You do understand that there are many voters over the age of 30 right?
It doesn't matter what the test is supposed to be for, in the United States any such test will immediately be subverted to disenfranchise otherwise legitimate voters who vote for the "wrong party". That's bad for everyone.
Personally, I think the democratic systems are not designed very well. The first thing you need to remember is that half of the people are of below average intelligence, and half of them will have below-average ability to tell when they're being lied to. I think the problem has less to do with incompetent voters than with the intersection of corporate politics and lousy systems.
The lousy democratic system reduce the effective choices to the two front-runners. All voters are trapped in the same bind, they can vote for the front-runner they favour the most (or disfavour the least) or they can contribute to victory of the party they wouldn't choose by voting for any other candidate. It's a trap that's reinforced by constant polling. Furthermore, you can bet that major political candidates have focus group testing for their base political messaging. Voters are being targeted by special interest groups with lots of money. American news programs aren't required to be truthful, American politicians only face consequences for their actions at re-election time (if then). The entire system needs to be torn down and replaced with something that requires more transparency and accountability.
~50% of voters will always be below average on any measure you choose, the system should work for the below average as well, or it's not really Democracy (or a Democratic Republic for the idiotic pendants).
If I remember correctly, there is an ongoing court case over this. There's a woman who goes to her polling place and then refuses to accept her ballot and refuses to pay the fine as a matter of principle every election. So far the courts seem to have upheld the right of the state to impose a small fine on people who refuse to vote.
Interestingly, if you demanded a driver's license for voter id, that would favour the Republican party. Republican voters are more likely to be rural citizens who live in areas with little or no public transportation, thus they need to have driver's licenses to live. Democratic voters are more likely to live in urban areas that have public transportation and therefore have less need to own and operate a car, thus they have a lower rate of ownership of driver's licenses.
Thus what id you require to vote is a political issue and can be used to influence close elections. Now, if the U.S. implemented a public universal health care system, then you could use that id instead and since everyone should have equitable (and free) access to those cards, it shouldn't sway to the outcome of the vote.
"Death Panels" "Obama's coming to take your guns and religion" "Socialism!"
Is that part of the election process or a subversion of the process? Should elections be decided on actual issues or ones made up by partisan media celebrities?
That's because the U.S. political system is pretty much the most poorly designed system in the world. The electoral college disenfranchises the majority of Americans in Presidential elections (there are about 12 "competitive" states that actually matter), gerrymandering disenfranchises about 90% of congressional voters who are packed into "safe" districts. First-past-the-post disenfranchises anyone who like to see change. Filibuster rules allow the minority party to frustrate the majority party in the Senate unless they have a "super-majority" of 60 senators.
Of course, the U. S. is in such sorry shape because at least one of it's party cares more about winning elections than working for the benefit of the American people. I suspect the founding father never suspected the people who continue to vote for a party that because obviously and vocally obstructionist.
The problem with tests is that the person designing the test has the ability to sway the vote in whatever direction they like by including questions that one demographic is more likely to get correct than another (deliberately or not). These types of tests are often decried as racist because they have been used in the past to prevent significant groups of black voters from voting. You don't even need to tilt the questions for that. For example, if you know the literacy rate among black voters is lower than white voters, give them a written test and the illiterate don't get to vote. Since tricks like this have been used over and over again to perpetuate racism, there's good reasons why they are associated with racism.
It's not limited to racism either, for instance, imagine the test includes something "controversial" like the whether evolution or global warming is true. Depending on the "correct" answer chosen by the test designer, either the Democratic or Republican vote can be suppressed. I can imagine a lot of other ways to abuse the test system too, but maybe you should spend some time thinking about it.
Most of the people with school age children have large debts (mortgage). It may be in the parent's best interests to have those debts paid off with inflationary policies.
Also holding debt isn't "bad behavior", (excluding stupid housing choices) it's often a wise decision. In the case of a mortgage, you pay off the principal of the debt and while you live in the house allowing the wise investor to accumulate wealth at a faster pace than he would if he were renting and trying to save up for a house.
Life's rarely as simple as you seem to want it to be.
Hmm, I didn't interpret the last episode that way at all - in fact I seem to remember dialog expressly indicating that it was a historical recreation, and considering that the TNG cast weren't in any of the previous episodes there's no reason to assume it impacts anything outside that one epsiode.
I suspect that's because you liked Enterprise. To me it leaves the entire series open to the interpretation that it is a "based on a true story" holographic drama. TNG characters don't actually have to appear in any of the other episode to support that interpretation because it's probably a mass market drama and anyone can take the role of any of the characters. Since the individual players aren't important to the actual narrative it can be told with the stock characters. I know it's stretching a little bit, but frankly, that interpretation casts the rest of the series in a more positive light to me and excuses any canon violations because it's all fiction within the fictional setting. Essentially, it casts the entire show as the work of an unreliable narrator and that makes it more acceptable.
Personally, I stopped watching it for a while, it was too excruciatingly awful. The final straw, was an episode where the engineer (I think) and an alien are dying of heat stroke on a planet. The captain wants to beam them up, but they can't because the temperature difference would probably kill the alien. So they leave them both exposed to the sun with no water for hours while they adjust a shuttle (by adding a control for air temperature? WTF!) to pick them up. It just left me wondering how stupid can you get? Beam them down an umbrella and a glass of water or anything. Instead they sit still and passively watch their friend slowly succumb to the heat with most of the cast doing absolutely nothing to help for hours on end.
That type of massive oversight could be forgiven If it had been a one time occurrence, but it seemed to happen every episode. Every week the characters seemed to do completely stupid and out-of-character things because it was required for the plot to get from the start to the end. No one involved in the production ever seemed to ever stop and ask "what would I do in this situation"?
Of course, the article mentions a very effective way to solve this problem. Give the employees an "apprenticeship" period where they start at a reduced wage until they complete the training requirement. Then you break the cycle without eating a huge financial hit. Plus you might find that Company Y's employees might actually want to return to Company X, since Company Y is obviously run by douche bags and company X isn't.
With the exception of the Mirror Universe episodes in Enterprise, only the last season was worth watching at all. However, do not watch the series finale*. The primary issues with Voyager and Enterprise appears to be a combination of hubris from Rick Berman and Brannon Braga and interference from know-nothing Network executives who made the already terrible stories even worse with constant pressure to "sex it up" and "dumb it down". During the final season of Enterprise they brought in a new primary writer who really did a great job, under the circumstances, of fixing some of the terrible things that had been done to Star Trek in the name of ratings.
According to Braga most of the worst things in Enterprise were done at the request of executives (Klingons in the series premiere, temporal war, T'Boobs played by Jolene Blalock). Frankly, I don't know if we should believe him.
* The series finale was written by Berman and Braga and is atrociously bad. It essentially casts all of Enterprise as a Holodeck trip taking place during a Star Trek: TNG episode. The upside is that it potentially makes everything in Enterprise non-canon (for those that care). The downside is it means the entire series was kind of pointless, especially given that not many people actually enjoyed watching it.
I know, I'm just sceptical that your other statements will hold true over longer time frames as well. I could easily see Apple losing market share again as soon as their marketing and/or technical lead slips a little. Essentially the $200 price premium that Apple can command is based on consumer good will. That will be difficult to maintain over the long run.
So you would continue the treatment that killed them rather than accept change?
This is not optional. Technology is changing the world, recorded music is going extinct as a money maker for musicians. There's at least two problems here:
1) Recorded music can be easily replicated and transported to any place at any time, on demand. 2) The library of recorded music gets larger every year, which means every individual participant in the marketplace faces more and more competition. This is nearly perfect competition, margins will be squeezed to nothing. Economic laws predict that there soon will be virtually no profit margin on producing recorded music regardless of piracy.
The money will be in goods that can't be duplicated at the click of the button. It will be in merchandise and concerts. It doesn't matter if you don't think that will be sufficient, that's the way the world is headed, for better or worse. The current piracy crackdowns are only alienating the very people the music industry will want to get money from in the future.
Amusingly if you look at the table, belief in God decreases the crime rate by more than attending religious services and belonging to any of the identified religious groups (Roman Catholic, Christian (Non-RC), or Muslim) increases the crime rate.
Well, they put a Microsoft vice-president in charge of the company. Maybe he's driving the price down as far as it can go before Microsoft "saves" the company by acquiring it. Alternatively, he might just be driving it into the ground because he's exactly as good an executive as Balmer but without the monopolies to keep the company in business.
So you're saying the biggest problem with the Zune is that the company that developed it was bought out by Microsoft? Who then proceeded to run it into the ground? I don't know where I've heard that story before...
You don't actually understand how credit cards work. Every time you buy something from a store with a credit card, the credit card company gets something like $1 + 3% of what you purchased. That's right, if the store is making a 10% profit on your purchase, almost a third of it goes to VISA or Mastercard. Before 2008, the credit card companies were looking for debt slaves. They loved the people who carried near the maximum balances and made near the minimum payment. However, after the economy tanked they were reminded of how risky that is. Apparently, post 2008 they started seeking out the no-balance people who buy lots of stuff and pay it off every month. They were the new targeted group. I'm not sure if the credit card companies are still actively targeting the no balance people but they are very lucrative for the credit card companies.
Now if you credit card company decides to force you to pay a fee to carry your card, cancel it. They'll eventually learn not to do that. You have to remember corporations are like evil little children. If you don't rap their knuckles every time they get into mischief they'll rob you blind while mocking you for it. See the shackle shoes, for example. It's amazing that a company could reasonably despise it's customer that much.
If you want it hosted off site, ask your ISP. A business grade ISP should have a mail list system that they run and all you need to do is transfer your mailing list over to it. The advantage is you're not running the list and people who know what they're doing should be running it. Additionally, you'll be working with people you already have a business relationship with running it, however, check the price first. Sometimes list services have wonky pricing.
Of course, if you don't like your ISP, you may not want to do that. However, why are you dealing with them at all in that case?
Sure, everyone who disagrees with you a sycophantic slave. You're really winning hearts and minds, here. You are a fool, who discards wise counsel for idiocy because the words of idiots please you more.
If you had seriously read the article you might have noticed that they mentioned that fall temperatures have a significant impact on the moose because they don't eat as much when it's warm (they overheat too easily), and they need to bulk up in the fall to prepare for winter. So if warmer weather lasts longer then the Moose delay the start of the bulking period and not enough food may be left when they begin the bulking or they might not have enough time between the start of their bulking period and the first snows. Interestingly, looking at the last 5 years of fall temperatures they are all significantly above average and above the trend.
That's ignoring the exploding parasite populations which are also weakening the moose.
Do you really think the US military would fire on its own people, within its own country's borders?
Absolutely. The U.S. military has always done so in the past, and I see no reason to think it has magically changed since the last time.
If so little as 500,000 people rose up with arms to depose the US government, I'd doubt the military would become involved.
On the other hand, I think the military would definitely become involved. In any uprising like that you're going to have a loyalist and rebel side and those sides will fight. Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon. Even with brutal and ruthless regimes each country has it's own loyalists. The military would stand to defend the current government, as they are officially under the direction of the President. Only if the President chose not to use the military would they stand down. Most of the military would be quite willing to shoot the "traitors" in the uprising.
The previous Republican administration already engaged in torture and kidnapping and admitted it openly. The majority of their supporters either don't care or approve of torturing "them". I doubt there could ever be a situation where the case will be so blindingly obvious that the military as a whole would stand down and allow an armed militia to take control of the government. Lastly, history has shown us that soldiers are least likely to fire upon friendly unarmed crowds and even that isn't guaranteed. They are much less lenient towards an unfriendly and armed crowd.
To me, the things you imagine seem naive fantasies.
I don't mind registration. I don't see the point to microstamping. As someone else already mentioned, it is basically the gun equivalent of DRM.
No. I'm afraid that's wrong. It's the equivalent of watermarking, not DRM, and I think that's actually was effective in identifying the sources for a number of pirated movies. The problem is that it turned out that most of the good digital copies came from people in the movie industry. DRM on the other hand, would be some device that prevents you from firing at certain people, or on certain days, or more than a certain number of times. Actually that amuses me, we should get the anti-gun people working on GRM systems to "help" gun owners "manage their gun rights".
Seriously, if you're going to make bad analogies on Slashdot, stick to cars.
You should probably include the context when you write that, I was quite disappointed to find out that they were specifically referring to "copper pot scrubbers" used to silence a gun and "shoe laces" when used to modify a gun so that it fired automatically. Basically according to the law, the parts of a gun are also, legally speaking, "a firearm".
I would hazard a guess that the parts of a gun are considered "a firearm" to prevent gun shops from selling the pieces individually and thus circumventing the laws surrounding gun sales. Are the consequences some times silly? Yes. That's part of the reason why the justice system uses judges and juries.
Slashdot Mirror
You do understand that there are many voters over the age of 30 right?
It doesn't matter what the test is supposed to be for, in the United States any such test will immediately be subverted to disenfranchise otherwise legitimate voters who vote for the "wrong party". That's bad for everyone.
Personally, I think the democratic systems are not designed very well. The first thing you need to remember is that half of the people are of below average intelligence, and half of them will have below-average ability to tell when they're being lied to. I think the problem has less to do with incompetent voters than with the intersection of corporate politics and lousy systems.
The lousy democratic system reduce the effective choices to the two front-runners. All voters are trapped in the same bind, they can vote for the front-runner they favour the most (or disfavour the least) or they can contribute to victory of the party they wouldn't choose by voting for any other candidate. It's a trap that's reinforced by constant polling. Furthermore, you can bet that major political candidates have focus group testing for their base political messaging. Voters are being targeted by special interest groups with lots of money. American news programs aren't required to be truthful, American politicians only face consequences for their actions at re-election time (if then). The entire system needs to be torn down and replaced with something that requires more transparency and accountability.
~50% of voters will always be below average on any measure you choose, the system should work for the below average as well, or it's not really Democracy (or a Democratic Republic for the idiotic pendants).
If I remember correctly, there is an ongoing court case over this. There's a woman who goes to her polling place and then refuses to accept her ballot and refuses to pay the fine as a matter of principle every election. So far the courts seem to have upheld the right of the state to impose a small fine on people who refuse to vote.
Interestingly, if you demanded a driver's license for voter id, that would favour the Republican party. Republican voters are more likely to be rural citizens who live in areas with little or no public transportation, thus they need to have driver's licenses to live. Democratic voters are more likely to live in urban areas that have public transportation and therefore have less need to own and operate a car, thus they have a lower rate of ownership of driver's licenses.
Thus what id you require to vote is a political issue and can be used to influence close elections. Now, if the U.S. implemented a public universal health care system, then you could use that id instead and since everyone should have equitable (and free) access to those cards, it shouldn't sway to the outcome of the vote.
"Death Panels"
"Obama's coming to take your guns and religion"
"Socialism!"
Is that part of the election process or a subversion of the process? Should elections be decided on actual issues or ones made up by partisan media celebrities?
That's because the U.S. political system is pretty much the most poorly designed system in the world. The electoral college disenfranchises the majority of Americans in Presidential elections (there are about 12 "competitive" states that actually matter), gerrymandering disenfranchises about 90% of congressional voters who are packed into "safe" districts. First-past-the-post disenfranchises anyone who like to see change. Filibuster rules allow the minority party to frustrate the majority party in the Senate unless they have a "super-majority" of 60 senators.
Of course, the U. S. is in such sorry shape because at least one of it's party cares more about winning elections than working for the benefit of the American people. I suspect the founding father never suspected the people who continue to vote for a party that because obviously and vocally obstructionist.
The problem with tests is that the person designing the test has the ability to sway the vote in whatever direction they like by including questions that one demographic is more likely to get correct than another (deliberately or not). These types of tests are often decried as racist because they have been used in the past to prevent significant groups of black voters from voting. You don't even need to tilt the questions for that. For example, if you know the literacy rate among black voters is lower than white voters, give them a written test and the illiterate don't get to vote. Since tricks like this have been used over and over again to perpetuate racism, there's good reasons why they are associated with racism.
It's not limited to racism either, for instance, imagine the test includes something "controversial" like the whether evolution or global warming is true. Depending on the "correct" answer chosen by the test designer, either the Democratic or Republican vote can be suppressed. I can imagine a lot of other ways to abuse the test system too, but maybe you should spend some time thinking about it.
Most of the people with school age children have large debts (mortgage). It may be in the parent's best interests to have those debts paid off with inflationary policies.
Also holding debt isn't "bad behavior", (excluding stupid housing choices) it's often a wise decision. In the case of a mortgage, you pay off the principal of the debt and while you live in the house allowing the wise investor to accumulate wealth at a faster pace than he would if he were renting and trying to save up for a house.
Life's rarely as simple as you seem to want it to be.
Hmm, I didn't interpret the last episode that way at all - in fact I seem to remember dialog expressly indicating that it was a historical recreation, and considering that the TNG cast weren't in any of the previous episodes there's no reason to assume it impacts anything outside that one epsiode.
I suspect that's because you liked Enterprise. To me it leaves the entire series open to the interpretation that it is a "based on a true story" holographic drama. TNG characters don't actually have to appear in any of the other episode to support that interpretation because it's probably a mass market drama and anyone can take the role of any of the characters. Since the individual players aren't important to the actual narrative it can be told with the stock characters. I know it's stretching a little bit, but frankly, that interpretation casts the rest of the series in a more positive light to me and excuses any canon violations because it's all fiction within the fictional setting. Essentially, it casts the entire show as the work of an unreliable narrator and that makes it more acceptable.
Personally, I stopped watching it for a while, it was too excruciatingly awful. The final straw, was an episode where the engineer (I think) and an alien are dying of heat stroke on a planet. The captain wants to beam them up, but they can't because the temperature difference would probably kill the alien. So they leave them both exposed to the sun with no water for hours while they adjust a shuttle (by adding a control for air temperature? WTF!) to pick them up. It just left me wondering how stupid can you get? Beam them down an umbrella and a glass of water or anything. Instead they sit still and passively watch their friend slowly succumb to the heat with most of the cast doing absolutely nothing to help for hours on end.
That type of massive oversight could be forgiven If it had been a one time occurrence, but it seemed to happen every episode. Every week the characters seemed to do completely stupid and out-of-character things because it was required for the plot to get from the start to the end. No one involved in the production ever seemed to ever stop and ask "what would I do in this situation"?
Of course, the article mentions a very effective way to solve this problem. Give the employees an "apprenticeship" period where they start at a reduced wage until they complete the training requirement. Then you break the cycle without eating a huge financial hit. Plus you might find that Company Y's employees might actually want to return to Company X, since Company Y is obviously run by douche bags and company X isn't.
With the exception of the Mirror Universe episodes in Enterprise, only the last season was worth watching at all. However, do not watch the series finale*. The primary issues with Voyager and Enterprise appears to be a combination of hubris from Rick Berman and Brannon Braga and interference from know-nothing Network executives who made the already terrible stories even worse with constant pressure to "sex it up" and "dumb it down". During the final season of Enterprise they brought in a new primary writer who really did a great job, under the circumstances, of fixing some of the terrible things that had been done to Star Trek in the name of ratings.
According to Braga most of the worst things in Enterprise were done at the request of executives (Klingons in the series premiere, temporal war, T'Boobs played by Jolene Blalock). Frankly, I don't know if we should believe him.
* The series finale was written by Berman and Braga and is atrociously bad. It essentially casts all of Enterprise as a Holodeck trip taking place during a Star Trek: TNG episode. The upside is that it potentially makes everything in Enterprise non-canon (for those that care). The downside is it means the entire series was kind of pointless, especially given that not many people actually enjoyed watching it.
I know, I'm just sceptical that your other statements will hold true over longer time frames as well. I could easily see Apple losing market share again as soon as their marketing and/or technical lead slips a little. Essentially the $200 price premium that Apple can command is based on consumer good will. That will be difficult to maintain over the long run.
So you would continue the treatment that killed them rather than accept change?
This is not optional. Technology is changing the world, recorded music is going extinct as a money maker for musicians. There's at least two problems here:
1) Recorded music can be easily replicated and transported to any place at any time, on demand.
2) The library of recorded music gets larger every year, which means every individual participant in the marketplace faces more and more competition. This is nearly perfect competition, margins will be squeezed to nothing. Economic laws predict that there soon will be virtually no profit margin on producing recorded music regardless of piracy.
The money will be in goods that can't be duplicated at the click of the button. It will be in merchandise and concerts. It doesn't matter if you don't think that will be sufficient, that's the way the world is headed, for better or worse. The current piracy crackdowns are only alienating the very people the music industry will want to get money from in the future.
Amusingly if you look at the table, belief in God decreases the crime rate by more than attending religious services and belonging to any of the identified religious groups (Roman Catholic, Christian (Non-RC), or Muslim) increases the crime rate.
Those are some strange results.
The real table market began just over 2 years ago with the release of the iPad. The "war" has only just begun.
I doubt you can tell who's going to win a marathon by watching the first few minutes of the race.
Well, they put a Microsoft vice-president in charge of the company. Maybe he's driving the price down as far as it can go before Microsoft "saves" the company by acquiring it. Alternatively, he might just be driving it into the ground because he's exactly as good an executive as Balmer but without the monopolies to keep the company in business.
So you're saying the biggest problem with the Zune is that the company that developed it was bought out by Microsoft? Who then proceeded to run it into the ground? I don't know where I've heard that story before...
You don't actually understand how credit cards work. Every time you buy something from a store with a credit card, the credit card company gets something like $1 + 3% of what you purchased. That's right, if the store is making a 10% profit on your purchase, almost a third of it goes to VISA or Mastercard. Before 2008, the credit card companies were looking for debt slaves. They loved the people who carried near the maximum balances and made near the minimum payment. However, after the economy tanked they were reminded of how risky that is. Apparently, post 2008 they started seeking out the no-balance people who buy lots of stuff and pay it off every month. They were the new targeted group. I'm not sure if the credit card companies are still actively targeting the no balance people but they are very lucrative for the credit card companies.
Now if you credit card company decides to force you to pay a fee to carry your card, cancel it. They'll eventually learn not to do that. You have to remember corporations are like evil little children. If you don't rap their knuckles every time they get into mischief they'll rob you blind while mocking you for it. See the shackle shoes, for example. It's amazing that a company could reasonably despise it's customer that much.
If you want it hosted off site, ask your ISP. A business grade ISP should have a mail list system that they run and all you need to do is transfer your mailing list over to it. The advantage is you're not running the list and people who know what they're doing should be running it. Additionally, you'll be working with people you already have a business relationship with running it, however, check the price first. Sometimes list services have wonky pricing.
Of course, if you don't like your ISP, you may not want to do that. However, why are you dealing with them at all in that case?
Sure, everyone who disagrees with you a sycophantic slave. You're really winning hearts and minds, here. You are a fool, who discards wise counsel for idiocy because the words of idiots please you more.
Also, xkcd has covered it pretty succinctly.
If you had seriously read the article you might have noticed that they mentioned that fall temperatures have a significant impact on the moose because they don't eat as much when it's warm (they overheat too easily), and they need to bulk up in the fall to prepare for winter. So if warmer weather lasts longer then the Moose delay the start of the bulking period and not enough food may be left when they begin the bulking or they might not have enough time between the start of their bulking period and the first snows. Interestingly, looking at the last 5 years of fall temperatures they are all significantly above average and above the trend.
That's ignoring the exploding parasite populations which are also weakening the moose.
Do you really think the US military would fire on its own people, within its own country's borders?
Absolutely. The U.S. military has always done so in the past, and I see no reason to think it has magically changed since the last time.
If so little as 500,000 people rose up with arms to depose the US government, I'd doubt the military would become involved.
On the other hand, I think the military would definitely become involved. In any uprising like that you're going to have a loyalist and rebel side and those sides will fight. Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon. Even with brutal and ruthless regimes each country has it's own loyalists. The military would stand to defend the current government, as they are officially under the direction of the President. Only if the President chose not to use the military would they stand down. Most of the military would be quite willing to shoot the "traitors" in the uprising.
The previous Republican administration already engaged in torture and kidnapping and admitted it openly. The majority of their supporters either don't care or approve of torturing "them". I doubt there could ever be a situation where the case will be so blindingly obvious that the military as a whole would stand down and allow an armed militia to take control of the government. Lastly, history has shown us that soldiers are least likely to fire upon friendly unarmed crowds and even that isn't guaranteed. They are much less lenient towards an unfriendly and armed crowd.
To me, the things you imagine seem naive fantasies.
I don't mind registration. I don't see the point to microstamping. As someone else already mentioned, it is basically the gun equivalent of DRM.
No. I'm afraid that's wrong. It's the equivalent of watermarking, not DRM, and I think that's actually was effective in identifying the sources for a number of pirated movies. The problem is that it turned out that most of the good digital copies came from people in the movie industry. DRM on the other hand, would be some device that prevents you from firing at certain people, or on certain days, or more than a certain number of times. Actually that amuses me, we should get the anti-gun people working on GRM systems to "help" gun owners "manage their gun rights".
Seriously, if you're going to make bad analogies on Slashdot, stick to cars.
You should probably include the context when you write that, I was quite disappointed to find out that they were specifically referring to "copper pot scrubbers" used to silence a gun and "shoe laces" when used to modify a gun so that it fired automatically. Basically according to the law, the parts of a gun are also, legally speaking, "a firearm".
I would hazard a guess that the parts of a gun are considered "a firearm" to prevent gun shops from selling the pieces individually and thus circumventing the laws surrounding gun sales. Are the consequences some times silly? Yes. That's part of the reason why the justice system uses judges and juries.