Slashdot Mirror


User: Firethorn

Firethorn's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
10,751
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 10,751

  1. Re:Libertarian strawmen on The Future of Shopping: Trapping You in a Club You Didn't Know You Joined (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    So what's the keep the courts & the police from being captured & corrupted? To quote the Non-Libertarian FAQ [raikoth.net] ,

    What's keeping them from being captured & corrupted now?

    Also, I'm not seeing the connection between your question and what you quoted. That being said, keep in mind that I'm explicitly a moderate libertarian. By no means am I for getting rid of ALL government. I'm for some pretty extreme reforms in some ways, but not getting rid of all government.

    As such, I agree with the statement you quote. Matter of fact, the Non-Libertarian FAQ has my type in there:

    To many people, libertarianism is a reaction against an over-regulated society, and an attempt to spread the word that some seemingly intractable problems can be solved by a hands-off approach. Many libertarians have made excellent arguments for why certain libertarian policies are the best options, and I agree with many of them. I think this kind of libertarianism is a valuable strain of political thought that deserves more attention, and I have no quarrel whatsoever with it and find myself leaning more and more in that direction myself.

    This is me.

  2. In my area? Yes. Well, they don't usually double park, pulling into your driveway in order to reach the tank...

    That being said, the big tankers in my area have the tank itself built to a much higher standard than 'half a dozen gas cans in the back', it's built higher up, so if rear-ended the striking vehicle is unlikely to reach the tank itself, and the semis are at least really visible.

  3. It's hard to come up with a clear reason why one truck carrying twenty properly filled, properly made gas cans is that much less safe than twenty trucks carrying one.

    It's not hard at all to me. It's simple enough.
    1. Even properly made gas cans can leak.
    2. The probability of a gas can leaking increases the more of them you have
    3. Gasoline ignites only at specific stoichiometric ratios
    4. A single gas can is unlikely to reach the stoichiometric ratio, much less over a significant area
    5. Multiple gas cans in a single vehicle are much more likely to reach that ratio, and over a larger area as well.
    6. A 10 gallon fuel fire is bad enough, a 200 gallon fuel fire is quite another. Note, I'm not including the vehicle's fuel tank because, on consideration, it's generally pretty well protected.
    7. In an auto accident, vehicle gas tanks are generally not penetrated or ignited.
    8. All bets are off for canisters stacked up in the back of a pickup. See #6 about having drastically more gasoline spread around.

    Honestly enough, plenty of farmers and such have permanently mounted fuel tanks in the back of their truck, with a pump even. Go with that.

  4. Really, this gets '5 Insightful'?

    Libertarians do support deceptive business practices in that they are opposed to all means possible for impeding them. (And while libertarians [lower case "l"] don't support deceptive business practices, they are incoherent about how they should be stopped.)

    Okay, given that you did make a difference between the fundy Libertarians and the more moderate libertarians, of which I'm the latter, I'll give you the small-l answer: You don't get rid of the courts or all the police. You show a court(small claims, most likely) that they deceived you and charged you without authorization, and the court rakes them over the coals.

    Done.

    libertarians aren't anarchists, though some of the Big-L types seem to be more Anarchists trying to rebrand themselves as something not so objectionable.

  5. Re:Traitors! on US Spy Court Didn't Reject a Single Government Surveillance Request In 2015 (zdnet.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    2. If someone didn't agree with the government every time, how fast would they lose their job?

    This trick here is that you simply review a few hundred potential judges before selecting 'the right one'. Consider that for lawsuits 'judge shopping' is already a thing. It's not hard to pick a judge with a well known history of rubber-stamping such requests.

  6. Re:They do accumulate on All Belgians To Be Given Iodine Pills In Case Of Nuclear Accident (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    Note that I mentioned that getting people out was still a concern. But to address further, things get messy in the real world, and I'm not discounting other elements completely by any means. Consider this chart.

    Iodine and Tellurium make up almost 60% of the radiation the first day of the release. Barium and Lanthanum make up most of the rest. Cesium is relatively insignificant until a year later.

    Air release of Iodine 131 is estimated at 130 PBq, and Cesium-137 at 6.1 PBq. 21 times the iodine release? That's a bigger concern, don't you think?

    Cesium, well, we use it in radiation therapy. Half life of 30 years, it's not very radioactive, compared with the 7-8 days for the other substances, which is why it eventually comes to dominate the radiation % after a few years. 30 year half-life, but it's half life in the body is only 70 days. So the treatment for it would be fairly simply - make sure you're getting enough non-radioactive potassium and let it get flushed out of the system. And hey, what do you know, the most common method of giving Iodine to keep I-131 uptake low? Postassium Iodide!. So the same treatment that's used to keep uptake of I-131 low will also help keep uptake of CS-137 low.

    Strontium is an issue, yes, but no where near as large as the I-131, and as you say, there's not as much we can do about it other than making sure anybody exposed gets plenty of calcium to help displace it. It's biological half-life(IE how long, on average, until half of it's been eliminated from the body) is 14-600 days. Iodine-131 has such a short radiological half-life that it's biological half-life of 80-120 days isn't normally considered significant.

    Also, consider: Calcium intake is supposed to be 600-800mg. Iodine? 150 ug. Your calcium needs are 5,000 times as large. Potassium is even worse, with 4.5 grams/days being recommended. So you combine that Strontium/Cesium output is much smaller than Iodine output in nuclear disasters, combined with the difference in body proportions...

    So, to summarize: I stand by my statements. I-131 is more radioactive, more easily uptaken, and retained by the body longer than Cesium and strontium. More I-131 is released in a disaster, and it accumulates into a smaller portion of the body much more easily.

    Mdsolar, you might want to stop quoting blogs quite so much. The article you mentioned didn't examine more than skin deep at all, not considering the proportions released, the radiological half lives, the biological half-lives, etc... Cesium and strontium are a much lower concern than Iodine. I'm not saying that they aren't a concern, but that you can worry about them AFTER you've addressed the I-131 problem.

  7. I have noticed that is a fair portion of it. I would like to see them lose their job and their license to carry, then be prosecuted for what happened when their unsecured weapon was used. If they can't be responsible with their weapon - whether it is for work or otherwise - they shouldn't be allowed to carry it and should be liable for what happens when it is left unsecured.

    What I was trying to get at by mentioning officers is that training and certification of gun owners is unlikely to 'fix' the problem. Because half the damn problem are the officers - who have presumably been professionally trained, investigated, and certified. And then you get the blue line protecting them from any consequences. In most cases I'd say that they aren't prosecuted because the courts find it that their wounded kid is punishment enough - and that punishing the adult responsible will actually result in more damage to the kid. I mean, imagine that you're a kid who got hurt playing with your dad's gun. Your family has the resulting medical bills and such. Is it going to help you, the victim, if your dad loses his job and goes to prison over it? Suddenly you don't have your dad. You're looking at losing your house(medical bills + loss of income), etc...

    Though that brings up a different thing that I didn't notice about the GP - I'll call it incident amplification. ONE woman gets shot by her kid from the backseat, that incident generates dozens of news stories, then we get bugs2squash at least seeming to thing that they were multiple incidents, meaning that 1 incident has been expanded to a crisis in people's minds.

    I would be good with a campaign, even though it would be targeting a small portion of the population and likely make little to no difference. I'm not sure that a gun safe subsidy would help though, I suspect it would likely be used by those who already wanted a gun safe and ignored by those who think they don't need them.

    Of course it'd be targeting a small portion of the population. You mentioned 'Once a day'. That's ~365 kids a year, not all of whom are shot(some manage to shoot the irresponsible adult), much less killed. For small children - not getting up into the age where running with gangs is a real concern, death by firearm is about the smallest tracked death category going. Yes, every incident is a tragedy - but it can be a tragedy because it's so small. More kids die in car accidents, bath tubs, accidental poisonings, falling down stairs, etc...

    *looks at my safe* - yeah, I'd have liked some assistance with that. ;)

  8. The problem was when the senators that commissioned the study found out that they succeeded, they decided to bury the report and changed the definition so that a gun had to be able to determine the intent of the shooter (an impossible task). The gun industry was also totally against this.

    I'm with Orgasmatron, I think this system probably had major problems beyond your description. I know plenty of gun owners that would be fine with 'smart guns' if the threat of them being mandatory wasn't there. Consider that the most popular firearms today are both over 50, and one is over 100 years old, design wise. Conservative doesn't cover it. But they're also fairly live and let live, and if a parent wants a firearm that their kid can't fire even if it's left out while loaded, that's their choice. Grousing about proper storage would happen, but whatever.

    That being said, if somebody designed and released a smart gun good enough that police departments around the country were willing to go with them? I imagine that they would indeed be popular. Though I'd also imagine that they'd have a 'fail-deadly' switch. If the electronics go, flip this switch and you can fire - enough to stop the crook from immediately firing, but if the officer has a failure, he could rapidly re-enable his own weapon.

  9. Around once a day in this country, a child gets their hands on the unsecured and loaded weapon of mom/dad/brother/uncle/aunt/grandparent/etc and kills or wounds someone (or themselves) with it.

    And I'll ask: Have you noticed how often the relative turns out to be a police officer and the weapon his or her service pistol? That's way too high as well.

    That being said, wanting 'smart' guns to take care of this problem is a bit like wanting an automatic robot arm to snatch any children out of the pool if an adult isn't present. While cool, there are cost, reliability, and implementation issues. For the pool, just get a good cover, alarm, or lock for the fence. For the firearm, there are numerous options to secure any weapon, ranging from 'free' on up.

    The government, if anything, should do a little bit of a campaign to encourage parents and people secure their weapons. Maybe even subsidize gun safes a touch.

  10. Re:Do police and military use them? on White House Releases Report On How To Spur Smart-Gun Technology (computerworld.com) · · Score: 2

    And how many police officers are using "smart guns," exactly?

    It depends on whether you'd consider the 'Magna-trigger' system to be a 'smart gun'. If not, 0%. If so, under 0.01%. I put the criteria in there because the only deployed 'authentication' system for firearms is a modification to some S&W revolvers, and maybe a few 1911s.

    The trick is though, is that the safety is about as much of an authentication as the keys to paper towel dispensers. All it consists of is a magnetic ring worn on the hand - and that ring will unlock every single magna-trigger out there. So if a police officer's partner has a ring, he can fire his partner's gun. If the crook has or takes the magnetic ring, he can do as well. To be fair, the system is older than me.

    I might consider trading in my handgun for a "smart" one just as soon as all police officers are willing to do the same. In other words, never going to happen.

    Exactly. What really irks me about the NJ law is that the police are specifically *exempt* from the law, when the police are the ones with actual statistics for being killed by their own weapons outside of suicide!

  11. Re:Idiocy is universal on All Belgians To Be Given Iodine Pills In Case Of Nuclear Accident (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    Keep telling yourself that and see if that fixes the problem.

    Well, it does in conjunction with other actions. No matter where you are, if you fail to account for idiots, any action with fail. Part of the problem in that you didn't actually specify a problem to solve.

  12. Re:Mutants! on All Belgians To Be Given Iodine Pills In Case Of Nuclear Accident (phys.org) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But, radiation can have bad effects on you in more ways than messing up your thyroid!

    Most of the other radioactive elements don't bio-accumulate like iodine does. They also don't concentrate quite so easily. So the pills are to prevent you from picking the iodine while they get you out and perform the other necessary decontamination.

  13. Idiocy is universal on All Belgians To Be Given Iodine Pills In Case Of Nuclear Accident (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    They didn't get the same "no child left behind" or "ebonics" cut-price education that would require what you suggest.

    One thing I've learned over time is that idiocy is pretty universal. Us Americans just like talking about it more.

  14. What about the cost? on Intel Wants To Eliminate The Headphone Jack And Replace It With USB-C (9to5mac.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can get headphones, not good ones mind you, but still headphones, for $3-10. They're perfectly functional for what I do. They also break or get lost frequently.

    I've tried more expensive ones, but they break as well.

    What will USB-C and the necessary DSP do except make headphones more expensive? I understand that there may be more options to 'tune' the DSPs to the individual headphone, but my hearing is damaged enough that I don't think it matters.

  15. Re:How about getting wireless cans working first? on Intel Wants To Eliminate The Headphone Jack And Replace It With USB-C (9to5mac.com) · · Score: 1

    I've had about 3 of them. All of them pretty much cover my house - phone in bedroom, won't cut out until I'm in the garage on the opposite side. They won't quite make the other side of a 1/4 mile track, so I can't just leave my phone in my bag on one side and have it work all the way around. It might in the middle.

    I must know how to pick ones with good radios, less so on physical strength. Or maybe I just need milspec..

  16. I think they're just moving on to a new insult. After all, you can't just call people gay anymore.

    Thus, calling them cucks/cuckolds as a way to, not necessarily say that they have cheating wives, but that they're easily fooled, period. I'd say, especially by the government and corporate interests.

  17. Okay, one can mitigate the risks. Now, consider that the average user is probably some mix of stupid, ignorant, and/or lazy.

    I don't even necessarily consider the last two flaws, at least about specific topics. A brain surgeon might be incredibly smart, but is ignorant about lots of computer stuff because he's busy learning about brains.

    Now, keeping in mind how easy Amazon, Google(Android), and Apple tried to make in-app purchases to be, making it difficult for a parent to, for example, purchase a game for their child, but not allow further purchases.

    Also, I'm going to dispute the above posters who's 'solution' is things like 'don't give a tablet to your kid!'. I think it's perfectly fine for the kid to have a tablet. It's a device that can be used for learning, fun, and everything else.

    But the parents should have the ability to trivially lock it down so that money only gets spent when they authorize it.

    Of course, I think that phone companies shouldn't be allowed to issue unlimited credit to their customers for things like data access, phone calls, and such. The customer should be informed well before they rack up thousands in charges.

  18. Re:It's all relative on A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    1. 4-6 year delay between entering college and graduating means that the job market could be substantially different than when you entered.
    2. Some do support the phasing out. I was posing a question that a student might ask after such a tour, or why they might be pissed.
    3. I happen to agree. Our healthcare systems are a mess.
    4. It, generally speaking, worked the other way around - companies ceased giving loyalty to their employees first.

  19. Re:It's all relative on A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Wow, what a stunning rebuttal of my statement. So hilarious.

    Indicates that you don't get the difference between socialism and communism.

    I mean, I don't really support either, but I at least recognize the differences between the two.

  20. Re:It's all relative on A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 2

    Socialism is just a way point on the road to full communism. Don't believe me, ask Karl Marx. Once people are dependent on their government, how are they going to resist?

    ... You haven't actually read any Karl Marx, have you? I mean, his theories are horrible, but if you're going to use him in a debate you might want to actually know what he stood for. Then you wouldn't make such dumb statements.

    And, looking at history(admittedly, nothing lasts forever), countries haven't fallen into communism from socialism. Just the opposite, actually.

    You see, Karl Marx would have called socialism an attempt by the bourgeoisie to placate the proletariat, delaying the inevitable revolution.

    And again - balance in all things. You give the masses too little support and they start acting French.

  21. Re:It's all relative on A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Socialism != Communism.

    Socialist policies are about taking care of the people - they're fine with private industry, so long as the private industry is controlled enough that it's still acting to benefit the people.

    You want a balance in all things, of course, but a little bit of socialism is a good thing.

  22. Re:It's all relative on A Majority Of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All it takes is a trip to Eastern Europe for any American to realize their world is pretty darn good. But given modern politics we might have to bring the Post-Soviet style problems to America firsthand before they can realize the situation.

    Okay, so they take a trip to Eastern Europe. On the way they go through Western Europe, and come back convinced even more that they're being fed a rotten load by their predecessors.

    Questions they might have:
    Why are we expected to take on so much debt for college?
    Why am I expected to fund my own retirement when my predecessor got a defined benefits package that I'm paying for?
    Why is healthcare so expensive?
    Why can't companies show a little bit of loyalty to us?
    etc...

  23. Re:How is this different on YouTube To Roll Out 6-Second Ads That You Can't Skip (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    I refuse to use the youtube ap on my stuff for this reason. I noticed that I get a lot more ads with it.

  24. Re:Toxicity? on New Heating Technology Uses Seawater and Carbon Dioxide (csmonitor.com) · · Score: 1

    The one saving grace is that ammonia smells quite distinctively, and at levels well below serious risk, so you'll at least know that there's a problem. CO2 is odorless, so you may not know that you are having a problem until your vision starts to cloud and your chest gets tight.

    You'll probably notice your breathing pick up and feeling like you're not getting enough air. The body doesn't track O2 levels, it tracks CO2. Increased CO2 concentrations trips the body's responses to increase respiration. It doubles, for example, at 1% CO2.

    Stick some sensors around the system that set off the fire alarms if CO2 goes high. Done.

  25. now you are getting away from the whole concept of 'universal income'. the whole point of it is to minimize administration costs, which is eating up current 'benefits' like food stamps and welfare.

    Not really. You see, most welfare is needs based. Evaluating 'need' is expensive. That's what's increasing costs.

    Citizenship is not a 'need' test, it's merely a test. 'In good standing' means 'not in prison or on the run'.