Outside of a database, how else do you effectively and in a reasonable amount of time identify someone who is unfit to buy a weapon at a point of sale? Give them an ad hoc mental examination? Ask them nicely if they have a history of criminal violence? Lie detector test? A database is more effective than anything else to do this.
You know and I know that it's impossible to prove that a database has stopped any instance of someone shooting up a school. But it logically follows that a database can identify someone who is a felon, mentally unstable, has a PFA against them, etc. It raises the barrier and makes it more difficult for any of these people to get a weapon. Could they get one elsewhere? If they tried hard enough, probably. It's likely it has stopped several mass violence events by at least stopping some of the less motivated potential mass killers, the low hanging fruit. But using the logic behind your often cited argument, we should just have gun and ammo stands outside schools, because, hey, these people are going to get a weapon somehow and shoot up a school, right?
I was going to say they just re-invented Pizza Hut pizza, but then I saw the part about it being edible. At least they don't have to worry about Pizza Hut suing for patent infringement.
They're not. Libertarians don't like Conservative Christians' religious infringement on freedom to do anything, and Conservative Christians wished Libertarians shared their desires for a Christian theocracy. Both camps tolerate each other because they both hate liberals and think all the world's problems are due to liberals.
What rules don't they play by? It's well known the USPS financial situation is caused by the pension funding madness hoisted on them. Private companies are great for performing well-defined jobs like hauling payloads into space, figuring out the makeup of a galaxy a few gazillion light years away, not so much.
You're so right, well, except for issues like wages, the environment, foreign policy, social programs, separation of church and state, education, taxation, gun rights, and abortion in which they're polar opposites. So, actually, the only thing they're the same on is surveillance.
Slashdot, will the beta site still support the $rtbl, that flag that you fucked me and several others over with years ago when you didn't like how the community moderated a particular comment?
The only reason it often sounds left wing to non-listeners is because conservative media won't spend 20 minutes exhaustively covering a subject like a frog species in South America or the history of the AK-47 (and not once mention school shootings or gun control). To compare it to MSNBC is laughable. MSNBC is just an inept left wing copy of Fox News. You clearly haven't listened to NPR to any extent if you think it sounds like MSNBC.
Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representing people.
State and local government does lend itself to backwardness, which is probably why conservatives gravitate to it. The founders should be admired for the country they created, however if you brought them back today they wouldn't know what a computer is, what a semi automatic weapon was and why somebody shot up a movie theater with one, why all the homosexuals aren't in prison, and why there are so many free slaves walking around.
Fair enough. There are extremists in every camp that don't represent the mainstream. What public figures and politicians are an accurate representation of what is considered mainstream libertarian thought?
They believe in gay rights and legalizing pot and lower taxes and small govt and no surveillance or drone attacks. What's not to love?
If they would stop there, it would be great. It's when they get into the libertarian utopia stuff where there are no regulations and corporations can do no wrong is that things go off the rails rather quickly.
I've always been puzzled when people say what the "Founders intended". The Founders lived in a time when it took days to get from one populated area to another, on horseback. They were wealthy land owners upset with being pushed around by a monarchy thousands of miles away. They did a fine job in creating a new country, but they created it for the times they were in and the technology they had. There's nothing sacred about the laws or structure they enacted. Undoubtedly some of the motivation behind a structure with states having power was due to the realities of a sparsely populated country and frontier, and recent bad experiences with a monarchy. There's certainly nothing magical about state and local government. Both can be just as wasteful and abusive as federal government, especially, as we've seen, when it comes to personal liberties and civil rights.
Jeans and a shirt is a good analogy. It's comfortable and it just works. I'm almost middle aged and I wear jeans and a shirt because that's what I've always worn outside of work, not to look young and cool. It's basically the same reason I use an iPhone. It just works, reliably. It seems the Android guys are continually worried about OS upgrades, shiny new phone models, and what Apple is or isn't doing. iPhone users meanwhile are just using their phones.
I wouldn't go to the extreme of asking for an ungoverned alternative, how about showing merely a *less governed* alternative. Every other civilized country in the world worth living in has some form of national healthcare, and environmental and gun control laws as strict or more strict than the US. Yet somehow the US is decried as a nanny state.
I don't care if he wastes his money on ammo, tin foil hats, ramen noodles, or inflated gold coins. When someone wastes their money on stuff that is needlessly wasting natural resources we all need, that's when it's time to eliminate it. And in spite of it making good economic sense, people continue to make dumb uneconomical choices every day. It's not a matter of being an asshat authoritarian, it's taking care of something due to people who don't care or who are too dumb to care. If we didn't live in an overpopulated world with dwindling resources, everyone could do pretty much whatever they wanted with their money and resources.
How is getting money from new investors in order to pay off old investors different from a Ponzi scheme? The realty is that its not different at all, that it is in fact exactly what a Ponzi scheme is.
If that's the case, then all stock markets and all private equity investment are a Ponzi schemes.
The theory that came into being through science is most always much more plausible than any religiously derived one. Using your tree analogy with more apt examples: a human or animal planted the seed, or an invisible unicorn from one of the moons Pluto begat the tree magically one day. This is what scientific versus religious scenarios tend to resemble. To say that the religious one is just as plausible is nuts.
When that alternative path from science is more plausible than the theory that a supernatural being discovered by ancient desert goat herders who no one has seen for 2,000 years did it, it may not prove that the being didn't do it, but it sure makes a hell of a lot more sense.
Cool. I've been wanting to get into satellites. I'm building a homebrew az/el rotation system controlled by Arduinos. With all the cubesats that have recently launched, satellite is where it's at.
Na, amateur radio transmissions are some of the most boring conversations known to man (and I am a ham radio operator). No sex, drugs and rock and [roll]
Listen to the guys on 80 meter AM and you'll get that.:-) And 14.313 Mhz has people on drugs....
Slashdot Mirror
Outside of a database, how else do you effectively and in a reasonable amount of time identify someone who is unfit to buy a weapon at a point of sale? Give them an ad hoc mental examination? Ask them nicely if they have a history of criminal violence? Lie detector test? A database is more effective than anything else to do this.
You know and I know that it's impossible to prove that a database has stopped any instance of someone shooting up a school. But it logically follows that a database can identify someone who is a felon, mentally unstable, has a PFA against them, etc. It raises the barrier and makes it more difficult for any of these people to get a weapon. Could they get one elsewhere? If they tried hard enough, probably. It's likely it has stopped several mass violence events by at least stopping some of the less motivated potential mass killers, the low hanging fruit. But using the logic behind your often cited argument, we should just have gun and ammo stands outside schools, because, hey, these people are going to get a weapon somehow and shoot up a school, right?
This is the classic flawed "if it's not 100% effective at stopping gun violence, we shouldn't do it at all" argument. It's been beaten to death.
I'm sure a $2K flight ticket really influenced everyone involved this deal when there was $16B at stake.
I see I pissed off someone who likes shit pizza.
I was going to say they just re-invented Pizza Hut pizza, but then I saw the part about it being edible. At least they don't have to worry about Pizza Hut suing for patent infringement.
They're not. Libertarians don't like Conservative Christians' religious infringement on freedom to do anything, and Conservative Christians wished Libertarians shared their desires for a Christian theocracy. Both camps tolerate each other because they both hate liberals and think all the world's problems are due to liberals.
They're one of the extreme right wings. Don't forget Conservative Christians.
What rules don't they play by? It's well known the USPS financial situation is caused by the pension funding madness hoisted on them. Private companies are great for performing well-defined jobs like hauling payloads into space, figuring out the makeup of a galaxy a few gazillion light years away, not so much.
You're so right, well, except for issues like wages, the environment, foreign policy, social programs, separation of church and state, education, taxation, gun rights, and abortion in which they're polar opposites. So, actually, the only thing they're the same on is surveillance.
Slashdot, will the beta site still support the $rtbl, that flag that you fucked me and several others over with years ago when you didn't like how the community moderated a particular comment?
The only reason it often sounds left wing to non-listeners is because conservative media won't spend 20 minutes exhaustively covering a subject like a frog species in South America or the history of the AK-47 (and not once mention school shootings or gun control). To compare it to MSNBC is laughable. MSNBC is just an inept left wing copy of Fox News. You clearly haven't listened to NPR to any extent if you think it sounds like MSNBC.
Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representing people.
State and local government does lend itself to backwardness, which is probably why conservatives gravitate to it. The founders should be admired for the country they created, however if you brought them back today they wouldn't know what a computer is, what a semi automatic weapon was and why somebody shot up a movie theater with one, why all the homosexuals aren't in prison, and why there are so many free slaves walking around.
Fair enough. There are extremists in every camp that don't represent the mainstream. What public figures and politicians are an accurate representation of what is considered mainstream libertarian thought?
They believe in gay rights and legalizing pot and lower taxes and small govt and no surveillance or drone attacks. What's not to love?
If they would stop there, it would be great. It's when they get into the libertarian utopia stuff where there are no regulations and corporations can do no wrong is that things go off the rails rather quickly.
I've always been puzzled when people say what the "Founders intended". The Founders lived in a time when it took days to get from one populated area to another, on horseback. They were wealthy land owners upset with being pushed around by a monarchy thousands of miles away. They did a fine job in creating a new country, but they created it for the times they were in and the technology they had. There's nothing sacred about the laws or structure they enacted. Undoubtedly some of the motivation behind a structure with states having power was due to the realities of a sparsely populated country and frontier, and recent bad experiences with a monarchy. There's certainly nothing magical about state and local government. Both can be just as wasteful and abusive as federal government, especially, as we've seen, when it comes to personal liberties and civil rights.
Jeans and a shirt is a good analogy. It's comfortable and it just works. I'm almost middle aged and I wear jeans and a shirt because that's what I've always worn outside of work, not to look young and cool. It's basically the same reason I use an iPhone. It just works, reliably. It seems the Android guys are continually worried about OS upgrades, shiny new phone models, and what Apple is or isn't doing. iPhone users meanwhile are just using their phones.
I wouldn't go to the extreme of asking for an ungoverned alternative, how about showing merely a *less governed* alternative. Every other civilized country in the world worth living in has some form of national healthcare, and environmental and gun control laws as strict or more strict than the US. Yet somehow the US is decried as a nanny state.
I don't care if he wastes his money on ammo, tin foil hats, ramen noodles, or inflated gold coins. When someone wastes their money on stuff that is needlessly wasting natural resources we all need, that's when it's time to eliminate it. And in spite of it making good economic sense, people continue to make dumb uneconomical choices every day. It's not a matter of being an asshat authoritarian, it's taking care of something due to people who don't care or who are too dumb to care. If we didn't live in an overpopulated world with dwindling resources, everyone could do pretty much whatever they wanted with their money and resources.
How is getting money from new investors in order to pay off old investors different from a Ponzi scheme? The realty is that its not different at all, that it is in fact exactly what a Ponzi scheme is.
If that's the case, then all stock markets and all private equity investment are a Ponzi schemes.
The theory that came into being through science is most always much more plausible than any religiously derived one. Using your tree analogy with more apt examples: a human or animal planted the seed, or an invisible unicorn from one of the moons Pluto begat the tree magically one day. This is what scientific versus religious scenarios tend to resemble. To say that the religious one is just as plausible is nuts.
When that alternative path from science is more plausible than the theory that a supernatural being discovered by ancient desert goat herders who no one has seen for 2,000 years did it, it may not prove that the being didn't do it, but it sure makes a hell of a lot more sense.
Cool. I've been wanting to get into satellites. I'm building a homebrew az/el rotation system controlled by Arduinos. With all the cubesats that have recently launched, satellite is where it's at.
They do HF, quite well, and they're fairly sensitive. $250 isn't a bad deal for a DC to daylight software defined receiver.
Na, amateur radio transmissions are some of the most boring conversations known to man (and I am a ham radio operator). No sex, drugs and rock and [roll]
Listen to the guys on 80 meter AM and you'll get that. :-) And 14.313 Mhz has people on drugs....