Say, if Hitler were still alive, or the internet existed and these proposals were in effect at the time, what could he legitimately request under these proposals? It's a little hazy understanding what the implications of these proposals are; does the benefit of hindsight and a well-known example make it any clearer what rights are provided and what's feasible under these circumstances?
Slightly offtopic, but I'm wondering. According to the European data protection law, every individual has the right to get a copy of all personal data a company holds about him or her. This was in the news some time ago regarding Facebook. Any user can order a CD with all information being stored about him or her. Does this law also apply to Google? And if so, has anybody yet attempted to retrieve this information?
Yup, Facebook got so innudated with requests that they couldn't keep up. Apparently you get a CD with a PDF that typically weighs in at over 1000 pages and in excess of 100mb. Many people are shocked by the amount of data Facebook has collected which I find hard to understand since FB isn't even trying very hard to hide the extent of their surveillance.
Actual BBC story:"Trojan had been found in more than 7,000 apps downloaded from _non-Google-owned_ stores."
It's a bit weird that neither the submitter nor the threatpost author thought it strange that thousands of popular apps on Google Play would include a trojan that has been known about for over a year?
It's a bit ironic that fAndroids, who have been criticising Apple's walled garden for years, are now criticising other Android users for making full and enthusiastic use of the freedom of the Android platform to download apps from anywhere they damn well please rather than only dealing exclusively with Google owned or Google sanctioned stores. Not to say that walled gardens are a good thing but this discussion is nevertheless quite amusing since it tacitly admits that walled gardens, for all their other faults, are an efficient way to filter out malware. As long as there are other ways to download Android apps than from a walled garden of Google owned or Google sanctioned third party stores things like this will continue to happen.
[T]hank you for not claiming Apple invented the mouse and giving credit where credit is due...
Except he didn't give proper credit. While Xerox had the first commercial sale of the mouse, it was invented by Doug Engelbart.
Telefunken in Germany beat Engelbart and Xerox to it and was already selling a mouse called the "Rollkugel" before Engelbart's demo as an optional peripheral with it's computers. Engelbart did his demo on December 9, 1968, Telefunken was already selling mice by that time.
please, all of the best scientists and engineers from here are still heading to north america. want to know why? its not because life is better over there, or the culture is better, or theres more vacation days.
its the prejudice and racial discrimination. european countries, while appearing to act all modern and chic, are still too steeped in their centuries-old hatred of one-another (especially former powers acting like they still have power) and indoctrinated biases. if you are from eastern europe you are still treated like shit (especially from hungary, and the hungarians are a delightful, highly intelligent nation, political situation nonwithstanding). if you want to immigrate to europe, like i have, learning the language is a must (in my case, german) or else, because of some superiority complex by the host nation, you will be constantly shitted on no matter how good your skill is. its no wonder im considering moving back to canada, where i can actually be judged on my talent.
america has its own problems, but at the bare minimum people are more or less judged on what they can do/what they can bring to the table. its why you STILL have the best sports leagues, best research programs, best schools, best websites (all the websites that matter are american built), best technology, best software and ultimately the best ideas. european nations working together on something technology related? please.
I'm a European. I just looked out the window and, WOW!!!! this place is just cawling with racists, the disgusting critters are all over the place, climbing the walls, on the rooves of houses and they are falling out of the trees. I never noticed that before!?! Somebody should really be doing something about this... like spraying pesticides or something. Mind you they'd have to be careful not to spray the column of scientists, engineers, students, athletes and web-devlopers running for the airport waving greencards and yelling USA! USA! Mr Coward, thank you! Reading your post has been a real eye-opener.... now where did I put my passport? Do you think they'll give me a green card? I'm not a web-developer but I know a whole bunch of stone-age languages like C and C++.
That was an ENGLISH plane. But yeah, they tried to crash an A380 by means of engine explosion.
...and the aircraft survived. That fact would actually motivate me to get on an A380 rather than the reverse. The advantage of really big aircraft is that they can soak up more damage than their little brothers.
The factor that you ignore is that these countries with draconian gun controls had fewer per capita gun murders than the US when their people were armed.
LK
Care to back that up with some data or did you just pull that assertion out of thin air?
While frustrating for him, from the outside looking in, it's kinda funny. No matter what he does to assert his innocence, it will appear as lies to the owner of the missing phone...
It's really funny until some nutter with a gun, a short temper and a generous interpretation of stand-your-ground rights comes looking for his stolen phone.
A good guy with a gun. Anything else is handwaving bullshit.
Where's the school shooting going to happen? At the school with the "Gun Free Zone" sign, or at the school with the "Protected by Armed Guards" sign?
That depends on whether the school is in a country where only responsible citizens get to own guns or a place where loonies, criminals and terrorists can buy firearms by the crate at gun shows for cash money with no questions asked. Normally the only place where you have to worry about armed thugs going into a school and massacring the kids is in a war-zone like Bosnia where the ethnic or religions factions involved have a bitter and deep rooted hatred for each other.
Look, I pay money for a hotel room-- that fee goes to an expected level of security. I pay nothing for Instagram's services-- no expectation of security, or of any service at all. Is instagram an online storage business? No. Therefore, the pictures you upload are not there for you to store-- they're for Instagram to use however they want... your pictures are free, as in beer.
Point of fact, since no one is paying you for your pictures, they are literally worth nothing.
Link to an XKCD in case you're still confused as to what storage, business, and free is.
You can split hairs about his analogy all you want but he still has a point. Your pictures are only free (as in beer) for Instagram to flog to their corporate buddies as long as people are willing to put up with it. Shockingly, for whatever bunch of arrogant and inexperienced young Turks at Facebook who came up with the dumb idea of hijacking user's images, it seems that Instagram users are in fact not willing to put up with it and are fleeing the service in hoards.... well DUH! the joke's on Instagram/Facebook. Instagram is it's users, without the users and their images Instagram is worthless (as in used paper-towel that somebody has blown their nose with). Because somebody failed to realise this a $1 billion investment is circling the drain. It is always fascinating to watch as a real world example of truly epic ineptitude unfolds.
mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop
Here's a Free Clue: criminals don't obey the law. Even if you did somehow, magically, stop criminals or 'nutters' from buying guns legitimately, they'd just buy them illegitimately- from other criminals or smugglers who get them into the country (like drugs) from Mexico. Or they'd lay in wait for a cop, hit him upside the head with a baseball bat, and take his gun.
Here's a free clue: It is a lot harder for a nutter to get a gun in Europe than it is in the USA. I live here and I would not begin to know how to get a gun without having a license. The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is that I could travel to... say... the Ukraine buy a gun there and smuggle it over two national borders into the Shengen zone but even if I did get in my car and travel to the Ukraine I would not know where to go. I do, however, have a very good idea of how to get a gun without having a license in the USA. Western Europe borders several countries sitting on huge cold war arsenals that leak guns. European criminals who want to get a gun can get it but our gun violence problem is still smaller than that in the USA. Over here the only way to get a gun without a license is through illegal sources and monitoring them is way easier than keeping track of thousands of unregulated gun shows and other forums where guns change hands without any oversight or background checks. This guy went to a gun show in Virginia and bought 10 guns in an hour without any background checks and without anybody even asking any questions: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7297745 I would love to see you pull this off in Britain, Germany or France, walk into a gun show and walk out with a bunch of pistols and Colt Carbines without even having a firearms license or being asked for it.
the problem you and everyone else seems to be misled on is that the idea that removing guns will somehow stop violence. The anti-gun crowd ONLY want to quote statistics on gun violence and not overall violent crimes. The per-capita statistics on overall violence is still very high when you don't pick out some meaningless statistic as the instrument used to commit the crime. By the same logic I could say that we should ban the import of British cars in the USA because the number of drunk driving incidents involving British cars in England are astronomically high; and here, where there are fewer British cars, there are almost no drunk driving incidents where those cars are involved. Its a useless statistic that does nothing to address the real problem associated with drunk driving.
The truth is, getting rid of the gun does nothing to stop someone from committing a violent crime no more than banning straws keeps you from drinking your soda. When Hamas blows up a city bus in Tel-Aviv they manage to kill 20 people without so much as firing a single bullet. They make their bombs out of grocery store items including table sugar. There is nothing you can do to stop a determined crazy person hell-bent on mass homicide. They will research how to make bombs or whatever alternative solution they choose to carry out their plan. In China, back in October, a person went into a school and killed 6 or 7 kids with an Axe. Its not like 6yr olds can put up such a fight that making due with some other weapon wouldn't do enough carnage. The same psycho could rush in and hack the teacher to death first, before he/she had any warning, leaving you with a classroom of 20 or so terrified children unable to defend themselves. In theory, a sick individual could lock the door and kill them slowly, one at a time, hacking them to pieces before the cops could arrive and break down the door.
I am not trying to argue that all guns should be melted down and turned into can openers. I'm just trying to say that ensuring that guns end up in the hands of responsible, well trained, mentally stable citizens would contribute hugely to reducing gun violence. Compared to many other developed countries the USA has a major gun violence problem. That is hard to argue with. And I don't accept the idea that because there are also axe murders and bus bombings we should do nothing about gun violence. Axe murders are way less common that shooting rampages, you can do something to prevent them and you can also do something about bus bombings just like you can do something to reduce gun violence.
I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
The alternative is mandating everyone in a school be completely unarmed, and we have horrific school shootings where nobody is able to stop them. I want there to be no violence of any kind. But since that isn't going to happen, let's pick from one of the realistic alternatives. Unarmed and helpless schools, or trusted teachers with pistols. If there is another realistic alternative, i'm all ears.
Arming teachers in primary schools is still treating a symptom not curing the root cause and the root cause is the complete failure of the USA as a nation to ensure that only responsible, mentally stable, well trained and law abiding citizens get to own guns.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny.
And yet America has a love and fascination with firearms unequaled in the developed world. Do you have an alternative explanation?
I am not going to argue with that, you are right, this is why Americans love guns. This is also why gun violence in the USA will remain a problem until the US people change their gun culture, not abandon it, just modify it a bit. I was just tying to make the case that two fights against tyranny gave birth to two different gun cultures and one of them has a significantly lower rate of gun violence associated with it. Maybe that tells us something about how to reduce gun violence? I don't want to take your guns away from you, I have nothing against gun ownership and I own two guns myself. I just feel a lot better in a place where every gun owner has at least a portion your kind of qualifications, where a gun owner gets background checked, then trained properly and finally has a heavy dose of gun ethics hammered into his head by somebody who knows his stuff. That's the process I went through and it did me no harm, It would also be a huge step towards reducing gun violence but as I said it's a cultural change and it takes lots of time.
...and gasoline, gunpowder, plans for explosives, and many other cheap and legal means to kill people. Solving gun violence doesn't solve violence.
I agree in general that more stringent rules for purchasing guns and being issued concealed carry permits would not be a bad thing. I don't think the required changes are likely to be made, but perhaps that is another argument. Looking at myself, not only do I have military training (as do millions of Americans), but I have had 4 concealed carry permits issued in 2 different states which means 4 background checks. I have a security clearance, and have had 3 intense background checks done, every 5 years. I have undergone a psychological test in order to work in a particularly sensitive unit. I have undergone a polygraph, during which they asked me questions to determine if I was a spy, a saboteur, and or a terrorist. I passed. I think I can be trusted to carry a gun at this point, and even carry one into a school. (I also think I can be trusted to carry a knife on a plane since the govt is convinced I am not a terrorist, but that is yet another argument). There are millions of Americans who have military or law enforcement training, security clearances, and clean backgrounds. I have heard some say, here and elsewhere, that only police should be able to buy guns, and I think that there are plenty of people like me that are in effect trustable, and at least these people should be able to have guns. I think that teachers that meet similar criteria (there are plenty of former military teachers) should be able to carry a concealed pistol to school. Allowing trusted citizens to carry pistols into schools, sporting events, etc (as well as allowing them to carry non-firearm weapons on planes) would help curb some of these types of rampage shootings where someone is able to kill multiple unarmed people.
Ok, firstly guns are much more convenient and easy way of killing than any of the methods you mentioned. Building a bomb takes time and skill, stabbing somebody means getting close and it's risky because your victim might be able to defeat you in close combat. Guns are easy to draw in the heat of the moment and the odds of your victim being armed with a concealed gun are relatively slim so guns are way higher on my priority list than bomb components, anarchist handbooks, gasoline or even knives. Regarding your statement that teachers should be armed with guns... say that out loud and listen to yourself say it. I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
On a separate note, I think America's very recent history of having a revolution and a dangerous frontier has made the personal firearm a part of our culture. So while much of Europe enjoys lower murder rates and fewer guns, our culture is just different and solutions that worked for Europe may not work for the US.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny. Your history of revolution dates back to the 18th century, and I am not quite sure why people in New York or LA today would need similarly easy access to guns as people did during the 19th century on the American frontier. Also keep in mind that Europe was devastated within living memory by WWI, I know people who fought the Nazis and people who fought for them. My (German) grandparents witnessed firestorms that killed tens of thousands of people in hours, room to room combat in the house they lived in, my grandmother's neighbor was dragged out of her apartment and summarily executed by the SD in 1945 after some Quisling fingered her for listening to British radio broadcasts. After WWI and WWII Europe was awash with millions of military grade small arms and yet we normalized the situ
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
The problem, as ever, is that people who have none of those qualities that you have and who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop or any other place where you can legally buy guns and start making it mandatory for gun owners to undergo serious training before getting to own a gun. Smart people also know that even if we do this will take a loooooong time for things to change. Stuffing guns full of sensors that deactivate them in the vicinity of schools won't help either since there are way to many legacy weapons with no such sensors and safety devices in circulation already. The USA has already created a situation where there are so many firearms in circulation and they are so easy to obtain in ways the police is powerless to monitor that no amount of legislating, policing, training or educational efforts by gun clubs/owners-associations will ever be really effective at keeping guns out of the hands of nutters and criminals unless, as I stated before, these measures are given a take a long time to take effect (not years, decades). Gun control works in Europe because it has been in place for many, many decades and the bar to owning a gun is so high you have to quite motivated to complete the process of getting a weapons license... especially one for a pistol. The byproduct of the European approach is that the vast majority of gun owners are people like you, well trained, responsible, mentally stable and not likely to treat a gun frivolously.
The church killed merely thousands? I've heard that claim before. It doesn't seem substantial to me. Do those low numbers include young women all through the first two millenia who were victimized by circumstances like the Salem witch hangings? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live among you."
I strongly suspect that more than mere thousands were put to death in the Church's name. The native populations in North America didn't fare to well, at the church's hands. Smallpox blankets sent to reservations, for instance. Good "Christian" men taking advantage of the "savages" in thousands of different ways, like selling grain alcohol to the "ignorant savages".
But, go ahead, whitewash the numbers. The winners do get to write history, from what I'm told.
Witch hunts did not kill all that many people. Try the crusades, the capture of Jerusalem alone came with a death-toll of 70,000 (according to Wikipeida, other estmates are around 40.000) and don't forget crusades into Moorish Spain, crusades into Ottoman territory in eastern Europe, the crusades in the Baltic region and campaigns against 'heretical' christians like the one that resulted in the slaughter of the Albigensians. Then take the various wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries into your calculations. Not that Christians are particularly unique in this regard. The moslem conquests weren't exactly a peaceful civilising mission to convert the rest of humanity to Islam. They were just as bloody as the crusades.
Hello God (if I may call you that). Since you're here we just have a few questions:
1. Do you have a Beowulf cluster of Simulatron 6000s and if so what is it like? I am trying to imagine it and I can't.
1a) Yes. 1b) Parallel universes. 1c) I didn't code you with the intelligence to do that. Would you like an upgrade?
2. What is the ??? which comes right before "Profit"? Alternately, can you just give each of us a Billion dollars?
2a) I could tell you that but it would take all the fun out of capitalism. 2b) Sorry, misery through hard work makes for a more fun simulation (fun for me that is).
3. Does Natalie Portman ever get stoned in the presence of hot grits? Also, thank you for creating Natalie Portman and hot grits.
Glad you like Natalie, she's one of my better creations although she was actually created as a way to torture nerds, an irresistible yet unobtainable objective.
4. You mispelled "cereator". Don't you have a spellchecker, dumbass?
Your truly and quite literally it seems, SlashDot
I mistyped... and if you don't adopt a more polite tone I will refactor you as a Pee-Wee Herman like character with greasy hair, a major halitosis problem and a 1.5 inch erection.
There cannot be any proof, it is obviously impossible to distinguish between "simulated" and "real" reality
Not that obvious to me. You're assuming the simulators have made a perfect simulation, which they may not have done. Or they could leave deliberate clues, if they so wished, which would help us distinguish simulation and reality. Of course, on a broader philisophical point, you could argue there would still be no difference - reality could be a simulation and still be real.
Hi there, You can stop philosophizing, I just deleted that guy from the simulation, he was getting annoying. Incidentally, if you subscribe to the specific flavor of mass delusion you guys call 'Christianity' and are wondering when the rapture will happen, it'll come the day I finally slip up while combining wild-cards and the 'rm' command on my Simulatron 6000 (TM).
Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
What is a fair share? A Nissan Micra does less damage to the road surface than a Ford King Ranch pickup because the Micra is way lighter so charging all drivers the same flat tax per mile driven is would for example be kind of unfair since the King Ranch tears up the road surface more. If you want to even more fair you can also to take the weight of the vehicle and, it's gas consumption/carbon-footprint per driven mile into account when levying taxes and the Micra wins hands down on all counts. Since this is not so much about being fair or green and rather more about preserving the revenue levels perviously generated by taxing gas guzzling SUVs I can see why people are unhappy. It seems to me that a milage tax wold be unfair unless you at least take differences in vehicle weight into account.
It's not a monopoly because the source code is public and available for anyone to use.
If Microsoft wants the full power of Android, they are free to create their own Android phone, provided they comply to the licensing agreement.
So you are saying that Linux cannot not be a monopoly/monoculture because everybody can fork Android? Let's for a moment assume that Microsoft implodes, Windows disappears from the market. Let's furthermore assume that the desktop OS marketshare looks like this afterwards: OS X 5%, the sundry Linux distros we already have continue to hover between 1 and 2%, Google Android Desktop Edition (TM) gobbles up the remaining 93-4% of the desktop OS market. That would be a "monopoly based on Linux" and the underdogs in that monopoly would be OS X and the remaining Linux distros. No matter how these underdogs tried to out-innovative Google they could never get a foothold on the desktop OS market, since (in this hypothetical world) Google would have inherited Microsoft's corporate-dollar based ability to dominate the desktop OS market and keep device manufacturers on a leash. Google would allow competitors to become just large enough to enable Google to point at them every time somebody says "competition law" but never large enough to threaten Android. Open source solutions can dominate a market and cause innovative stagnation just like anything else
that is some twisted perspective considering 6 of the top 10 are windows lol.
I think he meant that this would be news if there were more Chrome-books on that list than Apple Macs since Apple is a smaller competitor to beat when it comes to laptop sales than the 800 pound gorilla that is Windows Laptops. Chrome-books displacing Windows laptops on the top 10 most sold list would be the next hurdle. Personally, I'll be impressed one of these Chrome-books managed to stays on that list on for any length of time, not that I'm especially impressed by that list, the one for music players still has third place on the Amazon list and it is discontinued.
Mustang does that better as well. German cars are for cunts.
So Steve McQueen was a cunt? You should go tell his son Chad... I'm sure he will react well, he's a Porsche owner like his dad and therefore (according to you) a cunt.
Slashdot Mirror
Since these companies are based in Ireland for tax purposes, that might indeed end up happening...
On the other hand, that could also force said companies' tax dollars back into the US which wouldn't hurt at this point...
Fat lot of good that would do, they hardly pay any taxes at all...
Say, if Hitler were still alive, or the internet existed and these proposals were in effect at the time, what could he legitimately request under these proposals? It's a little hazy understanding what the implications of these proposals are; does the benefit of hindsight and a well-known example make it any clearer what rights are provided and what's feasible under these circumstances?
Godwin...
Slightly offtopic, but I'm wondering. According to the European data protection law, every individual has the right to get a copy of all personal data a company holds about him or her. This was in the news some time ago regarding Facebook. Any user can order a CD with all information being stored about him or her. Does this law also apply to Google? And if so, has anybody yet attempted to retrieve this information?
Yup, Facebook got so innudated with requests that they couldn't keep up. Apparently you get a CD with a PDF that typically weighs in at over 1000 pages and in excess of 100mb. Many people are shocked by the amount of data Facebook has collected which I find hard to understand since FB isn't even trying very hard to hide the extent of their surveillance.
Actual BBC story:"Trojan had been found in more than 7,000 apps downloaded from _non-Google-owned_ stores."
It's a bit weird that neither the submitter nor the threatpost author thought it strange that thousands of popular apps on Google Play would include a trojan that has been known about for over a year?
It's a bit ironic that fAndroids, who have been criticising Apple's walled garden for years, are now criticising other Android users for making full and enthusiastic use of the freedom of the Android platform to download apps from anywhere they damn well please rather than only dealing exclusively with Google owned or Google sanctioned stores. Not to say that walled gardens are a good thing but this discussion is nevertheless quite amusing since it tacitly admits that walled gardens, for all their other faults, are an efficient way to filter out malware. As long as there are other ways to download Android apps than from a walled garden of Google owned or Google sanctioned third party stores things like this will continue to happen.
Except he didn't give proper credit. While Xerox had the first commercial sale of the mouse, it was invented by
Doug Engelbart.
Telefunken in Germany beat Engelbart and Xerox to it and was already selling a mouse called the "Rollkugel" before Engelbart's demo as an optional peripheral with it's computers. Engelbart did his demo on December 9, 1968, Telefunken was already selling mice by that time.
please, all of the best scientists and engineers from here are still heading to north america. want to know why? its not because life is better over there, or the culture is better, or theres more vacation days.
its the prejudice and racial discrimination. european countries, while appearing to act all modern and chic, are still too steeped in their centuries-old hatred of one-another (especially former powers acting like they still have power) and indoctrinated biases. if you are from eastern europe you are still treated like shit (especially from hungary, and the hungarians are a delightful, highly intelligent nation, political situation nonwithstanding). if you want to immigrate to europe, like i have, learning the language is a must (in my case, german) or else, because of some superiority complex by the host nation, you will be constantly shitted on no matter how good your skill is. its no wonder im considering moving back to canada, where i can actually be judged on my talent.
america has its own problems, but at the bare minimum people are more or less judged on what they can do/what they can bring to the table. its why you STILL have the best sports leagues, best research programs, best schools, best websites (all the websites that matter are american built), best technology, best software and ultimately the best ideas. european nations working together on something technology related? please.
I'm a European. I just looked out the window and, WOW!!!! this place is just cawling with racists, the disgusting critters are all over the place, climbing the walls, on the rooves of houses and they are falling out of the trees. I never noticed that before!?! Somebody should really be doing something about this... like spraying pesticides or something. Mind you they'd have to be careful not to spray the column of scientists, engineers, students, athletes and web-devlopers running for the airport waving greencards and yelling USA! USA! Mr Coward, thank you! Reading your post has been a real eye-opener.... now where did I put my passport? Do you think they'll give me a green card? I'm not a web-developer but I know a whole bunch of stone-age languages like C and C++.
That was an ENGLISH plane. But yeah, they tried to crash an A380 by means of engine explosion.
...and the aircraft survived. That fact would actually motivate me to get on an A380 rather than the reverse. The advantage of really big aircraft is that they can soak up more damage than their little brothers.
The damage, in case anybody is interested:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/files/2011/05/qantasa380engine.jpg
The factor that you ignore is that these countries with draconian gun controls had fewer per capita gun murders than the US when their people were armed.
LK
Care to back that up with some data or did you just pull that assertion out of thin air?
While frustrating for him, from the outside looking in, it's kinda funny. No matter what he does to assert his innocence, it will appear as lies to the owner of the missing phone...
It's really funny until some nutter with a gun, a short temper and a generous interpretation of stand-your-ground rights comes looking for his stolen phone.
You know how you stop a bad guy with a gun?
A good guy with a gun. Anything else is handwaving bullshit.
Where's the school shooting going to happen? At the school with the "Gun Free Zone" sign, or at the school with the "Protected by Armed Guards" sign?
That depends on whether the school is in a country where only responsible citizens get to own guns or a place where loonies, criminals and terrorists can buy firearms by the crate at gun shows for cash money with no questions asked. Normally the only place where you have to worry about armed thugs going into a school and massacring the kids is in a war-zone like Bosnia where the ethnic or religions factions involved have a bitter and deep rooted hatred for each other.
But you need to be slow and subtle to boil a frog.
And give the frog a lobotomy first.
Isn't that what Fox News is for?
What nitwit modded you insightful?
Look, I pay money for a hotel room-- that fee goes to an expected level of security. I pay nothing for Instagram's services-- no expectation of security, or of any service at all. Is instagram an online storage business? No. Therefore, the pictures you upload are not there for you to store-- they're for Instagram to use however they want... your pictures are free, as in beer.
Point of fact, since no one is paying you for your pictures, they are literally worth nothing.
Link to an XKCD in case you're still confused as to what storage, business, and free is.
You can split hairs about his analogy all you want but he still has a point. Your pictures are only free (as in beer) for Instagram to flog to their corporate buddies as long as people are willing to put up with it. Shockingly, for whatever bunch of arrogant and inexperienced young Turks at Facebook who came up with the dumb idea of hijacking user's images, it seems that Instagram users are in fact not willing to put up with it and are fleeing the service in hoards.... well DUH! the joke's on Instagram/Facebook. Instagram is it's users, without the users and their images Instagram is worthless (as in used paper-towel that somebody has blown their nose with). Because somebody failed to realise this a $1 billion investment is circling the drain. It is always fascinating to watch as a real world example of truly epic ineptitude unfolds.
They'll probably be great when all those are ironed out.
Or in other words; wait for the first service pack before flying...
...and don't ever book a flight on Patch Tuesday.
mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop
Here's a Free Clue: criminals don't obey the law. Even if you did somehow, magically, stop criminals or 'nutters' from buying guns legitimately, they'd just buy them illegitimately- from other criminals or smugglers who get them into the country (like drugs) from Mexico. Or they'd lay in wait for a cop, hit him upside the head with a baseball bat, and take his gun.
Here's a free clue: It is a lot harder for a nutter to get a gun in Europe than it is in the USA. I live here and I would not begin to know how to get a gun without having a license. The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is that I could travel to... say... the Ukraine buy a gun there and smuggle it over two national borders into the Shengen zone but even if I did get in my car and travel to the Ukraine I would not know where to go. I do, however, have a very good idea of how to get a gun without having a license in the USA. Western Europe borders several countries sitting on huge cold war arsenals that leak guns. European criminals who want to get a gun can get it but our gun violence problem is still smaller than that in the USA. Over here the only way to get a gun without a license is through illegal sources and monitoring them is way easier than keeping track of thousands of unregulated gun shows and other forums where guns change hands without any oversight or background checks. This guy went to a gun show in Virginia and bought 10 guns in an hour without any background checks and without anybody even asking any questions:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7297745
I would love to see you pull this off in Britain, Germany or France, walk into a gun show and walk out with a bunch of pistols and Colt Carbines without even having a firearms license or being asked for it.
the problem you and everyone else seems to be misled on is that the idea that removing guns will somehow stop violence. The anti-gun crowd ONLY want to quote statistics on gun violence and not overall violent crimes. The per-capita statistics on overall violence is still very high when you don't pick out some meaningless statistic as the instrument used to commit the crime. By the same logic I could say that we should ban the import of British cars in the USA because the number of drunk driving incidents involving British cars in England are astronomically high; and here, where there are fewer British cars, there are almost no drunk driving incidents where those cars are involved. Its a useless statistic that does nothing to address the real problem associated with drunk driving.
The truth is, getting rid of the gun does nothing to stop someone from committing a violent crime no more than banning straws keeps you from drinking your soda. When Hamas blows up a city bus in Tel-Aviv they manage to kill 20 people without so much as firing a single bullet. They make their bombs out of grocery store items including table sugar. There is nothing you can do to stop a determined crazy person hell-bent on mass homicide. They will research how to make bombs or whatever alternative solution they choose to carry out their plan. In China, back in October, a person went into a school and killed 6 or 7 kids with an Axe. Its not like 6yr olds can put up such a fight that making due with some other weapon wouldn't do enough carnage. The same psycho could rush in and hack the teacher to death first, before he/she had any warning, leaving you with a classroom of 20 or so terrified children unable to defend themselves. In theory, a sick individual could lock the door and kill them slowly, one at a time, hacking them to pieces before the cops could arrive and break down the door.
I am not trying to argue that all guns should be melted down and turned into can openers. I'm just trying to say that ensuring that guns end up in the hands of responsible, well trained, mentally stable citizens would contribute hugely to reducing gun violence. Compared to many other developed countries the USA has a major gun violence problem. That is hard to argue with. And I don't accept the idea that because there are also axe murders and bus bombings we should do nothing about gun violence. Axe murders are way less common that shooting rampages, you can do something to prevent them and you can also do something about bus bombings just like you can do something to reduce gun violence.
I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
The alternative is mandating everyone in a school be completely unarmed, and we have horrific school shootings where nobody is able to stop them. I want there to be no violence of any kind. But since that isn't going to happen, let's pick from one of the realistic alternatives. Unarmed and helpless schools, or trusted teachers with pistols. If there is another realistic alternative, i'm all ears.
Arming teachers in primary schools is still treating a symptom not curing the root cause and the root cause is the complete failure of the USA as a nation to ensure that only responsible, mentally stable, well trained and law abiding citizens get to own guns.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny.
And yet America has a love and fascination with firearms unequaled in the developed world. Do you have an alternative explanation?
I am not going to argue with that, you are right, this is why Americans love guns. This is also why gun violence in the USA will remain a problem until the US people change their gun culture, not abandon it, just modify it a bit. I was just tying to make the case that two fights against tyranny gave birth to two different gun cultures and one of them has a significantly lower rate of gun violence associated with it. Maybe that tells us something about how to reduce gun violence? I don't want to take your guns away from you, I have nothing against gun ownership and I own two guns myself. I just feel a lot better in a place where every gun owner has at least a portion your kind of qualifications, where a gun owner gets background checked, then trained properly and finally has a heavy dose of gun ethics hammered into his head by somebody who knows his stuff. That's the process I went through and it did me no harm, It would also be a huge step towards reducing gun violence but as I said it's a cultural change and it takes lots of time.
...and gasoline, gunpowder, plans for explosives, and many other cheap and legal means to kill people. Solving gun violence doesn't solve violence.
I agree in general that more stringent rules for purchasing guns and being issued concealed carry permits would not be a bad thing. I don't think the required changes are likely to be made, but perhaps that is another argument. Looking at myself, not only do I have military training (as do millions of Americans), but I have had 4 concealed carry permits issued in 2 different states which means 4 background checks. I have a security clearance, and have had 3 intense background checks done, every 5 years. I have undergone a psychological test in order to work in a particularly sensitive unit. I have undergone a polygraph, during which they asked me questions to determine if I was a spy, a saboteur, and or a terrorist. I passed. I think I can be trusted to carry a gun at this point, and even carry one into a school. (I also think I can be trusted to carry a knife on a plane since the govt is convinced I am not a terrorist, but that is yet another argument). There are millions of Americans who have military or law enforcement training, security clearances, and clean backgrounds. I have heard some say, here and elsewhere, that only police should be able to buy guns, and I think that there are plenty of people like me that are in effect trustable, and at least these people should be able to have guns. I think that teachers that meet similar criteria (there are plenty of former military teachers) should be able to carry a concealed pistol to school. Allowing trusted citizens to carry pistols into schools, sporting events, etc (as well as allowing them to carry non-firearm weapons on planes) would help curb some of these types of rampage shootings where someone is able to kill multiple unarmed people.
Ok, firstly guns are much more convenient and easy way of killing than any of the methods you mentioned. Building a bomb takes time and skill, stabbing somebody means getting close and it's risky because your victim might be able to defeat you in close combat. Guns are easy to draw in the heat of the moment and the odds of your victim being armed with a concealed gun are relatively slim so guns are way higher on my priority list than bomb components, anarchist handbooks, gasoline or even knives. Regarding your statement that teachers should be armed with guns... say that out loud and listen to yourself say it. I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
On a separate note, I think America's very recent history of having a revolution and a dangerous frontier has made the personal firearm a part of our culture. So while much of Europe enjoys lower murder rates and fewer guns, our culture is just different and solutions that worked for Europe may not work for the US.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny. Your history of revolution dates back to the 18th century, and I am not quite sure why people in New York or LA today would need similarly easy access to guns as people did during the 19th century on the American frontier. Also keep in mind that Europe was devastated within living memory by WWI, I know people who fought the Nazis and people who fought for them. My (German) grandparents witnessed firestorms that killed tens of thousands of people in hours, room to room combat in the house they lived in, my grandmother's neighbor was dragged out of her apartment and summarily executed by the SD in 1945 after some Quisling fingered her for listening to British radio broadcasts. After WWI and WWII Europe was awash with millions of military grade small arms and yet we normalized the situ
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
The problem, as ever, is that people who have none of those qualities that you have and who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop or any other place where you can legally buy guns and start making it mandatory for gun owners to undergo serious training before getting to own a gun. Smart people also know that even if we do this will take a loooooong time for things to change. Stuffing guns full of sensors that deactivate them in the vicinity of schools won't help either since there are way to many legacy weapons with no such sensors and safety devices in circulation already. The USA has already created a situation where there are so many firearms in circulation and they are so easy to obtain in ways the police is powerless to monitor that no amount of legislating, policing, training or educational efforts by gun clubs/owners-associations will ever be really effective at keeping guns out of the hands of nutters and criminals unless, as I stated before, these measures are given a take a long time to take effect (not years, decades). Gun control works in Europe because it has been in place for many, many decades and the bar to owning a gun is so high you have to quite motivated to complete the process of getting a weapons license... especially one for a pistol. The byproduct of the European approach is that the vast majority of gun owners are people like you, well trained, responsible, mentally stable and not likely to treat a gun frivolously.
The church killed merely thousands? I've heard that claim before. It doesn't seem substantial to me. Do those low numbers include young women all through the first two millenia who were victimized by circumstances like the Salem witch hangings? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live among you."
I strongly suspect that more than mere thousands were put to death in the Church's name. The native populations in North America didn't fare to well, at the church's hands. Smallpox blankets sent to reservations, for instance. Good "Christian" men taking advantage of the "savages" in thousands of different ways, like selling grain alcohol to the "ignorant savages".
But, go ahead, whitewash the numbers. The winners do get to write history, from what I'm told.
Witch hunts did not kill all that many people. Try the crusades, the capture of Jerusalem alone came with a death-toll of 70,000 (according to Wikipeida, other estmates are around 40.000) and don't forget crusades into Moorish Spain, crusades into Ottoman territory in eastern Europe, the crusades in the Baltic region and campaigns against 'heretical' christians like the one that resulted in the slaughter of the Albigensians. Then take the various wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries into your calculations. Not that Christians are particularly unique in this regard. The moslem conquests weren't exactly a peaceful civilising mission to convert the rest of humanity to Islam. They were just as bloody as the crusades.
Hello God (if I may call you that). Since you're here we just have a few questions:
1. Do you have a Beowulf cluster of Simulatron 6000s and if so what is it like? I am trying to imagine it and I can't.
1a) Yes.
1b) Parallel universes.
1c) I didn't code you with the intelligence to do that. Would you like an upgrade?
2. What is the ??? which comes right before "Profit"? Alternately, can you just give each of us a Billion dollars?
2a) I could tell you that but it would take all the fun out of capitalism.
2b) Sorry, misery through hard work makes for a more fun simulation (fun for me that is).
3. Does Natalie Portman ever get stoned in the presence of hot grits? Also, thank you for creating Natalie Portman and hot grits.
Glad you like Natalie, she's one of my better creations although she was actually created as a way to torture nerds, an irresistible yet unobtainable objective.
4. You mispelled "cereator". Don't you have a spellchecker, dumbass?
Your truly and quite literally it seems,
SlashDot
I mistyped... and if you don't adopt a more polite tone I will refactor you as a Pee-Wee Herman like character with greasy hair, a major halitosis problem and a 1.5 inch erection.
Sincerely,
Your lord and creator.
P.S. Shouldn't that be ' Yours truly...' ???
There cannot be any proof, it is obviously impossible to distinguish between "simulated" and "real" reality
Not that obvious to me. You're assuming the simulators have made a perfect simulation, which they may not have done. Or they could leave deliberate clues, if they so wished, which would help us distinguish simulation and reality. Of course, on a broader philisophical point, you could argue there would still be no difference - reality could be a simulation and still be real.
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429561/the-measurement-that-would-reveal-the-universe-as-a-computer-simulation/
Hi there,
You can stop philosophizing, I just deleted that guy from the simulation, he was getting annoying. Incidentally, if you subscribe to the specific flavor of mass delusion you guys call 'Christianity' and are wondering when the rapture will happen, it'll come the day I finally slip up while combining wild-cards and the 'rm' command on my Simulatron 6000 (TM).
Sincerely,
Your lord and cereator.
Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
What is a fair share? A Nissan Micra does less damage to the road surface than a Ford King Ranch pickup because the Micra is way lighter so charging all drivers the same flat tax per mile driven is would for example be kind of unfair since the King Ranch tears up the road surface more. If you want to even more fair you can also to take the weight of the vehicle and, it's gas consumption/carbon-footprint per driven mile into account when levying taxes and the Micra wins hands down on all counts. Since this is not so much about being fair or green and rather more about preserving the revenue levels perviously generated by taxing gas guzzling SUVs I can see why people are unhappy. It seems to me that a milage tax wold be unfair unless you at least take differences in vehicle weight into account.
a monopoly based on Linux is still a monopoly.
It's not a monopoly because the source code is public and available for anyone to use.
If Microsoft wants the full power of Android, they are free to create their own Android phone, provided they comply to the licensing agreement.
So you are saying that Linux cannot not be a monopoly/monoculture because everybody can fork Android? Let's for a moment assume that Microsoft implodes, Windows disappears from the market. Let's furthermore assume that the desktop OS marketshare looks like this afterwards: OS X 5%, the sundry Linux distros we already have continue to hover between 1 and 2%, Google Android Desktop Edition (TM) gobbles up the remaining 93-4% of the desktop OS market. That would be a "monopoly based on Linux" and the underdogs in that monopoly would be OS X and the remaining Linux distros. No matter how these underdogs tried to out-innovative Google they could never get a foothold on the desktop OS market, since (in this hypothetical world) Google would have inherited Microsoft's corporate-dollar based ability to dominate the desktop OS market and keep device manufacturers on a leash. Google would allow competitors to become just large enough to enable Google to point at them every time somebody says "competition law" but never large enough to threaten Android. Open source solutions can dominate a market and cause innovative stagnation just like anything else
that is some twisted perspective considering 6 of the top 10 are windows lol.
I think he meant that this would be news if there were more Chrome-books on that list than Apple Macs since Apple is a smaller competitor to beat when it comes to laptop sales than the 800 pound gorilla that is Windows Laptops. Chrome-books displacing Windows laptops on the top 10 most sold list would be the next hurdle. Personally, I'll be impressed one of these Chrome-books managed to stays on that list on for any length of time, not that I'm especially impressed by that list, the one for music players still has third place on the Amazon list and it is discontinued.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Hard-Drive-Based/zgbs/electronics/15752041
Mustang does that better as well. German cars are for cunts.
So Steve McQueen was a cunt? You should go tell his son Chad... I'm sure he will react well, he's a Porsche owner like his dad and therefore (according to you) a cunt.