We can make up for their functionality in other ways.
What other ways would that be? Would it be as efficient in price, manpower, effectivness?
Mines can be used to force troops into corridors or take huge losses by pushing through, or delays as they use field expedient demining, allowing defensive forces to position themselves for maximum effect.
They're cheap and don't need to be monitored much. Any if you're irresponsable.
Don't forget that american minefields are designed to turn themselves off after a period of time and are also only used in carefully mapped fields to be cleaned up when no longer needed. We have ones that can be shut down by transmissions, that do it automatically after 3 months to a year, etc...
They're not the steppers that can still be dangerous 10, 20 or even 50 years down the road, planted all over the place then forgotten.
There's reasons us Americans don't want to give up our mines.
If you take a rough midpoint and say $500 million per maintenance, the break even point would be three missions. Now, a huge portion of a satellite's cost is the R&D just to design the thing. If you produce multiple ones, the cost drops substantially. Produce multiple hubbles and soon they'd cost under a billion each. Meanwhile you can still do a great deal of updating on the ground.
I'll admit that I'd prefer to scrap the shuttle entirely, replacing it with boosters, dedicated personal carriers, and source maintenance missions from a space station. This would hopefully drastically reduce the cost of maintaining it, and might change the equations again.
but there are dozens other experiments that were performed each shuttle mission before the space station even existed.
Isn't that what the ISS and the other space stations were for?
The shuttle isn't just a flying semi, it's a flying semi with a extended cab that includes a lab. Why don't we just leave it up there and convert it into a space station?
The idea is simple: You launch cargo on the cheap dumb booster of the appropriate size. You launch people using a high reliability rocket, with a high reliability but simple and fairly inexpensive return vehicle. They then do their work at the station.
You do not try to use the dangerous and inefficient at everything shuttle. Though heck, why not redesign the shuttle and use it for missions from the ISS to other satellites to perform maintenance? How about doing some remodeling and launching it one last time to serve as an actual space station?
So to piggy back on your analogy they aren't just picking up milk. They are checking the oil and tire pressure, getting gas, buying lottery tickets, buying a newspaper, getting a pack of gum, and buying a Slurpee for the ride home. Only the milk makes the news.
To continue your example, all this doesn't require a truck either, it can be done with any econobox car.
I've never really thought of the police as a simple cleanup squad,
Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it simple, but they do end up batting cleanup. On the whole, they only respond after a crime has been commited, their only role in prevention is that they raise the subsequent costs of crime by catching the criminals so that punishments can be levied against them.
But I would hasten to add that even if people were more legally empowered to defend themselves, I wouldn't say that absolves the police from that responsibility when there is immediate danger.
But that's something for the local community to decide. Let's say that I live in some community, and we, as a community decide that the police shall provide protection to people with restraining orders who have subsequently been threatened again by the subject of the order and provide funding to hire officers to do so. The police then fail to do this, citing the above ruling. Let's say that the Police Chief defends the officers who decided not to go over. While the victim wouldn't really be able to sue in court, the appropriate authority such as the Mayor would be justified in firing the lot of them.
It leads far too readily to leaving blame for a violent crime at the feat of the victim, for not undertaking due diligence to defend himself. That's a little too close to "the law of the jungle" for my taste.
This has come up before. I end up saying that the perpetrator of the crime is still 100% responsable for the crime, but it can often be said that the victim could made different choices to reduce the chance of him or her being the chosen victim.
Basically, despite all our advances it's still the law of the jungle out there. While criminals are bad and deserve/need to be punished, law abiding citizens should be aware that there are still criminals and other people who would do them harm and take at least some steps to protect themselves. It's a case of an ounce of protection being worth a pound of cure.
My philosophy in life is that I'm ultimately the only one I can depend on. That means I follow up to make sure I get the things due me, that I maintain the resources to survive a period of time if necessary, etc...
I believe in owning my efforts. But ownership of land is different. If all land is owned, which it will eventually be under any propertarian system, then those who do not own will be the slaves of those who do. We can talk more than origins, most property now is owned by less than 10% of the population, and they most definitely did NOT work for it. Besides, all real property was stolen at some point. Just because someone sells me a stolen bike for $10 doesn't make that bike morally mine.
At least in the US's case, it was mostly divied up by the government and given out to the farmers who could prove that they could make the land useful. Given that we aren't a society of farmers anymore, it doesn't matter as much. Without 'ownership' of the land, people aren't encouraged to build building, plant crops, etc... It's a good thing on the whole.
Why does the starving man have a moral right to your bread that you worked for? Because the whole system that was set up to let you work for that bread was set up by society, including the concept of ownership which potentially excludes that man from being able to feed himself. You profit from the system, he suffers, he has a right to your bread because by fencing him off your property you stole from him the opportunity to make his own bread.
Charity doesn't have to be given by the government to exist. Starvation is not a problem in the USA today. Between the public dole and private charities basic essentials are not hard to get by those down on their luck. Besides that, there are plenty of programs to encourage somebody to become productive members of society, at which point they too may eventually own land. Heck, I don't own any land I don't really feel the lack. I own plenty of other things.
Don't like it? Give back everything society has given to you and go do it completely on your own.
Don't need to. I get along with society just fine. Civilisation, group cooperation is a good thing. Charity is a good thing, it's just that it should be voluntary.
As to the "easier to obtain" part, no. They simply want to stop useless inconvenient measures that do not do much. I already own a couple of firearms, but if I want to get a new.22 pistol just to poke holes in paper, I have to wait three days. It does not matter that if my goal was to actually hurt somebody, I already have much better tools than a.22.
You want a hilarious modification of this? Walmart has a policy of having a store manager carry a newly purchased firearm(rifle or shotgun, they don't sell pistols) to the store exit, presumably to prevent you from loading it and shooting up the place.
I purchased a.300wby vanguard, a magnum rifle designed to be used with a scope*, which requires tools and a good deal of time to mount. It has no iron sights. I reflected on the sillyness of the rule as I walked to the front, the manager carrying the unloaded, unscoped firearm, as I was legally wearing a fully loaded 9mm handgun at the time, and had used my CCW permit as identification on the paperwork.
There is no such thing as an accidental discharge.
Well, there is one way: Breakage of the firearm. There have been cases where the firing pin breaks unexpectably and lodges forward, resulting in a slamfire.
Still, follow the rules and you won't have an ND, and if the astronomically rare breakage happens nobody will get hurt.
But if no one else was around, you could eat anything.
Not without a lot of work, relativly speaking. It takes work to cultivate crops, or even to just collect wild edibles. Catching game for meat is even tougher.
As it is, people will try to stop you from eating things they think of as theirs.
Of course, they worked for those things. Sure, a $2 loaf of bread is a fairly marginal amount for me(less than.1% of my monthly income), but if you take my loaf of bread, I have to go get another or do without. As I need food too, if you keep taking my food pretty soon I'd be left with nothing. Go get a job to buy your own food slacker.
By "right to food" I really mean that no one has the right to initiate force to keep me from eating any naturally growing thing I damn well like.
In the USA there's plenty of parks where you're welcome to go and try this. On the other hand, farmers have invested quite a bit into growing their crops, and isn't it far to compensate them for that?
Owning yourself means owning your efforts, and while we can argue beginnings, people today own property for the most part because they worked for it.
Soon the govt starts deployment in schools, parks etc., Crime goes down, and secret service is equipped with bows and arrows.
Thing is, this is a fictional story. Crime tends to INCREASE when guns are banned. My personal theory is that most violent criminals are the ones most capable of physical violence, IE young people, specifically males. They can cause all sorts of damage with knives, bats, and their bare fists and Granny, who could stop them with a gun, can't defend herself as well with the same tools.
For instance, a round specially designed for military or police use could only be fired by a military / police gun, and only if the gun was being operated by a soldier / police officer.
The problem with this is that, so far, the police and military have refused to have anything to do with these types of guns for their issue weapons, and the police are the number one groupd to be killed/injured by their own weapon.
I mean New Jersey wanted to require all guns sold to be 'smart', but the police lobbied fiercly until they won an exemption.
If it's not reliable enough for the police, would you want to depend on one?
I have an entirely different set of concerns...
on
Encrypted Ammunition?
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· Score: 1
This looks to be another case of a solution looking for a problem. I predict that under 12 will be sold if it's ever produced.
From the article: but many firearm enthusiasts would surely pay a premium for such added security.
Nope, nada, not happening. I AM a firearm enthusiast, I talk with other enthusiats and they all disdain such a system. Their number one concern is that the firearm goes bang when the trigger is pulled, every time. This means KISS principles are in effect.
Problems I see: 1. Cost of compatible gun: The gun is more expensive. Actually about the least concern. 2. Performance of 'smart bullets': We have hundreds of calibers so shooters can pick the one they like the best. I doubt that they'll release even the dozen calibers needed to make 90% of defensive handgun owners happy. 3. Cost of ammunition: rounds today range from.02 cents(.22LR) to over $5(.50BMG and such). This system is likely to at least double the cost of the ammunition, and I shoot thousands and thousands of rounds a year. 4. Availability of ammunition: People tend to select calibers that they can get ahold of easily. If walmart doesnt' carry it, it's not popular. 5. Reliability: Users want a bang, every time. The more complicated the system, the less useful this will be. 6. Safety: Users who have a firearm for self defense want a weapon to be immediatly useful. No fumbling around with a 'tiny keypad' trying to enter a code when the criminal is breaking into your home. Hell, my primary self defense firearm doesn't even have a manual safety. I refer you to the #1 police firearm, the Glock, for this. Requiring complicated code entry actually works out better for the criminal, who through whatever means gets ahold of firearm, ammo, and password. He can enter it in before entering, while the occupants pretty much have to wait for the entry to start to get the weapon and enter the code 7. You'd be spending millions and millions of dollars for basically nothing, because there's already so many firearms out there that they aren't going to run out, and the black market will simply supply the demand, just like with drugs. It's not like guns and ammunition are hard to make.
That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway?
This would be a database of known cporn images. IE already caught on the HD or something of some pedophile. Like others have said, my standard would be to not worry about 'teen porn', and go after true cporn, IE 12 and under. Mistakes there are unlikely.
And yes, you do have the problem that some people consider plain nudes pornographic.
As to maturity being something you gain by practice, this goes along with my contention that the most important thing you can give your kids isn't love, or security, or anything else; it's PRIVACY.
Now this I don't agree with. My parents always knew what I was doing, but they allowed pretty much everything that wouldn't result in permanent injury, criminal record, or expulsion from school. Even then I feel that they would deal, depending upon circumstances(I got into a couple fights that they felt were justified when I gave my side). They were my guardians, and thus need to know what I'm doing, even if they simply give some common advice to avoid trouble.
Now, if the parent never lets the teenager be home alone, or anywhere alone for that matter, we might have issues. Heck, I wasn't even in my teens when my parents would give me money to go watch the movies or rent something from the local store. But they knew what movie I was going to go see and where, and I knew what movies I was allowed to rent.
Because they've had access to alcohol before they reach the legal age, it's not a huge deal.
It's fully legal for them to have it at the age they do. The difference is that they're not driving yet and are still under their parents thumb.
I'm not saying to throw kids into the 'deep end' early on, but to let them venture out there under the watchful eye of their parents. The parents shouldn't necessarily dive in at the first sign of trouble, but should be there if the child turns out to truly need them.
My mom was a great example of this. Generally speaking, if it wasn't going to result in permanent injury, criminal record, or expulsion from school, she'd simply observe and give advice. After going against said advice a few times, only to suffer the dreaded 'I told you so', we started listening.
Many of my friends with more controlling parents were more scared of her than their own parents. Why? She seemed to know everything. It was easy to sneak stuff by other parents, her, well, there have been wars less planed out than some of the stuff we tried to avoid her knowing about it.
not to underestimate "the lure of the forbidden".
I had a phase like this, but it didn't last too long because I couldn't find anything that mom wouldn't allow that I didn't feel was too expensive for my rebellion. When I wanted to get an ear pierced, Mom simply said 'Pay for it yourself'.
Ok, why don't they drive a wagon? Or perhaps a people carrier? A small truck would also do the same job. I can think of plenty of people in Virginia who drive SUVs where there is no need, they never go off-road and they don't use the space 99% of the time.
Like I said, cars/wagons don't sit high enough for her. As for the 'people carrier' do you mean a van? Mom usually drives alone, she doesn't need any extra capacity from a car, the reason she drives the (small)SUV is the seat height. As for the truck option, small trucks get even worse gas milage than her SUV, which is front wheel drive only, and having the enclosed cargo/seating area is nice if my parents need to drive somewhere with luggage or with three to five people in the rain, snow, or other incliment weather.
Whilst the smaller SUVs aren't so bad (RAV4), there are far too many ones that get sub 20 MPG being used for driving people in and out of work/to the shops/etc. Yeah, when you do that in a car you are just moving yourself but at least you'll get over 30 MPG in any sort of good small car. That is 50% better... if you get a diesel or a hybrid, you'll likely get over 100% more MPG.
We test drove a hybrid (ford escape), but I felt that the technology just wasn't mature enough yet. For one thing, car salesman uncle recommends never buying the first year model, and the price difference was high enough to negate any gas savings even at high gasoline prices. Mom doesn't drive a huge number of miles. Heck, I don't either. I'm at half the milage they'd expect by it's age.
I am sure for some people, SUVs are a good fit. For a lot of people, it is just a joke.
My personal philosophy is to get a vehicle that covers 98% of my driving. That works out to renting 1 week a year. I drive a small car that gets better than 30 mpg. If I need to haul alot, I figure I can just rent a truck.
80% of the SUV's I see on the road aren't carying anything more than their 120 - 350 lb driver. That simple, easilly observable FACT proves that most SUV owners are wasteful.
Is it more wasteful to own 1 SUV or a SUV and another car? Do you know what they have in the back? Maybe they only really load it up once a week for the trip to the sports fields. Hell, 80% would translate to one out of every five trips using the extra capabilities of an SUV. Heck, let's make it 90%, that's still ~36 trips a year using the extra capabilities. Hell, we could say the same thing about cars. If you're just moving yourself around 80% of the time, get a motorcycle.
For that matter, my mom now drives a (smaller)SUV. She has a problem with her hips that make it difficult to get out of low seats. Her choices would have been an even larger van, truck, or the SUV. She'd be included in your '80%' easily observed statistic. Populations are aging, she's not the only one with this problem.
This ties into my own theories on this. People learn maturity by practicing it. This means that they'll screw it up every so often. People need to suffer the consequences of their actions, not take it as an opportunity to score it rich.
When I was young, I was more or less trusted in bringing knives to school. My grandfather could have brought a rifle. Today they're talking about mandatory year long suspensions for a swiss army knife, and we aren't talking about schools with 'gang problems' here. Not as many kids have part time jobs anymore. Many don't have to do chores.
I mean, look at Europe. By vast majority they allow kids to drink below the age of eighteen, and they have far fewer dui/drinking problems than we do. Yet I hear an advertisement a few days ago talking about how if you drink before you're 21, your poor developing brain can't handle it and you have a higher risk of becoming an addict. Yet my theory is more along the lines of lactose tolerance, the younger you are when you're introduced to it, in small doses of course, the more your body is able to adapt to handle it.
If you want people to mature, you have to give them the freedom to do so. I've seen it in the military, in the dorms. They treat 18-21 year olds like kids in many respects, and these young adults turn around and act like kids.
Sorry, I was writing purely from memory, but the fact still remains that there are chunks of spectrum that, because of either contamination or absorbtion that aren't as useful on the earth, and given the cost of launching satellites, we might as well concentrate on having them do the things that they're advantaged at.
Hubble always had a limited life span, and with the loss of two shuttles, we have to look at prioritizing, especially with the requirement for the astronaughts to be able to evacutate to the ISS if the shuttle is unable to land.
Personally, I'd be working more towards launching a replacement for the Hubble. Ground based telescopes have caught up in many ways with adaptive lense technologies, but the hubble works much better in the infrared from what I understand. Design the replacement more towards making up the shortfalls of ground based telescopes.
Given the cost of a dedicated shuttle maintenance mission, it might even be cheaper to just launch new ones, especially if you make a series of them, allowing you to spread R&D costs between multiple sats.
The only thing restraining orders provide is another charge when the perpetrator is apprehended. Instead of battery, you have battery and violating a restraining order. That's not saying much, but sometimes you need these things documented to the hilt.
I'm more concerned with stopping the battery, but then again there's also the whole murder thing many of these types get into.
On the other end you have the whole 'defensive restraining order' thing. In some states it's automatic for lawyers to apply for an order, and judges to grant them during divorce proceedings, even if there's zero evidence of abuse, violence, or threats.
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We can make up for their functionality in other ways.
What other ways would that be? Would it be as efficient in price, manpower, effectivness?
Mines can be used to force troops into corridors or take huge losses by pushing through, or delays as they use field expedient demining, allowing defensive forces to position themselves for maximum effect.
They're cheap and don't need to be monitored much. Any if you're irresponsable.
Don't forget that american minefields are designed to turn themselves off after a period of time and are also only used in carefully mapped fields to be cleaned up when no longer needed. We have ones that can be shut down by transmissions, that do it automatically after 3 months to a year, etc...
They're not the steppers that can still be dangerous 10, 20 or even 50 years down the road, planted all over the place then forgotten.
There's reasons us Americans don't want to give up our mines.
It was actually 1.5 billion, and 100 million is a low ball figure for the cost of a shuttle launch.
Being a purely politically funded venture, nailing down the cost is difficult, but varies.
$300 million
$600 million
$500 million
$55 million incremental, $1.3 billion when you include facilities, research, engineering, etc...
If you take a rough midpoint and say $500 million per maintenance, the break even point would be three missions. Now, a huge portion of a satellite's cost is the R&D just to design the thing. If you produce multiple ones, the cost drops substantially. Produce multiple hubbles and soon they'd cost under a billion each. Meanwhile you can still do a great deal of updating on the ground.
I'll admit that I'd prefer to scrap the shuttle entirely, replacing it with boosters, dedicated personal carriers, and source maintenance missions from a space station. This would hopefully drastically reduce the cost of maintaining it, and might change the equations again.
but there are dozens other experiments that were performed each shuttle mission before the space station even existed.
Isn't that what the ISS and the other space stations were for?
The shuttle isn't just a flying semi, it's a flying semi with a extended cab that includes a lab. Why don't we just leave it up there and convert it into a space station?
The idea is simple: You launch cargo on the cheap dumb booster of the appropriate size. You launch people using a high reliability rocket, with a high reliability but simple and fairly inexpensive return vehicle. They then do their work at the station.
You do not try to use the dangerous and inefficient at everything shuttle. Though heck, why not redesign the shuttle and use it for missions from the ISS to other satellites to perform maintenance? How about doing some remodeling and launching it one last time to serve as an actual space station?
So to piggy back on your analogy they aren't just picking up milk. They are checking the oil and tire pressure, getting gas, buying lottery tickets, buying a newspaper, getting a pack of gum, and buying a Slurpee for the ride home. Only the milk makes the news.
To continue your example, all this doesn't require a truck either, it can be done with any econobox car.
I've never really thought of the police as a simple cleanup squad,
Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it simple, but they do end up batting cleanup. On the whole, they only respond after a crime has been commited, their only role in prevention is that they raise the subsequent costs of crime by catching the criminals so that punishments can be levied against them.
But I would hasten to add that even if people were more legally empowered to defend themselves, I wouldn't say that absolves the police from that responsibility when there is immediate danger.
But that's something for the local community to decide. Let's say that I live in some community, and we, as a community decide that the police shall provide protection to people with restraining orders who have subsequently been threatened again by the subject of the order and provide funding to hire officers to do so. The police then fail to do this, citing the above ruling. Let's say that the Police Chief defends the officers who decided not to go over. While the victim wouldn't really be able to sue in court, the appropriate authority such as the Mayor would be justified in firing the lot of them.
It leads far too readily to leaving blame for a violent crime at the feat of the victim, for not undertaking due diligence to defend himself. That's a little too close to "the law of the jungle" for my taste.
This has come up before. I end up saying that the perpetrator of the crime is still 100% responsable for the crime, but it can often be said that the victim could made different choices to reduce the chance of him or her being the chosen victim.
Basically, despite all our advances it's still the law of the jungle out there. While criminals are bad and deserve/need to be punished, law abiding citizens should be aware that there are still criminals and other people who would do them harm and take at least some steps to protect themselves. It's a case of an ounce of protection being worth a pound of cure.
My philosophy in life is that I'm ultimately the only one I can depend on. That means I follow up to make sure I get the things due me, that I maintain the resources to survive a period of time if necessary, etc...
I believe in owning my efforts. But ownership of land is different. If all land is owned, which it will eventually be under any propertarian system, then those who do not own will be the slaves of those who do. We can talk more than origins, most property now is owned by less than 10% of the population, and they most definitely did NOT work for it. Besides, all real property was stolen at some point. Just because someone sells me a stolen bike for $10 doesn't make that bike morally mine.
At least in the US's case, it was mostly divied up by the government and given out to the farmers who could prove that they could make the land useful. Given that we aren't a society of farmers anymore, it doesn't matter as much. Without 'ownership' of the land, people aren't encouraged to build building, plant crops, etc... It's a good thing on the whole.
Why does the starving man have a moral right to your bread that you worked for? Because the whole system that was set up to let you work for that bread was set up by society, including the concept of ownership which potentially excludes that man from being able to feed himself. You profit from the system, he suffers, he has a right to your bread because by fencing him off your property you stole from him the opportunity to make his own bread.
Charity doesn't have to be given by the government to exist. Starvation is not a problem in the USA today. Between the public dole and private charities basic essentials are not hard to get by those down on their luck. Besides that, there are plenty of programs to encourage somebody to become productive members of society, at which point they too may eventually own land. Heck, I don't own any land I don't really feel the lack. I own plenty of other things.
Don't like it? Give back everything society has given to you and go do it completely on your own.
Don't need to. I get along with society just fine. Civilisation, group cooperation is a good thing. Charity is a good thing, it's just that it should be voluntary.
As to the "easier to obtain" part, no. They simply want to stop useless inconvenient measures that do not do much. I already own a couple of firearms, but if I want to get a new .22 pistol just to poke holes in paper, I have to wait three days. It does not matter that if my goal was to actually hurt somebody, I already have much better tools than a .22.
.300wby vanguard, a magnum rifle designed to be used with a scope*, which requires tools and a good deal of time to mount. It has no iron sights. I reflected on the sillyness of the rule as I walked to the front, the manager carrying the unloaded, unscoped firearm, as I was legally wearing a fully loaded 9mm handgun at the time, and had used my CCW permit as identification on the paperwork.
You want a hilarious modification of this? Walmart has a policy of having a store manager carry a newly purchased firearm(rifle or shotgun, they don't sell pistols) to the store exit, presumably to prevent you from loading it and shooting up the place.
I purchased a
*That I didn't have yet
There is no such thing as an accidental discharge.
Well, there is one way: Breakage of the firearm. There have been cases where the firing pin breaks unexpectably and lodges forward, resulting in a slamfire.
Still, follow the rules and you won't have an ND, and if the astronomically rare breakage happens nobody will get hurt.
But if no one else was around, you could eat anything.
.1% of my monthly income), but if you take my loaf of bread, I have to go get another or do without. As I need food too, if you keep taking my food pretty soon I'd be left with nothing. Go get a job to buy your own food slacker.
Not without a lot of work, relativly speaking. It takes work to cultivate crops, or even to just collect wild edibles. Catching game for meat is even tougher.
As it is, people will try to stop you from eating things they think of as theirs.
Of course, they worked for those things. Sure, a $2 loaf of bread is a fairly marginal amount for me(less than
By "right to food" I really mean that no one has the right to initiate force to keep me from eating any naturally growing thing I damn well like.
In the USA there's plenty of parks where you're welcome to go and try this. On the other hand, farmers have invested quite a bit into growing their crops, and isn't it far to compensate them for that?
Owning yourself means owning your efforts, and while we can argue beginnings, people today own property for the most part because they worked for it.
Thing is, this is a fictional story. Crime tends to INCREASE when guns are banned. My personal theory is that most violent criminals are the ones most capable of physical violence, IE young people, specifically males. They can cause all sorts of damage with knives, bats, and their bare fists and Granny, who could stop them with a gun, can't defend herself as well with the same tools.
Brakes are designed such that they still work even if the ABS fails.
My gun is always loaded unless I'm cleaning it. Guns today can literally sit somewhere for a decade and still fire perfectly
What do you mean here?
Oh yeah, almost forgot a part of 5: Battery replacement.
For instance, a round specially designed for military or police use could only be fired by a military / police gun, and only if the gun was being operated by a soldier / police officer.
The problem with this is that, so far, the police and military have refused to have anything to do with these types of guns for their issue weapons, and the police are the number one groupd to be killed/injured by their own weapon.
I mean New Jersey wanted to require all guns sold to be 'smart', but the police lobbied fiercly until they won an exemption.
If it's not reliable enough for the police, would you want to depend on one?
This looks to be another case of a solution looking for a problem. I predict that under 12 will be sold if it's ever produced.
.02 cents(.22LR) to over $5(.50BMG and such). This system is likely to at least double the cost of the ammunition, and I shoot thousands and thousands of rounds a year.
From the article:
but many firearm enthusiasts would surely pay a premium for such added security.
Nope, nada, not happening. I AM a firearm enthusiast, I talk with other enthusiats and they all disdain such a system. Their number one concern is that the firearm goes bang when the trigger is pulled, every time. This means KISS principles are in effect.
Problems I see:
1. Cost of compatible gun: The gun is more expensive. Actually about the least concern.
2. Performance of 'smart bullets': We have hundreds of calibers so shooters can pick the one they like the best. I doubt that they'll release even the dozen calibers needed to make 90% of defensive handgun owners happy.
3. Cost of ammunition: rounds today range from
4. Availability of ammunition: People tend to select calibers that they can get ahold of easily. If walmart doesnt' carry it, it's not popular.
5. Reliability: Users want a bang, every time. The more complicated the system, the less useful this will be.
6. Safety: Users who have a firearm for self defense want a weapon to be immediatly useful. No fumbling around with a 'tiny keypad' trying to enter a code when the criminal is breaking into your home. Hell, my primary self defense firearm doesn't even have a manual safety. I refer you to the #1 police firearm, the Glock, for this. Requiring complicated code entry actually works out better for the criminal, who through whatever means gets ahold of firearm, ammo, and password. He can enter it in before entering, while the occupants pretty much have to wait for the entry to start to get the weapon and enter the code
7. You'd be spending millions and millions of dollars for basically nothing, because there's already so many firearms out there that they aren't going to run out, and the black market will simply supply the demand, just like with drugs. It's not like guns and ammunition are hard to make.
That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway?
This would be a database of known cporn images. IE already caught on the HD or something of some pedophile. Like others have said, my standard would be to not worry about 'teen porn', and go after true cporn, IE 12 and under. Mistakes there are unlikely.
And yes, you do have the problem that some people consider plain nudes pornographic.
Ah, sounds like antivirus retasked to looking for cporn. Shouldn't be too hard, millions of viruses, millions of images.
Still, I'm scared of how much 'for the children' there is today. It's become the clarion call of those who want to take our rights away.
I mean, think about what else this can be used for, and you know it will be used for other things. Looking for copyrighted media, anyone?
One would tend to think that a checksum/hash code would be sufficient. You need a fingerprint, not a copy of the act.
As to maturity being something you gain by practice, this goes along with my contention that the most important thing you can give your kids isn't love, or security, or anything else; it's PRIVACY.
Now this I don't agree with. My parents always knew what I was doing, but they allowed pretty much everything that wouldn't result in permanent injury, criminal record, or expulsion from school. Even then I feel that they would deal, depending upon circumstances(I got into a couple fights that they felt were justified when I gave my side). They were my guardians, and thus need to know what I'm doing, even if they simply give some common advice to avoid trouble.
Now, if the parent never lets the teenager be home alone, or anywhere alone for that matter, we might have issues. Heck, I wasn't even in my teens when my parents would give me money to go watch the movies or rent something from the local store. But they knew what movie I was going to go see and where, and I knew what movies I was allowed to rent.
Because they've had access to alcohol before they reach the legal age, it's not a huge deal.
It's fully legal for them to have it at the age they do. The difference is that they're not driving yet and are still under their parents thumb.
I'm not saying to throw kids into the 'deep end' early on, but to let them venture out there under the watchful eye of their parents. The parents shouldn't necessarily dive in at the first sign of trouble, but should be there if the child turns out to truly need them.
My mom was a great example of this. Generally speaking, if it wasn't going to result in permanent injury, criminal record, or expulsion from school, she'd simply observe and give advice. After going against said advice a few times, only to suffer the dreaded 'I told you so', we started listening.
Many of my friends with more controlling parents were more scared of her than their own parents. Why? She seemed to know everything. It was easy to sneak stuff by other parents, her, well, there have been wars less planed out than some of the stuff we tried to avoid her knowing about it.
not to underestimate "the lure of the forbidden".
I had a phase like this, but it didn't last too long because I couldn't find anything that mom wouldn't allow that I didn't feel was too expensive for my rebellion. When I wanted to get an ear pierced, Mom simply said 'Pay for it yourself'.
Ok, why don't they drive a wagon? Or perhaps a people carrier? A small truck would also do the same job. I can think of plenty of people in Virginia who drive SUVs where there is no need, they never go off-road and they don't use the space 99% of the time.
Like I said, cars/wagons don't sit high enough for her. As for the 'people carrier' do you mean a van? Mom usually drives alone, she doesn't need any extra capacity from a car, the reason she drives the (small)SUV is the seat height. As for the truck option, small trucks get even worse gas milage than her SUV, which is front wheel drive only, and having the enclosed cargo/seating area is nice if my parents need to drive somewhere with luggage or with three to five people in the rain, snow, or other incliment weather.
Whilst the smaller SUVs aren't so bad (RAV4), there are far too many ones that get sub 20 MPG being used for driving people in and out of work/to the shops/etc. Yeah, when you do that in a car you are just moving yourself but at least you'll get over 30 MPG in any sort of good small car. That is 50% better... if you get a diesel or a hybrid, you'll likely get over 100% more MPG.
We test drove a hybrid (ford escape), but I felt that the technology just wasn't mature enough yet. For one thing, car salesman uncle recommends never buying the first year model, and the price difference was high enough to negate any gas savings even at high gasoline prices. Mom doesn't drive a huge number of miles. Heck, I don't either. I'm at half the milage they'd expect by it's age.
I am sure for some people, SUVs are a good fit. For a lot of people, it is just a joke.
My personal philosophy is to get a vehicle that covers 98% of my driving. That works out to renting 1 week a year. I drive a small car that gets better than 30 mpg. If I need to haul alot, I figure I can just rent a truck.
80% of the SUV's I see on the road aren't carying anything more than their 120 - 350 lb driver. That simple, easilly observable FACT proves that most SUV owners are wasteful.
Is it more wasteful to own 1 SUV or a SUV and another car? Do you know what they have in the back? Maybe they only really load it up once a week for the trip to the sports fields. Hell, 80% would translate to one out of every five trips using the extra capabilities of an SUV. Heck, let's make it 90%, that's still ~36 trips a year using the extra capabilities. Hell, we could say the same thing about cars. If you're just moving yourself around 80% of the time, get a motorcycle.
For that matter, my mom now drives a (smaller)SUV. She has a problem with her hips that make it difficult to get out of low seats. Her choices would have been an even larger van, truck, or the SUV. She'd be included in your '80%' easily observed statistic. Populations are aging, she's not the only one with this problem.
This ties into my own theories on this. People learn maturity by practicing it. This means that they'll screw it up every so often. People need to suffer the consequences of their actions, not take it as an opportunity to score it rich.
When I was young, I was more or less trusted in bringing knives to school. My grandfather could have brought a rifle. Today they're talking about mandatory year long suspensions for a swiss army knife, and we aren't talking about schools with 'gang problems' here. Not as many kids have part time jobs anymore. Many don't have to do chores.
I mean, look at Europe. By vast majority they allow kids to drink below the age of eighteen, and they have far fewer dui/drinking problems than we do. Yet I hear an advertisement a few days ago talking about how if you drink before you're 21, your poor developing brain can't handle it and you have a higher risk of becoming an addict. Yet my theory is more along the lines of lactose tolerance, the younger you are when you're introduced to it, in small doses of course, the more your body is able to adapt to handle it.
If you want people to mature, you have to give them the freedom to do so. I've seen it in the military, in the dorms. They treat 18-21 year olds like kids in many respects, and these young adults turn around and act like kids.
Sorry, I was writing purely from memory, but the fact still remains that there are chunks of spectrum that, because of either contamination or absorbtion that aren't as useful on the earth, and given the cost of launching satellites, we might as well concentrate on having them do the things that they're advantaged at.
Hubble always had a limited life span, and with the loss of two shuttles, we have to look at prioritizing, especially with the requirement for the astronaughts to be able to evacutate to the ISS if the shuttle is unable to land.
Personally, I'd be working more towards launching a replacement for the Hubble. Ground based telescopes have caught up in many ways with adaptive lense technologies, but the hubble works much better in the infrared from what I understand. Design the replacement more towards making up the shortfalls of ground based telescopes.
Given the cost of a dedicated shuttle maintenance mission, it might even be cheaper to just launch new ones, especially if you make a series of them, allowing you to spread R&D costs between multiple sats.
I'm more concerned with stopping the battery, but then again there's also the whole murder thing many of these types get into.
On the other end you have the whole 'defensive restraining order' thing. In some states it's automatic for lawyers to apply for an order, and judges to grant them during divorce proceedings, even if there's zero evidence of abuse, violence, or threats.