Sure: [warning - rampent sillyness] Assault Weapon -> Any weapon, that contains moving parts or is greater than 4cm in its greatest dimension. (Allows small penknives, bioweapon agents and nothing much else) [/warning]
:->
It's a slow day.
I didn't think there was a ban on such weapons any more.
(I do agree with your point by the way. It's a general problem with all law making designed to curtail a particular action/item/practice. First define it without allowing any loopholes...)
I think that weapons are a slightly different issue than tools. Weapons are specifically designed to hurt people
That was my point. It was a retorical question. Looking back at my post I realise the subtlty of that was "lost in translation";-).
is some credible evidence that conceal'n'carry laws for handguns actually decrease the overall amount of harm done to people.
That implies there is a lot of incredible evidence. Do you have any actual evidence (independent reports) to back this up or are you just repeating what other people tell you?
I do I'd err on the side of freedom until I'm convinced otherwise.
What do you define as freedom? I realise that this is opening a can of worms. Defining "freedom" however is important as I feel many of these issues flow directly from it. I assume you mean political freedom rather than freedom of will? (*)
If so, I follow the line (paraphrasing Sartre I think, though I hope the alert Philosophy student will step in to point me to the appropriate text) that:
"Individual personal freedom should be limited to the extent that it does not restrict the personal freedom of others."
So: Owning a gun is fine, you just can't use it to shoot people. Or, taken to the extreme [for governments rather than individuals], owning Nukes is fine, you just mustn't use them.
Well, Duh! [As the well known modern Philosopher Homer would say];-)
Another example is smoking, a pet favourite of mine. To place this in context (there is always a context) I am a fervent anti-smoker. I hate it. It's a foul habit that I loath at different levels.
From that you may those statements you may think that I am some crazed anti-smoking zelot. Not so. Following the paraphrased quote above I feel people should be free to smoke providing it does not impinge upon other peoples personal freedom to "not inhale" (2) their smoke (amongst other things).
Of course, if one has a different view of political freedom then the conclusions will be different. I guess that's what condems me to be a liberal.
-sigh-
-------- (*) Freedom of will is another matter entirely. There I do tend towards the, somewhat abstract notion that we are all "condemmned to be free".
(2) Please excuse the comic reference to Bill Clinton, it's a cheap shot. I just couldn't help myself!
which wasn't any louder than a regular plane landing
You must have some pretty load "regular planes". When Concord was flying (bless her little cotton socks) it sounded like the sky was being torn apart. Those engines were not exactly "whispers". Now she's stopped *sniff* the sky around Heathrow is almost silent...
I am currently working on a web site with CSS driven menus. To get IE to work, we have to override event handlers in Javascript to get IE to behave properly.
I too feel your pain! Not only that, if you want the CSS to validate properly the "behaviour" thang in the IE the CSS hover hack is non standard so will make the W3C validator barf. So you (still) have to do browser detection, but for the CSS instead of the HTML! I've had to hack and slash to get my home page working any where near reasonably. Even then, I got it working ok in IE5, looked at it in IE6 and it's ridiculously different. In case you are wondering all the HTML pages validate perfectly, as do the CSS. So they should not look fundamentally different!
As far as CSS goes, great idea. How about *someone* implementing it correctly? Even Mozilla (which is far better than IE) does a lousy job occasionally (for example font manipulation is non existent). For a prime example of rubbish CSS handling, go to any page on my home page in Mozilla and do "print preview". For some reason it barfs on the drop caps (of course IE doesnt *do* the drop caps anyhow). Moz formats them fine in screen view but not in print preview, (the CSS just hides the columns and widens the content part for printing). If I want it to avoid looking totally stupid I have to get rid of the drop caps. Bah!
Speaking of Mozilla (4.78) it's not even all that stable, for instance it crashes when visiting The Guardian
Aaargh! I feel like going off on a rant again.... Time to go home!
...Go zealots who, whenever chess is mentioned here, start with the "Chess sucks, Go rules!" stuff.
Do you mean like Linux zealots? Just because they're zealots doesn't mean they are wrong.:-)
I play chess and have started learning to play Go.
It is a truly sublime game. It takes literally no more than 3 minutes to learn the rules (all five of them) and you are up and playing straight away. But it is madenningy hard to be any good at! I think getting computer Go to the same level of play as computer chess will teach people about AI. I can easilly see how a typical chess algorithm would work but wouldn't have a clue with Go, the "merit function" is just too hard!
Yes, and since we didn't destroy each in a nuclear holocost I'd say the primary mission of the military was fulfulled by both the Soviet and US military.
Agreed; but were you as confident then of this outcome as you are now? [*]
Which time?
Iraq. [except that is war by proxy with "the bad guys (tm)"]
The Primary Mission is to appear fierce to discourage agression.
What agression did Iraq *realisticly* *actually* project to the US?
N.B. The following is a different issue....
The American Revolution was because Great Brittain didn't think the colonies (US to be) had the will to fight let alone win.
Granted, and without the help of the French that would quite probably have been a true statement. For an amusing annotated summary see totalitarian burger. For those ardent Bushists that seem to think France owe you an historic debt, you can always turn the clock back a few hundred years.
[*] Again this is a thread in a thread but, in my opinion it was the incredible level of espionage by both sides that lead to this outcome. Most of the spies of the time were tried for treason or "died". If it wasn't for them however who would have known that the movement of XYZ to XYW wasn't a threat. In the situation where you see a perceived threat you launch a counter attack and, as the story goes, *end of story*.
The main purpose of the military is not to fight wars. It is to appear so fierce that the war does not NEED to be fought.
In a conventional situation where the use of the military is defensive I agree with you. When two equally well armed entities are involved of course that is essentially what MAD was all about (Mutually Assured Destruction). At which point it becomes a nerve racking situation of "who blinks first".
What about the situation where the same military is used offensively?
War means that the military has failed in it's primary mission and now must undertake it's secondary mission, to fight.
What primary mission did the US and UK military fail in that caused them to undertake their "secondary mission".
That is not an example of countering a Guerilla campain its mass murder / genocide (depending on context). Here the "enemy" (now you see why I used quotes) are the people you don't want, in the case of Saddam the Kurds. There are other lower-tech examples such as Rwanda of course. They are a well defined group and can be "countered" (aka. massacred) with conventional weapons (in the case of Rwanda machettes, pistols and small arms).
A Guerilla (as defined by dictionary.com)
A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy, as by surprise raids.
is an all together different beast (excuse the pun).
Countering such an enemy, particularly in the case where they are mixed with friendlies will be exceedingly difficult (most obvious for the US being Vietnam). The classic analogue is of fighting an advanced cancer, unless you are prepared to kill the patient destroying the cancer is going to be very hard.
Guerilla tactics are the stuff of choice for the descerning terrorist since they simply cannot be countered with "big ships". If they manage to win the tacit support of the "friendly" population you will loose since the "enemy" is now undefined, you just don't know who they are any more. What do you point your big guns at? You've not got to look far for a first class example of this happening in front of your eyes... Just check the main news stories.
Which will only work if the "enemy" is well defined and plays by the rules. As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use.
[cynisism]
My bet is that this is not about countering the current threat (which appears to be guerilla/terrorist tactics) but about defense companies selling high tech arms and making a buck.
[/cynisism]
If you're bored of the F1 parade watch MotoGP! You don't know what you're missing.
I quite agree. Also the "Superbikes" championship. One dream race would be Rossi (on a Honda) vs Shu (in a Ferrari) over the Monaco course!;-)
Ok, only practical if you could get decent downforce on a bike... Something I was coincidentally discussing just before the England Switzerland match [which England won 3-0 in case you were wondering].....
Seriously though, without detracting from F1, if you want seriously exciting motorsport take a look at the Moto GP and Superbikes... Very tight, fast action with some seriously gutsy performers.
I never twigged that was the start of RD..... Full marks for 'popular cultural reference'...
For some reason (and this is where my point of "cultural differences" comes from) in this country (UK) tipping waiting staff [in a resturant] is normally done if they have given decent service (aka they are not useless) however the practice does not normally translate to other things (e.g. bar staff). If they have not given reasonable service a tip is either minimal or not given.
As an aside. "She" probably can't quit. US Society (my impression of it at least) seems to dictate that the employer will not pay the employee enough therefore the employee has to gain tips to suppliment their income. On the other side of the fence (the customer) their is the (justified) impression of the employee that is under paid hence the moral pressure to tip, thus developing a self reinforcing practice.
I suspect that the premise of Mr Pink in your quote:[if] She don't make enough money, she can quit. generally doesn't apply since people in such jobs are likely to be very "cashflow sensitive", so they can't quit and have to "play the game", reinforcing the situation of essentially compulsory tips.
He makes his money on those tips, not the paycheck and thus the more deliveries he makes the more $$ he makes.
This is something I never really appreciated about the cultural differences between the US and UK. Over there it is natural to tip practically everyone for everything, to such an extent that I'm sure it can be significant compared to saleries. Of course this is "unearned income" it's not taxed so I'm sure the employee, if they are good at getting tips is happy to perpetuate this (boo hiss to the taxman)..
One thing that shocked me was tipping bar staff. For me (and most fellow britons) the assumption is that staff are employed to do a job and should be paid a fair wage for what they do. Over here most bar staff would think it odd (even insulting) to be given tips (I have worked behind a bar and certainly would have that opinon).
When I visited the US however barstaff got really shirty when I didn't leave a tip, it took me a while to understand why...
On another off hand ramble... I've noticed a creeping policy of many places (such as bars) starting to add "opt out" service charge to customers... I wonder if they pay the VAT [*] on that?
Anyway, random ramble over....
[*] Value Added Tax - A levy on most things you by as an end consumer currently at 17.5%.
But I think a real argument can be made that one of the reasons pseudoscience has become so popular these days (to the level of informing at least two presidents) is that so much of real science is published in journals that you have to pay big bucks to read.
You make a good point, not one that I had really considered before. Perhaps another way of viewing this issue is "why do people believe what is preseted in the mainstream `scientific' media"?
Slashdot Mirror
[warning - rampent sillyness]
Assault Weapon -> Any weapon, that contains moving parts or is greater than 4cm in its greatest dimension. (Allows small penknives, bioweapon agents and nothing much else)
[/warning]
It's a slow day.
I didn't think there was a ban on such weapons any more.
Come on children "get them while they are still hot".
(I do agree with your point by the way. It's a general problem with all law making designed to curtail a particular action/item/practice. First define it without allowing any loopholes...)
That was my point. It was a retorical question. Looking back at my post I realise the subtlty of that was "lost in translation"
is some credible evidence that conceal'n'carry laws for handguns actually decrease the overall amount of harm done to people.
That implies there is a lot of incredible evidence. Do you have any actual evidence (independent reports) to back this up or are you just repeating what other people tell you?
I do I'd err on the side of freedom until I'm convinced otherwise.
What do you define as freedom? I realise that this is opening a can of worms. Defining "freedom" however is important as I feel many of these issues flow directly from it. I assume you mean political freedom rather than freedom of will? (*)
If so, I follow the line (paraphrasing Sartre I think, though I hope the alert Philosophy student will step in to point me to the appropriate text) that:
So: Owning a gun is fine, you just can't use it to shoot people. Or, taken to the extreme [for governments rather than individuals], owning Nukes is fine, you just mustn't use them.
Well, Duh! [As the well known modern Philosopher Homer would say]
Another example is smoking, a pet favourite of mine. To place this in context (there is always a context) I am a fervent anti-smoker. I hate it. It's a foul habit that I loath at different levels.
From that you may those statements you may think that I am some crazed anti-smoking zelot. Not so. Following the paraphrased quote above I feel people should be free to smoke providing it does not impinge upon other peoples personal freedom to "not inhale" (2) their smoke (amongst other things).
Of course, if one has a different view of political freedom then the conclusions will be different. I guess that's what condems me to be a liberal.
-sigh-
--------
(*) Freedom of will is another matter entirely. There I do tend towards the, somewhat abstract notion that we are all "condemmned to be free".
(2) Please excuse the comic reference to Bill Clinton, it's a cheap shot. I just couldn't help myself!
Guns are tools, like screwdrivers, hammers and lockpicks.
The big difference is that screwdrivers are not designed with the main aim of killing people. Guns generally are.
This same assumption of yours could be make for glass cutters, screwdrivers, crowbars, bolt cutters, wrenches...where do we draw the line?
Assault weapons?
Horror of horrors, a link on slashdot to something interesting!
I'd be curious to see the results of similar stuff with parliments of other countries, MEPs and the UN.
Food for thought.
It's written in to the constitution that way.
Just change it. Or is The Constitution (TM) something utterly immutable?
which wasn't any louder than a regular plane landing
You must have some pretty load "regular planes". When Concord was flying (bless her little cotton socks) it sounded like the sky was being torn apart. Those engines were not exactly "whispers". Now she's stopped *sniff* the sky around Heathrow is almost silent...
the *gun* did!
:-/
The bullet surely? Maybe that's it. Don't ban guns, ban bullets! Genius!!!
Of course I could read other posts before hitting "Reply", as mentioned in another thread:
bash completion
is a good start.
Sounds cool, y' learn something every day! Can you post up a list of your bash "complete" specifications?
.tgz .tar.gz
With "complete" would there be a sane way of telling it about common command line arguments eg...
tar -[TAB] lists up
-c - create
-t - list
-x - extract
-z - gzip compression
tar -xz [TAB]
lists up all files ending in
I loved it.
What happened to make you stop using it?
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when we try"... ..."to be standards complient".
Thanks I'll check it out, what a headache...
You are of course quite correct, my mistake was to look at the "about:" in Mozilla for the version info (silly me)
It is completely wrong as shown in this screen shot. The actual version is Mozilla 1.5.
I am currently working on a web site with CSS driven menus. To get IE to work, we have to override event handlers in Javascript to get IE to behave properly.
I too feel your pain! Not only that, if you want the CSS to validate properly the "behaviour" thang in the IE the CSS hover hack is non standard so will make the W3C validator barf. So you (still) have to do browser detection, but for the CSS instead of the HTML! I've had to hack and slash to get my home page working any where near reasonably. Even then, I got it working ok in IE5, looked at it in IE6 and it's ridiculously different. In case you are wondering all the HTML pages validate perfectly, as do the CSS. So they should not look fundamentally different!
As far as CSS goes, great idea. How about *someone* implementing it correctly? Even Mozilla (which is far better than IE) does a lousy job occasionally (for example font manipulation is non existent). For a prime example of rubbish CSS handling, go to any page on my home page in Mozilla and do "print preview". For some reason it barfs on the drop caps (of course IE doesnt *do* the drop caps anyhow). Moz formats them fine in screen view but not in print preview, (the CSS just hides the columns and widens the content part for printing). If I want it to avoid looking totally stupid I have to get rid of the drop caps. Bah!
Speaking of Mozilla (4.78) it's not even all that stable, for instance it crashes when visiting The Guardian
Aaargh! I feel like going off on a rant again.... Time to go home!
...Go zealots who, whenever chess is mentioned here, start with the "Chess sucks, Go rules!" stuff.
:-)
Do you mean like Linux zealots? Just because they're zealots doesn't mean they are wrong.
I play chess and have started learning to play Go.
It is a truly sublime game. It takes literally no more than 3 minutes to learn the rules (all five of them) and you are up and playing straight away. But it is madenningy hard to be any good at! I think getting computer Go to the same level of play as computer chess will teach people about AI. I can easilly see how a typical chess algorithm would work but wouldn't have a clue with Go, the "merit function" is just too hard!
Agreed; but were you as confident then of this outcome as you are now? [*]
Which time?
Iraq. [except that is war by proxy with "the bad guys (tm)"] The Primary Mission is to appear fierce to discourage agression.
What agression did Iraq *realisticly* *actually* project to the US?
N.B. The following is a different issue.... The American Revolution was because Great Brittain didn't think the colonies (US to be) had the will to fight let alone win.
Granted, and without the help of the French that would quite probably have been a true statement. For an amusing annotated summary see totalitarian burger. For those ardent Bushists that seem to think France owe you an historic debt, you can always turn the clock back a few hundred years.
[*] Again this is a thread in a thread but, in my opinion it was the incredible level of espionage by both sides that lead to this outcome. Most of the spies of the time were tried for treason or "died". If it wasn't for them however who would have known that the movement of XYZ to XYW wasn't a threat. In the situation where you see a perceived threat you launch a counter attack and, as the story goes, *end of story*.
In a conventional situation where the use of the military is defensive I agree with you. When two equally well armed entities are involved of course that is essentially what MAD was all about (Mutually Assured Destruction). At which point it becomes a nerve racking situation of "who blinks first".
What about the situation where the same military is used offensively?
War means that the military has failed in it's primary mission and now must undertake it's secondary mission, to fight.
What primary mission did the US and UK military fail in that caused them to undertake their "secondary mission".
That is not an example of countering a Guerilla campain its mass murder / genocide (depending on context). Here the "enemy" (now you see why I used quotes) are the people you don't want, in the case of Saddam the Kurds. There are other lower-tech examples such as Rwanda of course. They are a well defined group and can be "countered" (aka. massacred) with conventional weapons (in the case of Rwanda machettes, pistols and small arms).
A Guerilla (as defined by dictionary.com)
is an all together different beast (excuse the pun).
Countering such an enemy, particularly in the case where they are mixed with friendlies will be exceedingly difficult (most obvious for the US being Vietnam). The classic analogue is of fighting an advanced cancer, unless you are prepared to kill the patient destroying the cancer is going to be very hard.
Guerilla tactics are the stuff of choice for the descerning terrorist since they simply cannot be countered with "big ships". If they manage to win the tacit support of the "friendly" population you will loose since the "enemy" is now undefined, you just don't know who they are any more. What do you point your big guns at? You've not got to look far for a first class example of this happening in front of your eyes... Just check the main news stories.
Which will only work if the "enemy" is well defined and plays by the rules. As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use.
[cynisism] My bet is that this is not about countering the current threat (which appears to be guerilla/terrorist tactics) but about defense companies selling high tech arms and making a buck. [/cynisism]
Be patient, most havn't got over the Spanish Armada yet.....
You don't know what you're missing.
I quite agree. Also the "Superbikes" championship. One dream race would be Rossi (on a Honda) vs Shu (in a Ferrari) over the Monaco course!
Ok, only practical if you could get decent downforce on a bike... Something I was coincidentally discussing just before the England Switzerland match [which England won 3-0 in case you were wondering].....
Seriously though, without detracting from F1, if you want seriously exciting motorsport take a look at the Moto GP and Superbikes... Very tight, fast action with some seriously gutsy performers.
I never twigged that was the start of RD..... Full marks for 'popular cultural reference'...
For some reason (and this is where my point of "cultural differences" comes from) in this country (UK) tipping waiting staff [in a resturant] is normally done if they have given decent service (aka they are not useless) however the practice does not normally translate to other things (e.g. bar staff). If they have not given reasonable service a tip is either minimal or not given.
As an aside. "She" probably can't quit. US Society (my impression of it at least) seems to dictate that the employer will not pay the employee enough therefore the employee has to gain tips to suppliment their income. On the other side of the fence (the customer) their is the (justified) impression of the employee that is under paid hence the moral pressure to tip, thus developing a self reinforcing practice.
I suspect that the premise of Mr Pink in your quote:[if] She don't make enough money, she can quit. generally doesn't apply since people in such jobs are likely to be very "cashflow sensitive", so they can't quit and have to "play the game", reinforcing the situation of essentially compulsory tips.
"Catch 22".
He makes his money on those tips, not the paycheck and thus the more deliveries he makes the more $$ he makes.
This is something I never really appreciated about the cultural differences between the US and UK. Over there it is natural to tip practically everyone for everything, to such an extent that I'm sure it can be significant compared to saleries. Of course this is "unearned income" it's not taxed so I'm sure the employee, if they are good at getting tips is happy to perpetuate this (boo hiss to the taxman)..
One thing that shocked me was tipping bar staff. For me (and most fellow britons) the assumption is that staff are employed to do a job and should be paid a fair wage for what they do. Over here most bar staff would think it odd (even insulting) to be given tips (I have worked behind a bar and certainly would have that opinon).
When I visited the US however barstaff got really shirty when I didn't leave a tip, it took me a while to understand why...
On another off hand ramble... I've noticed a creeping policy of many places (such as bars) starting to add "opt out" service charge to customers... I wonder if they pay the VAT [*] on that?
Anyway, random ramble over....
[*] Value Added Tax - A levy on most things you by as an end consumer currently at 17.5%.
Unless they come from a poor institution in which case it's a very bad thing.
You make a good point, not one that I had really considered before. Perhaps another way of viewing this issue is "why do people believe what is preseted in the mainstream `scientific' media"?
If I could moderate your comment up I would.