Don't have the source handy but I remember finding a site that showed how many peak hours you could expect to get out of your solar panels. And the numbers were very sad. Even the best area's of the US seemed to average less than five hours of peak production per day. And most were at 1 to 2 hours average.
In the first two examples you posit it wouldn't matter in that case if the victim was armed or not so they lose nothing by having the gun.
For the third, if you can't use your gun or aren't willing to use your gun when appropriate you shouldn't be carrying one.
The point is that by being armed with a gun the victim is on a much more level footing against their assailant. Criminals don't pick targets that stand anywhere near a 50/50 shot of resisting them. The idea isn't to carry a weapon openly but to carry it concealed. So that if you are in a situation where it's use is appropriate you may use it with the benefit of suprise. Hopefully ambushing the ambusher as it were.
Your statement about the greatest civiliazation is true but it is also incredibly simliar to the original. "Equally armed" can also mean "equally unarmed" which is where you would be if there was no reason for anyone to be armed. That would require a utopian world which I don't think anyone sees as a real possiblity.
I think part of your problem in understanding the original poster is that you misunderstand how guns should properly be used.
When I was a kid the first thing I learned was do not ever for any reason point a gun, or any weapon, at something or someone whom you do not intend to use it on. If I draw my gun on someone it is because I am about to shoot them with it. It is not something with which to threaten or persuade. If my weapon is coming out it's because we are already past the point of resolving the issue non-violently and lethal force is the appropriate response.
A gun does not empower the criminal and the victim in preciesly the same way. It in most cases evens their footing considerably. Most criminals are only going to attempt to victimize someone when they have a perceived advantage. Often this is because they are either physically larger or armed in some fashion. If they both are armed with handguns the difference comes down to willingness to use force and reflexes, both of which equate to a smaller difference in leverage than when the victim was unarmed.
That said if you haven't made the decision already for yourself whether or not you are willing to use lethal force to defend yourself and others you shouldn't be carrying a gun.
"Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government"
Until you realize the impossibility and silliness of your comment, no intelligent conversation can be had.
When I was in high school a friend of mine convinced me to join the wrestling team. I sucked pretty badly at it. I only had fighting with my siblings as experience where as my team mates had been doing it for four years or more. At my first tournament a friend of mine from another school's team wanted to informally wrestle with me to warm up and have some fun. He had been wrestling for years. He had won more than half of his last 40 matches by pin. I out weighed him by about 25 pounds. Despite his better physical conditioning and years of experience I was simply able to out muscle him at almost any point and essentialy sit on him till he gave up.
Depends on the context. People have hunted for sport for years. I think in that context it just means for the fun and challenge, not necessarily against another human competitors.
While I can't under stand the entertainment value in watching NASCAR I can see why it's a sport. The conditions a driver performs under are pretty grueling. And the reaction speeds and skill necessary to drive competively at those speeds are very restrictive. We can joke about how difficult it is to drive in a circle all day but doing it better than a bunch of other teams in those conditions is definitely challenging.
"liberties that are not yours to take" WTF are you talking about. The parent wasn't talking about enforcing the laws himself. He was talking about addressing someone who was breaking the law and requesting they stop doing such. Enforcing the law would be to issue a citation or arrest the individual. Unless the behaviour is a felony offense civilians don't usually have the liberty to enforce the law but they always have the liberty to call out the asshats breaking the law. That is the entire point of society.
And so far as snitching goes, I'll do it any time any place you want. I have plenty of friends that would do like wise and if I ever have the chance I hope I can snitch on you. Tolerance of crime because some other criminal thinks it's cool is clearly retarded.
Actually the military and civilian DoD sites I have been to that actually work with more important military systems were already in theory locked down like this. People just always figured since their usb drive didn't have a battery it didn't count as a personal electronic device. If you read the rules and understood their intent it was already obvious that you shouldn't be bringing that kind of thing in to work.
According to my enlisted friends their flash drives and optical drives are just not useable now by a non-admin user. If you insert a usb device like a flash drive or an optical disk the computer just refuses to recognize it. They didn't just disable the USB controllers though because most of the keyboards and mice as well as CAC readers are usb devices and they still function properly.
My office for years had a Snack Cabinet. It worked on the honor system and I ever only had an issue with one persons honor. I was responsible much of the time for stocking it and posting a price list. We made minimal profit off any sale and the money was used for going away gifts and such so there was never that uncomfortable passing of an envelope and such. Eventually we had to close it down because our office was moved to another building where the vending contractor had a clause specifically prohibitting such informal arrangements. I can't blame him, our soda's and waters were 40 cents, where as his were almost a dollar if not more.
I don't think s/he is saying that the child recognizes pink as a girly color and hence deduces that they are a girl. The child simply develops an affinity for the color pink because it's what it is surrounded by most often and so when given a choice of colors it opts for pink.
My Wife got her Masters from a state university and worked the whole time. I believe it took her about six years, maybe seven. I think she owed a little over 12k when we got married a year ago. We still owe more than that on her car.
I can agree with you that discouraging people from going to college if they want to, or are interested in a field where it's absolutely necessary, is wrong. At the same time many people don't have an interest in college. For many it's what they expect to do because it's what they've been fed all along.
I always thought I would go to college myself, even though I hated school and dreaded more of it. I ended up in the Air Force as a computer programmer and from there I moved to a defense contractor. Granted I would be better off in my current position with a degree because it would get me another week of vacation every year and a little more salary. But I don't need that, and I have time and a job that allows me to work on it without half starving myself.
Maybe the Public High School I attended was better than the norm, but I also went to a Vocational Tech school for my junior and senior years. I studied law enforcement there which is pretty much completely unconnected from what I do now. And Votech's aren't known for their high standards of accademia, but I still feel like I am a more rounded person than 90% of my aquantances.
If we're argueing that college is necessary to round out individuals because high school isn't cutting it then shouldn't the solution be to improve our public high schools? And schools can not and should not be taking the place of parents teaching children morals, personal and civic responsibility. And of course there is always the point that we can't have a society entirely composed of wite collar works. The World needs it's Epsilons as do we as a society.
Having been a Mormon practically all my life I can denounce that in at least my experience. And in fact the Church does not take a position on whether or not tithes should be based on Gross or Net income.
I have never been asked for any validation that I paid a full tithe other than my own word. Also paying a tithe is not required to be allowed to attend any religious services outside of the Temples. Some Callings(jobs done on a voluntary basis) require that the person be a full tithe payer, but again your word is all that's asked to verify that you are. Now obviously the person interviewing you is likely to know you well enough to determine if you were to lie blatantly about your tithes.
Entering a Temple once it is dedicated requires what we call a Temple Recommend, a small card verifying that you have been interviewed by a couple different Church authorities and found worthy. Meaning you are living up to the standards and teachings of the Church, among which is paying a full tithe.
All this of course doesn't mean that some nut job somewhere isn't demanding that he see W2's and such but that person is definitely out of line and acting outside of their authority.
So are you saying you get your paycheck 100% tax free? If so I'd like to know how you magically manage that.
As for the personal insult, I'm not sure why you feel it necessary. Unless you feel like you were mislead by a recruiter and are now trying to cover up your shame by lying about something that's easily verifiable.
Re:You do realize the other hobbies are the same?
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
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· Score: 1
Backpacking and such can teach you very important life skills not just how to load a pack or start a fire.
When I was a Boy Scout we hiked part of the Appalachean Trail. Before doing that though we had to spend most of a yaer preparing by taking smaller hikes and figuring out what we could and could not take, where our limits where and generally building endurance.
I learned from that about setting goals with real consequences. Some of my friends sloughed off on the prep work and suffered heat exhaustion and such on the trail. Which resulted in them needing the first aid skills we all had to learn before going. I got to see in a very real way why setting and achieving goals was important.
I learned what was and wasn't necessary for me to carry around. I wish my wife had learned that principle her purse must weigh close to fifty pounds.
Re:You do realize the other hobbies are the same?
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
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· Score: 1
Not that my car was typical entirely but the cheapest mechanic I found that was even willing to look at my car was $65 an hour. When my starter went bad I bought the part online and installed it in about thirty minutes of work. The mechanic would have charged for at least the full hour and I would have had to take it out to his shop ten miles out of town. He would have charged for sourcing the part. And I wouldn't save any time because I would have just stayed at the shop while he fixed it.
Hobbies aren't necessarily all about learning that specific skill. They are often more about learning life skills that you don't always get in your day to day life. And yeah, many hobbies can teach the same things but in ways catered to the preferences of the individual.
You represent the World do you? Well you can take your notice and shove it up your anus. If you don't like the way we do things then maybe you should have fixed it before we felt we had to. We wouldn't be acting as the world police if the rest of the world had a spine.
What are you going to do if we screw it up, fire us? How exactly does that work? I'll bet whatever country your in we can still lay it to waste in no time. Put up or shut up.
Having worked at one of the USAF's major software production facilities. I would like to say that would not work out in any kind of economically feasible manner. The vast majority of software that the military uses is written to be run on the OS's we have today. Using a new and different OS would mean rewriting most everything in use today and anything new you wanted to develop would have to be specially made for your systems. COTS is a pretty good way to save money in the majority of situations where the USAF needs something. Proprietary is almost always a bad idea except as a cash cow for the seller.
Going with Open Source software written to be as secure as possible is probably the best way to go. But there's the whole irrational fear from the people at the top that being open is dangerous. Security by obfuscation is still their favorite.
It's only tax free if your are in specific areas. Most of the time those are combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a recruiter is telling you that your pay is always tax free he's lying. Also that's only federal income taxes that you are getting out of. You still get to pay for Social Security, Medicare and Capital Gains.
So pay while you are in a tax free zone is nice, but it's not utpoia, and there is the bonus of getting to dodge bullets and IED's.
I don't have any good anecdotal evidence like that myself. Well other than that I thrived on around 20k a year for awhile in a major city myself. I eventually took a pay cut and joined the AF but it's what I wanted, and I certainly wasn't impoverished.
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Don't have the source handy but I remember finding a site that showed how many peak hours you could expect to get out of your solar panels. And the numbers were very sad. Even the best area's of the US seemed to average less than five hours of peak production per day. And most were at 1 to 2 hours average.
In the first two examples you posit it wouldn't matter in that case if the victim was armed or not so they lose nothing by having the gun.
For the third, if you can't use your gun or aren't willing to use your gun when appropriate you shouldn't be carrying one.
The point is that by being armed with a gun the victim is on a much more level footing against their assailant. Criminals don't pick targets that stand anywhere near a 50/50 shot of resisting them. The idea isn't to carry a weapon openly but to carry it concealed. So that if you are in a situation where it's use is appropriate you may use it with the benefit of suprise. Hopefully ambushing the ambusher as it were.
Your statement about the greatest civiliazation is true but it is also incredibly simliar to the original. "Equally armed" can also mean "equally unarmed" which is where you would be if there was no reason for anyone to be armed. That would require a utopian world which I don't think anyone sees as a real possiblity.
I think part of your problem in understanding the original poster is that you misunderstand how guns should properly be used.
When I was a kid the first thing I learned was do not ever for any reason point a gun, or any weapon, at something or someone whom you do not intend to use it on. If I draw my gun on someone it is because I am about to shoot them with it. It is not something with which to threaten or persuade. If my weapon is coming out it's because we are already past the point of resolving the issue non-violently and lethal force is the appropriate response.
A gun does not empower the criminal and the victim in preciesly the same way. It in most cases evens their footing considerably. Most criminals are only going to attempt to victimize someone when they have a perceived advantage. Often this is because they are either physically larger or armed in some fashion. If they both are armed with handguns the difference comes down to willingness to use force and reflexes, both of which equate to a smaller difference in leverage than when the victim was unarmed.
That said if you haven't made the decision already for yourself whether or not you are willing to use lethal force to defend yourself and others you shouldn't be carrying a gun.
"Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government" Until you realize the impossibility and silliness of your comment, no intelligent conversation can be had.
As anecdotal evidence.
When I was in high school a friend of mine convinced me to join the wrestling team. I sucked pretty badly at it. I only had fighting with my siblings as experience where as my team mates had been doing it for four years or more. At my first tournament a friend of mine from another school's team wanted to informally wrestle with me to warm up and have some fun. He had been wrestling for years. He had won more than half of his last 40 matches by pin. I out weighed him by about 25 pounds. Despite his better physical conditioning and years of experience I was simply able to out muscle him at almost any point and essentialy sit on him till he gave up.
Depends on the context. People have hunted for sport for years. I think in that context it just means for the fun and challenge, not necessarily against another human competitors. While I can't under stand the entertainment value in watching NASCAR I can see why it's a sport. The conditions a driver performs under are pretty grueling. And the reaction speeds and skill necessary to drive competively at those speeds are very restrictive. We can joke about how difficult it is to drive in a circle all day but doing it better than a bunch of other teams in those conditions is definitely challenging.
"liberties that are not yours to take" WTF are you talking about. The parent wasn't talking about enforcing the laws himself. He was talking about addressing someone who was breaking the law and requesting they stop doing such. Enforcing the law would be to issue a citation or arrest the individual. Unless the behaviour is a felony offense civilians don't usually have the liberty to enforce the law but they always have the liberty to call out the asshats breaking the law. That is the entire point of society.
And so far as snitching goes, I'll do it any time any place you want. I have plenty of friends that would do like wise and if I ever have the chance I hope I can snitch on you. Tolerance of crime because some other criminal thinks it's cool is clearly retarded.
Actually the military and civilian DoD sites I have been to that actually work with more important military systems were already in theory locked down like this. People just always figured since their usb drive didn't have a battery it didn't count as a personal electronic device. If you read the rules and understood their intent it was already obvious that you shouldn't be bringing that kind of thing in to work.
According to my enlisted friends their flash drives and optical drives are just not useable now by a non-admin user. If you insert a usb device like a flash drive or an optical disk the computer just refuses to recognize it. They didn't just disable the USB controllers though because most of the keyboards and mice as well as CAC readers are usb devices and they still function properly.
Which brings up the question I have always had. Why isn't the default for comments "Plain Old Text"?
Surely this could be better explained with a car analogy than some silly loaf of raisin bread!?!?!?
My office for years had a Snack Cabinet. It worked on the honor system and I ever only had an issue with one persons honor. I was responsible much of the time for stocking it and posting a price list. We made minimal profit off any sale and the money was used for going away gifts and such so there was never that uncomfortable passing of an envelope and such. Eventually we had to close it down because our office was moved to another building where the vending contractor had a clause specifically prohibitting such informal arrangements. I can't blame him, our soda's and waters were 40 cents, where as his were almost a dollar if not more.
Seriously, you'd think anything they took with them outside of the station would have a freaking tether.
I don't think s/he is saying that the child recognizes pink as a girly color and hence deduces that they are a girl. The child simply develops an affinity for the color pink because it's what it is surrounded by most often and so when given a choice of colors it opts for pink.
My Wife got her Masters from a state university and worked the whole time. I believe it took her about six years, maybe seven. I think she owed a little over 12k when we got married a year ago. We still owe more than that on her car.
I can agree with you that discouraging people from going to college if they want to, or are interested in a field where it's absolutely necessary, is wrong. At the same time many people don't have an interest in college. For many it's what they expect to do because it's what they've been fed all along.
I always thought I would go to college myself, even though I hated school and dreaded more of it. I ended up in the Air Force as a computer programmer and from there I moved to a defense contractor. Granted I would be better off in my current position with a degree because it would get me another week of vacation every year and a little more salary. But I don't need that, and I have time and a job that allows me to work on it without half starving myself.
Maybe the Public High School I attended was better than the norm, but I also went to a Vocational Tech school for my junior and senior years. I studied law enforcement there which is pretty much completely unconnected from what I do now. And Votech's aren't known for their high standards of accademia, but I still feel like I am a more rounded person than 90% of my aquantances.
If we're argueing that college is necessary to round out individuals because high school isn't cutting it then shouldn't the solution be to improve our public high schools? And schools can not and should not be taking the place of parents teaching children morals, personal and civic responsibility. And of course there is always the point that we can't have a society entirely composed of wite collar works. The World needs it's Epsilons as do we as a society.
Having been a Mormon practically all my life I can denounce that in at least my experience. And in fact the Church does not take a position on whether or not tithes should be based on Gross or Net income.
I have never been asked for any validation that I paid a full tithe other than my own word. Also paying a tithe is not required to be allowed to attend any religious services outside of the Temples. Some Callings(jobs done on a voluntary basis) require that the person be a full tithe payer, but again your word is all that's asked to verify that you are. Now obviously the person interviewing you is likely to know you well enough to determine if you were to lie blatantly about your tithes.
Entering a Temple once it is dedicated requires what we call a Temple Recommend, a small card verifying that you have been interviewed by a couple different Church authorities and found worthy. Meaning you are living up to the standards and teachings of the Church, among which is paying a full tithe.
All this of course doesn't mean that some nut job somewhere isn't demanding that he see W2's and such but that person is definitely out of line and acting outside of their authority.
So are you saying you get your paycheck 100% tax free? If so I'd like to know how you magically manage that.
As for the personal insult, I'm not sure why you feel it necessary. Unless you feel like you were mislead by a recruiter and are now trying to cover up your shame by lying about something that's easily verifiable.
Backpacking and such can teach you very important life skills not just how to load a pack or start a fire. When I was a Boy Scout we hiked part of the Appalachean Trail. Before doing that though we had to spend most of a yaer preparing by taking smaller hikes and figuring out what we could and could not take, where our limits where and generally building endurance. I learned from that about setting goals with real consequences. Some of my friends sloughed off on the prep work and suffered heat exhaustion and such on the trail. Which resulted in them needing the first aid skills we all had to learn before going. I got to see in a very real way why setting and achieving goals was important. I learned what was and wasn't necessary for me to carry around. I wish my wife had learned that principle her purse must weigh close to fifty pounds.
Not that my car was typical entirely but the cheapest mechanic I found that was even willing to look at my car was $65 an hour. When my starter went bad I bought the part online and installed it in about thirty minutes of work. The mechanic would have charged for at least the full hour and I would have had to take it out to his shop ten miles out of town. He would have charged for sourcing the part. And I wouldn't save any time because I would have just stayed at the shop while he fixed it. Hobbies aren't necessarily all about learning that specific skill. They are often more about learning life skills that you don't always get in your day to day life. And yeah, many hobbies can teach the same things but in ways catered to the preferences of the individual.
You represent the World do you? Well you can take your notice and shove it up your anus. If you don't like the way we do things then maybe you should have fixed it before we felt we had to. We wouldn't be acting as the world police if the rest of the world had a spine.
What are you going to do if we screw it up, fire us? How exactly does that work? I'll bet whatever country your in we can still lay it to waste in no time. Put up or shut up.
Having worked at one of the USAF's major software production facilities. I would like to say that would not work out in any kind of economically feasible manner. The vast majority of software that the military uses is written to be run on the OS's we have today. Using a new and different OS would mean rewriting most everything in use today and anything new you wanted to develop would have to be specially made for your systems. COTS is a pretty good way to save money in the majority of situations where the USAF needs something. Proprietary is almost always a bad idea except as a cash cow for the seller.
Going with Open Source software written to be as secure as possible is probably the best way to go. But there's the whole irrational fear from the people at the top that being open is dangerous. Security by obfuscation is still their favorite.
It's only tax free if your are in specific areas. Most of the time those are combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. If a recruiter is telling you that your pay is always tax free he's lying. Also that's only federal income taxes that you are getting out of. You still get to pay for Social Security, Medicare and Capital Gains.
So pay while you are in a tax free zone is nice, but it's not utpoia, and there is the bonus of getting to dodge bullets and IED's.
I don't have any good anecdotal evidence like that myself. Well other than that I thrived on around 20k a year for awhile in a major city myself. I eventually took a pay cut and joined the AF but it's what I wanted, and I certainly wasn't impoverished.
Wow, that is a very insightful post and I wish I had gotten mod points today and not yesterday.