Tornados are inherently driven by DC electric, viz. an amp or two through a potential of several million volts. The circuit consists of rain laying down charge, the tornado picking it up and returning it to the cloud.
I wonder, do you think it would be any more efficient if they somehow compressed the cooling airflow? I would think utilizing the Venturi effect, they could increase the incoming air velocity with minimal power usage.
I'm curious - did you leave those examples out intentionally
1) I can't provide referances to everything on the internet, there's just too much.
2) I didn't know about those incidents until you pointed them out
I just googled "Mass stabbings."
Wasn't hard.
3) Actually they kind of prove my point. Sure they stabbed and killed quite a few, but note how many actually survived wounded. Had the attacker had a gun there would have been many more dead
Perhaps, but what if they'd have used bombs instead? History tells us the casualty rate would have been far higher.
If an 8-year-old in a third world nation can do it, anyone can.
1) I'd like a citation for that
Ask a Vietnam vet. Be careful, though, some of those guys are pretty messed up from what they saw over there.
2) There are also 8-year-olds that can play piano at very advance skill level, doesn't mean it's easy and everyone in the world can do it.
Non sequitur.
For the record, you can make an explosive device out of nothing more than 4th-of-July sparklers. I know a guy who does it every year, and they are both quite easy to make and relatively safe (outside the blast radius, of course).
the guns used in both incidents were acquired illegally
For Columbine:
"In the months prior to the attacks, Harris and Klebold acquired two 9 mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. Their friend Robyn Anderson bought a rifle and the two shotguns at the Tanner Gun Show in December 1998.[18] Through Robert Duran, another friend, Harris and Klebold later bought a handgun from Mark Manes for $500."
That's called a straw purchase, and it is a crime - ergo, not a legal method of acquiring guns.
For Newtown shooters they were bought and owned by the shooters mother. (I trust you could find a ton of info right now supporting this on any news site so I'm not going to provide a citation.)
Right - bought by the mother, stolen by the son. "Stolen" being the important factor here - it is not legal to steal guns. Thus, the guns were acquired illegally.
In both cases the guns were legally owned weapons taken by the shooters when it wasn't legal for them to have them, but the guns were easily accessible through legal means as I stated.
No, they weren't, and you just stated that yourself ("taken by the shooters when it wasn't legal for them").
there's this concept called 'personal responsibility,' which states that we don't blame outside parties for the actions of a certain person, when those actions are wholly owned by said person. Granted, in the cases mentioned measures could and should have been taken to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access, but to try and say the murderers acquired their weapons through legal means is disingenuous at best, and a blatant lie at worst.
and regarding Columbine, there were several pipe bombs placed around the school, which would have increased the casualty rate enormously had they detonated (it's pure chance they didn't).
Possibly because bomb making isn't very straight forward and, thankfully, the attackers screwed it up.
Or, those kids were idiots. You can get all the info you need from either the local library (Improvised Munitions Handbook is published by the military for civilian use, and thus is widely available), not to mention the internet; I actually saw a site years ago that taught how to build a 'dirty' nuke using old glow-in-the-dark watches (apparently they used to use uranium on the faces instead of phosphorous - no bullshit)
2. If that someone acknowledges that the message as legit (sender may be a long lost friend, or maybe a polite non-spam email), then you get $1 refunded, so it would not have cost you anything.
Yes, how dare they try to monetize their free-to-use website.
"Free" != no money exchanged.
Just because there's no overt monetary exchange does not mean it is a "free-to-use" website, but rather that your understanding of the word "free" is severely lacking.
If you're going to continually move the goalposts, I'm not going to bother trying to reason with you.
I'm not moving the goalposts. I stand by my statement that just because YOU argue that black powder is dangerous (bombs) is no reason to ignore the dangers of guns. Timothy McVeigh have killed 200 people, but many, many, many more people are killed with guns in the USA than with bombs.
Your original post had nothing to do with "the danger of guns," it was about their availability:
It's not a matter of who can make the deadliest weapon. It's a matter of convenience to do so. If bombs were available at the local 7-11, bombs would be used more.
Which I refuted, as you can't buy guns at 7-11, but you can buy bomb making materials there, and at pretty much any other general retail establishment.
then, you move the goalposts the first time:
It's just that getting it and making a bomb (successfully) requires a lot more work than getting guns and ammo.
So, at this point, you say it's now about difficulty of manufacture, not convenient availability, a point which I again refuted by pointing out that purchasing a firearm requires a background check in most circumstances, whereas buying things like bleach and pipe nipples have no such requirement.
So, you moved the posts a third time:
Yes, but you have to learn and do work. Guns take none of that. And you can go to a gun show and skip the background check. And background checks don't work on first-time psychos.
So you've again changed tack, and are now implying that it's not the convenience of material availability or manufacturing logistics that are the problem, it's required knowledge.
Then, there's your latest post:
just because... black powder is dangerous (bombs) is no reason to ignore the dangers of guns.
Which not only completely avoids the previous conversation, it is obviously an attempt to marginalize my opinion by creating an illusion that I somehow don't realize that guns can indeed be used to kill people. Poor show, as anyone who has to make their case by resorting to childish tactics like name calling and marginalization, has no case to make.
Seriously, dude, if you don't realize that your constant changing of topic is a prime example of the phrase, "moving the goalposts," your grasp of English idioms is severely lacking.
I dunno, poll data seemed to work out pretty well for Nate Silver.
One guy, out of 360,000,000+.
Not what I would consider a statistically relevant number of positive results.
Chances are, he's not just using poll data, plus he seems like a pretty with-it person who doesn't have an overt political agenda, unlike the majority of pollsters.
Japan is just one example of lower deaths and no guns..
So? As is oft posited here on Slashdot, correlation != causation, and you know it as well as I do.
Every other 1st world nation that enforce strict gun control laws has lower gun deaths and violent crime then the US.
[citation needed]
Question you should ask yourself - is gun control the only difference between those nations and ours?
gun control will magically make serial killers disappear.
It isn't magic when you have all the data we have. It's counter intuitive, but that's different.
And if the best you can do is 'serial killer' as you comparison, then you got nothing.
To say that banning guns will do anything to stop the Manson', McVeigh's, or Fish's of the nation is to speak abject nonsense that flies in the face of reality, and is nothing more than a kneejerk emotional reaction that will have absolutely zero effect on the penchant or ability of crazy motherfuckers who want to murder others.
22 stabbed in China vs. 27 shot in the states. similar because it was one person attacking a school of children in similar age rage, differences being China vs. US and knife vs. gun.
Osaka Japan, 2001 - Mamoru Takuma rampages through a school with a knife, killing 8 children, wounding 15 others.
Akihabara Japan, 2008 - Tomohiro Kat drives a box truck into a crowd outside an electronics store, killing 3 on impact. He then proceeds to begin stabbing bystanders with a dagger, killing four more people and injuring 8 others.
I'm curious - did you leave those examples out intentionally, as they run counter to your ideology, or was it just a matter of piss-poor research skills?
With the exception of bombs, which from what I've been told are hard to make and risk blowing up an inexperienced maker in the process
If an 8-year-old in a third world nation can do it, anyone can.
It's very clear that had legally own guns not been readily available to the Newtown or Columbine shooters they would not have been able to kill as many people as effectively, or at all.
Uh, hate to burst your bubble, but the guns used in both incidents were acquired illegally, and regarding Columbine, there were several pipe bombs placed around the school, which would have increased the casualty rate enormously had they detonated (it's pure chance they didn't).
I try to be as straightforward as I can be to avoid having that happen, but here in InternetLand people do tend to imply things they don't directly state, so I can understand why you might think that.
And I am not saying he is not anti-gun, I only meant that he does not have a hidden agenda.
What is an anti-gun agenda. One that tries to reduce the number of guns, so that the government can become more totalitarian and control its population with the guns the military owns? Because I cannot see any other anti-gun agenda. He makes is pretty clear why he does not like guns, and there doesnt seem to be a hidden agenda.
Whoever said it was hidden? Seems pretty blatant to me - GP says, essentially, "Japan has a low murder rate because guns are banned, so we should start banning (hand)guns." Also, GP makes a number of logical leaps, comparing apples to oranges, as if the US taking a Euro/Japanese approach to gun control will magically make serial killers disappear.
Right - because as we all know, correlation == causation.
That, or there's a whole fuck-ton of other factors you're discounting, because they don't mesh with your anti-gun agenda.
Being that there is a 'fuck-ton' of other factors, please enumerate them and list your estimated correlation values that we can debate them in a proper fashion. Otherwise, I will have to assume that you simply have a pro-gun agenda and discount your statement as an opinion and disregard it.
Or, we can just go around accusing other posters as having an agenda here all day long without making any real progress in the discussion.
Culture, religion, population density, square mileage, demographics, media, finances, employment, etc, etc, etc.
Really, if you have to have all this obvious stuff spelled out for you, you are probably not qualified to make such comparisons to begin with.
"Poll Data" == "The opinions of the small handful of pre-selected individuals residing in a particular geographic who have a landline phone and are home to answer it at 1 PM on a weekday."
That's not even accounting for the weaselly way they word poll questionnaires.
Good point; I mean, it's not like someone could take the components used to build a muzzle-loaded projectile (lead, black powder), and somehow reform them into some sort of destructive device capable of far more damage than a single bullet could cause, right?
Your sarcasm is poorly placed. It's not a matter of who can make the deadliest weapon. It's a matter of convenience to do so. If bombs were available at the local 7-11, bombs would be used more.
You honestly think black powder, lead, and the literal hundreds of thousands of other consumer products that can be used to create explosive devices aren't conveniently available nationwide?
In that case, I've got a nice piece of real estate in NYC that spans the East River you're definitely going to want to invest in.
Requiring someone to make their own cuts down the number who will, and often eliminates the problem through Darwin awards.
Tell that to the families of the 200 people killed by Timothy McVeigh.
I'm not saying that it isn't available. It's just that getting it and making a bomb (successfully) requires a lot more work than getting guns and ammo.
You think that, but I am telling you it's far from the truth.
For example, unlike firearms, you don't have to pass any sort of background check to purchase bleach and fertilizer.
Slashdot Mirror
Tornados are inherently driven by DC electric, viz. an amp or two through a potential of several million volts. The circuit consists of rain laying down charge, the tornado picking it up and returning it to the cloud.
...
...
WHAT???
I wonder, do you think it would be any more efficient if they somehow compressed the cooling airflow? I would think utilizing the Venturi effect, they could increase the incoming air velocity with minimal power usage.
Almost as good as my Beowulf cluster of raspberry pis.
Much better :)
Speaking of which, have you seen the new BSOD?
WTF, Ballmer?
Better question: Why doesn't it have a touch screen? A computer isn't "modern" without a touch screen
WTF is wrong with you?
Everybody knows touchscreens don't want to be vertical!
I'm curious - did you leave those examples out intentionally
1) I can't provide referances to everything on the internet, there's just too much. 2) I didn't know about those incidents until you pointed them out
I just googled "Mass stabbings."
Wasn't hard.
3) Actually they kind of prove my point. Sure they stabbed and killed quite a few, but note how many actually survived wounded. Had the attacker had a gun there would have been many more dead
Perhaps, but what if they'd have used bombs instead? History tells us the casualty rate would have been far higher.
If an 8-year-old in a third world nation can do it, anyone can.
1) I'd like a citation for that
Ask a Vietnam vet. Be careful, though, some of those guys are pretty messed up from what they saw over there.
2) There are also 8-year-olds that can play piano at very advance skill level, doesn't mean it's easy and everyone in the world can do it.
Non sequitur.
For the record, you can make an explosive device out of nothing more than 4th-of-July sparklers. I know a guy who does it every year, and they are both quite easy to make and relatively safe (outside the blast radius, of course).
the guns used in both incidents were acquired illegally
For Columbine: "In the months prior to the attacks, Harris and Klebold acquired two 9 mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. Their friend Robyn Anderson bought a rifle and the two shotguns at the Tanner Gun Show in December 1998.[18] Through Robert Duran, another friend, Harris and Klebold later bought a handgun from Mark Manes for $500."
That's called a straw purchase, and it is a crime - ergo, not a legal method of acquiring guns.
For Newtown shooters they were bought and owned by the shooters mother. (I trust you could find a ton of info right now supporting this on any news site so I'm not going to provide a citation.)
Right - bought by the mother, stolen by the son. "Stolen" being the important factor here - it is not legal to steal guns. Thus, the guns were acquired illegally.
In both cases the guns were legally owned weapons taken by the shooters when it wasn't legal for them to have them, but the guns were easily accessible through legal means as I stated.
No, they weren't, and you just stated that yourself ("taken by the shooters when it wasn't legal for them").
there's this concept called 'personal responsibility,' which states that we don't blame outside parties for the actions of a certain person, when those actions are wholly owned by said person. Granted, in the cases mentioned measures could and should have been taken to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access, but to try and say the murderers acquired their weapons through legal means is disingenuous at best, and a blatant lie at worst.
and regarding Columbine, there were several pipe bombs placed around the school, which would have increased the casualty rate enormously had they detonated (it's pure chance they didn't).
Possibly because bomb making isn't very straight forward and, thankfully, the attackers screwed it up.
Or, those kids were idiots. You can get all the info you need from either the local library (Improvised Munitions Handbook is published by the military for civilian use, and thus is widely available), not to mention the internet; I actually saw a site years ago that taught how to build a 'dirty' nuke using old glow-in-the-dark watches (apparently they used to use uranium on the faces instead of phosphorous - no bullshit)
They provide their users with a service free of charge. How is that not free?
They are providing users with a service in exchange for the users providing them with content they can monetize. That's not free by any definition.
That the service they provide is to sell your details to advertisers is beside the point...
No, actually, that's exactly the point.
3. Charge the sender 2$, if it's a spam then FaceBook gets 1$ and the recipient gets 1$. It's lose-win-win, the perfect combination.
Not for Facebook.
According to what passes for business ethics these days, the only way it's a win for Facebook is if they get both dollars.
No Refunds.
2. If that someone acknowledges that the message as legit (sender may be a long lost friend, or maybe a polite non-spam email), then you get $1 refunded, so it would not have cost you anything.
Facebook? Returning money to users???
Thanks for the hearty chuckle!
Yes, how dare they try to monetize their free-to-use website.
"Free" != no money exchanged.
Just because there's no overt monetary exchange does not mean it is a "free-to-use" website, but rather that your understanding of the word "free" is severely lacking.
If you're going to continually move the goalposts, I'm not going to bother trying to reason with you.
I'm not moving the goalposts. I stand by my statement that just because YOU argue that black powder is dangerous (bombs) is no reason to ignore the dangers of guns. Timothy McVeigh have killed 200 people, but many, many, many more people are killed with guns in the USA than with bombs.
Your original post had nothing to do with "the danger of guns," it was about their availability:
Which I refuted, as you can't buy guns at 7-11, but you can buy bomb making materials there, and at pretty much any other general retail establishment.
then, you move the goalposts the first time:
So, at this point, you say it's now about difficulty of manufacture, not convenient availability, a point which I again refuted by pointing out that purchasing a firearm requires a background check in most circumstances, whereas buying things like bleach and pipe nipples have no such requirement.
So, you moved the posts a third time:
So you've again changed tack, and are now implying that it's not the convenience of material availability or manufacturing logistics that are the problem, it's required knowledge.
Then, there's your latest post:
Which not only completely avoids the previous conversation, it is obviously an attempt to marginalize my opinion by creating an illusion that I somehow don't realize that guns can indeed be used to kill people. Poor show, as anyone who has to make their case by resorting to childish tactics like name calling and marginalization, has no case to make.
Seriously, dude, if you don't realize that your constant changing of topic is a prime example of the phrase, "moving the goalposts," your grasp of English idioms is severely lacking.
I dunno, poll data seemed to work out pretty well for Nate Silver.
One guy, out of 360,000,000+.
Not what I would consider a statistically relevant number of positive results.
Chances are, he's not just using poll data, plus he seems like a pretty with-it person who doesn't have an overt political agenda, unlike the majority of pollsters.
Japan is just one example of lower deaths and no guns..
So? As is oft posited here on Slashdot, correlation != causation, and you know it as well as I do.
Every other 1st world nation that enforce strict gun control laws has lower gun deaths and violent crime then the US.
[citation needed]
Question you should ask yourself - is gun control the only difference between those nations and ours?
gun control will magically make serial killers disappear.
It isn't magic when you have all the data we have. It's counter intuitive, but that's different. And if the best you can do is 'serial killer' as you comparison, then you got nothing.
Serial killers, which are basically rampage killers who spread it out over time, are a real problem, one that won't be stopped by banning guns - if you look at a list of American serial killers, you'll realize that very, very few of them used guns, but many claimed tens to hundreds of lives anyway.
To say that banning guns will do anything to stop the Manson', McVeigh's, or Fish's of the nation is to speak abject nonsense that flies in the face of reality, and is nothing more than a kneejerk emotional reaction that will have absolutely zero effect on the penchant or ability of crazy motherfuckers who want to murder others.
22 stabbed in China vs. 27 shot in the states. similar because it was one person attacking a school of children in similar age rage, differences being China vs. US and knife vs. gun.
Osaka Japan, 2001 - Mamoru Takuma rampages through a school with a knife, killing 8 children, wounding 15 others.
Akihabara Japan, 2008 - Tomohiro Kat drives a box truck into a crowd outside an electronics store, killing 3 on impact. He then proceeds to begin stabbing bystanders with a dagger, killing four more people and injuring 8 others.
You also failed to mention the rash of knife attacks on children in China, many of which claimed several lives.
I'm curious - did you leave those examples out intentionally, as they run counter to your ideology, or was it just a matter of piss-poor research skills?
With the exception of bombs, which from what I've been told are hard to make and risk blowing up an inexperienced maker in the process
If an 8-year-old in a third world nation can do it, anyone can.
It's very clear that had legally own guns not been readily available to the Newtown or Columbine shooters they would not have been able to kill as many people as effectively, or at all.
Uh, hate to burst your bubble, but the guns used in both incidents were acquired illegally, and regarding Columbine, there were several pipe bombs placed around the school, which would have increased the casualty rate enormously had they detonated (it's pure chance they didn't).
If you're going to continually move the goalposts, I'm not going to bother trying to reason with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIrhVo1WA78
Whoever said it was hidden?
I thought it was implied in your sentence.
I try to be as straightforward as I can be to avoid having that happen, but here in InternetLand people do tend to imply things they don't directly state, so I can understand why you might think that.
And I am not saying he is not anti-gun, I only meant that he does not have a hidden agenda.
Fair enough; I saw it as rather overt.
Seems as though I have been the entire time...
What is an anti-gun agenda. One that tries to reduce the number of guns, so that the government can become more totalitarian and control its population with the guns the military owns? Because I cannot see any other anti-gun agenda. He makes is pretty clear why he does not like guns, and there doesnt seem to be a hidden agenda.
Whoever said it was hidden? Seems pretty blatant to me - GP says, essentially, "Japan has a low murder rate because guns are banned, so we should start banning (hand)guns." Also, GP makes a number of logical leaps, comparing apples to oranges, as if the US taking a Euro/Japanese approach to gun control will magically make serial killers disappear.
How could that not be construed as anti-gun?
Right - because as we all know, correlation == causation. That, or there's a whole fuck-ton of other factors you're discounting, because they don't mesh with your anti-gun agenda.
Being that there is a 'fuck-ton' of other factors, please enumerate them and list your estimated correlation values that we can debate them in a proper fashion. Otherwise, I will have to assume that you simply have a pro-gun agenda and discount your statement as an opinion and disregard it. Or, we can just go around accusing other posters as having an agenda here all day long without making any real progress in the discussion.
Culture, religion, population density, square mileage, demographics, media, finances, employment, etc, etc, etc.
Really, if you have to have all this obvious stuff spelled out for you, you are probably not qualified to make such comparisons to begin with.
There's some good poll data on this.
No.
Such.
Thing.
"Poll Data" == "The opinions of the small handful of pre-selected individuals residing in a particular geographic who have a landline phone and are home to answer it at 1 PM on a weekday."
That's not even accounting for the weaselly way they word poll questionnaires.
Because the evidence, say, from Japan, that an almost complete prohibition of firearms will make the murder rate very low.
Right - because as we all know, correlation == causation.
That, or there's a whole fuck-ton of other factors you're discounting, because they don't mesh with your anti-gun agenda.
In Soviet Russia...
Nevermind; too easy.
Good point; I mean, it's not like someone could take the components used to build a muzzle-loaded projectile (lead, black powder), and somehow reform them into some sort of destructive device capable of far more damage than a single bullet could cause, right?
Your sarcasm is poorly placed. It's not a matter of who can make the deadliest weapon. It's a matter of convenience to do so. If bombs were available at the local 7-11, bombs would be used more.
You honestly think black powder, lead, and the literal hundreds of thousands of other consumer products that can be used to create explosive devices aren't conveniently available nationwide? In that case, I've got a nice piece of real estate in NYC that spans the East River you're definitely going to want to invest in.
Requiring someone to make their own cuts down the number who will, and often eliminates the problem through Darwin awards.
Tell that to the families of the 200 people killed by Timothy McVeigh.
I'm not saying that it isn't available. It's just that getting it and making a bomb (successfully) requires a lot more work than getting guns and ammo.
You think that, but I am telling you it's far from the truth.
For example, unlike firearms, you don't have to pass any sort of background check to purchase bleach and fertilizer.
If you weren't intending to discuss the effect (or lack thereof) of violent games on society, why did you post that?