1. Not all military action involves killing people. Sure, war does connotate killing; but not all militaries are at war.
2. I quit the US Army. They even paid for my ticket home. I did not go to jail, I was not threatened, and nobody shot me for doing so. I am not the only person who has done this.
3. I think that you just attempted to differentiate two personality types, but actually only managed to show that they're not really very different at all.
Yep. And they're responsible for whatever gadgetry the car is equipped with. If that gadgetry kills the battery, that's Not My Problem.
Indeed, according to the service agreements I've read, once I drop off the car it is inspected to be in good working order and signed off on. Whatever happens after that inspection is Not My Problem: If it sits in the lot for a week or two and the battery dies, again, Not My Problem: It happened in their possession after they agreed, in writing, that the car was fine.
Furthermore, according to the service agreements I've read, if I pay extra for their insurance (usually $15/day or so), nothing I do to the car while it is in my own possession is my problem: I can (in theory) leave the car as a smoldering mass of freshly-oxidized iron at the side of the highway, call them up, and they'll bring me something different. That their car caught on fire is Not My Problem.
But whatever the case, I think everyone (including myself) is overthinking this. Car batteries die. And if you're in the business of making relatively new cars useful, you don't futz with replacing the battery...you just grab the jump-start kit from under the counter, hook it up, start the engine, disconnect the jump start kit, close the hood, and let it run for awhile. Since it is nowhere near old enough to have electrolyte loss, any meaningful sulfate buildup, or shorted cells, it'll be fine. Really.
The 10 minutes (maximum) that it takes Jill or Tom to do this is not worth the agonizing paperwork of making a simple dead battery someone else's problem.
instead of on things like, you know, salary and benefits for the people who actually do the work that keeps the company in business
In the past ten years, my hourly pay (with the same company) has literally quadrupled.
Has my work improved because of this? No, not at all: I'm still the same asshole as before. I just know more stuff than I used to, and I'm more expensive than I used to be.
But having been through the Army's basic training at Fort Gordon, I can see the merit of breaking people down: At the beginning of basic, I knew that I already knew everything. Soon after, it was proven to me that I actually knew nothing*. And toward the end, I began to realize that I did know some things, and that I could learn more, and that I was physically fit to make those things happen.
It was toward the end that our unit started acting cohesively and supportively, automatically, even though few of us had anything in common.
(Which, I think, probably happened right on schedule.)
*: It was around this same time that a drill sgt. said to us "Pushups make you -smarter-." It turned out that he was right.
Let me introduce you to the convection cooled heatsink. No moving parts, powered entirely by the dissipated heat itself, it just has to have sufficient surface area for the job (and they scale up more easily than actively cooled systems).
It also requires sufficient thermal conductivity, and the presence of air, and freedom of air movement and a means to exchange heated air with lower-temperature air. Oh, and gravity.
Other than that: Yeah, as long as you've got enough surface area, they're really quite simple!
I didn't have the benefit centuries to soften my comment into such elegance, but I think the Tokugawa Shoguns probably had the right idea about it.
In more modern terms: The very worst thing one can do in a confrontation is escalate. One can if one must, but one has already made an error by allowing things to go so far that escalation is necessary (be it Karate, or knives, or swords, or guns, or bombs).
I don't seem him defending a "community." The closest he comes is when he actively attempts to dismantle the very concept of "community" that you seem to think exists.
Right. Just like I don't know if a piano will fall on me as I step out to the car this morning: I just don't know unless it actually happens.
If you're serious, shoot them.
If you're not serious, don't be waving a gun around. It is not safe. Not for you, not for them, not for other people. One might as well keep blanks in it, if they're not going to use it.
No. It's Ohio, and the law was passed within the past few years. It was kind of a big deal at the time, and I don't know that I agree with it, but it is what it is.
in fact, at that point, you would no longer be eligible to claim self-defense.
In fact, in my state, as a matter of law, I can shoot unwelcome intruders just because they're unwelcome. I do not need to be threatened by them, and they do not need to be attacking me.
Like what? Presumably before actually firing your warning shot, youâ(TM)d point the thing at them and tell them to back off. If you can keep a cool head.
Why on Earth would I aim a killing machine at another human if I'm not intent on killing them?
The time to hesitate and consider options comes before weapons are drawn, not after.
If I'm an attacker and I'm armed, and you're a victim pointlessly aiming a gun in my direction, firing, and missing ("warning shot") on purpose, I am going to shoot you. If you hesitate long enough, I am going to disarm you: What have I got to lose?
Oh, well, thatâ(TM)s a great argument! Good point! If Iâ(TM)m going to discharge a weapon in a situation of threat (and I really hope I donâ(TM)t ever have to), better just go ahead and shoot to maim or kill rather than be wasting bullets on warning shots!
My gun (strange as it may seem, I'm an American and I only have one gun...) holds two rounds. If I fire one in warning, I now have one round remaining. Will I be able to make the next round count? Nay, there's a good chance I'm going to miss anyway. Besides, now that I myself have escalated things to a gun battle, I might very well need them both for my own survival.
Some guns hold five or six or eight or twenty or more rounds, but it's the same concept: A warning shot might hurt other people. Hell, shooting an intruder might hurt other people, depending on what you shoot them with: It's not as if bullets magically stop once they hit their intended target.
But it doesn't matter, because I will never point a gun at a human being unless they're about to die. Again: Why on Earth would I aim a gun at someone if I do not plan to kill them with it?
think he really meant "IF you fire, always fire at the person you are in confrontation with."
No, I meant what I wrote, although I also mean what you say.
If you're not in the process of actually shooting someone (after all other methods have failed), keep the gun put away, or at your side, or whatever Keep it pointed in a safe direction, in a holster, in a pocket, in a hand, or whatever is most safe: Do not point a gun at someone unless you're going to shoot them.
The only time you should ever point a gun at another person is if you are in the process of shooting them. Period.
IF the time comes that shooting someone is a good idea, THEN raise the weapon, aim center-of-mass, and fire. Not ready for that stage of escalation yet? Then don't wave the fucking gun around.
If I were attacking someone and they pointed a gun at me, I'm now going to do everything I can to remove that gun from that person and use it against them: After all, what have I got to lose at this point?
If I (the hypothetical attacker) have my own gun, I'm going to take this as my queue level it at the victim and fire it. If the victim hesitates with pulling the trigger, they're going to have a good chance at being dead.
IOW, the time to hesitate comes -before- you point a gun at someone.
Seriously. If you're not ready to seriously harm and/or kill another person, then why in the fuck would you point a gun at them?
They've only been dreaming of pneumatic tubes for 180 years or so, but they've never gone further than bank drivethrus and some buildings. Even something like the mail, that you would think would benefit greatly from pneumatic tubes compared to planes and vehicles, hasn't switched over.
But it did switch over. And it eventually switched back.
I'd like to think that we've learned a few things about metallurgy and other materials in the past 100 years that could make such a system far more viable today than it was way back then.
If one is not prepared to cause serious harm to another person, one should never buy a gun for self defense.
(Meanwhile: Any correlation between an officer's use of a gun and a private citizen's use of a gun is meaningless. The two things are held to completely different standards.)
When I'm being nefarious and Googling things, I use a dedicated local machine which knows nothing about me, and which has all of its Internet traffic routed through a country (over a VPN) that I do not expect trouble from.
My VPN provider does not keep logs. I fire up a browser (on that VPN-connected machine) with Private Browsing turned on, and do my nefarious things with plain-old Google.
I disconnect and reconnect to the provider periodically, which flushes the state and the connection relationship I have with them.
Not that I look for anything particularly wrong or harmful, but my desire to learn is powerful, and I simply do not want to be restrained in the future for being curious now.
The only attack I'm aware of, given this scenario, is timing-based: If the NSA were watching my local address and the off-shore VPN'd address, a correlation could be made between the timing and size of some packets.
But if OpenVPN had random padding and latency abilities, even a timing-based attack would be impossible. (Indeed, I might just suggest this to them.)
My own kid is 16. He's bigger, stronger, and better-fit than the vast majority of adults I know. (He does freestyle BMX, more as a lifestyle than as a hobby.)
If I were being pummeled by a kid of his build, I'd be in serious fear for my life.
Point being: I'm not sure "kid" has anything to do with it.
I've always believed that one should not ever brandish a firearm in a confrontation unless they're prepared to use it to cause harm.
Warning shot? No. If you think you can fire a warning shot and "scare someone away," then you've still got other less-lethal methods of handling the situation. (And if nothing else, it wastes ammunition.)
Drawing a firearm is the very last resort. And once you've drawn that weapon weapon, always fire at the person you are in confrontation with (with intent to, you know, actually hit them) -- not in random directions.
(The reason: If you don't intend to shoot the person, don't be waving a gun around. It isn't safe. A gun is not a threat, nor is it a scare tactic. It's a goddamn killing machine. Either use it properly and swiftly, or leave it alone.)
Slashdot Mirror
1. Not all military action involves killing people. Sure, war does connotate killing; but not all militaries are at war.
2. I quit the US Army. They even paid for my ticket home. I did not go to jail, I was not threatened, and nobody shot me for doing so. I am not the only person who has done this.
3. I think that you just attempted to differentiate two personality types, but actually only managed to show that they're not really very different at all.
aaaaand. I just realized I replied at the wrong point in the thread.
Disregard.
Yep. And they're responsible for whatever gadgetry the car is equipped with. If that gadgetry kills the battery, that's Not My Problem.
Indeed, according to the service agreements I've read, once I drop off the car it is inspected to be in good working order and signed off on. Whatever happens after that inspection is Not My Problem: If it sits in the lot for a week or two and the battery dies, again, Not My Problem: It happened in their possession after they agreed, in writing, that the car was fine.
Furthermore, according to the service agreements I've read, if I pay extra for their insurance (usually $15/day or so), nothing I do to the car while it is in my own possession is my problem: I can (in theory) leave the car as a smoldering mass of freshly-oxidized iron at the side of the highway, call them up, and they'll bring me something different. That their car caught on fire is Not My Problem.
But whatever the case, I think everyone (including myself) is overthinking this. Car batteries die. And if you're in the business of making relatively new cars useful, you don't futz with replacing the battery...you just grab the jump-start kit from under the counter, hook it up, start the engine, disconnect the jump start kit, close the hood, and let it run for awhile. Since it is nowhere near old enough to have electrolyte loss, any meaningful sulfate buildup, or shorted cells, it'll be fine. Really.
The 10 minutes (maximum) that it takes Jill or Tom to do this is not worth the agonizing paperwork of making a simple dead battery someone else's problem.
I did read your post.
The question stands.
Because...why? Because you say so?
In the past ten years, my hourly pay (with the same company) has literally quadrupled.
Has my work improved because of this? No, not at all: I'm still the same asshole as before. I just know more stuff than I used to, and I'm more expensive than I used to be.
But having been through the Army's basic training at Fort Gordon, I can see the merit of breaking people down: At the beginning of basic, I knew that I already knew everything. Soon after, it was proven to me that I actually knew nothing*. And toward the end, I began to realize that I did know some things, and that I could learn more, and that I was physically fit to make those things happen.
It was toward the end that our unit started acting cohesively and supportively, automatically, even though few of us had anything in common.
(Which, I think, probably happened right on schedule.)
*: It was around this same time that a drill sgt. said to us "Pushups make you -smarter-." It turned out that he was right.
Air can be in short supply.
Especially if aerodynamics are a concern -- even on a car.
(And since we're talking incremental efficiency improvements: Yes, aerodynamics are a concern.)
It also requires sufficient thermal conductivity, and the presence of air, and freedom of air movement and a means to exchange heated air with lower-temperature air. Oh, and gravity.
Other than that: Yeah, as long as you've got enough surface area, they're really quite simple!
Yes, that: Exactly.
I didn't have the benefit centuries to soften my comment into such elegance, but I think the Tokugawa Shoguns probably had the right idea about it.
In more modern terms: The very worst thing one can do in a confrontation is escalate. One can if one must, but one has already made an error by allowing things to go so far that escalation is necessary (be it Karate, or knives, or swords, or guns, or bombs).
I don't seem him defending a "community." The closest he comes is when he actively attempts to dismantle the very concept of "community" that you seem to think exists.
Just sayin'.
I know that if she fired a warning shot, then she was purposefully aiming the gun at something other than a purposeful target.
This means that either she fired into the ground (ha! some warning, lady!), or she fired in an unsafe direction.
So. You're in favor of firing a gun in random directions in an urban environment.
Got it!
Right. Just like I don't know if a piano will fall on me as I step out to the car this morning: I just don't know unless it actually happens.
If you're serious, shoot them.
If you're not serious, don't be waving a gun around. It is not safe. Not for you, not for them, not for other people. One might as well keep blanks in it, if they're not going to use it.
(Or, you know. Just not use it at all.)
I come from a fairly storied background, with family violence and the whole nine yards. The exact same situation?
No. Nobody else has ever been in that exact same situation.
Therefore, nobody has any idea what they'd do.
Right?
No. It's Ohio, and the law was passed within the past few years. It was kind of a big deal at the time, and I don't know that I agree with it, but it is what it is.
In fact, in my state, as a matter of law, I can shoot unwelcome intruders just because they're unwelcome. I do not need to be threatened by them, and they do not need to be attacking me.
Please do not make absolute generalizations.
Why on Earth would I aim a killing machine at another human if I'm not intent on killing them?
The time to hesitate and consider options comes before weapons are drawn, not after.
If I'm an attacker and I'm armed, and you're a victim pointlessly aiming a gun in my direction, firing, and missing ("warning shot") on purpose, I am going to shoot you. If you hesitate long enough, I am going to disarm you: What have I got to lose?
My gun (strange as it may seem, I'm an American and I only have one gun...) holds two rounds. If I fire one in warning, I now have one round remaining. Will I be able to make the next round count? Nay, there's a good chance I'm going to miss anyway. Besides, now that I myself have escalated things to a gun battle, I might very well need them both for my own survival.
Some guns hold five or six or eight or twenty or more rounds, but it's the same concept: A warning shot might hurt other people. Hell, shooting an intruder might hurt other people, depending on what you shoot them with: It's not as if bullets magically stop once they hit their intended target.
But it doesn't matter, because I will never point a gun at a human being unless they're about to die. Again: Why on Earth would I aim a gun at someone if I do not plan to kill them with it?
It's not a fucking toy.
No, I meant what I wrote, although I also mean what you say.
If you're not in the process of actually shooting someone (after all other methods have failed), keep the gun put away, or at your side, or whatever Keep it pointed in a safe direction, in a holster, in a pocket, in a hand, or whatever is most safe: Do not point a gun at someone unless you're going to shoot them.
The only time you should ever point a gun at another person is if you are in the process of shooting them. Period.
IF the time comes that shooting someone is a good idea, THEN raise the weapon, aim center-of-mass, and fire. Not ready for that stage of escalation yet? Then don't wave the fucking gun around.
If I were attacking someone and they pointed a gun at me, I'm now going to do everything I can to remove that gun from that person and use it against them: After all, what have I got to lose at this point?
If I (the hypothetical attacker) have my own gun, I'm going to take this as my queue level it at the victim and fire it. If the victim hesitates with pulling the trigger, they're going to have a good chance at being dead.
IOW, the time to hesitate comes -before- you point a gun at someone.
Seriously. If you're not ready to seriously harm and/or kill another person, then why in the fuck would you point a gun at them?
Sheesh.
Why else would you draw a weapon?
But it did switch over. And it eventually switched back.
New York City, for one, once had a fairly comprehensive tube network for mail delivery.
I'd like to think that we've learned a few things about metallurgy and other materials in the past 100 years that could make such a system far more viable today than it was way back then.
If one is not prepared to cause serious harm to another person, one should never buy a gun for self defense.
(Meanwhile: Any correlation between an officer's use of a gun and a private citizen's use of a gun is meaningless. The two things are held to completely different standards.)
When I'm being nefarious and Googling things, I use a dedicated local machine which knows nothing about me, and which has all of its Internet traffic routed through a country (over a VPN) that I do not expect trouble from.
My VPN provider does not keep logs. I fire up a browser (on that VPN-connected machine) with Private Browsing turned on, and do my nefarious things with plain-old Google.
I disconnect and reconnect to the provider periodically, which flushes the state and the connection relationship I have with them.
Not that I look for anything particularly wrong or harmful, but my desire to learn is powerful, and I simply do not want to be restrained in the future for being curious now.
The only attack I'm aware of, given this scenario, is timing-based: If the NSA were watching my local address and the off-shore VPN'd address, a correlation could be made between the timing and size of some packets.
But if OpenVPN had random padding and latency abilities, even a timing-based attack would be impossible. (Indeed, I might just suggest this to them.)
So because a drunk behaves in one particular way, we all should do the same thing.
Right?
No. Sorry.
Kid?
My own kid is 16. He's bigger, stronger, and better-fit than the vast majority of adults I know. (He does freestyle BMX, more as a lifestyle than as a hobby.)
If I were being pummeled by a kid of his build, I'd be in serious fear for my life.
Point being: I'm not sure "kid" has anything to do with it.
I've always believed that one should not ever brandish a firearm in a confrontation unless they're prepared to use it to cause harm.
Warning shot? No. If you think you can fire a warning shot and "scare someone away," then you've still got other less-lethal methods of handling the situation. (And if nothing else, it wastes ammunition.)
Drawing a firearm is the very last resort. And once you've drawn that weapon weapon, always fire at the person you are in confrontation with (with intent to, you know, actually hit them) -- not in random directions.
(The reason: If you don't intend to shoot the person, don't be waving a gun around. It isn't safe. A gun is not a threat, nor is it a scare tactic. It's a goddamn killing machine. Either use it properly and swiftly, or leave it alone.)