Let me see if I got that right: you got modded "Redundant, everybody knows this already" for making an anti-American statement?
Which resulted in less people seeing your statement.
Anti-American moderator with a subtle sense of humor? Pro-American idiot who thought redunant means something else?
You are missing the point: Up to now, there was nothing illegal about using the "intellectual property" in those "patents", because software patents did not exist. This sounds very circular, but this is what the law system is all about: Things are illegal because we make them illegal.
You could argue that some crimes (like murder) are somehow naturally obvious and no sane society would neglect to make a law against them. Software patents, however, are neither natural nor an obvious consequence of human life. There are people who support them and people who fight them, and it is the job of the legislative process to arbitrarily decide to make either software patents or their violation illegal.
The fact that software patents are pushed by big business as an anti-competitive measure may be a sign that SW patents are morally/ethically wrong, but that's just my evil pinko-commie opinion.
I prefer it when I can access the blades, screw drivers, saws etc. without having to unfold the whole device. In fact, this was a major deal breaker with the Leathermans (Leathermen?) for me.
Victorinox got it right on their series of SwissTools. On the one I have, all the tools lock into place, the whole thing is quite sturdy, but the wire cutting part of the main tool can only cut very small things.
I think that one idea about the holocaust denial is that it gives a rallying point for neo-nazis. Likewise, if the display of nazi emblems/flags etc. is outlawed, nazi demonstrations have to do without their most important symbols.
I am not in a position to judge if this is effective, but I can see the motivation behind these laws.
So, if I value clean air, I buy only nuclear/solar/wind/whatever power, assuming that it is possible to do so. But what about the coal plant next door? If it could sell its electricity to someone who lives elsewhere who does not care about my air quality, it could go on polluting.
Did you drive home the point that certain large greedy control-freak corporations were at fault there? After all, children are our future. If you don't indoctrinate them, someone else will.
My impression is that both sides have similarly long lists of grievances and it is not obvious that one side is the good guy and the other is evil. However, I have only superficial knowledge about the current negotiation process.
Airbus at least thinks they have a case, since they "counter-sued" against Boing before the WTO after Boing filed their complaint.
Right you are! Because we all know that the American economy is totally independent of any foreign markets and a trade war would have the Europeans begging for mercy after two weeks. And of course, we would be too stupid to realise that we can retaliate in kind against the American airlines. Not.
FWIW, the points raised in the grandparent article are exactly the points that are being discussed in the current negotiations about Airbus-Boing subsidies. The intent is to settle the whole matter out of (WTO) courts.
The only way to change that is to make it an elastic collision, which will require a hell of a lot of crush space
No. Elastic collisions conserve momentum, like the inelastic ones, and also the kinetic energy, i.e. no energy is used up in the crush spaces, so there is more energy left to hurt people.
How is this difference possible, when momentum is conserved just like in the less dangerous inelastic collision? Because momentum is a vector quantity -- in a head-on collision, one car's momentum is represented by a positive number, and the other car's momentum by a negative number, while their respective kinetic energies are always positive numbers. Thus, the arithmetic works out to give different post-collision momentums to the cars depending if it was an elastic or an inelastic collision.
The inelastic case is kinder to the cars' occupants, because the deceleration takes place in the length of the crush space, not the few cm of an elastic, rigid-body, collision.
gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws"
Of course "gun crime" has increased. After all, half the population are now "gun criminals" under the new laws, if they did not surrender their formally legal guns.
OK, the above is just a wild speculation, but we all now how statistics can be massaged to support all kinds of views. Most people do not realise that criminal behaviour is defined by the law -- a higher crime rate does not necessarily mean a worse quality of life, it might just mean a rise in the number of laws.
BTW, the increase of violent crime after strict gun laws were enacted is also often reported for the UK, as is its opposite.
What do you think is bad about delivering a baby in the emergency room? That birth as such should not be classified as an emergency? That it is a problem/nuisance for rural people to go all the way to the nearest hospital for delivery when the physician would have come to their home? That an emergency room cannot give the best medical treatment (barring complications)?
Up to the point that the losing side fears for its existence and starts thinking about a restricted use of nukes. Maybe to force an armistice? I can easily imagine the reluctance of a leader to surrender to conventional forces when he has all these nukes at his disposal. Of course, this depends on someone starting a conventional war in the first place.
Maybe I did not make myself clear enough on the "attacker is hit but not incapacitated" issue. It is well possible to hit an extremity or a non-vital part of the body. Bullets do get reflected by bones and what looks like a lung shot may be only a few cm deep. Fortunately, the law is on your side (if you were justified in using deadly force in the first place) even if you hit an attacker several times.
Keep in mind that I am talking about the rare and extreme situations where using deadly force against an attacker is necessary and legal.
You are precisely the person I would keep away from gun legislation because your idea of "excessive force" would put half the police force in jail.
About your last point, how much extra risk is acceptable to you for not using a firearm? AFAIK, the US law does not force you to take an extra risk to spare an attacker's life. After all, for legally using a gun in self defense you must be convinced that the other person is going to kill or maim you. This makes the decision about the risk of not using the gun a very personal one.
Wow, either you played too much Silent Hill or NRA propoganda is far more impressive than I imagined.
Nice try at insulting me without listening to my argument.
I let neither games nor the NRA define my sense of reality. Maybe you play too many games if you think that you can reliably hit an attacker when you are under stress. It is totally suicidal to artifically restrict yourself to one shot. That harebrained suggestion is what I was getting angry at.
With tranquilizer guns, there would be the problem of multiple hits, because, as I said earlier, you cannot guarantee a certain number of hits. The usual recommendation for using a gun in self defence (in close quarters at least) is to fire and keep firing until the attacker falls, because you can not reliably tell after a shot how badly you hit the attacker. If one hit can send him to sleep, several might kill him. If several hits make him sleep, one hit may not be enough, severely reducing the benefit of the weapon.
Let everyone have manually loaded single-shot pistols,
Who modded this insightful? Are you completely utterly out of your fucking mind? Single-shot pistols for self defence? Have you for one second thought about the consequences (hint: the defender will be dead)? The very concept is so painful to behold, a good precursor to the pain you will feel when you use your one-shot gun against a determined attacker, because one shot, even if you score a hit somewhere, will not usually incapacitate someone who has already demonstrated his determination to hurt you (otherwise you would not pull out your gun, of course). But it will surely make him mad.
Carrying a useless (yes, USELESS) gun for self defense will make you less safe. Using it in a situation that requires a gun will make you dead. And another thing, even if your attacker is lawful/evil and does not have his Glock with super high capacity magazine, he can still beat you into a pulp with his 3ft stainless steel pipe, while you can only wave your empty gun at him.
Your comment nicely demonstrates why a sensible gun control discussion is simply not possible: Too many people think that they are capable of discussing guns on the grounds that they have a vague emotional response ("guns scary! guns be gone!") to the subject. This leads to such utterly ludicrous suggestions as in your comment (or the "assault weapons" ban).
or better yet decent non/less-lethal weapons.
Just because there is a word for it does not mean a thing has to exist. There are situations in which pepper spray may not be enough.
Airplanes can and do crash, although crashing near an apartment complex without being noticed might be a bit of a stretch.
Why, it's no stretch at all. You are on a night flight in a light single engine plane when, through some oversight of maintanence, an electrical short develops that fries your alternator and quickly drains the battery. The subsequent fire destroys the magnetos. You now have no lights, no communication, and no engine power. As you silently descend to the nearest lights at best glide speed, you don't notice the little group of trees near the apartment complex and crash into it. While the noise was noticed by some people, they did not think anything drastic had happened and anyway, your plane is not visible from the ground and thanks to shutting of the fuel, the fire has gone out by itself. BTW, you hit your head and are unconscious. As dawn breaks, the authorities are still trying to pinpoint the location of your distress signal. And did I mention you forgot to open your flight plan, so noone knows to look for you?
OK, so it is a stretch after all. Glad we talked about it.
All I ever hear about Wal-Mart anymore is how damned evil [...] If it's so damned bad, why are they making money hand over fist?
Because, as usual, most people do not care about "evil" business practices. The other points you bring up are mostly a matter of taste.
Anybody else actually have a problem with Wal-Mart they can express intelligently?
How about: They make it too easy for the average uncaring buyer to take his dollars and vote for Chinese sweat shops with penny-wages and appalling work conditions.
I do not have anything to contribute to the discussion, so I'll comment on your sig instead: Just keep your humanitables in a locked closet -- no more fear.
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Anti-American moderator with a subtle sense of humor? Pro-American idiot who thought redunant means something else?
chl
chl
You could argue that some crimes (like murder) are somehow naturally obvious and no sane society would neglect to make a law against them. Software patents, however, are neither natural nor an obvious consequence of human life. There are people who support them and people who fight them, and it is the job of the legislative process to arbitrarily decide to make either software patents or their violation illegal.
The fact that software patents are pushed by big business as an anti-competitive measure may be a sign that SW patents are morally/ethically wrong, but that's just my evil pinko-commie opinion.
chl
Victorinox got it right on their series of SwissTools. On the one I have, all the tools lock into place, the whole thing is quite sturdy, but the wire cutting part of the main tool can only cut very small things.
chl
Several possibilities come to mind:
- Honest, hard work, American Dream(tm) etcblabla
- They are just smarter than anyone else, you sore loser!
- CHOSEN by GOD to be SUCCESSFUL evermore!
(Yes, I am bored)chl
I am not in a position to judge if this is effective, but I can see the motivation behind these laws.
chl
So, if I value clean air, I buy only nuclear/solar/wind/whatever power, assuming that it is possible to do so. But what about the coal plant next door? If it could sell its electricity to someone who lives elsewhere who does not care about my air quality, it could go on polluting.
As usual, people are a problem.
chl
chl
chl
Airbus at least thinks they have a case, since they "counter-sued" against Boing before the WTO after Boing filed their complaint.
chl
FWIW, the points raised in the grandparent article are exactly the points that are being discussed in the current negotiations about Airbus-Boing subsidies. The intent is to settle the whole matter out of (WTO) courts.
chl
Exactly. And the article says that there will be no demons. So they managed to mangle even this simple plot.
chl
No. Elastic collisions conserve momentum, like the inelastic ones, and also the kinetic energy, i.e. no energy is used up in the crush spaces, so there is more energy left to hurt people.
How is this difference possible, when momentum is conserved just like in the less dangerous inelastic collision? Because momentum is a vector quantity -- in a head-on collision, one car's momentum is represented by a positive number, and the other car's momentum by a negative number, while their respective kinetic energies are always positive numbers. Thus, the arithmetic works out to give different post-collision momentums to the cars depending if it was an elastic or an inelastic collision.
The inelastic case is kinder to the cars' occupants, because the deceleration takes place in the length of the crush space, not the few cm of an elastic, rigid-body, collision.
chl
Of course "gun crime" has increased. After all, half the population are now "gun criminals" under the new laws, if they did not surrender their formally legal guns.
OK, the above is just a wild speculation, but we all now how statistics can be massaged to support all kinds of views. Most people do not realise that criminal behaviour is defined by the law -- a higher crime rate does not necessarily mean a worse quality of life, it might just mean a rise in the number of laws.
BTW, the increase of violent crime after strict gun laws were enacted is also often reported for the UK, as is its opposite.
chl
chl
chl
Keep in mind that I am talking about the rare and extreme situations where using deadly force against an attacker is necessary and legal.
You are precisely the person I would keep away from gun legislation because your idea of "excessive force" would put half the police force in jail.
About your last point, how much extra risk is acceptable to you for not using a firearm? AFAIK, the US law does not force you to take an extra risk to spare an attacker's life. After all, for legally using a gun in self defense you must be convinced that the other person is going to kill or maim you. This makes the decision about the risk of not using the gun a very personal one.
chl
With tranquilizer guns, there would be the problem of multiple hits, because, as I said earlier, you cannot guarantee a certain number of hits. The usual recommendation for using a gun in self defence (in close quarters at least) is to fire and keep firing until the attacker falls, because you can not reliably tell after a shot how badly you hit the attacker. If one hit can send him to sleep, several might kill him. If several hits make him sleep, one hit may not be enough, severely reducing the benefit of the weapon.
chl
Who modded this insightful? Are you completely utterly out of your fucking mind? Single-shot pistols for self defence? Have you for one second thought about the consequences (hint: the defender will be dead)? The very concept is so painful to behold, a good precursor to the pain you will feel when you use your one-shot gun against a determined attacker, because one shot, even if you score a hit somewhere, will not usually incapacitate someone who has already demonstrated his determination to hurt you (otherwise you would not pull out your gun, of course). But it will surely make him mad. Carrying a useless (yes, USELESS) gun for self defense will make you less safe. Using it in a situation that requires a gun will make you dead. And another thing, even if your attacker is lawful/evil and does not have his Glock with super high capacity magazine, he can still beat you into a pulp with his 3ft stainless steel pipe, while you can only wave your empty gun at him.
Your comment nicely demonstrates why a sensible gun control discussion is simply not possible: Too many people think that they are capable of discussing guns on the grounds that they have a vague emotional response ("guns scary! guns be gone!") to the subject. This leads to such utterly ludicrous suggestions as in your comment (or the "assault weapons" ban).
Just because there is a word for it does not mean a thing has to exist. There are situations in which pepper spray may not be enough.
chl
Why, it's no stretch at all. You are on a night flight in a light single engine plane when, through some oversight of maintanence, an electrical short develops that fries your alternator and quickly drains the battery. The subsequent fire destroys the magnetos. You now have no lights, no communication, and no engine power. As you silently descend to the nearest lights at best glide speed, you don't notice the little group of trees near the apartment complex and crash into it. While the noise was noticed by some people, they did not think anything drastic had happened and anyway, your plane is not visible from the ground and thanks to shutting of the fuel, the fire has gone out by itself. BTW, you hit your head and are unconscious. As dawn breaks, the authorities are still trying to pinpoint the location of your distress signal. And did I mention you forgot to open your flight plan, so noone knows to look for you?
OK, so it is a stretch after all. Glad we talked about it.
chl
Exactly. And now, he has no money.
chl
I have. Version 3.4 did not introduce any new trouble in the hd install. apt worked.
chl
Because, as usual, most people do not care about "evil" business practices. The other points you bring up are mostly a matter of taste.
How about: They make it too easy for the average uncaring buyer to take his dollars and vote for Chinese sweat shops with penny-wages and appalling work conditions.
chl
chl
Why not? Because then it won't sleep on its own?
chl