuss the purpose of life. However the idea of flying there and dying soon after landing is remarkably lacking of any purpose. It can be only seen as a fairly expensive, taxpayers-financed suicide. I fully support the idea of a suicide when the circumstances warrant it, but do it on your own dime:-)
Only until they realize that their lifespan on Mars will be measured in hours. Humans need a lot of specific items to support life. In case of Mars air, heat and shelter come first, then water and food, then something to justify their continuing existence (life in spacesuits is tough on morale.)
100% of remaining volunteers should be referred to a head doctor.
is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?
There are plenty of vehicles that can bring themselves down; most of them do, somewhere around South Pacific. If you mean "safely" then the list narrows, but a used satellite, well past its "use by" date, is just not worth of bringing down in one piece. The value is in data bits, not in bits of metal and silicon - and data can be easily sent over the radio.
Hubble is yet another issue. The original cost of Hubble was estimated at $400 million, but it grew out of proportion because of endless delays with launch and because of the defective mirror. It would be probably cheaper and better today to build a copy of Hubble telescope, with all new cameras installed and all the improvements made, instead of replacing failed components one by one in a risky and limited servicing mission. Many components of Hubble telescope are not serviceable anyway. So while STS is a system capable of servicing Hubble, the overall value of such a service is debatable. Of course, if you have STS you use it, but I wouldn't say that without Shuttle the Hubble telescope project can't happen - there would be some other vehicle to launch it on, likely a cheaper one.
Slashdot Mirror
But, it seems to me that if MS stopped working on superfluous bullshit, and concentrated on improving security, they might beat the malware people without ever going to court.
I think Microsoft can afford to do both. Besides, perfect security may be achievable only if the end user is not physically allowed to install or run *anything* that MS haven't signed. Obviously that isn't going to work - and if MS allows users to install 3rd party apps that's where malware people come into play. Scare the user, offer a free remedy, and have him install and run your zombie!
Sure it is melodramatic, but the problem exists. I personally know one businessman who were slaving away at his startup and one day he received the summons. Fortunately for him he wasn't selected (or even required to come) but if he were the damage would be very painful - his business, product of many years of hard work and employer of about 10 people, would crash and burn if the trial takes more than a week or two at most. I don't know if he'd be able to claim hardship or some other excuse since he didn't have to go through this.
You can look at other groups of people with same results. For example when I wrote "an independent contractor" I had a few specific people in mind, they do work at my house now and then. They have to "turn the crank" every day to earn their daily bread. Some go around and fix water pipes, other go around and fix wiring, and so on. If they go to jury duty nobody will be able to "keep their salary" because there isn't any money to do that with. Some complicated trials can take weeks or months, imagine the damage that does to their reputation and to their bank account. If they had some employees they may lose them; if they had projects in progress the house owner will be suing them by the time they are done; if they had a short term loan taken they may be getting nasty calls from the bank, and so on. Many small businesses live on a very narrow margin and just barely make the ends meet; many owners have to decide every payday if they need to declare bankruptcy right away or they have a reprieve of two more weeks. Taxes are rising, revenue is dropping, and life isn't getting any easier. Most of those folks just can't afford to take a month-long vacation to sit in the court and decide the fate of a stranger - they have their own fate to work on. You may say that it's not life and death issue because we have soup kitchens, but if you destroy someone's business he might just go and hang himself, for him it *will* be a life or death situation. First you lose your business, then you lose your house, then you lose your family, and then there isn't much else to live for if you are an older guy.
Personally I believe jury duty is an important civil responsibility so I never attempt to get out of jury duty.
If you are a wealthy retired businessman then more power to you, and thank you for the service. If, OTOH, you are an independent contractor and the only wage earner n a large family, your kids may starve to death during a 3-month trial. A lot of people find themselves in the latter category.
Lots of people spend lots of time in jail based on this kind of evidence.
Hans Reiser's case comes to mind. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence alone, and only after that he revealed where the body is buried.
If it is essential to justice that the lawyers be paid $200/hr, maybe we can at least pay the jurors something in-line with their hourly income.
Lawyers are in the courtroom because they want to be there. They are volunteers; the money entices them to take the case. Jurors are in the courtroom because the man with a gun orders them to be there. They are essentially legal slaves, property of the court. There is no reason to pay them, they are captives and have no option to leave. Whatever pennies jurors get are paid just to keep up the appearance.
IMO, forced conscription of jurors should be replaced with use of voluntary jurors (perhaps up to some hours or cases per year) that are well paid for their time. I don't see much harm coming from using semi-professional jurors - we use professionals everywhere else (in the courtroom and outside of it.) They only need to be impartial to the case, and if some are not then they won't be deciding that case, someone else will.
Mice bite
If you are catching a mouse in a cardboard box with your bare hand then the cornered mouse will eventually bite. But in an open land any sane mouse will do its best to run away. Attempts to bite a creature 100x larger than the mouse will only force it to come closer to the danger, and most likely will not be effective.
No need to read Cory Doctorow; you only need to have a look at the F/OSS community.
I do think that employers need to be forced to pay increasingly larger wages per hour once the work day exceeds 8 hrs
In the USA that's how it is - but not for every worker. It is easy to see that if a baker works 10 hours instead of 8 he bakes 25% more of whatever he is baking because his output is firmly tied to the time spent at the oven. But a writer, artist or a programmer working 10 hours is not necessarily more productive in 10 hours than in 8. Some say that working 10 hours is less productive than working 8 hours and then having good rest. This is definitely true if in a thought experiment you extend 10 hours to 24 - you'd be dead or insane within a week, and then your output is zero.
Another catch is that a programmer is in control of his production rate, whereas a baker is not (each batch of bread sits 30 minutes in the oven, for example.) This, and lack of instant performance measurement, gives the programmer an ability to control his per-hour wage. For example, if an engineer wants a bit of extra cash he can just stay two extra hours, read Slashdot (since the boss already went home) and get paid at a higher rate. So in the USA workers with this type of jobs are not eligible for overtime pay.
They're selling 8 GB cards at the store I'm standing in for $25. And a pidgeon could easily carry 4 of these.
Most of the size and mass of those cards are plastic enclosure and connectors. A properly designed "card" for a pigeon would be an implantable chip with a very fast wireless link to write and read, with inductively supplied power for those operations. Not only there would be no card to lose, the pigeon would be indistinguishable from all other.
Besides, that would be a very ecologically friendly telecommunications channel. Birds are good.
I agree that hunters use silencers however there is no need for them to go around public land with silencers fitted.
Plenty of hunting is done on public lands. Since you don't own the land (or pay for its use) it is actually more desirable to be quiet on public lands than at a private hunting location.
This alone tells me you don't know much, if anything, about guns. Caliber is not an absolute measurement, it is a relative one.
The GP is correct. Firearms' caliber is an absolute measurement. From your own link:
In firearms, the caliber is the approximate diameter of bullet used. In a rifled barrel, the distance is measured between opposing lands or grooves; [...] For example, a small bore rifle with a diameter of 0.22 inch is a .22 cal;
Since we are not discussing artillery here, your objection seems to be out of place.
There are ~0 legitimate reasons for having a silencer attached on public land
I believe you have no idea how much noise a single supersonic round makes. Silencers would be greatly welcomed on public ranges, and maybe you don't even need to wear earmuffs then.
Hunters would use silencers too because gunshots scare the game away. Archers are very proud that their gear doesn't do that :-)
But in my house, there won't be guns. If there is going to be a gun in the house, it will belong to an Adult, and it will be with them at all times till they leave my house.
In my house there are guns. They belong to an adult, as it is the only way to be (you were somewhat redundant) and they are kept locked at all times, except when they are used.
I have a kid in the house, my kid might get curious, and though I will teach her about gun safety, I'm not going to risk her forgetting what she knows so she can get a good look at the business end.
The safest thing for you to do is to not only teach your kid the gun safety, but also to teach her how to shoot. This is an important factor in reducing the curiosity of children about guns. If you say "never touch" they will want to touch when you are not around (or when it's someone's else gun.) If you say "never touch without me" it's a different story. Once the child learns how guns work the curiosity will drop quick, and many children will never want to shoot a gun again, even when they get a chance. There is a web site all about this, and you might want to read it all.
Only now, if we had no guns, I won't have a deterrent for that kid, I can't tell them I have a gun, and I will shoot them if they enter my home.
The police, if promptly called, will need 20 minutes to get to my home. If someone decides to invade my home I have to keep that number in mind. If you have a child in the house you need to consider who and how will protect the child if an unlikely event happens.
But she won't even know I have a gun until (big IF) I have to use it to defend my family, or she is older
There is a reason to do it differently. What if she is to come across a gun outside? The safety rules will be probably too much for her to remember, especially if she is too young. A knowledge of a gun would do better. First, the gun will be recognized as such instantly (and not seen as a strange toy without a name.) Second, if you shoot a gun with a child she will remember that loud report that happens, and it will be a deterrent from exploring further. It will be a good deterrent because it will be in a different kind of memory - the memory that children use best. Safety rules, though important, depend on logical interpretation of what's happening, and we all know how good children are at that. Again I suggest reading that link above, it explains things better than I do.
I don't think gun control would work well in the US, mostly because of our combined 'I'm above the law' mindset, that makes the mass think they can do what ever they want.
Yes. The cat is not just out of the bag, it was never in the bag. And if you *magically* make all guns disappear overnight, the gangs will switch to knives. It's actually scarier than a gun. A gun works even in lightly trained hands of a housewife, but she would be a sitting duck against a knife-wielding attacker. The UK banned all guns, so knives are all the rage there.
You may want to look into reloading.
Rimfire are not reloadable, unfortunately, and shooting squirrels with .30-06 is unreasonable :-) Some people do it, at least for longer effective range, but there is not much left of the squirrel (it explodes,) and the rounds are expensive to waste on such small and numerous critters. A single hillside can house a hundred of them easily.
Only a couple of comments:
One will appear at your local polling place next November.
It won't fix the past. Not only that, voting against a war-loving (D) and for a war-loving (R) is not very practical. 3rd parties are effectively eliminated from the political arena; even a strong candidate (Ron Paul, for one) can not get anywhere.
It is also worth mentioning that politicians are dispensable like paper cups. You don't like $A? Fine, kick him out and vote for $B, he is exactly like $A and receives his orders from the same source. Party does not matter, as we can see - D's are in power and the war rages on, as if there is something to fight for.
Considering that the poor pay little or no income tax, I don't see how they can be "entangled" in the safety net.
Poor phrasing on my part. People who contribute more (and earn more) may be hit with all kinds of progressive taxes which gradually reduce their desire to produce. For example, if you work 10 hours you earn $10/hr. But if you work another 10 hours you suddenly earn $5/hr - and though you do earn more in the end, you work much harder for each dollar. So a rational man would work just the bare minimum instead of working as much as he can, producing maximum wealth and making everyone richer. Progressive taxes tell people to sit on their hands instead of working.
In that case of Sweden that I mentioned not a single tax was above 100% - they were all small, but when they combined - for different people differently - the total tax was confiscatory. I work with a few Swedes, by the way, and they tell me that Sweden's prosperity is not as clear as you think it is. A lot of capital ran away from Sweden a couple decades ago, and it's not coming back. Just this spring, IIRC, Volvo was threatening the government that they will take their ball and leave if the government doesn't back down on some labor laws that apparently exceeded the boundaries of reasonable.
Your extensive comment definitely deserves a reply.
I described how government is supposed to work.
Then you are not the first in a long line of thinkers who discuss how an ideal government in, say, Utopia should work. Unfortunately those theories have no effect on current affairs of existing governments. I'm talking specifically about real world governments - those that are corrupt, inefficient and have goals that could be described as nefarious.
You seem to take it as a self-evidence axiom in the world that government is malicious, corrupt, inefficient, and ineffectual. I reject this axiom because it is patently false.
"All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - this was, is, and will be true. Claiming otherwise is just denying reality. How many governments were or are known that, even starting from a group of fine thinkers, didn't devolve into some sort of dictatorship? I think the French Revolution is a good example, or the Russian Revolution of 1917, though you can easily find many examples in the history of the USA also.
But how much satisfaction do you gain? Does having 50 laborers make you ten times happier than having five?
I should have been writing clearer: laborers are building the house, and a larger, costlier house requires larger construction crew. In any case, it's not important from the POV of economy how happy or satisfied an individual person is. I personally would be quite happy knowing that my money is well used and it feeds 50 families. But it's more important for the economy to just give those 5 (or 50) workers a job. Even if I don't need two yachts (or even one, as matter of fact, even if you give it to me for free) the construction and maintenance of those yachts will create jobs, and that is good. I definitely don't feel cheated when I pay a contractor to fix this or that at the house - they did a job that I could not, and I know that my money will be well spent.
You have the ability to influence the budget through many different political channels, the most powerful of which is the ballot box.
Pray tell where is (or was) that magical ballot box where I could cast my vote against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And against bailouts of banks. And against "cash for clunkers."
Are you seriously claiming that there's no incentive to work in a society with a safety net?
If the safety net entangles honest workers then there is no reason to work at all. Many people point out that the USA's social security programs, as they are set up, only make sure that poor people remain poor. In Sweden, for example, the security net was so extensive that taxes on those who dared to work exceeded 100% - and people refused to work for anything but cash. You couldn't get any service there at that time unless you pay cash.
Or is it that you're more upset that it's possible to survive without working? Are your sensibilities offended by the idea of someone not being punished for idleness by starving in the street? That's not a just punishment in a civilized nation.
I only want to reiterate - ability to survive without working leads to formation of ghettos where nobody works because only fools work. This is simple human psychology, and if you deny that then you are in the same boat as Lenin and Stalin who talked about "reshaping a human" into something that can live under communism. They had to talk about it because obviously no modern man [in sufficient quantities, outside of geeks w/o life] would work if he doesn't have to.
Sure, there is a need for a safety net, but a better design of that net is required. The intent should be not to pay you for not working, but to give you a job that will pay your bills. Humans must always work, or else their minds get lazy and people start expecting free stuff from the government (and that means from taxpayers.)
Just as it's better to acquit ten guilty men than to convict one wrongly, it's better to support ten
Let's make up our damn minds one way or the other already and stop waffling around for decades on end.
You can't have this because you need a government that is continuous over decades. The USA has a government that is permanently in "trolling for votes" mode, and in that mode persistence and steady hand do not pay if the results of today's investments will be visible only 10 or 20 years from now. A President would go down like a lead balloon once the opposition explains to voters that he took $10B of their money and "just burned it." The USA is probably doomed to achieving only short term goals (not longer than 8 years.) Leave long term goals to China, those guys know how to plan ahead and know what persistence of power means.
government's duty under our social contract is to ensure the utilitarian welfare of all.
I'm not sure the government is aware of this. An impartial observer would say that the US government is steadily working to expand its control over US citizens and over foreign lands and foreign resources, with benefits channeled to select few corporations. I'm sure the government would have a good laugh at the notion of "social contract" of any sort. Most of government bureaucracy is not even elected.
It's perfectly legitimate for government to tax you in order to benefit society as a whole.
Troubles begin when your definition of "benefits" does not match their. How would you like a federal tax that is used for killing foreign dark-skinned people because ... [nobody remembers the cause any more.] How would you like a federal tax that takes your money and gives it to bankers? How would you like a federal tax that takes your money and gives it as free money to your lazy neighbor so that he can buy a better car? You are paying all of these taxes and many more, most of them are useless at best, but usually destructive. That's the problem.
Also, progressive taxation can be justified by observing that as one earns more, each dollar is less useful.
Even if we focus on personal income and personal taxes, how is it that each dollar is less useful? I can spend a $50K on a house and it keeps 5 laborers employed. Or I can spend $500K on a house, and it keeps 50 laborers employed. I think dollars just don't have the attribute of usefulness; each dollar is equally useful in the economy.
On top of that, all the progressive taxation does is gives more of your money to the government, where it will be misused in millions of ways. They might build a mega-school where none are needed, or they can build a bridge to nowhere, or they can build an international airport in a fishing village, or they can just burn the cash up in some war. The money is taken out of your hands, this means you are denied the right to decide how to spend it. This reduces the desire to earn more; the opposite end of the spectrum is to earn nothing at all and live on social security or some illegal income.
some Scandinavian countries have begun to issue fines for traffic violations [...] as percentages of the violator's income
Yet another way found to deincentivize honest work. Work for cash only (as a pimp, for example,) run red lights all you want, and pay nothing. Great idea, just as most governments' ideas are.
The capital gains tax is a price for sitting on wealth. It's something we should discourage.
I feel a disconnect here. An example may be helpful. Your school needs repairs. The city issues a bond for $10M, which is an offer to potential creditors. I decide to help out and lend them $1M. A year later the city pays me back $1.1M when the bond matures. I have $100K of capital gain as a fee for the risk I took and for the use of my money (I couldn't hire more workers for my business, for example, when the money was lent.) How is it that this use of my money is not socially welcome? Am I some sort of villain for letting you use my money when you needed it?
I'm not proposing "socialism" in the way you think I am. I'm proposing that we make a market economy that works better through forcing all the participants to play fair.
And, with the right value of "fair", that is the definition of socialism.
Because places with laws like that are wonderful places to live, and you live there too.
If you can live quite well in the USA on $100K/yr then you can live like a king on the same money in India or China. You'd have a palace and servants there; but in the USA you'd have a $1,000 sq.ft. house on a noisy street in a bad neighborhood, and you'd be mowing your lawn all by yourself.
This is especially important when you consider that if you move your business to, say, China your $100K of income can easily become $300K or even more. Asia now is the place where money is made; the USA today is the place where taxes are paid. You'd have to be totally insane to open a new business in California, for example - you'd need to hire a CPA and an HR director before you hire your first worker, and if by some miracle your widget has market you can't manufacture it here anyway, so why not to set the whole thing up abroad in the first place?
It is also important to understand that owners of a company do not have to live near the factory; those days are over - you have managers to crack the whip on the factory floor; you, on the other hand, are free to do other things - to relax on beaches of other countries, or to talk to Wall Street, or to wine and dine someone toward an acquisition.
Pain is such a strong feeling that the body reacts to pain automatically, much faster than you would be able to do if you had to think about it.
Is there any substance that could exist on Mars which would make a round trip economically viable?
I'd approach this from a different angle. How much the conditions on Earth - both political and social and all other - have to worsen before the idea of an off-planet colony for like-minded individuals becomes an irresistible goal?
Are you really going to claim that in the entire solar system there isn't one single resource that could be profitably exploited by mankind?
IMO, asteroids offer far greater ROI. They are somewhat farther, but they have about zero gravity, so you can have space navigation there with minimal expense of reaction mass. It is theorized that asteroids have metals, water, and other valuable materials that will be in demand within the asteroid belt and outside of it. You can establish hundreds of colonies of miners in the Belt, and all of them could be self-sustaining and profitable, and they can trade and move around just as easily as a typical car owner goes to the grocery store. Microgravity will let you build surface objects with little structural strength (saving on materials) and you need those for greenhouses. Asteroids themselves may be solid enough to drill into and build bases under the surface, safe from solar radiation.
But planets ... we can't handle planets yet - we don't have technology to land in anything but dense atmosphere (Earth, Venus) or vacuum (Moon.) Landing in all other atmospheres is tough because none of our technologies work well there. You need a new propulsion method to do that. That's why all Mars probes basically fall on the surface surrounded by airbags (and some just slam into the planet :-) I think all we can do with Mars now is to keep sending robotic probes; it's just common sense and rational thinking. You want to live somewhere off the planet - then build living quarters on LEO, send them to some asteroid and park there (no gravity to worry about.) If all is well, send the tenants; if they want to leave they maybe could get to the Earthbound orbit with just a single SRB - again no gravity to fight against. Once here they can be picked up by a separate vehicle that just services LEO.
Besides difficulties with landing on planets, there are too few of them within reach. We could land on Mercury, I guess, but it's pretty far and quite hot. Venus is just bad for your health. Earth we are on already. Moon is dead as a doornail. Mars is dead as a doornail. Asteroids are interesting. Jupiter itself is not even an option, its satellites - possibly, but they are too far, we need nuclear engines to get there and nuclear power to sustain life (too far from the Sun.) Saturn and beyond are the same story.
I understand that /. is probably not the best place to discuss the purpose of life. However the idea of flying there and dying soon after landing is remarkably lacking of any purpose. It can be only seen as a fairly expensive, taxpayers-financed suicide. I fully support the idea of a suicide when the circumstances warrant it, but do it on your own dime :-)
I think their would be plenty of volunteers
Only until they realize that their lifespan on Mars will be measured in hours. Humans need a lot of specific items to support life. In case of Mars air, heat and shelter come first, then water and food, then something to justify their continuing existence (life in spacesuits is tough on morale.)
100% of remaining volunteers should be referred to a head doctor.
is there any other vehicle capable of either servising Hubble, or bringing anything down?
There are plenty of vehicles that can bring themselves down; most of them do, somewhere around South Pacific. If you mean "safely" then the list narrows, but a used satellite, well past its "use by" date, is just not worth of bringing down in one piece. The value is in data bits, not in bits of metal and silicon - and data can be easily sent over the radio.
Hubble is yet another issue. The original cost of Hubble was estimated at $400 million, but it grew out of proportion because of endless delays with launch and because of the defective mirror. It would be probably cheaper and better today to build a copy of Hubble telescope, with all new cameras installed and all the improvements made, instead of replacing failed components one by one in a risky and limited servicing mission. Many components of Hubble telescope are not serviceable anyway. So while STS is a system capable of servicing Hubble, the overall value of such a service is debatable. Of course, if you have STS you use it, but I wouldn't say that without Shuttle the Hubble telescope project can't happen - there would be some other vehicle to launch it on, likely a cheaper one.