While analog tends to degrade a little more gracefully, pretty much all digital media incorporates error recovery code. How extensive this code is depends on the media and how valuable the expected data storage is. Thus analog degrades sooner, and pretty much unavoidably. However, seriously degraded media is more recoverable than digital media. But as long as the error recovery method isn't overwhelmed, you're much more likely to get a perfect copy.
So small tape imperfections might actually show more with analog recordings.
Yeah, I'm sure the beancounters at NASA who made that observation has much better estimates.
It's one of the reasons that I really don't support maintenance missions of the hubble sort. The shuttle is so big and heavy that servicing missions don't make much sense. Now a worker bug type system that can use a space station as a docking point would probably work out better. Ship up the necessary parts on the cargo run. The ISS is in a funky orbit, so it might not be the best for servicing missions, but you probably get my drift.
But then, I do support seperating tasks in space to: Launching cargo(SS supplies and satellites), Launching/recovering people (I envision a type of capsule), and space station. You have an experiment to do in space? Use the space station. Need modules that can't just be hauled up? Design and launch an extension to the SS. Make the extensions as standardized as possible, and use something like the rail on the ISS to rearrange them as necessary. Heck, make it so you can strip the module afterwards to repurpose it.
Sending up shuttle to fix the hubble: around 1 Billion. Some figures say costs are around 250mil, but it said right in the report that NASA hid ALOT of expenses to come up with that figure. The closest I saw was 1 Bil. It might be a bit high end, I admit. You still have to worry about parts, crew wages and such, so the end figure is tough to estimate, at least for somebody outside the agency.
Sending up a new Hubble, max 1.5 billion. That was the original cost of the hubble, including research and development costs. Building a second would be considerably cheaper. The article itself noted that building a second would be cheaper than servicing the existing telescope.
Well, rededicating the money spent on the ineffecient shuttle on getting a replacement would get you alot of research money.
As for the replacement, while I'm up for any ideas, I think that the replacement should:
1. KISS. 2. There's not much difference between building a new orbital craft and essentialy salvaging the old one. If the best design is built new each time, and turns out cheaper than refitting and recertifying then go with it. 3. take advantage of advances in material science. For one thing I think that titanium is orders of magnitude easier to get and work with today. 4. At least consider ballistic re-entry. 5. Seperate out cargo delivery, personel transport, and space station operations. Using the shuttle as all three is inefficient. 6. Once we get it together and can stop failing to launch craft for years at a time, either stop with the ISS or get it moved to a better location. Where it is now isn't usefull for many things other than being easier for the Russians to reach. 7. Develop a space based recycling facility. Orbital material is more valuable than gold. Let's keep it up there so we can reuse it later(even if it's years later). 8. Design stuff to have uses after it's used. A solar foundry would be a good idea. Designing the cargo pods to become additions to the station, as nothing more than extra shielding if necessary would be a good idea. Use the solar foundry. 9. Use the materials collected and some additions from the ground to add some sort of hydroponics type facility. Or aeroponics(Now that was a wierd site, plants growing with root systems completely exposed to the air). I think some sort of sponge system might be necessary in the very low G. Heck, even Algae would be a start. 10. With all these ideas, bring back only the minimum necessary. Cargo net the rest of the stuff if necessary. Eventually you should be able to recycle the stuff, whether it be by the plants or through the foundry. If nothing else it becomes extra radiation/debri shielding.
There have been proposals to use small satellites to grab and push objects into a retrograde orbit to burn up in atmosphere. For even smaller things, you could use some kind of mesh or aerogel to catch the objects, then once the sweeper sat has collected enough material, it retros the whole thing.
Of course, the idea also leads to the idea of having small booster satellites being used to extend the life of satellites whose electronics are still good, but have exhausted their reaction mass.
Cost per pound to orbit is something like $10k per pound, low ball.
So launch costs for a new hubble would be about $245 million. Launch cost for the shuttle seem to run around 1Billion per shot. That leaves 755 million to build a new hubble and apply the refits. The original hubble cost 1.5 Billion at launch, which I presume includes launch costs, development costs and such, of which building costs would actually be pretty cheap, seeing as how we still have the plans to use in building another one.
As the other person pointed out retrograde orbit isn't a big concern.
What IS a concern is parabolic orbits. The shuttle maintains a more or less circular orbit, like the planets around the sun. Some objects are in more of a parabolic orbit, like comets and some asteroids around the sun. And we're worried about the earth being hit by one of those...
The other problem is orbits with different inclinations. The shuttles orbit looks like a sine wave. What happens when you have a piece of debris following the cosine intersects with the shuttle? Heck, we have polar orbits as well, though there's less junk following that path.
Though, yes, things in orbit around a certain point does tend to be heading in the same direction, reducing relative velocity, which is the killer.
That's why I said "gifted hacker". Not hooked up to the internet? Some versions are! Most of the rest still use phone lines. Heck, somebody found a method on the diebold machines to cast mutliple votes while still in the booth, without opening up the machine (and you have privacy while voting). Heck, do you trust Diebold or any other closed source voting vendor?
Heck, people used to fake out slot machines with magnets. There were dozens of ways to 'jigger' the machines. How were they generally detected? The payout of the machine drifted out of mathimatical expectations, and they started paying attentions. With a vote, you have the exit polls, but those can be flawed.
And what I'm saying is that we're too far in debt, and increasing taxes on the rich leads to less capitol for the businesses that hire workers.
People of my views don't object to all programs, but we try to insist on effective programs. For years welfare has been broken in many ways. The drug war is and has been failing for many years. Defense spending, well, it could be better(anything could be better), but that's a necessary function of government.
England managed for years with mostly private education model. There are many private schooling options, despite the public schools in the USA.
I'm a minarchist, I'll admit. I feel that before the government interferes in something, the issue should be carefully reviewed to see if it's really necessary.
I suggest you come to america for a year or so. Midwest, not the pseudoEurope of New York or California. Just to let you know, those you consider right, we consider majorly LEFT.
And yes, doing steps 1 and 2 save major amounts of money. Increases in efficiency tend to happen when privatisation is done right.
And yes, it does seem to be proving out false. It's happening in the USA as well. However, we're looking at changing demographics resulting in the bankruptcy of social security, and evidence of rampant inefficiency and fraud in the system.
Problem 1: I have no problem having those lacking the motivation to get out and vote not voting. They probably aren't educated on the details anyways. Problem 2: "Some governmant database" needs a little more defining. The other problem with a statistical method are that far too often there's a problem with it. For example an early polling method messed up because they only polled people with phones, which at that time was a definate subset of the population, with a slightly different viewpoint. I think it was the Carter-Hoover election. Problem 3: Our current system results in political activism. Under the statistical system, I think that the activism would die down. Far fewer people would be involved in the political system, and that is the strength of the democratic system. Of course, our system of duality needs some work.
If you can't trust the voting software, what makes you trust the OCR tabulation software?
I don't, completely. Let's say that you have a FUBAR like what happened in the last election with votes lost. It's easier, faster, and cheaper to do an OCR recount of those ballots than to count by hand. Personally, I'd borrow the school's test scanners for a day or two to do the counts.
Now, you still randomly pull and count some precincts, just to be safe. But in the case of jiggering the OCR readers too, as long as the systems are seperate, that's two systems our hacker has to compromise, rather than one, adding to the difficulty.
With printed receipts, you don't need OCR (and the complexities and costs associated with it.)
the costs of OCR today is minimal. Especially wehn you're talking about feeding something essentialy straight from a printer into the scanner. North Dakota has them integrated on to the ballot boxes. Of course, we still fill out ballots by hand and #2 pencil(well black pen is also acceptable today). It's one of those, only costs a little to add the capability so we might as well type things.
And given the problems of the last election, having the receipts be machine readable is a good thing. As for the feeding mechanism, whether you take the receipt up to a vote officer or have it behine glass doesnt' really matter. Heck, having you take it to the officer would get the votes out of order, so they can't do the 'you were the 33rd voter to use that both, so the 33rd vote in the box is yours.
While on some of my worst days I feel that you should have a positive tax payment balance (taxes-welfare > 0) in order to vote, simply to combat the ancient observation that democracies tend to break down once the people realize that they can vote themselves money.
I have some really big problems with our government's out of control spending. We end up paying for it one way or another. Whether that be through inflation, increased interest, or higher taxes. In any case, it takes capitol away from people & industry. The idea that the people voting for any spending are the ones who're going to have to pay for it makes some sense.
I was being somewhat funny, I expected to be modded funny, but as a libertarian with somewhat conservative leanings, I find that I disagree with Kerry/Clinton on most things.
Well, I'm closer to a libertarian, but 3/4 of our beliefs? I guess that depends on your definitions of beliefs. For example I think there's all sorts of beliefs we both believe in. I'm guessing that you're against cannabilism, for example.;)
but the one thing we can almost certainly agree on is that every eligible voter who wants to vote should be able to do so in a way that guarantees that vote is counted
100% agreement. While we can't guarentee that, given that human systems aren't perfect yet, we can do a very good job. I also think that we shouldn't allow inelgible people to vote.
That's why you use OCR and not a bar code. The way I picture it is that the machine would print out a ballet much like a compact ballot like what's generally used in the midwest states, or for standardized tests, but pre-filled out.
And printed out is better because somebody would notice their votes coming out different than what they selected on the screen, and a big stink would result.
Of course, I'm a equal opportunity supporter of the color blind philosophy. It proposes that election day be a federal holiday
Now this is an interesting idea. Of course, you'd also have to close down non-essential services. So many places are open 365x7 anymore that simply having federal institutions and places like banks and offices close down really wouldn't prevent many people from still working that day. Maybe require places of work provide the opportunity to vote?
Because only a human hand count, viewed by all interested parties can be verified fair.
Otherwise, what's to prevent joeblow gifted hacker from jiggering the machine, whether that be via mechanical or through code modification, to throw a few votes to his favorite candidate.
I'm not saying that the machine count is bad, just that you really should have auditing. Manual retotaling of all voting districts, some districts selected for a manual recount.
Security in something this important needs to be layered.
you actually your own guns to be safe Well, that and I like shooting.
What about someone single, who works the night shift? How are they gonna protect their home when they're not at home? Huh? Protect my stuff? I don't have a weapon to protect my stuff. I have a weapon to protect myself, my loved ones and other innocent people(roughly in that order). When I leave the house, my gun comes with me. The others are in the safe.
How about someone 80 years old and with Parkinson, such as half my neighbours?
A great deal better than trying to do it by hand? While a handgun might not be the best option, a shotgun loaded with buckshot, or even birdshot at close range works very well. Heck, there was a guy who had a stroke, was still only at limited functionality who most likely saved a police officer's life when he opened fire at the bad guys who were in the process of putting their own gun to the downed officer's head.
Honestly, I live in a state where every murder or suspicious death is front page news.
But I lived in Colorado Springs when Colombine happened. I lived in Germany when the school shooting there happened. I've read about church shootings. I heard on the news recently when the guy started shooting in the Mall in NY. I read about the execution of the slasher in japan, who killed 8 in the school he attacked. I remember the school shooting in Russia by Chechnian/Al Qaeda terrorists. I've also read about a number of cases that don't make the major news channels where a non law enforcement officer uses a weapon to prevent a crime of violence. Such as the vice principal who retreived his firearm from the vehicle to stop a spree killer at his school.
It's not the state of the area/country I live in. It's the state of the world. I have made the determination that if I become involved in such a situation, that I WILL NOT BE A HELPLESS VICTIM. I WILL NOT stand by and allow evil to occur. While the chances of it occuring to me are remote, I just couldn't live with myself with the question "If only I had... I could of prevented it". I also know first aid and CPR. I know how to use an IED. I'm taking flying lessons as time and money allows.
Something that ought to be fixed at politics level, rather than by making everyone sit guard on their own porch with a shotgun. There just has to be a better way than that.
I live by the philosophy that when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them. Banning guns has not been shown to reduce overall crime, matter of fact, it often increases. Finally, more than even the murder rate, Governments have killed more of their own citizens than any individual murders. One of the most noticable predecessors to these killings is the disarmament of it's citizens, reducing them to subjects.
Freedom is not free, nor is it safe. You can only do the best you can do.
This might sound strange, but the USA actually tends to have about the same number of police per capita than europe. I believe that our problem has two interconnected facets: The inner cities and the "drug war". Police abuses, the drug war, and traffic offenses are what has led to the demonization of the police in the eyes of the public. Outside of the cities, the police are trusted alot more, and work with the rest of the people to help prevent crime.
No country can afford to put a cop at every corner to keep you safe from crime. Which is why I support people learning to defend themselves, and the legal possesion of the means of self defense.
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Not to mention that Russian prisons are not nice...
And their police don't have all the rules against beating prisoners that ours have.
Depends on how the digital recordings are set up.
While analog tends to degrade a little more gracefully, pretty much all digital media incorporates error recovery code. How extensive this code is depends on the media and how valuable the expected data storage is. Thus analog degrades sooner, and pretty much unavoidably. However, seriously degraded media is more recoverable than digital media. But as long as the error recovery method isn't overwhelmed, you're much more likely to get a perfect copy.
So small tape imperfections might actually show more with analog recordings.
Yeah, I'm sure the beancounters at NASA who made that observation has much better estimates.
It's one of the reasons that I really don't support maintenance missions of the hubble sort. The shuttle is so big and heavy that servicing missions don't make much sense. Now a worker bug type system that can use a space station as a docking point would probably work out better. Ship up the necessary parts on the cargo run. The ISS is in a funky orbit, so it might not be the best for servicing missions, but you probably get my drift.
But then, I do support seperating tasks in space to: Launching cargo(SS supplies and satellites), Launching/recovering people (I envision a type of capsule), and space station. You have an experiment to do in space? Use the space station. Need modules that can't just be hauled up? Design and launch an extension to the SS. Make the extensions as standardized as possible, and use something like the rail on the ISS to rearrange them as necessary. Heck, make it so you can strip the module afterwards to repurpose it.
Sending up shuttle to fix the hubble: around 1 Billion. Some figures say costs are around 250mil, but it said right in the report that NASA hid ALOT of expenses to come up with that figure. The closest I saw was 1 Bil. It might be a bit high end, I admit. You still have to worry about parts, crew wages and such, so the end figure is tough to estimate, at least for somebody outside the agency.
Sending up a new Hubble, max 1.5 billion. That was the original cost of the hubble, including research and development costs. Building a second would be considerably cheaper. The article itself noted that building a second would be cheaper than servicing the existing telescope.
Well, rededicating the money spent on the ineffecient shuttle on getting a replacement would get you alot of research money.
As for the replacement, while I'm up for any ideas, I think that the replacement should:
1. KISS.
2. There's not much difference between building a new orbital craft and essentialy salvaging the old one. If the best design is built new each time, and turns out cheaper than refitting and recertifying then go with it.
3. take advantage of advances in material science. For one thing I think that titanium is orders of magnitude easier to get and work with today.
4. At least consider ballistic re-entry.
5. Seperate out cargo delivery, personel transport, and space station operations. Using the shuttle as all three is inefficient.
6. Once we get it together and can stop failing to launch craft for years at a time, either stop with the ISS or get it moved to a better location. Where it is now isn't usefull for many things other than being easier for the Russians to reach.
7. Develop a space based recycling facility. Orbital material is more valuable than gold. Let's keep it up there so we can reuse it later(even if it's years later).
8. Design stuff to have uses after it's used. A solar foundry would be a good idea. Designing the cargo pods to become additions to the station, as nothing more than extra shielding if necessary would be a good idea. Use the solar foundry.
9. Use the materials collected and some additions from the ground to add some sort of hydroponics type facility. Or aeroponics(Now that was a wierd site, plants growing with root systems completely exposed to the air). I think some sort of sponge system might be necessary in the very low G. Heck, even Algae would be a start.
10. With all these ideas, bring back only the minimum necessary. Cargo net the rest of the stuff if necessary. Eventually you should be able to recycle the stuff, whether it be by the plants or through the foundry. If nothing else it becomes extra radiation/debri shielding.
There have been proposals to use small satellites to grab and push objects into a retrograde orbit to burn up in atmosphere. For even smaller things, you could use some kind of mesh or aerogel to catch the objects, then once the sweeper sat has collected enough material, it retros the whole thing.
Of course, the idea also leads to the idea of having small booster satellites being used to extend the life of satellites whose electronics are still good, but have exhausted their reaction mass.
Exactly.
As expensive as it is to get mass up into orbit, which would be cheaper:
Shuttle weighs 4.5 million pounds
Hubble telescope weighs 24,500 pounds
Cost per pound to orbit is something like $10k per pound, low ball.
So launch costs for a new hubble would be about $245 million.
Launch cost for the shuttle seem to run around 1Billion per shot. That leaves 755 million to build a new hubble and apply the refits. The original hubble cost 1.5 Billion at launch, which I presume includes launch costs, development costs and such, of which building costs would actually be pretty cheap, seeing as how we still have the plans to use in building another one.
As the other person pointed out retrograde orbit isn't a big concern.
What IS a concern is parabolic orbits. The shuttle maintains a more or less circular orbit, like the planets around the sun. Some objects are in more of a parabolic orbit, like comets and some asteroids around the sun. And we're worried about the earth being hit by one of those...
The other problem is orbits with different inclinations. The shuttles orbit looks like a sine wave. What happens when you have a piece of debris following the cosine intersects with the shuttle? Heck, we have polar orbits as well, though there's less junk following that path.
Though, yes, things in orbit around a certain point does tend to be heading in the same direction, reducing relative velocity, which is the killer.
That's why I said "gifted hacker". Not hooked up to the internet? Some versions are! Most of the rest still use phone lines. Heck, somebody found a method on the diebold machines to cast mutliple votes while still in the booth, without opening up the machine (and you have privacy while voting). Heck, do you trust Diebold or any other closed source voting vendor?
Heck, people used to fake out slot machines with magnets. There were dozens of ways to 'jigger' the machines. How were they generally detected? The payout of the machine drifted out of mathimatical expectations, and they started paying attentions. With a vote, you have the exit polls, but those can be flawed.
Privilege is something given to you
Liberty is something you posess, and it's a two sided coin.
"Give me liberty or Give me death!".
There are plenty of people who've hauled themselves out of a ghetto, out of poverty to a life of wealth.
And what I'm saying is that we're too far in debt, and increasing taxes on the rich leads to less capitol for the businesses that hire workers.
People of my views don't object to all programs, but we try to insist on effective programs. For years welfare has been broken in many ways. The drug war is and has been failing for many years. Defense spending, well, it could be better(anything could be better), but that's a necessary function of government.
England managed for years with mostly private education model. There are many private schooling options, despite the public schools in the USA.
I'm a minarchist, I'll admit. I feel that before the government interferes in something, the issue should be carefully reviewed to see if it's really necessary.
Centrist to right? Chirac? Blair?
I suggest you come to america for a year or so. Midwest, not the pseudoEurope of New York or California. Just to let you know, those you consider right, we consider majorly LEFT.
And yes, doing steps 1 and 2 save major amounts of money. Increases in efficiency tend to happen when privatisation is done right.
And yes, it does seem to be proving out false. It's happening in the USA as well. However, we're looking at changing demographics resulting in the bankruptcy of social security, and evidence of rampant inefficiency and fraud in the system.
Problem 1: I have no problem having those lacking the motivation to get out and vote not voting. They probably aren't educated on the details anyways.
Problem 2: "Some governmant database" needs a little more defining. The other problem with a statistical method are that far too often there's a problem with it. For example an early polling method messed up because they only polled people with phones, which at that time was a definate subset of the population, with a slightly different viewpoint. I think it was the Carter-Hoover election.
Problem 3: Our current system results in political activism. Under the statistical system, I think that the activism would die down. Far fewer people would be involved in the political system, and that is the strength of the democratic system. Of course, our system of duality needs some work.
If you can't trust the voting software, what makes you trust the OCR tabulation software?
I don't, completely. Let's say that you have a FUBAR like what happened in the last election with votes lost. It's easier, faster, and cheaper to do an OCR recount of those ballots than to count by hand. Personally, I'd borrow the school's test scanners for a day or two to do the counts.
Now, you still randomly pull and count some precincts, just to be safe. But in the case of jiggering the OCR readers too, as long as the systems are seperate, that's two systems our hacker has to compromise, rather than one, adding to the difficulty.
With printed receipts, you don't need OCR (and the complexities and costs associated with it.)
the costs of OCR today is minimal. Especially wehn you're talking about feeding something essentialy straight from a printer into the scanner. North Dakota has them integrated on to the ballot boxes. Of course, we still fill out ballots by hand and #2 pencil(well black pen is also acceptable today). It's one of those, only costs a little to add the capability so we might as well type things.
And given the problems of the last election, having the receipts be machine readable is a good thing. As for the feeding mechanism, whether you take the receipt up to a vote officer or have it behine glass doesnt' really matter. Heck, having you take it to the officer would get the votes out of order, so they can't do the 'you were the 33rd voter to use that both, so the 33rd vote in the box is yours.
While on some of my worst days I feel that you should have a positive tax payment balance (taxes-welfare > 0) in order to vote, simply to combat the ancient observation that democracies tend to break down once the people realize that they can vote themselves money.
I have some really big problems with our government's out of control spending. We end up paying for it one way or another. Whether that be through inflation, increased interest, or higher taxes. In any case, it takes capitol away from people & industry. The idea that the people voting for any spending are the ones who're going to have to pay for it makes some sense.
I was being somewhat funny, I expected to be modded funny, but as a libertarian with somewhat conservative leanings, I find that I disagree with Kerry/Clinton on most things.
Of course, I yell at Bush alot too...
Actually, it's the population who feels motivated enough to get out and VOTE.
And yes, randomizing the vote order with each ballot would eliminate some forms of bias.
I'm guessing that you're a conservative
;)
Well, I'm closer to a libertarian, but 3/4 of our beliefs? I guess that depends on your definitions of beliefs. For example I think there's all sorts of beliefs we both believe in. I'm guessing that you're against cannabilism, for example.
but the one thing we can almost certainly agree on is that every eligible voter who wants to vote should be able to do so in a way that guarantees that vote is counted
100% agreement. While we can't guarentee that, given that human systems aren't perfect yet, we can do a very good job. I also think that we shouldn't allow inelgible people to vote.
That's why you use OCR and not a bar code.
The way I picture it is that the machine would print out a ballet much like a compact ballot like what's generally used in the midwest states, or for standardized tests, but pre-filled out.
And printed out is better because somebody would notice their votes coming out different than what they selected on the screen, and a big stink would result.
like intimidating minorities
I'd change a word in this. Minorities -> Voters.
Of course, I'm a equal opportunity supporter of the color blind philosophy.
It proposes that election day be a federal holiday
Now this is an interesting idea. Of course, you'd also have to close down non-essential services. So many places are open 365x7 anymore that simply having federal institutions and places like banks and offices close down really wouldn't prevent many people from still working that day. Maybe require places of work provide the opportunity to vote?
Because only a human hand count, viewed by all interested parties can be verified fair.
Otherwise, what's to prevent joeblow gifted hacker from jiggering the machine, whether that be via mechanical or through code modification, to throw a few votes to his favorite candidate.
I'm not saying that the machine count is bad, just that you really should have auditing. Manual retotaling of all voting districts, some districts selected for a manual recount.
Security in something this important needs to be layered.
Will wonders never cease?
Something I agree with Kerry & Clinton on?
you actually your own guns to be safe
Well, that and I like shooting.
What about someone single, who works the night shift? How are they gonna protect their home when they're not at home?
Huh? Protect my stuff? I don't have a weapon to protect my stuff. I have a weapon to protect myself, my loved ones and other innocent people(roughly in that order). When I leave the house, my gun comes with me. The others are in the safe.
How about someone 80 years old and with Parkinson, such as half my neighbours?
A great deal better than trying to do it by hand? While a handgun might not be the best option, a shotgun loaded with buckshot, or even birdshot at close range works very well. Heck, there was a guy who had a stroke, was still only at limited functionality who most likely saved a police officer's life when he opened fire at the bad guys who were in the process of putting their own gun to the downed officer's head.
Honestly, I live in a state where every murder or suspicious death is front page news.
But I lived in Colorado Springs when Colombine happened. I lived in Germany when the school shooting there happened. I've read about church shootings. I heard on the news recently when the guy started shooting in the Mall in NY. I read about the execution of the slasher in japan, who killed 8 in the school he attacked. I remember the school shooting in Russia by Chechnian/Al Qaeda terrorists. I've also read about a number of cases that don't make the major news channels where a non law enforcement officer uses a weapon to prevent a crime of violence. Such as the vice principal who retreived his firearm from the vehicle to stop a spree killer at his school.
It's not the state of the area/country I live in. It's the state of the world. I have made the determination that if I become involved in such a situation, that I WILL NOT BE A HELPLESS VICTIM. I WILL NOT stand by and allow evil to occur. While the chances of it occuring to me are remote, I just couldn't live with myself with the question "If only I had... I could of prevented it". I also know first aid and CPR. I know how to use an IED. I'm taking flying lessons as time and money allows.
Something that ought to be fixed at politics level, rather than by making everyone sit guard on their own porch with a shotgun.
There just has to be a better way than that.
I live by the philosophy that when you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them. Banning guns has not been shown to reduce overall crime, matter of fact, it often increases. Finally, more than even the murder rate, Governments have killed more of their own citizens than any individual murders. One of the most noticable predecessors to these killings is the disarmament of it's citizens, reducing them to subjects.
Freedom is not free, nor is it safe. You can only do the best you can do.
This might sound strange, but the USA actually tends to have about the same number of police per capita than europe. I believe that our problem has two interconnected facets: The inner cities and the "drug war". Police abuses, the drug war, and traffic offenses are what has led to the demonization of the police in the eyes of the public. Outside of the cities, the police are trusted alot more, and work with the rest of the people to help prevent crime.
No country can afford to put a cop at every corner to keep you safe from crime.
Which is why I support people learning to defend themselves, and the legal possesion of the means of self defense.