Shotguns and bolt-action rifles are the most common.
You know, the sort of firearms that farmers and so on need as tools, as opposed to the sort of firearms that are used to kill people.
It's extremely rare for criminals to use firearms of any kind in Australia, since use of a firearm in commission of a crime dramatically escalates the legal stakes in terms of punishment. In the last couple of years, though, there have been a series of gangland shootings in Melbourne - there was basically a low-level war between some of the organised crime families. Those are the only shootings by criminals I've really been aware of lately, and since they were shooting each other the degree to which I care is pretty limited.
I think the problem is the stereotype of "selling sandals" to every Chinaman, which would presumably refer to the nineteenth century stereotype of the Chinese coolie with flat straw hat, pigtail and sandals.
It's a bit old-fashioned and certainly doesn't reflect modern China in any way, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to find it really offensive.
"Finally, let me point out that the most common unit for for measuring pressures is a length. How's that for crazy?"
Maybe in wacky US Customary units:)
Internationally, Pascals (and kPa, MPa etc) are pretty popular for general engineering & metereological purposes. The Pascal is defined as a force of 1 Newton exerted over an area of 1 square meter. You also see "bars", which are defined as 100kPa, which is within a few percent of standard laboratory atmospheric pressure. PSI (pounds force per square inch) seems to be common for pneumatics such as tyres and breathing apparatus, probably due to the influence of American manufacturing, but is likewise not a measurement of length.
In the water industry, meters head of water is a common pressure unit because it's convenient. But I wouldn't call it the *most* common unit of pressure.
The only context where I've seen mmHg used was in thermodynamics lab at uni using an ancient manometer to make readings...
But your other comments about power consumption were very valid. Good points.
The untraceable police abuse thing is a real problem, but it shouldn't be impossible to solve. Why not make Tasers have a built-in recording of their usage?
Put in a a bit of write-once memory that records a timestamp every time the Taser is activated, and records the frequency and duration of applied shocks. Maybe even record when it's used in drive stun mode and when it's used in projectile mode. The things certainly already have unique serial numbers, and would presumably be registered to a specific officer.
That way, if you get roughed up in custody, it should be possible for you (or the coroner!) to subpoena the weapon's usage records in any resulting legal action.
Goodbye, untraceability! It's certainly not a complete solution and is far from unhackable, and doesn't stop the cops from finding other sources of leverage, but it might tone down any rampant abuse...
I also back the suggestions that Taser usage should involve as much paperwork & internal investigation as a firearms discharge. That's certainly an important disincentive.
From the article: "Historians say Mr. Putin may have cited Dr. Koval's accomplishments as a way to rekindle Russian pride."
Huh. Well, I'd be the last to say that Russia has nothing to be proud of. There's a long history of great achievements there (as well as some horrific crimes).
But, rekindling Russian pride by honoring the guy who... um... helped them leach from American R&D and achievement?
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be that proud of it!
I guess Putin, given his own unsavoury background, probably has different ideas about counts as a "great achievement".
Do you think this strategy would work well for managing IT environments at work? After all, employees are responsible adults and wouldn't disobey the directions of IT, would they? No need to use user accounts to control access to files either, after all if you set firm boundaries people won't want to look at payroll to find out what the bosses earn!
Oh wait,/. says that a third of employees regularly violate IT policy. Guess that whole "limited user" account security model has a point after all!
This just in: using tools to *enforce* policies is not the same thing as lacking parental leadership. In fact, using features like this to set policies the kids can't get around constitutes at least some kind of leadership in my book.
I don't understand why there is so much distaste for giving parents tools for *enforcing* the policies they have put in place.
Which of the following would you disagree with:
1) Locking gun cabinets. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to play with guns!
2) Keeping household chemicals out of reach of children. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to touch them!
3) Running corporate computers without any kind of limited user environment. Every one can be admin! After all, if you tell your users not to download the special pointers and smiley sets off the Internet, they never would, right? They're trustworthy adults! And the process of an IT admin busting an employee and then doing something about it is good for the employee, the IT admin, and good for the company!
Seriously, *what* is wrong with making a parent's decisions enforceable by the software and hardware?
Actually, a caveat: I'm not sure if Vista writes to hard disk at the start of the hybrid sleep, or only if/when the timeouts or battery levels trigger a Hibernation. It could be either way.
Anyway, the point stands that hybrid sleep is not a Mac OS specific feature!
I don't know about XP, but my Vista laptop has "Hybrid Sleep" as an option. You close the lid, it suspends to RAM. If it's been in Suspend state for too long or the battery is running low, it caches the RAM to HD and goes into Hibernate mode.
It seems that once again it's feature *exposure* and usability that forms any difference.
Besides, you could always use the 4th Ed SRD.
In case you don't know about the System Rules Description (SRD), it's the core of the 3.x d20 system. In particular, the parts that are accessible to third party RPG developers under the Open Gaming License without being a violation of WotC's copyright.
Therefore, it's available for free on the internet, and it basically consists of all the rules from the 3.0 and 3.5 PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual. There's no art, it's plain text, and all references to WotC specific characters have been removed (eg Mordenkainen's Lucubration renamed to Mage's Lucubration, no stats a handful of monsters like beholders and illithids) and doesn't cover any of the expansions. But, it's more than enough to run a pretty good game.
WotC have said that OGL is continuing for 4th Ed, so hey, there ought to be a 4th Ed SRD as well! With that and your 3.x library, you shouldn't *need* to buy any 4th ed books if you're willing to do conversion yourself. If you want the official conversions, of course, maybe WotC has a product for you after all.
Maybe he's talking about a service like Steam. You know, online *delivery* of *applications*, which then run locally on your PC, complete with pretty-good copy protection systems and a subscription-based approach to "ownership".
Makes sense to me... what's so special about retail boxes for software anyway?
"Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?"
Can't agree with this. I'm not an expert in ISO processes, but in *most* cooperative decision making processes (which is what ISO Committees are supposed to be) it is entirely appropriate for someone to say, "Yes, this could be made a standard as-is, but it could also be improved by doing x, y, and z."
I also think it's a bit unfair to assume bad faith on the part of Microsoft's OOXML engineering team. (Management? Yeah, ok. There's plenty of fishy smell surrounding Microsoft's pushing of the process.) If the ISO process returns a bunch of comments, even attached to Yes votes, I would expect Microsoft's engineers to look at the comments and fix whatever management will allow them to do.
how will they run the process for standardizing their standardization process without a standard process for processing standardization?
Argh, my head....
Slashdot Mirror
Shotguns and bolt-action rifles are the most common.
You know, the sort of firearms that farmers and so on need as tools, as opposed to the sort of firearms that are used to kill people.
It's extremely rare for criminals to use firearms of any kind in Australia, since use of a firearm in commission of a crime dramatically escalates the legal stakes in terms of punishment. In the last couple of years, though, there have been a series of gangland shootings in Melbourne - there was basically a low-level war between some of the organised crime families. Those are the only shootings by criminals I've really been aware of lately, and since they were shooting each other the degree to which I care is pretty limited.
I think the problem is the stereotype of "selling sandals" to every Chinaman, which would presumably refer to the nineteenth century stereotype of the Chinese coolie with flat straw hat, pigtail and sandals.
It's a bit old-fashioned and certainly doesn't reflect modern China in any way, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to find it really offensive.
Further evidence of global warming, obviously....
John Milton: Paradise Lost.
:D
For a prequel, it's not bad!
"Finally, let me point out that the most common unit for for measuring pressures is a length. How's that for crazy?"
:)
Maybe in wacky US Customary units
Internationally, Pascals (and kPa, MPa etc) are pretty popular for general engineering & metereological purposes. The Pascal is defined as a force of 1 Newton exerted over an area of 1 square meter. You also see "bars", which are defined as 100kPa, which is within a few percent of standard laboratory atmospheric pressure. PSI (pounds force per square inch) seems to be common for pneumatics such as tyres and breathing apparatus, probably due to the influence of American manufacturing, but is likewise not a measurement of length.
In the water industry, meters head of water is a common pressure unit because it's convenient. But I wouldn't call it the *most* common unit of pressure.
The only context where I've seen mmHg used was in thermodynamics lab at uni using an ancient manometer to make readings...
But your other comments about power consumption were very valid. Good points.
The untraceable police abuse thing is a real problem, but it shouldn't be impossible to solve. Why not make Tasers have a built-in recording of their usage?
Put in a a bit of write-once memory that records a timestamp every time the Taser is activated, and records the frequency and duration of applied shocks. Maybe even record when it's used in drive stun mode and when it's used in projectile mode. The things certainly already have unique serial numbers, and would presumably be registered to a specific officer.
That way, if you get roughed up in custody, it should be possible for you (or the coroner!) to subpoena the weapon's usage records in any resulting legal action.
Goodbye, untraceability! It's certainly not a complete solution and is far from unhackable, and doesn't stop the cops from finding other sources of leverage, but it might tone down any rampant abuse...
I also back the suggestions that Taser usage should involve as much paperwork & internal investigation as a firearms discharge. That's certainly an important disincentive.
From the article: "Historians say Mr. Putin may have cited Dr. Koval's accomplishments as a way to rekindle Russian pride."
Huh. Well, I'd be the last to say that Russia has nothing to be proud of. There's a long history of great achievements there (as well as some horrific crimes).
But, rekindling Russian pride by honoring the guy who... um... helped them leach from American R&D and achievement?
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be that proud of it!
I guess Putin, given his own unsavoury background, probably has different ideas about counts as a "great achievement".
you own botnet.
Do you think this strategy would work well for managing IT environments at work? After all, employees are responsible adults and wouldn't disobey the directions of IT, would they? No need to use user accounts to control access to files either, after all if you set firm boundaries people won't want to look at payroll to find out what the bosses earn!
Oh wait, /. says that a third of employees regularly violate IT policy. Guess that whole "limited user" account security model has a point after all!
This just in: using tools to *enforce* policies is not the same thing as lacking parental leadership. In fact, using features like this to set policies the kids can't get around constitutes at least some kind of leadership in my book.
Huh. Apparently the line breaks I put in that post didn't work the way I expected. I must be new here.
I don't understand why there is so much distaste for giving parents tools for *enforcing* the policies they have put in place. Which of the following would you disagree with: 1) Locking gun cabinets. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to play with guns! 2) Keeping household chemicals out of reach of children. After all, parents can just tell their kids not to touch them! 3) Running corporate computers without any kind of limited user environment. Every one can be admin! After all, if you tell your users not to download the special pointers and smiley sets off the Internet, they never would, right? They're trustworthy adults! And the process of an IT admin busting an employee and then doing something about it is good for the employee, the IT admin, and good for the company! Seriously, *what* is wrong with making a parent's decisions enforceable by the software and hardware?
Actually, a caveat: I'm not sure if Vista writes to hard disk at the start of the hybrid sleep, or only if/when the timeouts or battery levels trigger a Hibernation. It could be either way. Anyway, the point stands that hybrid sleep is not a Mac OS specific feature!
I don't know about XP, but my Vista laptop has "Hybrid Sleep" as an option. You close the lid, it suspends to RAM. If it's been in Suspend state for too long or the battery is running low, it caches the RAM to HD and goes into Hibernate mode. It seems that once again it's feature *exposure* and usability that forms any difference.
Besides, you could always use the 4th Ed SRD. In case you don't know about the System Rules Description (SRD), it's the core of the 3.x d20 system. In particular, the parts that are accessible to third party RPG developers under the Open Gaming License without being a violation of WotC's copyright.
Therefore, it's available for free on the internet, and it basically consists of all the rules from the 3.0 and 3.5 PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual. There's no art, it's plain text, and all references to WotC specific characters have been removed (eg Mordenkainen's Lucubration renamed to Mage's Lucubration, no stats a handful of monsters like beholders and illithids) and doesn't cover any of the expansions. But, it's more than enough to run a pretty good game.
WotC have said that OGL is continuing for 4th Ed, so hey, there ought to be a 4th Ed SRD as well! With that and your 3.x library, you shouldn't *need* to buy any 4th ed books if you're willing to do conversion yourself. If you want the official conversions, of course, maybe WotC has a product for you after all.
Anyway, here's a link to a nicely HTML-ified copy of the 3.x SRD.
Maybe he's talking about a service like Steam. You know, online *delivery* of *applications*, which then run locally on your PC, complete with pretty-good copy protection systems and a subscription-based approach to "ownership". Makes sense to me... what's so special about retail boxes for software anyway?
"Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?" Can't agree with this. I'm not an expert in ISO processes, but in *most* cooperative decision making processes (which is what ISO Committees are supposed to be) it is entirely appropriate for someone to say, "Yes, this could be made a standard as-is, but it could also be improved by doing x, y, and z." I also think it's a bit unfair to assume bad faith on the part of Microsoft's OOXML engineering team. (Management? Yeah, ok. There's plenty of fishy smell surrounding Microsoft's pushing of the process.) If the ISO process returns a bunch of comments, even attached to Yes votes, I would expect Microsoft's engineers to look at the comments and fix whatever management will allow them to do.
how will they run the process for standardizing their standardization process without a standard process for processing standardization? Argh, my head....