If the model was shifted to paying for the data you use regardless of your line speed, at least it would be fair; You get what you pay for, no more, no less.
Charging by amount of data transmitted doesn't necessarily make it "fair". Sometimes it isn't the amount of data that matters but the speed at which you get it. I don't use a huge amount of data but when I dial into a VPN, latency and other speed issues matter. Data that doesn't arrive in a timely manner can be useless. Furthermore the cost of transmitting a unit of data is not a linear cost. The price for Comcast to transmit 10MB of data is not double what it costs to transmit 5MB of data to the same location. The variable cost component of the equation is quite small. The amount of data that would have to be transmitted to truly affect Comcast's cost of service is enormous.
Exactly how "fair" is it to sell the service based on an arbitrarily capped speed (which they don't guarantee) AND cap your bandwidth (which they will not advertise)? Exactly how is that anything except for misrepresentation when they bury the limitations in the fine print?
Which is irrelevant in this discussion. Any proposed new electric or fuel cell vehicle will be sold as a new car so the only relevant comparison is with new car prices.
In the long run a gas tank is going to become cheaper than a battery array, but in the short run, electric cars are there already.
So a hypothetical gas tank is hypothetically cheaper than an existing and very real battery? Curious argument you have there. How about we just plug in a hypothetical Mr. Fusion while we are at it? I frankly disagree with how you are framing the issue given the lack of cited evidence.
Hydrogen is refillable. Hydrogen stations only needs electric and water.
If you already are delivering the electricity, why not just put it into a battery and use it directly? (presuming the battery has sufficient energy density)
Electric will always have the advantage of regenerative braking though.
Electricity has a number of advantages. It is independent of the fuel source. Electricity can come from coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind etc. Electricity also is compatible with other types of motors. You can have a gas-electric hybrid, a diesel-electric hybrid, a fuel-cell-electric hybrid, etc. No other energy source can do that. We do not have the technology to use hydrogen directly (requires pressure and/or cooling tech beyond current economic practicality) and there is no near term likely prospect for a practical hydrogen based fuel.
The average American doesn't even spent $30,000 on a car, so the price range of these new vehicles is still in the realm of the rich for toys and games.
The average price of a new car in America is $31,252. A $40,000 vehicle is not remotely out of reach for a large percent of the population.
Pretty much the very definition of niche use. When your livelihood depends on performance of a technology, it's not hard to justify the extra cost of a specialized technology. That does not describe the vast majority of use cases.
And, for what it's worth, firewire is still very popular in the pro video and pro audio world.
And RS-232 is still very popular in industrial machinery. Neither one is going to displace USB at this point as the go-to general purpose device interface. There are lots of interfaces out there which are popular for specific uses but looking forward will remain niche. USB is good enough for enough stuff that it is unlikely to be displaced any time soon. I don't think USB is great but it's not going away either.
Except if batteries last basically forever, having "swapping stations" where a robot replaces your car battery with a fully loaded one becomes a lot more feasible, since you no longer need to worry about the difference in condition between the old and new battery.
That is NOT the major thing holding swapping stations back. To make swapping stations feasible you need a standardized power pack installed in a standardized way compatible with a battery pack swap. This standardization need to be agreed to by a substantial market share of electric vehicle manufacturers - enough to justify the enormous infrastructure costs involved in building out a network of swapping stations. Furthermore there need to be enough electric vehicles already on the road to justify the build out.
Frankly the durability of the battery packs is pretty far down the list of problems with swapping stations.
Since it's essentially a PCI bus extension --- this means, you can add an external PCI chassis attached via Thunderbolt without needing special drivers
Problem is that there is barely any use case for doing that. I can think of a few specialized applications where an external PCI chassis makes sense but not nearly enough to justify Thunderbolt. USB covers 90%+ of the use cases of thunderbolt and other existing technologies cover the rest. Thunderbolt may be a bit more elegant than some but Firewire was more elegant than USB and we all know how that turned out. A low end "good enough" technology will beat a high end expensive technology in the long run almost every time.
The monitor I'm using to type this is hooked up via USB 3.90 via a docking station. Thunderbolt is far more optimized for video but for any situation where there is a choice, USB is almost certain to win largely due to the size of the installed base. Furthermore Thunderbolt is not the only or even most common way to hook up a monitor. It's not that Thunderbolt is a bad standard but the problems it "solves" really are just not a big deal. USB covers 90%+ of the potential use cases for Thunderbolt and other video and network standards cover the remaining ones adequately.
You honestly think telcos don't know how many subscribers they have?
I think they have strong incentives to inflate the number of subscribers they actually have to look good for their investors. One cell phone for every man, woman and child on the planet? Yeah, I'm a little dubious. There are a LOT of young people, poor people and old people who do not have cell phones.
...one of my favorite infotainers rush limbaugh was talking about this very meme yesterday on his show.
Because Rush is obviously an unbiased source of rational analysis... No chance at all that he would try to twist an event to try to bash liberal ideas. [/sarcasn]
postulates that super wealthy individuals propose liberal ideas not because they really believe them, but to shield themselves from criticisms from the media.
Or maybe we go with the simpler explanation that many of them actually believe what they are saying. It is possible to be wealthy and have liberal ideals you know. It's not like this guy is really in need of shielding from the media.
i must say...due to the timing it would seem that mr. kaiser is a rush fan.
Lots of people like to have their biases confirmed. Doesn't make them correct however.
Personally I'd like to see the IRS eliminated and the Fair Tax Act implemented.
It's a consumption tax on retail sales with a modestly complicated "pre-bate" scheme to help low income folks with the increased sales taxes. Not complicated to understand what it is. There is plenty of disagreement however regarding whether it is a good idea. It's (probably) progressive on consumption but regressive on income. It also would effectively become a very large entitlement program similar to social security. I don't see it as any more "fair" or sensible than any number of other tax schemes I've seen. Just because they title it "Fair Tax" doesn't mean it actually is better or more fair.
As you hinted discussions of "fairness" tend to leave out clear definitions of what they mean by fair - fair in what sense? Percent of income? Percent of purchasing power? Percent of wealth? Some combination? There is no tax strategy anyone has devised yet that will be "fair" under every possible measurement. The best you can really hope for is a sort of least-worst scenario which optimizes tax revenue (not too high or too low) without unduly burdening any single segment of society but that's more of an aspiration than a realistic scenario.
Really? Then prove that the supreme court has in EVERY single case declined to allow any regulation or restriction of any kind on ownership of "arms" in every circumstance. Even a single standing ruling restricting gun rights in the slightest way proves me right and that the supreme court interprets the constitution to mean that the right to bear arms in the second amendment is not without limit.
However since I've already cited at least one case your argument is shot dead. (Pun intended)
Every right in the Constitution has limits. Free speech is not without limits. Freedom of religion is not without limits. Why would you expect the second amendment to be any different?
im a libertarian, not an anarchist. As I said below, if you dont like guns, remove them the way the law was intended, via constitutional convention.
Libertarian... riiiiight.... I "like guns" (whatever that means) just fine and I support the right to bear arms. However I'm also not stupid enough to believe that everyone with access to firearms is sane, responsible, law abiding and/or reasonable. If you want to have a reasonable debate about the extent of what arms private citizens should be allowed to carry and under what circumstances then I'm cool with that. Personally I think private citizens should be allowed to carry whatever the police forces are allowed to carry. Nothing more, nothing less. However if your opinion is all-the-weapons-all-the-time then I'm going to declare you a crazy person and this discussion is over.
And even if you could prevent a few suicides by firearm, you'd just see suicides by other means.
Actually there is copious academic evidence that the people would NOT just commit suicide by other means. You are making a seemingly reasonable assumed conclusion not supported by actual evidence.
It's about your kid son finding the gun you thought you had hidden so well he'd never find it
If the firearm is stored anywhere except a well secured safe to which the child has no access then the parent is unfit to be responsible for the safety of another human being. Jail and/or removal of custody seem to be the appropriate solutions. If the firearm cannot be safely stored then it should not be purchased in the first place.
Actually the more important thing is to safely secure all ammunition. A firearm without ammunition is of extremely limited utility.
So if the dumb fucks who don't/won't secure their weapons, how else do you protect the innocents aside from making sure that the dumb fuck's guns are secured for them?
You put the "dumb fucks" in jail when they screw up and/or remove the children from their custody. "Smart guns" certainly aren't going to solve the problem even if they were technologically feasible. This is a social problem and technological solutions rarely work well on social problems.
I want it. Maybe I am not a current gun owner, but have small kids.
So purchase a gun safe and keep the firearm in there. There are plenty of gun safes that can be opened quickly. Your decision to procreate does not make "smart gun" technology a good idea. It is your responsibility to store your firearms safely and if you cannot do this then you should not purchase one. If you are unable to keep your children away from a firearm and thus endangering others then you should be in jail and your children should be put in the custody of a more responsible adult.
They appeal most to inexperienced and/or untrained people worried about self defense, as well as people with kids, worried what might happen if those kids start messing around with stuff they shouldn't.
A much simpler and less expensive solution is to not let children play with firearms. If a child has access to firearms such that they are able to hurt themselves or others then the parent(s) should go to jail. As for the inexperienced/untrained people, I see no problem with requiring mandatory training classes for anyone who wants to purchase a firearm. We require training for all kinds of other dangerous products. So called "smart gun" technology is a impractical and complicated technical solution to a social problem.
Statistically, the need to prevent "unauthorized" people from using your gun against you is vanishingly small. Yet for the sake of doing that, many people seem willing to compromise the ability to do something that is statistically vastly more likely: defend yourself with a gun.
Wrong issue. Everyone here is worrying about your gun being used against you. Not a big issue statistically speaking. What IS a big issue is suicides. About 2/3 of deaths by firearms are suicides and a big number of these suicides are with firearms not owned by the person committing suicide. Additionally a huge percentage of suicides are impulse actions which if the opportunity is removed they suicide does not occur. In theory, some sort of "smart gun" technology could prevent a lot of these suicides. Key words being "in theory". In practice I simply don't see it ever happening. There are huge numbers of existing firearms and I do not see any likely scenario by which these firearms could/would be retrofitted with this sort of technology even if it did actually work - which it doesn't
im all for individual freedom, not being told what I can and cant do.
So you are an anarchist then? Personally I prefer to live in a civilized society where we have meaningful and ongoing debates about what rules we should all live under including those relating to weapons. I'm generally a supporter of the right to bear arms but I also recognize that there are significant real world issues with how to manage weapons while simultaneously ensuring people's rights to life and security. "Anything goes" is not a sane position to hold on the issue.
Without doing that, all gun regulations are unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you and their interpretation of the law is the one that actually matters.
That doesn't mean you want to waste a lot of energy generating non-recyclable carbon fiber products that will fill up landfills.
The amount of energy saved by building lighter vehicles dwarfs the amount saved through recycling.
I'm guessing you aren't aware of the energy savings from recycling aluminum. Recycling aluminum requires roughly 5% of the energy required to create it from bauxite. Furthermore you can recycle aluminum multiple times whereas you effectively cannot recycle carbon fiber at all. (technically it is possible but economically it is not) Much or even all of the fuel savings through lighter weight vehicles will be given back when the product needs to be disposed of.
Folks who know even less about guns . . . shouldn't be legislating about guns.
The flaw in this reasoning is that it is quite possible to know a lot about guns and still believe it is a good idea to restrict their usage. I can introduce you to quite a few people who are firearms experts (including some cops, former military, etc) who think that overly permissive firearm ownership laws are a bad idea. I myself am fairly knowledgeable about firearms and I don't have any problem with requiring registration and training for firearms to roughly the same level we require for motor vehicles. I have no illusions that my firearm ownership keeps me safe from our government but I do think that private citizens should be allowed to keep and (when appropriate) use firearms.
It's just like any other sport. People like to show off, when they know a lot about something, and are good at it.
If you are talking about competitive target shooting then I'll agree that it is a sport. A fun one too - I love target shooting and trap shooting. However most firearms are not sold for that purpose. Most are sold for hunting and/or self defense, neither of which should ever be described as "sport". Nothing fundamentally wrong with those activities but they aren't games.
The ONLY thing I want to have to deal with or worry about is "Did I flip the safety off?"
Fair enough. Electronics can be a sort of safety but I agree that a simple, reliable safety is an important consideration and if you are in a situation where a firearm is actually necessary you definitely do not want to be dicking around with lots of frippery.
Most guns are purely mechanical in nature and I see no reason to introduce electronics into making them "safe," do you?
The first half of that sentence has little to do with the second half. The mechanical design of most firearms alone has nothing to do with whether or not we should introduce electronics in the interests of safety or for any other reason. There is at least one VERY good (theoretical) reason to introduce such electronics, presuming they are sufficiently reliable. About 2/3 of firearm deaths are suicides and a non-trivial percentage of these are with firearms not owned by the user. Introducing electronics to prevent unauthorized users from discharging the firearm may result in a meaningful reduction in deaths by suicide. There is a lot of evidence that many/most suicides are impulse actions so if the impulse can be stymied then the suicide can be prevented. In practice I doubt it is possible to retrofit enough firearms for this to really matter even if the technology actually worked - which it doesn't.
Let's add in additional points of failure into what should be a mechanical object that needs to JUST WORK.
Adding electronics does not necessarily make a device less reliable. There are innumerable examples of electronics making machines more reliable than their mechanical only counterparts. All other things being equal a simpler device is more likely to be reliable than a more complicated device but that is a statistical correlation only due to fewer opportunities for failure. You can easily have a simpler device that ends up being less reliable due to the likelihood of the available failure modes even given that there are fewer of them. Your argument has some validity in that firearms tend to be quite reliable and so any electronics added would have a high bar to clear to improve reliability. I'm merely pointing out that it is actually possible for electronics to improve reliability.
Slashdot Mirror
When I tried to politely explain that my Netflix usage exceeded that, I was again told there was not legitimate reason for the kind of usage.
From the perspective of Comcast that is probably "true". I feel your pain though. Nothing more frustrating that talking to an unthinking minion.
If the model was shifted to paying for the data you use regardless of your line speed, at least it would be fair; You get what you pay for, no more, no less.
Charging by amount of data transmitted doesn't necessarily make it "fair". Sometimes it isn't the amount of data that matters but the speed at which you get it. I don't use a huge amount of data but when I dial into a VPN, latency and other speed issues matter. Data that doesn't arrive in a timely manner can be useless. Furthermore the cost of transmitting a unit of data is not a linear cost. The price for Comcast to transmit 10MB of data is not double what it costs to transmit 5MB of data to the same location. The variable cost component of the equation is quite small. The amount of data that would have to be transmitted to truly affect Comcast's cost of service is enormous.
Exactly how "fair" is it to sell the service based on an arbitrarily capped speed (which they don't guarantee) AND cap your bandwidth (which they will not advertise)? Exactly how is that anything except for misrepresentation when they bury the limitations in the fine print?
The average used car sells for $9-10k
Which is irrelevant in this discussion. Any proposed new electric or fuel cell vehicle will be sold as a new car so the only relevant comparison is with new car prices.
In the long run a gas tank is going to become cheaper than a battery array, but in the short run, electric cars are there already.
So a hypothetical gas tank is hypothetically cheaper than an existing and very real battery? Curious argument you have there. How about we just plug in a hypothetical Mr. Fusion while we are at it? I frankly disagree with how you are framing the issue given the lack of cited evidence.
Hydrogen is refillable. Hydrogen stations only needs electric and water.
If you already are delivering the electricity, why not just put it into a battery and use it directly? (presuming the battery has sufficient energy density)
Electric will always have the advantage of regenerative braking though.
Electricity has a number of advantages. It is independent of the fuel source. Electricity can come from coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind etc. Electricity also is compatible with other types of motors. You can have a gas-electric hybrid, a diesel-electric hybrid, a fuel-cell-electric hybrid, etc. No other energy source can do that. We do not have the technology to use hydrogen directly (requires pressure and/or cooling tech beyond current economic practicality) and there is no near term likely prospect for a practical hydrogen based fuel.
The average American doesn't even spent $30,000 on a car, so the price range of these new vehicles is still in the realm of the rich for toys and games.
The average price of a new car in America is $31,252. A $40,000 vehicle is not remotely out of reach for a large percent of the population.
For pro video and pro audio use cases
Pretty much the very definition of niche use. When your livelihood depends on performance of a technology, it's not hard to justify the extra cost of a specialized technology. That does not describe the vast majority of use cases.
And, for what it's worth, firewire is still very popular in the pro video and pro audio world.
And RS-232 is still very popular in industrial machinery. Neither one is going to displace USB at this point as the go-to general purpose device interface. There are lots of interfaces out there which are popular for specific uses but looking forward will remain niche. USB is good enough for enough stuff that it is unlikely to be displaced any time soon. I don't think USB is great but it's not going away either.
Except if batteries last basically forever, having "swapping stations" where a robot replaces your car battery with a fully loaded one becomes a lot more feasible, since you no longer need to worry about the difference in condition between the old and new battery.
That is NOT the major thing holding swapping stations back. To make swapping stations feasible you need a standardized power pack installed in a standardized way compatible with a battery pack swap. This standardization need to be agreed to by a substantial market share of electric vehicle manufacturers - enough to justify the enormous infrastructure costs involved in building out a network of swapping stations. Furthermore there need to be enough electric vehicles already on the road to justify the build out.
Frankly the durability of the battery packs is pretty far down the list of problems with swapping stations.
Since it's essentially a PCI bus extension --- this means, you can add an external PCI chassis attached via Thunderbolt without needing special drivers
Problem is that there is barely any use case for doing that. I can think of a few specialized applications where an external PCI chassis makes sense but not nearly enough to justify Thunderbolt. USB covers 90%+ of the use cases of thunderbolt and other existing technologies cover the rest. Thunderbolt may be a bit more elegant than some but Firewire was more elegant than USB and we all know how that turned out. A low end "good enough" technology will beat a high end expensive technology in the long run almost every time.
I take it you don't do video?
The monitor I'm using to type this is hooked up via USB 3.90 via a docking station. Thunderbolt is far more optimized for video but for any situation where there is a choice, USB is almost certain to win largely due to the size of the installed base. Furthermore Thunderbolt is not the only or even most common way to hook up a monitor. It's not that Thunderbolt is a bad standard but the problems it "solves" really are just not a big deal. USB covers 90%+ of the potential use cases for Thunderbolt and other video and network standards cover the remaining ones adequately.
You honestly think telcos don't know how many subscribers they have?
I think they have strong incentives to inflate the number of subscribers they actually have to look good for their investors. One cell phone for every man, woman and child on the planet? Yeah, I'm a little dubious. There are a LOT of young people, poor people and old people who do not have cell phones.
...one of my favorite infotainers rush limbaugh was talking about this very meme yesterday on his show.
Because Rush is obviously an unbiased source of rational analysis... No chance at all that he would try to twist an event to try to bash liberal ideas. [/sarcasn]
postulates that super wealthy individuals propose liberal ideas not because they really believe them, but to shield themselves from criticisms from the media.
Or maybe we go with the simpler explanation that many of them actually believe what they are saying. It is possible to be wealthy and have liberal ideals you know. It's not like this guy is really in need of shielding from the media.
i must say...due to the timing it would seem that mr. kaiser is a rush fan.
Lots of people like to have their biases confirmed. Doesn't make them correct however.
Personally I'd like to see the IRS eliminated and the Fair Tax Act implemented.
It's a consumption tax on retail sales with a modestly complicated "pre-bate" scheme to help low income folks with the increased sales taxes. Not complicated to understand what it is. There is plenty of disagreement however regarding whether it is a good idea. It's (probably) progressive on consumption but regressive on income. It also would effectively become a very large entitlement program similar to social security. I don't see it as any more "fair" or sensible than any number of other tax schemes I've seen. Just because they title it "Fair Tax" doesn't mean it actually is better or more fair.
As you hinted discussions of "fairness" tend to leave out clear definitions of what they mean by fair - fair in what sense? Percent of income? Percent of purchasing power? Percent of wealth? Some combination? There is no tax strategy anyone has devised yet that will be "fair" under every possible measurement. The best you can really hope for is a sort of least-worst scenario which optimizes tax revenue (not too high or too low) without unduly burdening any single segment of society but that's more of an aspiration than a realistic scenario.
There is plenty of evidence that restricting gun ownership has no effect on suicide rates.
Citation needed.
You're outright wrong.
Really? Then prove that the supreme court has in EVERY single case declined to allow any regulation or restriction of any kind on ownership of "arms" in every circumstance. Even a single standing ruling restricting gun rights in the slightest way proves me right and that the supreme court interprets the constitution to mean that the right to bear arms in the second amendment is not without limit.
However since I've already cited at least one case your argument is shot dead. (Pun intended)
Every right in the Constitution has limits. Free speech is not without limits. Freedom of religion is not without limits. Why would you expect the second amendment to be any different?
im a libertarian, not an anarchist. As I said below, if you dont like guns, remove them the way the law was intended, via constitutional convention.
Libertarian... riiiiight.... I "like guns" (whatever that means) just fine and I support the right to bear arms. However I'm also not stupid enough to believe that everyone with access to firearms is sane, responsible, law abiding and/or reasonable. If you want to have a reasonable debate about the extent of what arms private citizens should be allowed to carry and under what circumstances then I'm cool with that. Personally I think private citizens should be allowed to carry whatever the police forces are allowed to carry. Nothing more, nothing less. However if your opinion is all-the-weapons-all-the-time then I'm going to declare you a crazy person and this discussion is over.
And even if you could prevent a few suicides by firearm, you'd just see suicides by other means.
Actually there is copious academic evidence that the people would NOT just commit suicide by other means. You are making a seemingly reasonable assumed conclusion not supported by actual evidence.
It's about your kid son finding the gun you thought you had hidden so well he'd never find it
If the firearm is stored anywhere except a well secured safe to which the child has no access then the parent is unfit to be responsible for the safety of another human being. Jail and/or removal of custody seem to be the appropriate solutions. If the firearm cannot be safely stored then it should not be purchased in the first place.
Actually the more important thing is to safely secure all ammunition. A firearm without ammunition is of extremely limited utility.
So if the dumb fucks who don't/won't secure their weapons, how else do you protect the innocents aside from making sure that the dumb fuck's guns are secured for them?
You put the "dumb fucks" in jail when they screw up and/or remove the children from their custody. "Smart guns" certainly aren't going to solve the problem even if they were technologically feasible. This is a social problem and technological solutions rarely work well on social problems.
I want it. Maybe I am not a current gun owner, but have small kids.
So purchase a gun safe and keep the firearm in there. There are plenty of gun safes that can be opened quickly. Your decision to procreate does not make "smart gun" technology a good idea. It is your responsibility to store your firearms safely and if you cannot do this then you should not purchase one. If you are unable to keep your children away from a firearm and thus endangering others then you should be in jail and your children should be put in the custody of a more responsible adult.
They appeal most to inexperienced and/or untrained people worried about self defense, as well as people with kids, worried what might happen if those kids start messing around with stuff they shouldn't.
A much simpler and less expensive solution is to not let children play with firearms. If a child has access to firearms such that they are able to hurt themselves or others then the parent(s) should go to jail. As for the inexperienced/untrained people, I see no problem with requiring mandatory training classes for anyone who wants to purchase a firearm. We require training for all kinds of other dangerous products. So called "smart gun" technology is a impractical and complicated technical solution to a social problem.
Statistically, the need to prevent "unauthorized" people from using your gun against you is vanishingly small. Yet for the sake of doing that, many people seem willing to compromise the ability to do something that is statistically vastly more likely: defend yourself with a gun.
Wrong issue. Everyone here is worrying about your gun being used against you. Not a big issue statistically speaking. What IS a big issue is suicides. About 2/3 of deaths by firearms are suicides and a big number of these suicides are with firearms not owned by the person committing suicide. Additionally a huge percentage of suicides are impulse actions which if the opportunity is removed they suicide does not occur. In theory, some sort of "smart gun" technology could prevent a lot of these suicides. Key words being "in theory". In practice I simply don't see it ever happening. There are huge numbers of existing firearms and I do not see any likely scenario by which these firearms could/would be retrofitted with this sort of technology even if it did actually work - which it doesn't
im all for individual freedom, not being told what I can and cant do.
So you are an anarchist then? Personally I prefer to live in a civilized society where we have meaningful and ongoing debates about what rules we should all live under including those relating to weapons. I'm generally a supporter of the right to bear arms but I also recognize that there are significant real world issues with how to manage weapons while simultaneously ensuring people's rights to life and security. "Anything goes" is not a sane position to hold on the issue.
Without doing that, all gun regulations are unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you and their interpretation of the law is the one that actually matters.
The world is not running out of carbon.
That doesn't mean you want to waste a lot of energy generating non-recyclable carbon fiber products that will fill up landfills.
The amount of energy saved by building lighter vehicles dwarfs the amount saved through recycling.
I'm guessing you aren't aware of the energy savings from recycling aluminum. Recycling aluminum requires roughly 5% of the energy required to create it from bauxite. Furthermore you can recycle aluminum multiple times whereas you effectively cannot recycle carbon fiber at all. (technically it is possible but economically it is not) Much or even all of the fuel savings through lighter weight vehicles will be given back when the product needs to be disposed of.
Folks who know even less about guns . . . shouldn't be legislating about guns.
The flaw in this reasoning is that it is quite possible to know a lot about guns and still believe it is a good idea to restrict their usage. I can introduce you to quite a few people who are firearms experts (including some cops, former military, etc) who think that overly permissive firearm ownership laws are a bad idea. I myself am fairly knowledgeable about firearms and I don't have any problem with requiring registration and training for firearms to roughly the same level we require for motor vehicles. I have no illusions that my firearm ownership keeps me safe from our government but I do think that private citizens should be allowed to keep and (when appropriate) use firearms.
It's just like any other sport. People like to show off, when they know a lot about something, and are good at it.
If you are talking about competitive target shooting then I'll agree that it is a sport. A fun one too - I love target shooting and trap shooting. However most firearms are not sold for that purpose. Most are sold for hunting and/or self defense, neither of which should ever be described as "sport". Nothing fundamentally wrong with those activities but they aren't games.
The ONLY thing I want to have to deal with or worry about is "Did I flip the safety off?"
Fair enough. Electronics can be a sort of safety but I agree that a simple, reliable safety is an important consideration and if you are in a situation where a firearm is actually necessary you definitely do not want to be dicking around with lots of frippery.
Most guns are purely mechanical in nature and I see no reason to introduce electronics into making them "safe," do you?
The first half of that sentence has little to do with the second half. The mechanical design of most firearms alone has nothing to do with whether or not we should introduce electronics in the interests of safety or for any other reason. There is at least one VERY good (theoretical) reason to introduce such electronics, presuming they are sufficiently reliable. About 2/3 of firearm deaths are suicides and a non-trivial percentage of these are with firearms not owned by the user. Introducing electronics to prevent unauthorized users from discharging the firearm may result in a meaningful reduction in deaths by suicide. There is a lot of evidence that many/most suicides are impulse actions so if the impulse can be stymied then the suicide can be prevented. In practice I doubt it is possible to retrofit enough firearms for this to really matter even if the technology actually worked - which it doesn't.
Let's add in additional points of failure into what should be a mechanical object that needs to JUST WORK.
Adding electronics does not necessarily make a device less reliable. There are innumerable examples of electronics making machines more reliable than their mechanical only counterparts. All other things being equal a simpler device is more likely to be reliable than a more complicated device but that is a statistical correlation only due to fewer opportunities for failure. You can easily have a simpler device that ends up being less reliable due to the likelihood of the available failure modes even given that there are fewer of them. Your argument has some validity in that firearms tend to be quite reliable and so any electronics added would have a high bar to clear to improve reliability. I'm merely pointing out that it is actually possible for electronics to improve reliability.