meanwhile: chinese workers slowly die, economies in crisis because of missing tax money, trash piles, heavy energy consumption.
It's time to stop this madness and bring out phones that last 4 years minimum.
I guess I don't see how this relates, or rather maybe I disagree with how it relates. Apple is, as far as I know, the only tech company that performs internal and external audits of their Chinese labor and actually fines and fires companies that don't comply with workers rights guidelines. It is far from perfect, but can you name any company that is doing as much as Apple? Hell,as far as I can tell they get more flack in the media about it for two reasons, first they are popular and well known, second they publish all this info so it makes it easy for reporters to write about them.
As for economies in crisis, yup, we need tax reform, but again, Apple is not one of the companies lobbying against tax reform and has even spoken in favor of it.
Trash piles are an issue, but again Apple works towards "green" goals, conducts audits and publishes how well they are doing. They sponsor a recycling program where you can send them any of their devices and they recycle them free of cost and pay for the shipping.
As for energy consumption, that would be their iDevice's strongest suit and greatest weakness. Apps are limited in their interactions with each other and with the background processes they can run specifically because Apple designed them around the concept of energy conservation (not out of some altruistic goal, just because they believed battery life was a huge consumer concern).
As for phones that last 4 years, my last iPhone lasted 5 years before I gave it to a friend. My current one is 3 years old and still works fine. I'll probably update in another year or two. So, mission accomplished?
I think some of what you write is exactly what is wrong with the PC industry. There is more to quality that the amount of RAM or disk space, there is also the quality of the components. Don't get me wrong, Lenovo uses pretty good hardware for the most part, but there is a reason Apple crushes everyone else on consumer satisfaction, hardware failure rates, and DOA rates every year in Consumer Reports. The last numbers I recall, Apple scored 86 versus Lenovos 63 out of 100 for overall laptop quality.
The problem is geeks focus on easy to find and compare numbers like RAM and disk size and ignore things like reliability. Stores advertise based on these numbers and make recommendations based on them. As a result, most computer makers are racing one another to the bottom and trying to by the biggest cheapest disk out there and the biggest crappiest RAM out there, etc.
Apple gets away with quality hardware mostly because they've already differentiated themselves in the market with a different OS, while all the other makers are competing with one another but they differentiator for consumers is price. Chromebook's might be the only exception, and barely at that.
Even if 100% of revenues from iTunes was profit (i.e. no cost to run the App Store), it's still less than 1/3 of total profits.
Apple has publicly stated to its shareholders that it runs the iTunes store at nearly break even levels to encourage hardware sales. Is it possible that they lied and the SEC will bust them, sure. But it just isn't likely. Apple is firmly in the razor end of the razor and blades model.
"Since nothing is stopping gay couples from having ceremonies and living as if married, as far as I can tell, gay marriage is all about forcing acceptance and government benefits."
You're half right. This isn't about forcing acceptance. It's about forcing equal treatment under law. It's a little thing called "personal freedom". You can be critical of gays and of gays getting married all you want. The minute you try to use the government to force your beliefs on other, by denying them the same choices everyone else has, however, you've stepped across the line into the "anti-freedom" camp. When you do that, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You rightfully deserve scorn and boycotts and the label of "bigot". If Eich doesn't like gays getting married, fine he can talk about what he thinks and try to persuade people. That's not what he did though, is it? He worked to try to force his view on others by controlling their actions with legislation.
"If the gay community and it's supporters put as much effort into really creating equality for all, instead of selfishly grabbing benefits for themselves..."
Umm, grabbing benefits everyone else has IS creating equality for all. All your attitudes are a rehash of the same bullshit we heard about interracial marriage and marriage for non-christians. Go back to the stone age already.
"No one at the local Whole Foods is trying to impose their beliefs or customs on you our your secular government."
Well, that isn't necessarily true, because many of the same people who shop at Whole Foods are active in the anti-GMO movement.
Hmmm, maybe I'm not familiar with your particular kind of "anti-GMO" movement. Here in Real America (laugh it's a funny) we don't even have labeling so people know what is and is not GMO and the only political action has been on attempts to provide that information. If you count accurate labeling of food as anti-GMO, well then maybe you should think about that for a second in terms of whether it is pro or anti science.
There was a study last year I read, although a quick Google search does not find it. I think it was "New Scientist". The gist was that the more expensive a car was the more likely the driver was to violate a studied subset of traffic laws including giving right of way to pedestrian in crosswalks. The study stuck in my mind because of the studied cars there was one exception that really stood out in the data, the Nissan Leaf for some reason had drivers that were much less likely to violate those laws, compared to drivers of similarly priced cars.
I'm a casual gamer. I don't mind shelling out some money for a weekend or two of fun. I bought Diablo 3 and at first it was, okay, but not on par with Diablo 2. I often ended up dying or at least being very annoyed when network lag interfered with playability, and of course there is no offline mode. That was annoying. But the real problem came when my account was de-activated randomly one day. Well crap, that's strange, but I had the serial and the login and password for my account, how much of a hassle could it be? Several e-mail exchanges and numerous broken help pages later, they finally decided they needed a copy of my driver's license! WTF?
I might consider another game from Blizzard in future if they ever manage to implement a level of DRM that doesn't inconvenience me, their customer, quite so much with poorer gameplay and stupid bureaucracy. I tossed Diablo 3 in the trash, sent an e-mail explaining why, and bought a better game (for less money) from their competitor.
Blizzard has done nothing to address what was wrong with Diablo 3 for this customer.
Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Have you been following the news? Apple stopped doing business with two suppliers. They forced the companies using child labor to pay for those kids to go to school and pay them wages while they went. They forced several companies to pay all the overtime they were trying to bilk employees out of. Any they did all this for years and openly published their audits before anyone paid any attention.
Who else has done anything? Who do you buy your computer from that is doing better? You are part of the problem Mr. Cowboy. Stop and think. Apple published these audits and reporters used it as dirt to write articles like this one. The company you buy from published jack and shit and has done even less. What are you doing to solve the problem? Who are you buying from and why?
Well, according to Apple's own (scanty) information on iMessage and on third party analysis, it looks like it is some sort of end to end encryption with Apple serving as the cert authority. it may well be that Apple cannot intercept the messages as the system is currently designed and can only reissue a certificate by killing the old one (and thus alerting the user because their iMessage stops working). That is by no means certain, but if it is not the case then Apple might have a false advertising lawsuit headed their way.
That is why I don't understand why its included....do they include other thin clients?
I think you're confusing Pwnium with Pwn2own. Chrome OS was the only thing in the former. The latter did not include any thin clients, just Chrome on Windows, which failed along with every other browser offered for testing on Windows.
The core components are LGPL, which means if it is distributed contributions have to be submitted back. That's pretty copyleft in my book, in fact it is about the most copyleft license I know of that is practical for a library that the developers want to be widely used.
If Apple are having the compress the high-rez signal to get it out or over the cable, then it's a step backward.
Agreed. I did not mean to imply this was a good technology (either the port or the adaptor), just that conceptually putting a chip in the cable seems like an excellent idea.
And as an added bonus, none of those countries will have obsessive gun culture, and gun crime is relatively rare.
I always wonder about people who use the term "gun crime". Does anyone really think, "man I'm glad this guy is beating me to death with a hammer because guns are just so scary." In the nicest places to live violent crime in general is very rare, regardless of the tool used. I've heard it said (and there is some justification) that americans are obsessed with guns, but there are certainly particular countries in Europe just as obsessed with lack of guns, to the point that they use terms like "gun crime" without ever thinking about it.
Stritcly[sic] speaking, WebKit is the fork. Credit where its due.
Strictly speaking, they're both forks of the same code. While some people use the term "fork" to try to indicate a spin off of a code base, that sort of connotation becomes really murky really fast. Is LibreOffice or OpenOffice the fork? It all depends upon your perspective. In truth, like forks in the road, when code diverges both divergent code bases are forks.
Really, needing a computerized cable is just silly.
Actually, it's a step forward and it's not the first technology to do this. The basic idea is, make the port a smart interconnect and let a smarter cable be more adaptive. That way a 4 meter cable can be tuned differently than a 2 meter cable and you can use the same port for a cheap copper cable or a long but expensive fiber cable. Regardless of how relatively expensive the cables are, replacing the computer is harder and adding new ports to mobile devices, even most laptops, simply doesn't happen. This makes a nice, future-proofed port for your laptop, phone, peripheral, etc. that will have real longevity.
First, you can easily make something that requires great strength using 3D printing if all you are printing is the mold into which you pour molten metal.
Generally, making a strong steel or steel alloy requires that it be tempered after hardening, but that needs to be done before you cut precision features like rifling into them. So, 3D printing is unlikely to work in that situation although you could certainly make some assault shotguns. People can and do make their own firearms now using machining tools that anyone can buy, but they are expensive and take skill and thus don't offer the untraceable proliferation problem that is the main issue posed by 3D printing.
It is still the default in Konqueror although many users swap it out for Webkit. Kubuntu, probably the largest KDE distro, dropped Konqueror for a Webkit based alternative, so the KHTML fork of the code seems pretty close to dead from my perspective.
The moment "everyone" goes to the same platform is the moment everything slows to a crawl or even a stop.
I disagree. Monopoly, slows innovation to a halt, because there is no motivation to improve to gain share. Apple, Google, Opera, etc. still want to gain share from one another and they still need to advance Webkit to support those advancements in applications and services. The nature of copyleft prevents the normal monopoly issues (although patents can still introduce that problem).
People with kids are less happy? I find that hard to believe - definitely citation needed. My kids make me far happier than anything else in my life and most parents I know feel the same.
We're talking about statistics here, not individual experience or anecdotes, but here's a NY Times Post about the topic with numerous citations. Studies of happiness are fairly similar in this regard, although I did see at least one that ended up concluding men are slightly happier if they have children while women are much less happy. You'd think this would be taught in school as it is one of the most basic choices we all make.
Okay, I'll bite. This reply is really modded up as informative? Really? As opposed to funny? Because, as a parent, I can see funny. But reasonable? Really?
I'm torn. I'd like to think everyone knows that not having children will save you a shitload of money and that people are not obligated to have children. Thus "informative" would be a ridiculous mod. On the other hand, many of the people in our society do seem to feel they are obligated to have children and it is just what society expects of them. The idea that it is a huge expense they may not be able to afford and that people who have children tend to be less happy, isn't something they've ever thought about. So maybe I can't argue with the informative mod too much.
"Faith is the opposite - belief regardless of supporting, absent, or contradicting evidence."
I don't think that's a fair description. Speaking from my own religious past, some practitioners feel they are observing, theorizing, and testing. When things don't make go as expected, they may adjust their beliefs. When things just don't make sense at all they'll try to see what went wrong with their experiment - missing variables, [missing dimensions, anyone?].
The difference is the starting point. Do you believe the Harry Potter books are real? Some kids do. Would you consider it reasonable and scientific for them to believe everything in those books is real until such a time as they were forced to accept parts as untrue because of their own personal experiences conflicting with them?
The default in science is to believe whatever the most supported theory is and absent any tested theory the most uncomplicated hypothesis that explains the data to date. Then you make predictions (falsifiable) to test the hypothesis or theory and build from there. You don't start with beliefs based upon here say with no scientific backing until it can somehow be disproved. That is, well, just the opposite of science.
You seem to have failed to respond to my points.Do you now accept that violent crime is a much more useful measure of the efficacy of particular legislation?
Have you read that "study". It tries to control for so many factors it basically looks like they are obscuring the numbers and it certainly does not correlate with international numbers. I can't even find what the un-adjusted numbers they used were.
Legislation was passed to stop the CDC from collecting information about this because people were concerned when the CDC started building a database of personally identifiable information on gun owners
It was the CDC, But I see no evidence for that. Indeed if it was that, they could have simply banned the collection of such personally identifiable information. The truth is the ban came about simply because of lobbying by the NRA, because they dislike data which shows gun control is a good thing.
You assign motives that are not that stated motives and which don't even seem to make sense. Yes, the NRA was lobbying for action to stop the CDC and yes they got it. That does not by any means mean that the results of any study would have been contradictory to all the other major studies that don't seem to find any real benefit to gun control laws aside from lowering the rate of successful suicides, but it certainly did stop the collection of data about gun owners and for all we know may have prevented that information from being released to the detriment of many people's right to privacy. After all, that is what this article is about. The government cannot be trusted with this data, as demonstrated. More scientific study is needed, but certainly we need more precautions about the type of data and we need real evidence gun control laws will have a positive instead of negative effect before we pass some law out of empathy for children that would not have been helped by that law in the first place.
Comparing rate of gun ownership with numbers of violent crimes is naive. A violent crime consisting of someone being shot is clearly worse than someone getting punched or stabbed.
I disagree. It's not clear at all. For example, murder is murder, but according to your hypothesis murder rates would go up with rates of gun ownership, since "being shot is clearly worse" and you don't get much worse than death. But that correlation does not happen. By singling out "gun violence" you logically misstate the problem due to your own assumption that anything involving guns is worse somehow.
And all the statistical evidence is that more people do get shot when gun ownership is up.
Allow me to demonstrate in a hypothetical example the flaw in this measure. An axe murderer breaks into an elementary school. Lax gun laws mean the teacher is packing. He shoots the axe murderer. By your measure that means no statistic is entered into our equation. Now imagine strict gun laws prevent him from having a gun and he kills the teacher and a dozen children. By your measure no statistic is entered into our equation. Despite this gun control laws make a difference of over a dozen murders. Do you see the flaw in your approach? You're intentionally ignoring the data because you've focused on only part of part of the problem, ignoring even direct consequences of the laws you promote.
And all the statistical evidence is that more people do get shot when gun ownership is up.
Yes, that's true. More successful suicides in general as well. But in many instances you also have somewhat lower overall violent crime and fewer murders.
Unfortunately most of the stuff you'll find if you google is pro-gun blogs interpreting the limited data to their own advantage.
Yes, and you hear just as misguided limited interpretations of the data from "the other side" yourself included. You were just arguing that we should be limiting the data to only crimes with guns, instead of considering the whole problem and real solutions. Just the other day I heard reporters mention that the National Science Foundation study in the US found no correlation between any gun control laws and the level of murders or violent crimes imposed. The reporter interpreted this to mean that we should pass gun control laws in addition to other laws and thus they will be effective. What was that opinion based on? It was just a justification for ignoring the scientific evidence he just presented.
What is really needed is rigorous scientific study, including measuring raw data, not just adapting what scant resources are already out there.
There has been significant study and I'm certainly in favor of more, but don't mistake data you don't like or which does not support your preconceived opinions with lack of data. We have data, but you have not used it to form your opinions, but have dismissed it because it does not re-inforce those opinions.
Unfortunately as such science tends to back the gun control lobby, the pro-gun lobby cynically pushed through legislation banning the government from financing such proper research.
I've heard this myth repeated a great deal lately and you'd think people would be more informed when discussing this particular article. Legislation was passed to stop the CDC from collecting information about this because people were concerned when the CDC started building a database of personally identifiable information on gun owners, you know kind of like the one this article is about and which the government released to the public before public outrage made them change the policy. Other government agencies and government grants have been part of gun control studies for decades (like the NSF study I just mentioned).
Slashdot Mirror
meanwhile: chinese workers slowly die, economies in crisis because of missing tax money, trash piles, heavy energy consumption. It's time to stop this madness and bring out phones that last 4 years minimum.
I guess I don't see how this relates, or rather maybe I disagree with how it relates. Apple is, as far as I know, the only tech company that performs internal and external audits of their Chinese labor and actually fines and fires companies that don't comply with workers rights guidelines. It is far from perfect, but can you name any company that is doing as much as Apple? Hell ,as far as I can tell they get more flack in the media about it for two reasons, first they are popular and well known, second they publish all this info so it makes it easy for reporters to write about them.
As for economies in crisis, yup, we need tax reform, but again, Apple is not one of the companies lobbying against tax reform and has even spoken in favor of it.
Trash piles are an issue, but again Apple works towards "green" goals, conducts audits and publishes how well they are doing. They sponsor a recycling program where you can send them any of their devices and they recycle them free of cost and pay for the shipping.
As for energy consumption, that would be their iDevice's strongest suit and greatest weakness. Apps are limited in their interactions with each other and with the background processes they can run specifically because Apple designed them around the concept of energy conservation (not out of some altruistic goal, just because they believed battery life was a huge consumer concern).
As for phones that last 4 years, my last iPhone lasted 5 years before I gave it to a friend. My current one is 3 years old and still works fine. I'll probably update in another year or two. So, mission accomplished?
I think some of what you write is exactly what is wrong with the PC industry. There is more to quality that the amount of RAM or disk space, there is also the quality of the components. Don't get me wrong, Lenovo uses pretty good hardware for the most part, but there is a reason Apple crushes everyone else on consumer satisfaction, hardware failure rates, and DOA rates every year in Consumer Reports. The last numbers I recall, Apple scored 86 versus Lenovos 63 out of 100 for overall laptop quality.
The problem is geeks focus on easy to find and compare numbers like RAM and disk size and ignore things like reliability. Stores advertise based on these numbers and make recommendations based on them. As a result, most computer makers are racing one another to the bottom and trying to by the biggest cheapest disk out there and the biggest crappiest RAM out there, etc.
Apple gets away with quality hardware mostly because they've already differentiated themselves in the market with a different OS, while all the other makers are competing with one another but they differentiator for consumers is price. Chromebook's might be the only exception, and barely at that.
Even if 100% of revenues from iTunes was profit (i.e. no cost to run the App Store), it's still less than 1/3 of total profits.
Apple has publicly stated to its shareholders that it runs the iTunes store at nearly break even levels to encourage hardware sales. Is it possible that they lied and the SEC will bust them, sure. But it just isn't likely. Apple is firmly in the razor end of the razor and blades model.
2013 lobbying dollars: Google - $14.06 million, Microsoft - $10.49 million, Apple -$3.37 million
I don't think profit correlates well with how much money each company is giving to politicians.
"Since nothing is stopping gay couples from having ceremonies and living as if married, as far as I can tell, gay marriage is all about forcing acceptance and government benefits."
You're half right. This isn't about forcing acceptance. It's about forcing equal treatment under law. It's a little thing called "personal freedom". You can be critical of gays and of gays getting married all you want. The minute you try to use the government to force your beliefs on other, by denying them the same choices everyone else has, however, you've stepped across the line into the "anti-freedom" camp. When you do that, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You rightfully deserve scorn and boycotts and the label of "bigot". If Eich doesn't like gays getting married, fine he can talk about what he thinks and try to persuade people. That's not what he did though, is it? He worked to try to force his view on others by controlling their actions with legislation.
"If the gay community and it's supporters put as much effort into really creating equality for all, instead of selfishly grabbing benefits for themselves..."
Umm, grabbing benefits everyone else has IS creating equality for all. All your attitudes are a rehash of the same bullshit we heard about interracial marriage and marriage for non-christians. Go back to the stone age already.
"No one at the local Whole Foods is trying to impose their beliefs or customs on you our your secular government."
Well, that isn't necessarily true, because many of the same people who shop at Whole Foods are active in the anti-GMO movement.
Hmmm, maybe I'm not familiar with your particular kind of "anti-GMO" movement. Here in Real America (laugh it's a funny) we don't even have labeling so people know what is and is not GMO and the only political action has been on attempts to provide that information. If you count accurate labeling of food as anti-GMO, well then maybe you should think about that for a second in terms of whether it is pro or anti science.
The Harvard Classics were the answer to your question as of 1900. They still hold up as a pretty good start on an education.
There was a study last year I read, although a quick Google search does not find it. I think it was "New Scientist". The gist was that the more expensive a car was the more likely the driver was to violate a studied subset of traffic laws including giving right of way to pedestrian in crosswalks. The study stuck in my mind because of the studied cars there was one exception that really stood out in the data, the Nissan Leaf for some reason had drivers that were much less likely to violate those laws, compared to drivers of similarly priced cars.
I'm a casual gamer. I don't mind shelling out some money for a weekend or two of fun. I bought Diablo 3 and at first it was, okay, but not on par with Diablo 2. I often ended up dying or at least being very annoyed when network lag interfered with playability, and of course there is no offline mode. That was annoying. But the real problem came when my account was de-activated randomly one day. Well crap, that's strange, but I had the serial and the login and password for my account, how much of a hassle could it be? Several e-mail exchanges and numerous broken help pages later, they finally decided they needed a copy of my driver's license! WTF?
I might consider another game from Blizzard in future if they ever manage to implement a level of DRM that doesn't inconvenience me, their customer, quite so much with poorer gameplay and stupid bureaucracy. I tossed Diablo 3 in the trash, sent an e-mail explaining why, and bought a better game (for less money) from their competitor.
Blizzard has done nothing to address what was wrong with Diablo 3 for this customer.
Anyone can come up with any kind of policy, and what Apple is doing is merely giving lip service to their "policy"
Have you been following the news? Apple stopped doing business with two suppliers. They forced the companies using child labor to pay for those kids to go to school and pay them wages while they went. They forced several companies to pay all the overtime they were trying to bilk employees out of. Any they did all this for years and openly published their audits before anyone paid any attention.
Who else has done anything? Who do you buy your computer from that is doing better? You are part of the problem Mr. Cowboy. Stop and think. Apple published these audits and reporters used it as dirt to write articles like this one. The company you buy from published jack and shit and has done even less. What are you doing to solve the problem? Who are you buying from and why?
Well, according to Apple's own (scanty) information on iMessage and on third party analysis, it looks like it is some sort of end to end encryption with Apple serving as the cert authority. it may well be that Apple cannot intercept the messages as the system is currently designed and can only reissue a certificate by killing the old one (and thus alerting the user because their iMessage stops working). That is by no means certain, but if it is not the case then Apple might have a false advertising lawsuit headed their way.
That is why I don't understand why its included....do they include other thin clients?
I think you're confusing Pwnium with Pwn2own. Chrome OS was the only thing in the former. The latter did not include any thin clients, just Chrome on Windows, which failed along with every other browser offered for testing on Windows.
Except WebKit isn't copyleft.
The core components are LGPL, which means if it is distributed contributions have to be submitted back. That's pretty copyleft in my book, in fact it is about the most copyleft license I know of that is practical for a library that the developers want to be widely used.
If Apple are having the compress the high-rez signal to get it out or over the cable, then it's a step backward.
Agreed. I did not mean to imply this was a good technology (either the port or the adaptor), just that conceptually putting a chip in the cable seems like an excellent idea.
And as an added bonus, none of those countries will have obsessive gun culture, and gun crime is relatively rare.
I always wonder about people who use the term "gun crime". Does anyone really think, "man I'm glad this guy is beating me to death with a hammer because guns are just so scary." In the nicest places to live violent crime in general is very rare, regardless of the tool used. I've heard it said (and there is some justification) that americans are obsessed with guns, but there are certainly particular countries in Europe just as obsessed with lack of guns, to the point that they use terms like "gun crime" without ever thinking about it.
Stritcly[sic] speaking, WebKit is the fork. Credit where its due.
Strictly speaking, they're both forks of the same code. While some people use the term "fork" to try to indicate a spin off of a code base, that sort of connotation becomes really murky really fast. Is LibreOffice or OpenOffice the fork? It all depends upon your perspective. In truth, like forks in the road, when code diverges both divergent code bases are forks.
Really, needing a computerized cable is just silly.
Actually, it's a step forward and it's not the first technology to do this. The basic idea is, make the port a smart interconnect and let a smarter cable be more adaptive. That way a 4 meter cable can be tuned differently than a 2 meter cable and you can use the same port for a cheap copper cable or a long but expensive fiber cable. Regardless of how relatively expensive the cables are, replacing the computer is harder and adding new ports to mobile devices, even most laptops, simply doesn't happen. This makes a nice, future-proofed port for your laptop, phone, peripheral, etc. that will have real longevity.
First, you can easily make something that requires great strength using 3D printing if all you are printing is the mold into which you pour molten metal.
Generally, making a strong steel or steel alloy requires that it be tempered after hardening, but that needs to be done before you cut precision features like rifling into them. So, 3D printing is unlikely to work in that situation although you could certainly make some assault shotguns. People can and do make their own firearms now using machining tools that anyone can buy, but they are expensive and take skill and thus don't offer the untraceable proliferation problem that is the main issue posed by 3D printing.
Does anyone know what happened to KHTML?
It is still the default in Konqueror although many users swap it out for Webkit. Kubuntu, probably the largest KDE distro, dropped Konqueror for a Webkit based alternative, so the KHTML fork of the code seems pretty close to dead from my perspective.
The moment "everyone" goes to the same platform is the moment everything slows to a crawl or even a stop.
I disagree. Monopoly, slows innovation to a halt, because there is no motivation to improve to gain share. Apple, Google, Opera, etc. still want to gain share from one another and they still need to advance Webkit to support those advancements in applications and services. The nature of copyleft prevents the normal monopoly issues (although patents can still introduce that problem).
People with kids are less happy? I find that hard to believe - definitely citation needed. My kids make me far happier than anything else in my life and most parents I know feel the same.
We're talking about statistics here, not individual experience or anecdotes, but here's a NY Times Post about the topic with numerous citations. Studies of happiness are fairly similar in this regard, although I did see at least one that ended up concluding men are slightly happier if they have children while women are much less happy. You'd think this would be taught in school as it is one of the most basic choices we all make.
Okay, I'll bite. This reply is really modded up as informative? Really? As opposed to funny? Because, as a parent, I can see funny. But reasonable? Really?
I'm torn. I'd like to think everyone knows that not having children will save you a shitload of money and that people are not obligated to have children. Thus "informative" would be a ridiculous mod. On the other hand, many of the people in our society do seem to feel they are obligated to have children and it is just what society expects of them. The idea that it is a huge expense they may not be able to afford and that people who have children tend to be less happy, isn't something they've ever thought about. So maybe I can't argue with the informative mod too much.
"Faith is the opposite - belief regardless of supporting, absent, or contradicting evidence."
I don't think that's a fair description. Speaking from my own religious past, some practitioners feel they are observing, theorizing, and testing. When things don't make go as expected, they may adjust their beliefs. When things just don't make sense at all they'll try to see what went wrong with their experiment - missing variables, [missing dimensions, anyone?].
The difference is the starting point. Do you believe the Harry Potter books are real? Some kids do. Would you consider it reasonable and scientific for them to believe everything in those books is real until such a time as they were forced to accept parts as untrue because of their own personal experiences conflicting with them?
The default in science is to believe whatever the most supported theory is and absent any tested theory the most uncomplicated hypothesis that explains the data to date. Then you make predictions (falsifiable) to test the hypothesis or theory and build from there. You don't start with beliefs based upon here say with no scientific backing until it can somehow be disproved. That is, well, just the opposite of science.
You seem to have failed to respond to my points.Do you now accept that violent crime is a much more useful measure of the efficacy of particular legislation?
Yes it does. http://arstechnica.com/science/2007/01/6601/ [arstechnica.com]
Have you read that "study". It tries to control for so many factors it basically looks like they are obscuring the numbers and it certainly does not correlate with international numbers. I can't even find what the un-adjusted numbers they used were.
Legislation was passed to stop the CDC from collecting information about this because people were concerned when the CDC started building a database of personally identifiable information on gun owners
It was the CDC, But I see no evidence for that. Indeed if it was that, they could have simply banned the collection of such personally identifiable information. The truth is the ban came about simply because of lobbying by the NRA, because they dislike data which shows gun control is a good thing.
You assign motives that are not that stated motives and which don't even seem to make sense. Yes, the NRA was lobbying for action to stop the CDC and yes they got it. That does not by any means mean that the results of any study would have been contradictory to all the other major studies that don't seem to find any real benefit to gun control laws aside from lowering the rate of successful suicides, but it certainly did stop the collection of data about gun owners and for all we know may have prevented that information from being released to the detriment of many people's right to privacy. After all, that is what this article is about. The government cannot be trusted with this data, as demonstrated. More scientific study is needed, but certainly we need more precautions about the type of data and we need real evidence gun control laws will have a positive instead of negative effect before we pass some law out of empathy for children that would not have been helped by that law in the first place.
Comparing rate of gun ownership with numbers of violent crimes is naive. A violent crime consisting of someone being shot is clearly worse than someone getting punched or stabbed.
I disagree. It's not clear at all. For example, murder is murder, but according to your hypothesis murder rates would go up with rates of gun ownership, since "being shot is clearly worse" and you don't get much worse than death. But that correlation does not happen. By singling out "gun violence" you logically misstate the problem due to your own assumption that anything involving guns is worse somehow.
And all the statistical evidence is that more people do get shot when gun ownership is up.
Allow me to demonstrate in a hypothetical example the flaw in this measure. An axe murderer breaks into an elementary school. Lax gun laws mean the teacher is packing. He shoots the axe murderer. By your measure that means no statistic is entered into our equation. Now imagine strict gun laws prevent him from having a gun and he kills the teacher and a dozen children. By your measure no statistic is entered into our equation. Despite this gun control laws make a difference of over a dozen murders. Do you see the flaw in your approach? You're intentionally ignoring the data because you've focused on only part of part of the problem, ignoring even direct consequences of the laws you promote.
And all the statistical evidence is that more people do get shot when gun ownership is up.
Yes, that's true. More successful suicides in general as well. But in many instances you also have somewhat lower overall violent crime and fewer murders.
Unfortunately most of the stuff you'll find if you google is pro-gun blogs interpreting the limited data to their own advantage.
Yes, and you hear just as misguided limited interpretations of the data from "the other side" yourself included. You were just arguing that we should be limiting the data to only crimes with guns, instead of considering the whole problem and real solutions. Just the other day I heard reporters mention that the National Science Foundation study in the US found no correlation between any gun control laws and the level of murders or violent crimes imposed. The reporter interpreted this to mean that we should pass gun control laws in addition to other laws and thus they will be effective. What was that opinion based on? It was just a justification for ignoring the scientific evidence he just presented.
What is really needed is rigorous scientific study, including measuring raw data, not just adapting what scant resources are already out there.
There has been significant study and I'm certainly in favor of more, but don't mistake data you don't like or which does not support your preconceived opinions with lack of data. We have data, but you have not used it to form your opinions, but have dismissed it because it does not re-inforce those opinions.
Unfortunately as such science tends to back the gun control lobby, the pro-gun lobby cynically pushed through legislation banning the government from financing such proper research.
I've heard this myth repeated a great deal lately and you'd think people would be more informed when discussing this particular article. Legislation was passed to stop the CDC from collecting information about this because people were concerned when the CDC started building a database of personally identifiable information on gun owners, you know kind of like the one this article is about and which the government released to the public before public outrage made them change the policy. Other government agencies and government grants have been part of gun control studies for decades (like the NSF study I just mentioned).