The point is, it's not crap. In the (very) large majority of cases, you know the dimensionality of your vectors at compile-time when doing math.
By moving the compile-time constant to a constant generated at runtime, you're moving the problem space from efficiently handling vector math to efficiently handling dynamic multidimensonality.
You're either comparing apples to oranges, or you're using the wrong tool (compile-time optimizations) for the job (dynamic efficiency).
Bah, overrated. If you think what I say is incorrect, discuss the issues with me, don't mod me down. I only say history has proven that it's dangerous when too much power and wealth ends up in the hands of a small elite, and that the ethics behind the process are questionable. Please show me where I'm wrong.
Yes, but for the rich to get richer in the long term, not only the poor have to become poorer, but the rich-but-not-quite-so-rich also. Not only do the rich get richer, they become fewer in numbers also. (This economical principal was the driving force behind most empires since the Roman empire btw.; and it often played a role in the downfall of these empires also.)
I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
Being just one of the richer ultimately doesn't cut it. You'll have to amass so much money that you become richer no matter what you do. As long as you actually have to work to earn your living or even make your income grow, you're in danger.
Of course, since this principal has lead to various kinds of slavery (like wage slavery) in the past, there is reason for concern about the ethics behind it also, not only about it's stability in the long term. The instability is obviously caused by the (slave) uprisings, (socialist) revolutions and independence struggles at the far corners of the empire.
This pattern runs like a red herring through history. It's just so damn tempting to take the short term profits, try to become part of the elite, and screw up in the long term in the process ("because somebody else will do it anyway").
I kown in hindsight running 2 threads on a 6502 isn't that great an achievement; but at the time I was very impressed with the way they coded some reentrable subroutines and (mostly:) kept the threads out of eachothers hair without real semaphores/mutexes.
There were only 6 bits to control the PLA (Programmable Logic Array) if I recall correctly. I know about the ROM size in the C64, but I was assuming (wrongly) every 6510 setup had a PLA. I think I'll have an attic-safari in the weekend, see if I can find the old specsheets and books. (The only 6502 book I still keep around is 6502 Assembly Language Subroutines by Leventhal and Saville.)
The 6510 not even had bank switching capabilities. The difference was that it had a 6 bit I/O port, which was uses in the C64 in combination with the PLA to implement bank-switching.
You're right of course, I got carried away a little. It happens when you reminisce on things/persons you (have) loved.:)
Exactly, the memory was divided into 256 pages of 256 bytes. The first page was the "zero page" for use with the fast instructions, the second page was the stack.
The difference between the 6510 and the 6502 was that the 6510 had bank switching capabilities. This way you could fit 64k ram and 48k rom into the 64k address space.
The C64 had a 6510 actually, but the 1541 (diskdrive) used a 6502 for a disk controller. The way the 6502 was used in the drive was a cool hack btw., they had it running two threads (each having 128 bytes of stack).
I loved the C64, and 20 years later I still know some of the ROM routine addresses by heart (like the obvious $ffd2); but when I got down to studying the 1541 it was a revelation, I got the feeling for the first time there was code in there so clever I couldn't have written it myself. I was about 17 at the time, and it convinced me that I could actually learn something in CS. Ah, memories:)
Agreed, IM is not necessary for basic survival, but that's true for email also; yet we complain about it a lot.
I know we can't expect our beloved knights of the imarket to stop playing Machiavelli; but if they somehow did or were forced to, IM has the potential of replacing email as the default way of communication over the internet. If done right, not only email but spam also would be a thing of the past. I realize this would hurt the IM providers a little and kill the spam and anti-spam business, but it would create new markets also, and save Joe Sixpack a lot of headaches.
IM providers deliberately create barriers between their networks to generate revenue by advertizing; then they generate more revenue to sell you a "business version" without the ads.
Everyone but the IM providers would be better off with a global IM standard that wasn't controlled by a single corporate identity. ISPs could easily take the load of running an IM server, and fair competition in the client market would be possible.
IM could be a service like email, but with a modern protocol and without the spam. Except it isn't because some heavyweight companies have found a way to create revenue by keeping it as it is.
You know there is a new ssh exploit out? How many firewalls with an open port 22 would there be around? Would it be impossible to write a worm that infects a lot of boxes running ssh? Just some questions that spring to mind.
Anyway, in cases like this ssh exploit, the warnings and patches come after the live exploits. Accidents are going to happen, people are going to get infected before patches or even warnings get out in the future too. If you don't patch really quick when the patch gets out (Murphy dictates this will be at 4:30am local time), you'll find yourself 8 days without internet.
Yes, I not only want but actually have the right to download personal copies of music I haven't paid for around where I live, just as I have the right to record radio or television broadcasts for personal use, including copyrighted stuff I didn't pay for.
Yeah, so if your company network/servers get hit by a worm and you need the internet for your business, you must effectively close your shop for 8 days. The economical impact of the forced shutdown could very well be bigger than the damage done by the worm itself, resulting in a solution which is worse than the problem.
Jesus died for us, and all I got is this lousy car?
No, Jesus died for the Germans, so they can deliver their redeeming cars to the world unhindered. Really, miracles are happening as we speak! People are buying these cars to crash them as an offering, and suddenly US laws change in inexplicable ways. If you can't see the Hand of God in that, you're beyond hope.
(I'll probably get nailed by some fundamentalist mod for this, but what the heck.)
but seriously, a good, fast OS could be written in java. and all that's slow about it is the GUI - which could be solved if driver developers wrote drivers that sped up java GUIs as they do C++. (so it's not all being done by the CPU)
So what you're suggesting is writing an OS in Java, but when it comes to the hard parts (drivers) you switch to C(++) or assembly? I do realize you're able to compile Java into machine code these days, but that's not all you need by far. Just try writing an efficient TCP/IP stack in Java, and you'll know what I mean.
No good for the terrorists. People would assume a non-deliberate failure happened. They want to scream out loud "WE BROUGHT IT DOWN".
Nonsense. Call a newspaper and claim you're going to bring down flight XY123 in 15 minutes; then zap the plane as it flies by. If they don't believe it was you, do it again tomorrow.
I don't know about Canada, but in the Netherlands you're allowed to download as much as you like; you may not redistribute the stuff you download to 3rd parties. There is a tax on DVDs and CDs, but we already had video and compact cassettes taxed. To Dutch law, downloading is not much different from recording radio or tv broadcasts.
Probably get modded down for defending religion in any way, shape, or form, but here goes...
Don't worry, I'm defending religion in some shape too:)
Christianity != Catholocism. Catholocism very arguably denies some of the central tenets of historical Christianity, and has done so since at least the council of Nicea, hence the reason for the reformation.
Of course Christianity != Catholicism, but Catholicism most certainly was the one of the two accepted orthodox forms of Christianity from about 300AD up to the Reformation, which makes it a mainstream form for more than a millennium. Nicea was not the reason for the Reformation; during the Reformation, even more books were declared aphocryphal and removed from the canon.
To find out what Christianity was originally intended to be (not Crusades and witch-burnings), read the writings of Paul, James, Peter, and the like, and you'll find that a great many people who claim to be Christian are actually not at all, in the context of the actual definition of the word.
I agree with you on most of Christianity rather being Pauleanism because almost every Christian accepts Paul's dogma; but bare in mind this goes for Reformism too. So if you want to go to the roots of Christianity, read the aphocryphal books, not the official canon. The canon has been edited eversince it existed to fit Paul's concept of Christianity (Paul never having seen Christ in real life but only in his visions).
Of course, many sects that claim to be Christian are more dangerous than Scientology, but I advance the opinion that those sects are not Christian in the historical sense of the word.
They may not be Christians in the original sense of the word, but they certainly are Christians in the historical sense of the word, because Paul's dogma has dominated Christian history. If you don't agree, you'll have to scratch about 99% of the Christians alive today from your list.
Evangelism is key to Christianity and said evangelism can't take placed without The Bible.
In the beginning of Christianity there was no Bible, but still Christianity managed to spread like wildfire. At the council of Nicea (325AD) was decided which books do and which books don't belong to the biblical canon to reject certain persuations (like gnosticism) within what was then called Christianity. Later councils happily went on editing the Bible. Still later, in medieval times, the language of Christianity was Latin, a dead language spoken by priests and learned men only. This kept the actual doctrines of faith hidden from the common believers, who couldn't understand a word of what they heard during mass. Early protestants were protesting many things done by the church, but this was one of the most important.
The key to scientology, however, is in getting as much money out of the mark as possible while revealing as little detail as possible - an odd system for a "religion" which purportedly wishes to maximize human potential and rid the world of all negativity.
This is exactly what Christianity did during medieval times. How do you think they got rich enough to have an own sovereign state today (the Vatican) along with the incredible amount of treasures they display and hide there? Scientology is in the business of selling exorcism (driving out body thetans(tm)) and enlightment (becoming an operating thetan(tm)). Like many creeds, there is an initiatory path to be followed, which explains for a lot of the secrecy. (Christianity was an initiatory religion too, as the initiatory sacraments in Catholicism prove.)
The real problem with Scientology is neither the secrecy and brainwashing nor their greed. Many religions exploit their followers, all religions brainwash their followers (spoonfeeding religious stories to your children is brainwashing/indoctrinating too). The real problem with Scientology is its modus operandi in gaining power in the world of business, the media and politics.
Scientology claims to be a church, but it uses the huge sums of money it gathers from its followers very unlike any other church or religion. It buys and founds (for-profit) companies, uses large funds to convert the rich and famous, and it spies on everyone it grades an "enemy" (they formally grade you), governments included. If you only look at what the religion actually teaches or how it treats its followers, I think some Christian sects are a lot more dangerous than Scientology is.
English carried on a lot of constructions, sayings, metaphors, et cetera, that the French added, but the French themselves went on a different path over those nearly thousand years. Odd that after a few years of college French, I find it easier to understand French from 1000 years ago than English from 1000 years ago.
This has a lot to do with how these nations operated on the world theater. I myself am Dutch, but if I have to understand medieval Dutch ("Diets"), I'm sometimes better served by my knowledge of modern German ("Deutsch") than by my knowledge of modern Dutch.
The Dutch and the British were seafaring nations who made their fortunes by overseas trade and colonial imperialism relativily early in history. Because of this their languages developed into trading languages. Trading languages have a simplified grammar and smaller vocabulary which contains a lot of (exotic) foreign influences compared to the languages they evolved from.
Because English is still a trading language, it is still evolving very rapidly. Dutch has setteled down much more and has split into distinct languages like "Afrikaans" (spoken by the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa). The only thing formal Dutch language is doing today, is massively importing English vocabulary and expressions, but that's the case with about every language in the world right now. (That's a part of what makes patriots and cultural purists all over the world so pissed about the US also.)
Re:Patent protection?
on
Cracking GSM
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· Score: 1
The meaning of that argument is deeper than you think.
Probably, but then what I wrote was not as superficial as it sounds either. I posted a reply explaining this.
I keep myself very well trained with my guns, both through practice and instruction, and I believe that both should be mandatory prerequisites to gun ownership. If you want gun control, don't make it more difficult for those who acquire guns legally, make it more difficult for those who don't.
Gun control doesn't mean an outright ban on guns, that would certainly work counterproductive. It usually means you have to have a permit to own a gun, and you get the permit if you aren't convicted of any crimes and you state good reasons for owning the desired type of gun (stating "hunting" shouldn't get you a permit for an uzi).
This way you discourage people from buying guns without thinking about it properly, it keeps dangerous people from buying guns, and it makes for a more efficient gun registration process.
Re:Patent protection?
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 1
Firstly, I'm not trying to be pedantic or to derail the discussion. The semantic argument is more than word games, it's making people realize what law actually is and does. Criminal behaviour is not some fundamental property of human nature; "criminal" is a label a state puts om some forms of behaviour and the people who display it. A criminal action could certainly be the right thing to do morally speaking (depending on your personal lot), and sometimes even be the ethical thing to do.
Secondly, on(off) the topic of gun control. As said, a lawbreaker always has an unfair advantage over someone who abides the law. That's one of the reasons for having law enforcement, and that's why anti gun control arguments usually come down to distrust of law enforcement and/or the belief that law enforcement is not competent enough to effectively disarm the "predators".
Ofcourse you have the right to defend yourself, even with deadly force if nescessary. The point is gun control will reduce the number of guns on the market, which will reduce the number of crimes involving guns, so the average citizen ends up with a smaller risk of getting involved in life threatening situations. I do realize you have a big problem if you just ban guns all at once, because they are not going to magically disappear. I do know however a lot of countries around the world have succeeded in gradually reducing gun posession.
Finally, to me, as someone not living in the US, gun control is not much different from control of dangerous chemicals, biological agents, explosives and radioactive materials. You obviously run a bigger risk of accidents if you allow things like this to proliferate throughout the population, even if everyone behaves responsibly. Note all of those things could ensure the freedom of whoever keeps or bares them, but as the population grows denser the chance of accidents and abuse grows too. At some point it becomes unacceptably high, and you have to take action before chance becomes certainty.
Re:Patent protection?
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 1
The point is that by banning guns, only those who we would wish not to have guns would have them. The law abiding citizens who may have a use would not.
Ah, so banning guns automatically means banning police guns too? (The executive having a monopoly on violence and all that...) Basically what you're saying is you do not trust law-enforcement, or you don't believe it is capable of enforcing the law (eg. disarming the criminals). Anyway, I would rather like not to get involved in a gun-control flamewar.
Bottom line is my point still stands, the argument has very shaky foundations. The law defines crime, so it's not very surprising people who don't abide the law are criminals.
Re:Patent protection?
on
Cracking GSM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Laws should not be used to shore up broken technology. This only impedes law abiding citizens, and does nothing to improve the protection against crime.
Brilliant example of a popular (but fundamental) misconception. Law never protects from crime, law defines what constitutes a crime. If there would be no laws, there would be no crimes. Every law only imepedes the people abiding it.
This one arguement against gun control, make them illegal and only criminals will have guns.
I hopefully have demonstrated that statements like this are tautologies and as such don't carry any meaning. You can use any conceivable law in this argument; if you take it serious you have to reject every law thinkable.
Simply put: "Make X illegal and only crimiminals have/do X." is only restating what the nature of law is: it is the law that makes X a crime. If you think it is a valid argument against law X, you must reject laws A..Z on the same basis.
Slashdot Mirror
By moving the compile-time constant to a constant generated at runtime, you're moving the problem space from efficiently handling vector math to efficiently handling dynamic multidimensonality.
You're either comparing apples to oranges, or you're using the wrong tool (compile-time optimizations) for the job (dynamic efficiency).
Yes, but it's no more than logical that compile-time optimizations don't work if you don't know these sizes at compile-time, isn't it.
Bah, overrated. If you think what I say is incorrect, discuss the issues with me, don't mod me down. I only say history has proven that it's dangerous when too much power and wealth ends up in the hands of a small elite, and that the ethics behind the process are questionable. Please show me where I'm wrong.
Yes, but for the rich to get richer in the long term, not only the poor have to become poorer, but the rich-but-not-quite-so-rich also. Not only do the rich get richer, they become fewer in numbers also. (This economical principal was the driving force behind most empires since the Roman empire btw.; and it often played a role in the downfall of these empires also.)
I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
Being just one of the richer ultimately doesn't cut it. You'll have to amass so much money that you become richer no matter what you do. As long as you actually have to work to earn your living or even make your income grow, you're in danger.
Of course, since this principal has lead to various kinds of slavery (like wage slavery) in the past, there is reason for concern about the ethics behind it also, not only about it's stability in the long term. The instability is obviously caused by the (slave) uprisings, (socialist) revolutions and independence struggles at the far corners of the empire.
This pattern runs like a red herring through history. It's just so damn tempting to take the short term profits, try to become part of the elite, and screw up in the long term in the process ("because somebody else will do it anyway").
I kown in hindsight running 2 threads on a 6502 isn't that great an achievement; but at the time I was very impressed with the way they coded some reentrable subroutines and (mostly :) kept the threads out of eachothers hair without real semaphores/mutexes.
There were only 6 bits to control the PLA (Programmable Logic Array) if I recall correctly. I know about the ROM size in the C64, but I was assuming (wrongly) every 6510 setup had a PLA. I think I'll have an attic-safari in the weekend, see if I can find the old specsheets and books. (The only 6502 book I still keep around is 6502 Assembly Language Subroutines by Leventhal and Saville.)
You're right of course, I got carried away a little. It happens when you reminisce on things/persons you (have) loved. :)
The difference between the 6510 and the 6502 was that the 6510 had bank switching capabilities. This way you could fit 64k ram and 48k rom into the 64k address space.
I loved the C64, and 20 years later I still know some of the ROM routine addresses by heart (like the obvious $ffd2); but when I got down to studying the 1541 it was a revelation, I got the feeling for the first time there was code in there so clever I couldn't have written it myself. I was about 17 at the time, and it convinced me that I could actually learn something in CS. Ah, memories :)
I know we can't expect our beloved knights of the imarket to stop playing Machiavelli; but if they somehow did or were forced to, IM has the potential of replacing email as the default way of communication over the internet. If done right, not only email but spam also would be a thing of the past. I realize this would hurt the IM providers a little and kill the spam and anti-spam business, but it would create new markets also, and save Joe Sixpack a lot of headaches.
Everyone but the IM providers would be better off with a global IM standard that wasn't controlled by a single corporate identity. ISPs could easily take the load of running an IM server, and fair competition in the client market would be possible.
IM could be a service like email, but with a modern protocol and without the spam. Except it isn't because some heavyweight companies have found a way to create revenue by keeping it as it is.
Anyway, in cases like this ssh exploit, the warnings and patches come after the live exploits. Accidents are going to happen, people are going to get infected before patches or even warnings get out in the future too. If you don't patch really quick when the patch gets out (Murphy dictates this will be at 4:30am local time), you'll find yourself 8 days without internet.
Yes, I not only want but actually have the right to download personal copies of music I haven't paid for around where I live, just as I have the right to record radio or television broadcasts for personal use, including copyrighted stuff I didn't pay for.
Yeah, so if your company network/servers get hit by a worm and you need the internet for your business, you must effectively close your shop for 8 days. The economical impact of the forced shutdown could very well be bigger than the damage done by the worm itself, resulting in a solution which is worse than the problem.
No, Jesus died for the Germans, so they can deliver their redeeming cars to the world unhindered. Really, miracles are happening as we speak! People are buying these cars to crash them as an offering, and suddenly US laws change in inexplicable ways. If you can't see the Hand of God in that, you're beyond hope.
(I'll probably get nailed by some fundamentalist mod for this, but what the heck.)
So what you're suggesting is writing an OS in Java, but when it comes to the hard parts (drivers) you switch to C(++) or assembly? I do realize you're able to compile Java into machine code these days, but that's not all you need by far. Just try writing an efficient TCP/IP stack in Java, and you'll know what I mean.
Nonsense. Call a newspaper and claim you're going to bring down flight XY123 in 15 minutes; then zap the plane as it flies by. If they don't believe it was you, do it again tomorrow.
I don't know about Canada, but in the Netherlands you're allowed to download as much as you like; you may not redistribute the stuff you download to 3rd parties. There is a tax on DVDs and CDs, but we already had video and compact cassettes taxed. To Dutch law, downloading is not much different from recording radio or tv broadcasts.
Don't worry, I'm defending religion in some shape too :)
Christianity != Catholocism. Catholocism very arguably denies some of the central tenets of historical Christianity, and has done so since at least the council of Nicea, hence the reason for the reformation.
Of course Christianity != Catholicism, but Catholicism most certainly was the one of the two accepted orthodox forms of Christianity from about 300AD up to the Reformation, which makes it a mainstream form for more than a millennium. Nicea was not the reason for the Reformation; during the Reformation, even more books were declared aphocryphal and removed from the canon.
To find out what Christianity was originally intended to be (not Crusades and witch-burnings), read the writings of Paul, James, Peter, and the like, and you'll find that a great many people who claim to be Christian are actually not at all, in the context of the actual definition of the word.
I agree with you on most of Christianity rather being Pauleanism because almost every Christian accepts Paul's dogma; but bare in mind this goes for Reformism too. So if you want to go to the roots of Christianity, read the aphocryphal books, not the official canon. The canon has been edited eversince it existed to fit Paul's concept of Christianity (Paul never having seen Christ in real life but only in his visions).
Of course, many sects that claim to be Christian are more dangerous than Scientology, but I advance the opinion that those sects are not Christian in the historical sense of the word.
They may not be Christians in the original sense of the word, but they certainly are Christians in the historical sense of the word, because Paul's dogma has dominated Christian history. If you don't agree, you'll have to scratch about 99% of the Christians alive today from your list.
In the beginning of Christianity there was no Bible, but still Christianity managed to spread like wildfire. At the council of Nicea (325AD) was decided which books do and which books don't belong to the biblical canon to reject certain persuations (like gnosticism) within what was then called Christianity. Later councils happily went on editing the Bible. Still later, in medieval times, the language of Christianity was Latin, a dead language spoken by priests and learned men only. This kept the actual doctrines of faith hidden from the common believers, who couldn't understand a word of what they heard during mass. Early protestants were protesting many things done by the church, but this was one of the most important.
The key to scientology, however, is in getting as much money out of the mark as possible while revealing as little detail as possible - an odd system for a "religion" which purportedly wishes to maximize human potential and rid the world of all negativity.
This is exactly what Christianity did during medieval times. How do you think they got rich enough to have an own sovereign state today (the Vatican) along with the incredible amount of treasures they display and hide there? Scientology is in the business of selling exorcism (driving out body thetans(tm)) and enlightment (becoming an operating thetan(tm)). Like many creeds, there is an initiatory path to be followed, which explains for a lot of the secrecy. (Christianity was an initiatory religion too, as the initiatory sacraments in Catholicism prove.)
The real problem with Scientology is neither the secrecy and brainwashing nor their greed. Many religions exploit their followers, all religions brainwash their followers (spoonfeeding religious stories to your children is brainwashing/indoctrinating too). The real problem with Scientology is its modus operandi in gaining power in the world of business, the media and politics.
Scientology claims to be a church, but it uses the huge sums of money it gathers from its followers very unlike any other church or religion. It buys and founds (for-profit) companies, uses large funds to convert the rich and famous, and it spies on everyone it grades an "enemy" (they formally grade you), governments included. If you only look at what the religion actually teaches or how it treats its followers, I think some Christian sects are a lot more dangerous than Scientology is.
This has a lot to do with how these nations operated on the world theater. I myself am Dutch, but if I have to understand medieval Dutch ("Diets"), I'm sometimes better served by my knowledge of modern German ("Deutsch") than by my knowledge of modern Dutch.
The Dutch and the British were seafaring nations who made their fortunes by overseas trade and colonial imperialism relativily early in history. Because of this their languages developed into trading languages. Trading languages have a simplified grammar and smaller vocabulary which contains a lot of (exotic) foreign influences compared to the languages they evolved from.
Because English is still a trading language, it is still evolving very rapidly. Dutch has setteled down much more and has split into distinct languages like "Afrikaans" (spoken by the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa). The only thing formal Dutch language is doing today, is massively importing English vocabulary and expressions, but that's the case with about every language in the world right now. (That's a part of what makes patriots and cultural purists all over the world so pissed about the US also.)
Probably, but then what I wrote was not as superficial as it sounds either. I posted a reply explaining this.
I keep myself very well trained with my guns, both through practice and instruction, and I believe that both should be mandatory prerequisites to gun ownership. If you want gun control, don't make it more difficult for those who acquire guns legally, make it more difficult for those who don't.
Gun control doesn't mean an outright ban on guns, that would certainly work counterproductive. It usually means you have to have a permit to own a gun, and you get the permit if you aren't convicted of any crimes and you state good reasons for owning the desired type of gun (stating "hunting" shouldn't get you a permit for an uzi).
This way you discourage people from buying guns without thinking about it properly, it keeps dangerous people from buying guns, and it makes for a more efficient gun registration process.
Secondly, on(off) the topic of gun control. As said, a lawbreaker always has an unfair advantage over someone who abides the law. That's one of the reasons for having law enforcement, and that's why anti gun control arguments usually come down to distrust of law enforcement and/or the belief that law enforcement is not competent enough to effectively disarm the "predators".
Ofcourse you have the right to defend yourself, even with deadly force if nescessary. The point is gun control will reduce the number of guns on the market, which will reduce the number of crimes involving guns, so the average citizen ends up with a smaller risk of getting involved in life threatening situations. I do realize you have a big problem if you just ban guns all at once, because they are not going to magically disappear. I do know however a lot of countries around the world have succeeded in gradually reducing gun posession.
Finally, to me, as someone not living in the US, gun control is not much different from control of dangerous chemicals, biological agents, explosives and radioactive materials. You obviously run a bigger risk of accidents if you allow things like this to proliferate throughout the population, even if everyone behaves responsibly. Note all of those things could ensure the freedom of whoever keeps or bares them, but as the population grows denser the chance of accidents and abuse grows too. At some point it becomes unacceptably high, and you have to take action before chance becomes certainty.
Ah, so banning guns automatically means banning police guns too? (The executive having a monopoly on violence and all that...) Basically what you're saying is you do not trust law-enforcement, or you don't believe it is capable of enforcing the law (eg. disarming the criminals). Anyway, I would rather like not to get involved in a gun-control flamewar.
Bottom line is my point still stands, the argument has very shaky foundations. The law defines crime, so it's not very surprising people who don't abide the law are criminals.
Brilliant example of a popular (but fundamental) misconception. Law never protects from crime, law defines what constitutes a crime. If there would be no laws, there would be no crimes. Every law only imepedes the people abiding it.
This one arguement against gun control, make them illegal and only criminals will have guns.
I hopefully have demonstrated that statements like this are tautologies and as such don't carry any meaning. You can use any conceivable law in this argument; if you take it serious you have to reject every law thinkable.
Simply put: "Make X illegal and only crimiminals have/do X." is only restating what the nature of law is: it is the law that makes X a crime. If you think it is a valid argument against law X, you must reject laws A..Z on the same basis.