Don't know about your neighbourhood but, where I live, there's a lot more traffic, driving more dangerously, now than when I started driving nearly 25 years ago. When kids share the same streets with that traffic and bike helmets often mean the difference between an accident causing brain injury and not, then wear the damn helmet. Idiots like you who should know better are the reason it has to be made a law instead of being common sense.
I'm with you on the elbow/knee pads and broken arms after a certain level of proficiency is obtained, but brains/spines are just more fragile and don't recover anywhere near as well.
Personally, I'd take issue with that analogy since Nvidia and ATI both routinely cheated in their drivers to make inflated benchmark scores. This was done by trying to detect what application was running at a given time and intentionally disregarding quality options in favor of performance options, using substitute trig. calculations, using alternate blending modes, etc.
Indeed. That, more than anything, is likely the reason why neither graphics manufacturer is willing to open source their drivers or release hardware interface specs. If ATI and nVidia did release H/W interface specs, people would be able to figure out what the real speeds are and produce good synthetic benchmarks to test specific features in the same way that we can with CPUs. Reverse-engineering their driver functionality and finding out if they were cheating on benchmarks would also become a lot easier. And neither manufacturer really wants that.
of course the info is useless, but it won't be known until it's needed, that is, when it's useful to expose an opposing congressman or hit up a businessman for contributions come election time.
Not just that, he criticised global climate prediction models, not the historical and current observed facts.
Yeah, that's what good scientists do. Criticize theories (and that's what models are) where they don't explain all the facts. And so he presents a few historical facts that run counter to some current model predictions. Much more importantly though, he proposes some alternative approaches to dealing with the problem, even if it is as serious current Global Warming models predict.
Not that his arguments are solid, but they are worth exploring since it might get us away from the stupid "he said-she said" no-win trap we're currently in.
Contrast that with some of the boneheaded arguments I've read over the years such as "CO2 is common biological by-product that couldn't cause Global Warming". Dyson is crazy like a fox.
Not the way I read it. He spoke out against current assumptions about the best way to deal with Global Warming/Climate Change. That's not at all the same thing.
Well, I like Freeman Dyson's attitude and analysis better than any I've seen from the GW-skeptic camp. He's not trying to dispute what's going on with Climate Change, or even that we're partially responsible. Instead he's saying there may be much better ways to deal with it than the current proposed economic approaches. I'll take his input over a hundred McIntyres' worth, for as long as we can still get it, given that he's 80. I'm not convinced about his finding an upside in the possible wetting of the Sahara, but any single one of his points is better argued than all the GW-skeptic points I've yet read on the subject in slashdot.
In the past Dyson's proven to be a lot closer to Einstein than Bozo the Clown and I think he deserves some slack on this one. For the role of genius moonlighting as clown, I think Roger Penrose has my vote for 'Emperor's New Mind', where he let his personal desires and beliefs overcome the pointers and evidence of evolutionary biology, chaos theory, and complexity theory. But I don't think Dyson's fallen off his pedestal yet, even if his balance looks shaky at times.
Yeah, I like Freeman Dyson's attitude and analysis better than any I've seen from the GW-skeptic camp. He's not trying to dispute what's going on with Climate Change, or even that we're partially responsible. Instead he's saying there may be much better ways to deal with it than the current proposed economic approaches. I'll take his input over a hundred McIntyres' worth, for as long as we can still get it, given that he's 80.
I'm not convinced about his finding an upside in the possible wetting of the Sahara, but any single one of his points is better argued than all the GW-skeptic points I've yet read in any Slashdot reply for this article.
That's because he's mis-parsing the Boolean logic due to his own assumptions.
He said (Not A)!
You said "you're wrong" and he assumed you meant Not(Not A) = A Presumably what you meant is he implicitly was saying 'B implies (Not A)' and that he was wrong in saying that. i.e. 'Not(B Implies Not A)' is not the same as A
No. Relativity differs from Newtonian Physics at high relative speeds/accelerations or very large/dense masses (high gravity gradients). Quantum Physics differs from Newtonian Mechanics at the atomic scale because Newtonian Mechanics assumes a continuous universe whereas quantum physics indicates it is fundamentally discrete with behaviour, such as the Pauli exclusion principle, not known or accounted for by Newton.
As somebody else pointed out, the nomenclature of the scientific method has evolved since Newton's day, but anachronisms are kept out of respect for the pioneering giants in the field.
Most people look at trends. For instance who has a longer history of serious security vulnerabilities in their code: Microsoft, or OpenBSD? Based on the number of vulnerabilities found in Windows vs. OpenBSD, which do you think has more vulnerabilities left in their code?
Now, look at the history of corrections of data and predictions in the Global Warming camp and the Global Warming skeptic camp. I expect errors in the methodology and predictions of the Global Warming/Climate Change camp, but generally, they have been more accurate in their predictions than the skeptics have (many of whom less than 5 years ago said Global Warming didn't exist and have now retrenched to say it isn't man-made). We're talking qualitative errors vs. quantitative errors here. Over time, I expect the Climatologists' product and predictions to improve, both as a result of improved models and as a result of improved computing capacity for those models.
So I agree it's prudent to expect that there remains errors in the data, but I believe it's even more prudent to expect the data is already good enough, particularly given the other correlating data, that corrective action is warranted.
And I bet you also don't think any Mechanical Engineers should be able to get a degree or get any designs approved until they can model all the systems they design and prove them correct down to the Planck scale.
As far as I know, there are no ice cores to be had in Florida. Yeah, well, if the scientific predictions are correct, there soon (a few decades) will no longer be any at the poles any more either and those pesky scientists won't be able to do any more ice core studies. Then the whole problem will go away!
Not everybody who smokes has lung cancer, or heart disease, or any number of ailments. It just seriously increases your chance of it.
I had a great aunt who smoked for around 60 years, and lived to 98+ years old without lung cancer or heart disease. She did have a stroke around the age of 90 that reduced her mobility and mental capacity but she was still amazing for someone who smoked for so many years. I also had a friend in her 40s who died of lung cancer. As did the daughter of my great-aunt.
Smoking "might be ruinous. It might happen." The odds of that might be comparable with those estimated for the negative effects of CO2-forced global warming.
So, I don't see how your post invalidates his analogy.
The scientists will actually take the analysis and respond to it correctly, either with counter criticism or by working with the corrected data, as is appropriate. In my experience, it tends to be more the global warming deniers, not so much the scientists, that tend to bible-thump about 5 or 10 year-old discredited papers and theories because they've got economic or personal biases.
Sure, scientists can have reputations at stake and resist admitting earlier analyses were wrong, but their stubbornness is nothing like that of a man or company with millions of $s or a way of life on the line.
I remember when there used to be a West Atlantic cod fishery. Do you remember how that ended?
Mosquitoes are not restricted to the tropics, as any Minnesotan or Alaskan can tell you. True, but the Anopheles variant is. It redistributes malaria due to the angle of its body during penetration being higher than that of the other mosquito variants that are more common in North America. That angle is a critical part of the life cycle, allowing the germ to flow back from the reservoir in the mosquito. And historically, Anopheles has been better adapted to tropical climates.
But hey, go on proselytizing with your cherry-picked anecdotes against documented scientific studies!
1934 was one of the three main years of the Dust Bowl, when US agricultural production took a nose dive as land dried up in the central plain and the soil eroded away. It seriously aggravated the Great Depression as many farmers went into bankruptcy and moved to cities looking for work when there already was none.
Ok, so bad farming practices were also a factor, but who in their right mind would take consolation that years like that one were warmer than recent years? And could the unusual weather conditions of the Dust Bowl itself have been a factor in some of those temperature peaks in North America?
If this was supposed to provide me with comfort that global warming is a sham, it ain't working.
It may take some years, or even decades, but eventually they'll be forced to change, both practically and the laws will be readjusted to take into account how technology can change the market so fast.
Sure they will because, after all, the Drug War is a similar sort of prohibition/losing battle with related economics and, after decades, the politicians have finally wised up and called it quits on that and focused on education instead. They're also wisening up on sexual education, teen pregnancy, STD control, abortion and looking at the scientific evidence about successful education approaches instead of providing funding and creating legislation based on flawed theology.
If there is not significant "commodity CPU" competition, it's not worth Intel putting much money into advancing it. Well, if they do that, what's going to happen is that almost nobody is going to buy upgrades. Seriously, remember how after the big upgrade push for Y2K, companies didn't upgrade for 4-5 years and 2004 was a really painful year for computer manufacturers? Multiply that by 4 as companies and end-users only bother upgrading when their old systems fail. Microsoft isn't the only company that can wind up having to compete with it's old products. I don't think Intel really wants to see the market shrink to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it is today, but that's what will happen if they sit on monopoly laurels for too long.
Nope, I'm saying that the most well known advocate of full disclosure, who also happens to have a very good and visionary record in preventative security practices even down to the O/S kernel level, disclosed that he believes that there is a security vulnerability with some of the unfixed microcode bugs. He probably feels that he has better things to do with his limited time than to turn it into a working exploit. He has let people know there is likely an issue and leaves it to other security researchers, who specialize in that, to flesh it out into an example exploit while he works at the stuff he's best at.
It wouldn't be the first time that a vendor summarily dismisses initial reports of a vulnerability to a) limit loss of confidence in their product and b) avoid performing fixes to their design that would limit the performance and competitiveness of their product. You can ignore Theo's comment if you wish. I prefer to avoid using a Core Duo to upgrade my computer and to wait until AMD's Barcelona becomes available.
And England and Scotland have very strict gun control, no totalitarian government, and low citizen against citizen gun crime. Of course here was that Irish potato famine and the Troubles (heavily funded by Irish-Americans) but just maybe the problem is the level of involvement of the people in the political process and the quality of information they have access to. For the last decade and a bit, the reporting quality of your national media have totally sucked. Based on voting levels, Americans aren't terribly involved, which is why politicians in your country get away with so much crap.
Really, the biggest risk to Democracy in the USA are the large corporate mercenary outfits which have been created as a result of the Iraq War: well-armed and armored paramilitary outfits which have no esprit de corps, no deep emotional conditioning for the nation they are fighting for, and which have gotten used to operating under no legal code or Geneva Convention restrictions. Remember, this was how the Roman Republic turned into an Empire that eventually fell. It was when ordinary citizens were disconnected from the cost of conquest and as they and the mercenary Roman Legions were paid off with the taxation and tribute imposed on conquered nations.
Non-soldiers in Rome were allowed to own swords but it didn't help them stop the corruption of the Republic and the fall of the Empire.
Maybe Theo was just wise enough, for once, to keep quiet, at least temporarily, about how to exploit a processor bug for which no fix or workaround exists and avoid handing it on a plate to skript kiddies and hackers-for-hire?
Just because he didn't demonstrate an exploit doesn't mean it can't be done. If you're serious about security then his comments ought to set of your paranoia triggers off. Theo's been (obnoxiously) right a lot more often than his detractors have.
Heh. Outside of law enforcement, how many handgun owners in the united states actually need their guns as part of their job or regular activities? Ranchers and other farmers who need to defend their livestock from predators. People who live in more remote areas with predators. Hunters maintaining wildlife population levels. Those classes of people would be just as well or better served with higher precision single action rifles in most cases.
For nearly everybody else, either it's an ego boost or it's an arms race with criminals who have fewer scruples, fewer conditioned counter-reflexes, and greater desperation for using more easily available weapons.
Personally I'm looking forward to the time when computer vision and recognition gets good enough that we can replace guns with automation-controlled, fixed, energy-based (non-chemical) weapons. For example armored flechette railguns (with backup power supply of course). The store or home owner just has a control which turns on defenses that recognize projectile weapons and attack the wielder, preferably to um, disarm. Then 90% of the "self-defense" argument for guns goes away if they're installed in most banks, stores, and restaurants. Sure, a shotgun is cheaper, but these wouldn't be too expensive if you could run them off re-purposed mass marketed hybrid car batteries. And when those things started firing, the crooks might think more about dropping their guns or bugging out than they would facing down a shotgun-wielding owner. Or course in the US, you'd have to worry about legal liability in the case of innocent bystanders to manufacture something like that but an early market would probably be an agin population worried about home invasions. It might make home invaders think again about the practice if all it takes is one keyword from the home owner to have the system get nasty with anybody it doesn't recognize.
So you have the system also recognize axes, machetes, and blades over a certain length outside of the woodshed and the kitchen. Yeah, your kids might have to find a different game to play than cops and robbers or cowboys and indians around the house. Big loss.
Nah, the 7 million who died didn't do it in death camps; you're confusing them with the Nazis. Most of those 7 million deaths were in the Ukraine in the 30's. They were farmers who had a bunch of really bad crop years. The apparatchiks running things from Moscow didn't want to admit a problem to their masters and thought the farmers were holding back food. They had the police and army take all the food, including the seed grain for the next year, to feed the urban populations who might riot if they went hungry too long. So the farmers starved to death on their own lands.
Not that the Gulags were vacation spots. They were forced labour camps that didn't include much concern for worker safety. People often died there from "occupational hazards", for trying to escape, or for not being completely subservient to the overseers. Gulag convicts effectively had no rights. But the Gulags weren't death camps in the same way that German concentration camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were designed to kill the convicts. Solzhenitzin got to write Gulag Archipelago because he lived through it. The Russians preferred to wring out as much cheap, effectively slave, labour out of them as possible instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't know about your neighbourhood but, where I live, there's a lot more traffic, driving more dangerously, now than when I started driving nearly 25 years ago. When kids share the same streets with that traffic and bike helmets often mean the difference between an accident causing brain injury and not, then wear the damn helmet. Idiots like you who should know better are the reason it has to be made a law instead of being common sense.
I'm with you on the elbow/knee pads and broken arms after a certain level of proficiency is obtained, but brains/spines are just more fragile and don't recover anywhere near as well.
Personally, I'd take issue with that analogy since Nvidia and ATI both routinely cheated in their drivers to make inflated benchmark scores. This was done by trying to detect what application was running at a given time and intentionally disregarding quality options in favor of performance options, using substitute trig. calculations, using alternate blending modes, etc.
Indeed. That, more than anything, is likely the reason why neither graphics manufacturer is willing to open source their drivers or release hardware interface specs. If ATI and nVidia did release H/W interface specs, people would be able to figure out what the real speeds are and produce good synthetic benchmarks to test specific features in the same way that we can with CPUs. Reverse-engineering their driver functionality and finding out if they were cheating on benchmarks would also become a lot easier. And neither manufacturer really wants that.
of course the info is useless, but it won't be known until it's needed, that is, when it's useful to expose an opposing congressman or hit up a businessman for contributions come election time.
There, fixed that for you.
Water cycles out of the atmosphere as precipitation much faster than CO2
Maybe they are keeping that level of detail because that's what Homeland Security asked for.
Not just that, he criticised global climate prediction models, not the historical and current observed facts.
Yeah, that's what good scientists do. Criticize theories (and that's what models are) where they don't explain all the facts. And so he presents a few historical facts that run counter to some current model predictions. Much more importantly though, he proposes some alternative approaches to dealing with the problem, even if it is as serious current Global Warming models predict.
Not that his arguments are solid, but they are worth exploring since it might get us away from the stupid "he said-she said" no-win trap we're currently in.
Contrast that with some of the boneheaded arguments I've read over the years such as "CO2 is common biological by-product that couldn't cause Global Warming". Dyson is crazy like a fox.
Not the way I read it. He spoke out against current assumptions about the best way to deal with Global Warming/Climate Change. That's not at all the same thing.
Well, I like Freeman Dyson's attitude and analysis better than any I've seen from the GW-skeptic camp.
He's not trying to dispute what's going on with Climate Change, or even that we're partially responsible. Instead he's saying there may be much better ways to deal with it than the current proposed economic approaches. I'll take his input over a hundred McIntyres' worth, for as long as we can still get it, given that he's 80. I'm not convinced about his finding an upside in the possible wetting of the Sahara, but any single one of his points is better argued than all the GW-skeptic points I've yet read on the subject in slashdot.
In the past Dyson's proven to be a lot closer to Einstein than Bozo the Clown and I think he deserves some slack on this one. For the role of genius moonlighting as clown, I think Roger Penrose has my vote for 'Emperor's New Mind', where he let his personal desires and beliefs overcome the pointers and evidence of evolutionary biology, chaos theory, and complexity theory. But I don't think Dyson's fallen off his pedestal yet, even if his balance looks shaky at times.
Yeah, I like Freeman Dyson's attitude and analysis better than any I've seen from the GW-skeptic camp.
He's not trying to dispute what's going on with Climate Change, or even that we're partially responsible. Instead he's saying there may be much better ways to deal with it than the current proposed economic approaches. I'll take his input over a hundred McIntyres' worth, for as long as we can still get it, given that he's 80.
I'm not convinced about his finding an upside in the possible wetting of the Sahara, but any single one of his points is better argued than all the GW-skeptic points I've yet read in any Slashdot reply for this article.
That's because he's mis-parsing the Boolean logic due to his own assumptions.
He said (Not A)!
You said "you're wrong" and he assumed you meant Not(Not A) = A
Presumably what you meant is he implicitly was saying 'B implies (Not A)' and that he was wrong in saying that.
i.e. 'Not(B Implies Not A)' is not the same as A
No. Relativity differs from Newtonian Physics at high relative speeds/accelerations or very large/dense masses (high gravity gradients). Quantum Physics differs from Newtonian Mechanics at the atomic scale because Newtonian Mechanics assumes a continuous universe whereas quantum physics indicates it is fundamentally discrete with behaviour, such as the Pauli exclusion principle, not known or accounted for by Newton.
As somebody else pointed out, the nomenclature of the scientific method has evolved since Newton's day, but anachronisms are kept out of respect for the pioneering giants in the field.
Most people look at trends. For instance who has a longer history of serious security vulnerabilities in their code: Microsoft, or OpenBSD? Based on the number of vulnerabilities found in Windows vs. OpenBSD, which do you think has more vulnerabilities left in their code?
Now, look at the history of corrections of data and predictions in the Global Warming camp and the Global Warming skeptic camp. I expect errors in the methodology and predictions of the Global Warming/Climate Change camp, but generally, they have been more accurate in their predictions than the skeptics have (many of whom less than 5 years ago said Global Warming didn't exist and have now retrenched to say it isn't man-made). We're talking qualitative errors vs. quantitative errors here. Over time, I expect the Climatologists' product and predictions to improve, both as a result of improved models and as a result of improved computing capacity for those models.
So I agree it's prudent to expect that there remains errors in the data, but I believe it's even more prudent to expect the data is already good enough, particularly given the other correlating data, that corrective action is warranted.
And I bet you also don't think any Mechanical Engineers should be able to get a degree or get any designs approved until they can model all the systems they design and prove them correct down to the Planck scale.
As far as I know, there are no ice cores to be had in Florida.
Yeah, well, if the scientific predictions are correct, there soon (a few decades) will no longer be any at the poles any more either and those pesky scientists won't be able to do any more ice core studies. Then the whole problem will go away!
Not everybody who smokes has lung cancer, or heart disease, or any number of ailments. It just seriously increases your chance of it.
I had a great aunt who smoked for around 60 years, and lived to 98+ years old without lung cancer or heart disease. She did have a stroke around the age of 90 that reduced her mobility and mental capacity but she was still amazing for someone who smoked for so many years. I also had a friend in her 40s who died of lung cancer. As did the daughter of my great-aunt.
Smoking "might be ruinous. It might happen." The odds of that might be comparable with those estimated for the negative effects of CO2-forced global warming.
So, I don't see how your post invalidates his analogy.
The scientists will actually take the analysis and respond to it correctly, either with counter criticism or by working with the corrected data, as is appropriate. In my experience, it tends to be more the global warming deniers, not so much the scientists, that tend to bible-thump about 5 or 10 year-old discredited papers and theories because they've got economic or personal biases.
Sure, scientists can have reputations at stake and resist admitting earlier analyses were wrong, but their stubbornness is nothing like that of a man or company with millions of $s or a way of life on the line.
I remember when there used to be a West Atlantic cod fishery. Do you remember how that ended?
Mosquitoes are not restricted to the tropics, as any Minnesotan or Alaskan can tell you.
True, but the Anopheles variant is. It redistributes malaria due to the angle of its body during penetration
being higher than that of the other mosquito variants that are more common in North America. That angle is a critical part of the life cycle, allowing the germ to flow back from the reservoir in the mosquito. And historically, Anopheles has been better adapted to tropical climates.
But hey, go on proselytizing with your cherry-picked anecdotes against documented scientific studies!
1934 was one of the three main years of the Dust Bowl, when US agricultural production took a nose dive as land dried up in the central plain and the soil eroded away. It seriously aggravated the Great Depression as many farmers went into bankruptcy and moved to cities looking for work when there already was none.
Ok, so bad farming practices were also a factor, but who in their right mind would take consolation that years like that one were warmer than recent years? And could the unusual weather conditions of the Dust Bowl itself have been a factor in some of those temperature peaks in North America?
If this was supposed to provide me with comfort that global warming is a sham, it ain't working.
It may take some years, or even decades, but eventually they'll be forced to change, both practically and the laws will be readjusted to take into account how technology can change the market so fast.
Sure they will because, after all, the Drug War is a similar sort of prohibition/losing battle with related economics and, after decades, the politicians have finally wised up and called it quits on that and focused on education instead. They're also wisening up on sexual education, teen pregnancy, STD control, abortion and looking at the scientific evidence about successful education approaches instead of providing funding and creating legislation based on flawed theology.
Oh, wait...
If there is not significant "commodity CPU" competition, it's not worth Intel putting much money into advancing it.
Well, if they do that, what's going to happen is that almost nobody is going to buy upgrades. Seriously, remember how after the big upgrade push for Y2K, companies didn't upgrade for 4-5 years and 2004 was a really painful year for computer manufacturers? Multiply that by 4 as companies and end-users only bother upgrading when their old systems fail. Microsoft isn't the only company that can wind up having to compete with it's old products. I don't think Intel really wants to see the market shrink to 1/2 or 1/3 of what it is today, but that's what will happen if they sit on monopoly laurels for too long.
Nope, I'm saying that the most well known advocate of full disclosure, who also happens to have a very good and visionary record in preventative security practices even down to the O/S kernel level, disclosed that he believes that there is a security vulnerability with some of the unfixed microcode bugs. He probably feels that he has better things to do with his limited time than to turn it into a working exploit. He has let people know there is likely an issue and leaves it to other security researchers, who specialize in that, to flesh it out into an example exploit while he works at the stuff he's best at.
It wouldn't be the first time that a vendor summarily dismisses initial reports of a vulnerability to a) limit loss of confidence in their product and b) avoid performing fixes to their design that would limit the performance and competitiveness of their product. You can ignore Theo's comment if you wish. I prefer to avoid using a Core Duo to upgrade my computer and to wait until AMD's Barcelona becomes available.
And England and Scotland have very strict gun control, no totalitarian government, and low citizen against citizen gun crime. Of course here was that Irish potato famine and the Troubles (heavily funded by Irish-Americans) but just maybe the problem is the level of involvement of the people in the political process and the quality of information they have access to. For the last decade and a bit, the reporting quality of your national media have totally sucked. Based on voting levels, Americans aren't terribly involved, which is why politicians in your country get away with so much crap.
Really, the biggest risk to Democracy in the USA are the large corporate mercenary outfits which have been created as a result of the Iraq War: well-armed and armored paramilitary outfits which have no esprit de corps, no deep emotional conditioning for the nation they are fighting for, and which have gotten used to operating under no legal code or Geneva Convention restrictions. Remember, this was how the Roman Republic turned into an Empire that eventually fell. It was when ordinary citizens were disconnected from the cost of conquest and as they and the mercenary Roman Legions were paid off with the taxation and tribute imposed on conquered nations.
Non-soldiers in Rome were allowed to own swords but it didn't help them stop the corruption of the Republic and the fall of the Empire.
Maybe Theo was just wise enough, for once, to keep quiet, at least temporarily, about how to exploit a processor bug for which no fix or workaround exists and avoid handing it on a plate to skript kiddies and hackers-for-hire?
Just because he didn't demonstrate an exploit doesn't mean it can't be done. If you're serious about security then his comments ought to set of your paranoia triggers off. Theo's been (obnoxiously) right a lot more often than his detractors have.
Heh. Outside of law enforcement, how many handgun owners in the united states actually need their guns as part of their job or regular activities? Ranchers and other farmers who need to defend their livestock from predators. People who live in more remote areas with predators. Hunters maintaining wildlife population levels. Those classes of people would be just as well or better served with higher precision single action rifles in most cases.
For nearly everybody else, either it's an ego boost or it's an arms race with criminals who have fewer scruples, fewer conditioned counter-reflexes, and greater desperation for using more easily available weapons.
Personally I'm looking forward to the time when computer vision and recognition gets good enough that we can replace guns with automation-controlled, fixed, energy-based (non-chemical) weapons. For example armored flechette railguns (with backup power supply of course). The store or home owner just has a control which turns on defenses that recognize projectile weapons and attack the wielder, preferably to um, disarm. Then 90% of the "self-defense" argument for guns goes away if they're installed in most banks, stores, and restaurants. Sure, a shotgun is cheaper, but these wouldn't be too expensive if you could run them off re-purposed mass marketed hybrid car batteries. And when those things started firing, the crooks might think more about dropping their guns or bugging out than they would facing down a shotgun-wielding owner. Or course in the US, you'd have to worry about legal liability in the case of innocent bystanders to manufacture something like that but an early market would probably be an agin population worried about home invasions. It might make home invaders think again about the practice if all it takes is one keyword from the home owner to have the system get nasty with anybody it doesn't recognize.
So you have the system also recognize axes, machetes, and blades over a certain length outside of the woodshed and the kitchen. Yeah, your kids might have to find a different game to play than cops and robbers or cowboys and indians around the house. Big loss.
Nah, the 7 million who died didn't do it in death camps; you're confusing them with the Nazis. Most of those 7 million deaths were in the Ukraine in the 30's. They were farmers who had a bunch of really bad crop years. The apparatchiks running things from Moscow didn't want to admit a problem to their masters and thought the farmers were holding back food. They had the police and army take all the food, including the seed grain for the next year, to feed the urban populations who might riot if they went hungry too long. So the farmers starved to death on their own lands.
Not that the Gulags were vacation spots. They were forced labour camps that didn't include much concern for worker safety. People often died there from "occupational hazards", for trying to escape, or for not being completely subservient to the overseers. Gulag convicts effectively had no rights. But the Gulags weren't death camps in the same way that German concentration camps like Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were designed to kill the convicts. Solzhenitzin got to write Gulag Archipelago because he lived through it. The Russians preferred to wring out as much cheap, effectively slave, labour out of them as possible instead.