A handgun by default is not to kill people. Take 100 random people who legally own handguns, and ask them how many people they have killed with theirs. 99% of the private citizens who own handguns use them for target practice. God forbid, one day them may have to defend their life against people who wish them bodily harm, but that is by far the exception.
*A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms. I own several guns. I hunt with 1, and the rest are mostly for target shooting. Sometimes its funner to go out and "Kill" some aluminum cans and paper targets. Not everyone out there buys a gun and kills stuff with it all day long.
*A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively. *A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc. My point is that if you woke up tomorrow and the whole planet had no guns, criminals are going to move to the next handy thing that they can harm people with. Guns aren't the problem, the people are, and the failing criminal justice system keeps turning them back out on the streets.
*if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 months in the slammer. If you get caught walking around the streets of the US with a handgun in your pocket that you are not licensed to carry, you are going to get jailtime and fines as well, but criminals dont care, they continue to carry handguns.
Its easier for people to focus on guns as the problem because they can say that no one should have guns, when you admit that people are the problem, its a lot tougher, and the solutions tougher as well. Many people use guns=evil to pull at peoples emotions to support their particular agenda.
While I do use a gun to hunt, 90% of my time is target shooting, and just being outside enjoying nature. Guns can be used for other things besides killing things exclusively.
"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
I agree with you, except the part noted above. Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.? Should I not be allowed to own those because I might use them illegally at some point too? Should the government ban owning a penis to stop rapes?:-) England has banned private ownership of guns, and the response has been a large surge in knife attacks. Criminals will use whatever they can, and realistically I agree with you that criminals aren't going to be the ones turning in their firearms if they were banned.
So it took that long to determine his pastor was racist? And that just happens to coincide with his run for presidency? Not a likely coincidence in my opinion, but he's pres now, so might as well make due with current issues at hand. Hopefully he turns out to be great.
As populations grow out of control, lack of food and resources in some parts of the world will limit population growth, and as diseases and virus' change, our antibiotics are becoming less effective. I think the issue with population levels, and the rapid rate of growth that we are seeing, is far more worrysome than global warming. At least in my opinion. I think we are starting to approach a critical mass point, where we are going to have to start doing something, start making large changes soon. Whether it be global warming, over-population, or some other issue, each is only one of many "Holy crap what are we going to do?" problems. I would love to see the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but will we really be around to see it?:-)
I agree, I though we settled that whole "boxen" b.s. years ago. We need a slashdot poll, and then demand you only use the one that gets the highest vote. If you'll excuse me, I have to go move some cardboard boxen...
Its kind of surprising how many people don't realize this. The University I attend is extremely liberal and environmentally aware. They have banner and flyers and meetings about how E85 Ethanol and corn is going to save the world basically. They don't fully understand the complications of producing these things. They are so focused on the problem that they fail to see the big picture. And as stated above, the knee-jerk reactions rarely work.
How efficient is something like the Asus eeePC? Are they using a low voltage chip, or just making use of CPU scaling? I know the Flash Disk in it saves a fair amount of power, is the CPU saving much as well? Just curious... might be looking into one.
I freaking hate that! To get to my e-mail from my university I have to telnet to port 25 as well. Nothing better than doing that at a school where all the keyboards have keys that stick or stay stuck down. Makes sending a mail about a 10 try job.
$110,000 isnt' that much cost/money for a gas station to shell (no pun intended) out. My local gas station got busted for rigging the pumps with computer chips that would secretly pump 87-octane gas when you selected 91-octane and charge you 91 octane prices. I know the owner, and they got fined a couple hundred thousand dollars, but the owner just laughed when he told me that was ALL they charged him, he said he had made so much money rigging the pumps before he got busted that it was a drop in the bucket. I would imagine it would have cameras somewhere so if you drive off it snaps your photo, like the traffic cameras that send a picture of you running the red light in the mail. You know, the photo where your looking up at the light as you go through thinking you "totally make it!"
Definitely some cool stuff there. My personal favorite was not on the list, the trebuchet. But then again, creating a machine to hurl ginormous stones and flaming balls of death at people was bound to make some enemies...
I personally love the look of the Thinkpads. I am still using my 400mhz Thinkpad 390X, I just can't part with it. I have newer faster laptops these days, but I can always find time to use the Thinkpad. I don't want to be distracted by a million things on a laptop, glossy screens flashing lights, I want to work and get sh$t done.
As per your comment about cavemen leaving the weak or old to die, which I know was a quote from some idiot, the Neandertals actually buried their dead, with flowers too.
Wow plays fine on my current machine, and it would be nice to play it on a laptop, but for $4500.00 I can pay a sherpa to carry my desktop where ever I go.
The college I attend in Northern California is currently taking bids for an outsourced e-mail system. Among them are MS Live, Google, Zimbra and Mirapoint. At least in the past, when there was internet outages on campus, you could still send e-mail within the campus from local machines. I'm not sure I think the outsourcing is a good idea to begin with, but the thought of having MS Live makes me a little stand-off-ish. My campus has free wifi and currently the e-mail system supports windows, mac and linux. So I'm not sure about the Zimbra and Mirapoint, but between the big two competitors, I want google, if we have to change the e-mail. At least they generally support linux well.
Ha ha, Yes, as someone who is an avid hunter, shooter, and cartridge reloader, I have never heard of a.370 winchester. I think he might mean a.270 rifle cartridge, or creatively throwing numbers out there hoping that it exists.
Slashdot Mirror
"HP was once known as a research ant technology giant..."
I hear ant technology is the wave of the future!
Hey, finally someone with some sense!
A handgun by default is not to kill people. Take 100 random people who legally own handguns, and ask them how many people they have killed with theirs. 99% of the private citizens who own handguns use them for target practice. God forbid, one day them may have to defend their life against people who wish them bodily harm, but that is by far the exception.
*A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms.
I own several guns. I hunt with 1, and the rest are mostly for target shooting. Sometimes its funner to go out and "Kill" some aluminum cans and paper targets. Not everyone out there buys a gun and kills stuff with it all day long.
*A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively.
*A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc.
My point is that if you woke up tomorrow and the whole planet had no guns, criminals are going to move to the next handy thing that they can harm people with. Guns aren't the problem, the people are, and the failing criminal justice system keeps turning them back out on the streets.
*if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 months in the slammer.
If you get caught walking around the streets of the US with a handgun in your pocket that you are not licensed to carry, you are going to get jailtime and fines as well, but criminals dont care, they continue to carry handguns.
Its easier for people to focus on guns as the problem because they can say that no one should have guns, when you admit that people are the problem, its a lot tougher, and the solutions tougher as well. Many people use guns=evil to pull at peoples emotions to support their particular agenda.
While I do use a gun to hunt, 90% of my time is target shooting, and just being outside enjoying nature. Guns can be used for other things besides killing things exclusively.
"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
I agree with you, except the part noted above. Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.? Should I not be allowed to own those because I might use them illegally at some point too? Should the government ban owning a penis to stop rapes? :-) England has banned private ownership of guns, and the response has been a large surge in knife attacks. Criminals will use whatever they can, and realistically I agree with you that criminals aren't going to be the ones turning in their firearms if they were banned.
So it took that long to determine his pastor was racist? And that just happens to coincide with his run for presidency? Not a likely coincidence in my opinion, but he's pres now, so might as well make due with current issues at hand. Hopefully he turns out to be great.
I believe this is the link you were looking for?
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html
Magic... or More Magic?
As populations grow out of control, lack of food and resources in some parts of the world will limit population growth, and as diseases and virus' change, our antibiotics are becoming less effective. I think the issue with population levels, and the rapid rate of growth that we are seeing, is far more worrysome than global warming. At least in my opinion. I think we are starting to approach a critical mass point, where we are going to have to start doing something, start making large changes soon. Whether it be global warming, over-population, or some other issue, each is only one of many "Holy crap what are we going to do?" problems. I would love to see the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but will we really be around to see it? :-)
-Eric-
Oh thaaaaaaaat scratch. Uh... that will buff right out!
I agree, I though we settled that whole "boxen" b.s. years ago. We need a slashdot poll, and then demand you only use the one that gets the highest vote. If you'll excuse me, I have to go move some cardboard boxen...
-Eric-
Its kind of surprising how many people don't realize this. The University I attend is extremely liberal and environmentally aware. They have banner and flyers and meetings about how E85 Ethanol and corn is going to save the world basically. They don't fully understand the complications of producing these things. They are so focused on the problem that they fail to see the big picture. And as stated above, the knee-jerk reactions rarely work.
-Eric-
How efficient is something like the Asus eeePC? Are they using a low voltage chip, or just making use of CPU scaling? I know the Flash Disk in it saves a fair amount of power, is the CPU saving much as well? Just curious... might be looking into one.
-Eric-
I freaking hate that! To get to my e-mail from my university I have to telnet to port 25 as well. Nothing better than doing that at a school where all the keyboards have keys that stick or stay stuck down. Makes sending a mail about a 10 try job.
-Eric-
$110,000 isnt' that much cost/money for a gas station to shell (no pun intended) out. My local gas station got busted for rigging the pumps with computer chips that would secretly pump 87-octane gas when you selected 91-octane and charge you 91 octane prices. I know the owner, and they got fined a couple hundred thousand dollars, but the owner just laughed when he told me that was ALL they charged him, he said he had made so much money rigging the pumps before he got busted that it was a drop in the bucket. I would imagine it would have cameras somewhere so if you drive off it snaps your photo, like the traffic cameras that send a picture of you running the red light in the mail. You know, the photo where your looking up at the light as you go through thinking you "totally make it!"
I for one welcome our Dutch gas pumping robotic overlords!!
Definitely some cool stuff there. My personal favorite was not on the list, the trebuchet. But then again, creating a machine to hurl ginormous stones and flaming balls of death at people was bound to make some enemies...
-Eric-
I personally love the look of the Thinkpads. I am still using my 400mhz Thinkpad 390X, I just can't part with it. I have newer faster laptops these days, but I can always find time to use the Thinkpad. I don't want to be distracted by a million things on a laptop, glossy screens flashing lights, I want to work and get sh$t done.
As per your comment about cavemen leaving the weak or old to die, which I know was a quote from some idiot, the Neandertals actually buried their dead, with flowers too.
.02
Just my
-Eric-
Wow plays fine on my current machine, and it would be nice to play it on a laptop, but for $4500.00 I can pay a sherpa to carry my desktop where ever I go.
The college I attend in Northern California is currently taking bids for an outsourced e-mail system. Among them are MS Live, Google, Zimbra and Mirapoint. At least in the past, when there was internet outages on campus, you could still send e-mail within the campus from local machines. I'm not sure I think the outsourcing is a good idea to begin with, but the thought of having MS Live makes me a little stand-off-ish. My campus has free wifi and currently the e-mail system supports windows, mac and linux. So I'm not sure about the Zimbra and Mirapoint, but between the big two competitors, I want google, if we have to change the e-mail. At least they generally support linux well.
.02
Just my
-Eric-
Ah yes, the obligatory soviet russia joke... *Sigh*, you crazy kids.
Ha ha, Yes, as someone who is an avid hunter, shooter, and cartridge reloader, I have never heard of a .370 winchester. I think he might mean a .270 rifle cartridge, or creatively throwing numbers out there hoping that it exists.
-Eric-
Cool Toy???
In Soviet Russia, even the toys have Nuclear Fallout!!
-Eric-
Yeah, apparently 2007 is not the year of Windows on the desktop...
.02
My