Heh, thanks for *that* data point. I figured something like that -- it's also a nice, one-power-supply package. The fellow I mentioned above will be running gigantic calculations in Mathematica on it.
Now, my preference is a) to run some variety of Free-with-a-big-F operating system (Linux, *BSD) and b) to have hardware to which I have no emotional / aesthetic commitment (I like plain rectangular boxes in grey, black, and if I'm feeling especially festive, putty), but Apple has for years shown the ability to create designs -- even colorful ones -- that trigger my lust, from the toaster Macs on. (There've been a few stinkers, but the Cupertino hit rate is amazing.)
(My attempt to reconcile these things, an iBook running Ubuntu, is a decent thing -- but a 500MHz G3 just seems a bit laggy these days;))
I ate dinner last night with a friend, just starting as a professor at Penn; for $5,400 (or was it $5,600?) he just ordered an 8-core, 16GB MacPro, including a 30" monitor. He considered dual 30" monitors, but then thought, "Eh, why go crazy?" Yes, that's twice the price of the system under discussion here, but it's a pretty powerful machine for the price. Can anyone comment on what the machine here could do better than a beefy MacPro?
(I am not discounting the price difference!:) Obviously, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking real money...)
Logitech MarbleMouse. My current one is 6 or 7 years old (fewer buttons than the current ones, or the ones current when last I looked a few years ago). I'm sure there is some off-brand trackball that sells for less, but of the commonly available ones I've ever seen, this low-end logitech is by far the cheapest; I've seen them on sale for just under $20.
The ball is a reasonable size, and maintains spin better than many trackballs (in fact, better than any of the consumer-grade trackballs I've tried). I use mice sometimes -- they've gotten better, over the years -- but that's by far my favorite pointer manipulator. I only wish it were wireless USB, so the stupid cord didn't get caught on things, but that's true of anything with a cord at all.
If I could change anything else, it would be to provide an even heavier ball, so a flick of the fingers result in a pointer that keeps moving until the ball is held down with purpose. A thin shell of depleted uranium, perhaps?
I have (well, still possess, but it's now a useless broken piece of plastic not worthy even as a paperweight -- too light) a Sansa MP3 player, which I bought because it uses a AAA battery -- sparingly -- and had an FM tuner. It developed a problem, just out of warranty (make no mistake -- it's not like I actually had the receipt handy or would have gone through the hassle of a replacement under warranty, but this did happen just after the warranty expired), which is apparently well known, a certain pattern of errors which is unfixable and frequently recurs even on the replacements that Sansa sends out.
And it didn't play oggs, so I ended up annoyed but resigned to keep MP3 versions of most of my files, just to listen at the gym.
Good point! Via seemed pretty Linux friendly (not saying they're not now, just haven't been following) for a while, when their tiny all-in-one-motherboards were the best deal going in small / power-efficient computers. I hope they follow your advice when it comes to hiring some X developers.
Linked from the Eee page at Wikipedia, I just found this (mostly) similarly equipped laptop upcoming from VIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NanoBook
It uses a conventional hard drive, but also claims greater battery life. Also a 7" screen, but uses the space differently -- from the description and the way the photo looks (prototype?), I guess that's a trackpad next to the screen. Price will be "agressive," says that page, but it would have to be damn near ferocious to beat the $200 one from Asus... assuming that stays $200, not $279+shipping or something.
There's a decent entry already (with plentiful links to other articles etc) already up. Since Wikipedia allows a different kind of information aggregation than does Slashdot, I hope lots of people (accurately;)) extend what's there.
I've been reading about these for several weeks now, and am really looking forward to it. Anyone who remembers the i-Opener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener) will grin to think that this, while slightly more expensive (less than double, when considering inflation, though -- and it's a laptop!) will come with Linux by default.
I want one for school: taking notes is such ludicrous misemployment for my main laptop; I cringe each time I carry it back and forth to my law school classes to... tap out some notes. (I esp. like "View Your Mind" -- I hope that will run nicely on the Eee; on the 7" screen it might be annoying, but Hey, not too bad, I bet.)
I want one for the car / other travels: portable audio player, and (I hope!) a cool basis for a GPS system using GPS Drive (http://www.gpsdrive.de/) or similar. Can anyone recommend any works-from-the-box GPS modules for a typical Linux system?
Something this size and price, I'd feel justified to take on nearly any kind of travel -- not so much bigger than the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car a while back plus the portable keyboard for that. (Anyone want to send me a no-longer-used Visor Deluxe, so I could rescue the data from my backup cart?:))
The screen... eh, it sucks. Hopefully, the 10" screen version will be out soon after the 7".
To anyone who went to a summer camp somewhat recently (an American one at least, can't speak for elsewhere), "gimp" is the plasticky string used to make annoying bracelets, necklaces, etc.
I like LEDs on computer equipment. My aesthetics are clearly of the "ooh, blinky lights!" variety, but that means I like... blinky lights.
That said, LEDs are also underused for information purposes rather than as mere decoration; anyone with an Apple battery probably likes that you can tell a battery's charge (to a rough approximation) with the built-in LED meter -- there should be more things like this. USB mics should have red LEDs when active, like "ON AIR" signs at radio stations. USB hard drives could have 10-bar meters to show how full they are, etc.
And *that* said, it would be nice if certain LEDs (like obnoxious front-of-case ultra-bright ones) were accompanied by some small black covers mated to grooves around them, so they could be used with more discretion.
I'd think that kids who are gathered in large babysitting facilities like American public schools should be taught to be more engaged and aware of their surroundings generally -- there really ought to be more "bad event" drills, done matter-of-factly.
I don't know if this was a drill, an unexpected practical joke, an *expected* practical joke, or what -- the spin machine is still whirling, but "semi-expected practical joke" is seeming about right at this point. But let's say it was a drill, for the sake of argument (because that's the best possible scenario); in that case, it was badly done, and didn't really do much except prove that the kids were docile and compliant.
It would have been more responsible to a) prepare the kids first; a fire drill, well, done, is to reduce the stress of an actual fire, not to cause panic b) debrief them afterwards about what could or should have been done differently.
Unless someone believes we've seen the last school shooting / bombing / hostage situation worldwide, it makes sense to consider such things at least momentarily as part of a school safety plan. That doesn't mean obsessing over the things Schneier calls "movie plot scenarios" -- any more than "Backdraft" being about fires means that it's unreasonable to consider the risk of fire.
let me get this straight then, your solution is to put a gun in teachers hands ? oh boy, you MUST be american." Or, y'know, an Israeli. Armed teachers became the norm after a hostage situation in Maalot, in 1974.
(And actually, the world is more complicated than your lower-case "american" caricature; a lot of Americans would rather not send their children to State-run schools, and a lot of others who don't mind sending their kids to State-run schools would rather that teachers *not* have guns. Some think there should be heavy police presence, or at least armed guards, in every American public school. Etc.)
"Principal Catherine Stephens declined to say whether the staff members involved would face disciplinary action, but said the situation 'involved poor judgment.'" Gotta love that -- I hope that when the teachers give grammar lessons about passive voice, they use that line as a good example.
HOWEVER, it could be that this is small tempest in a large teapot; if the "campfire prank" version of the incident is accurate (and it does ring true, or at least true-ish), I hope that any idiot lawsuits get squashed like bugs.
I find NeoOffice runs pretty well (for the light uses I've ever put it to -- mild word processing) on a current (lowest-end) MacBook; my mom finally decided to replace her iBook (6 years old and pokey) with a MacBook, and since I was around during the purchase, I helped migrate data and put on the needed-but-not-there apps like Firefox. (Safari's fine, I'm sure, I just don't like it as much.) I put on NeoOffice as well, and other than a slowish startup time, I think it's perfectly nifty.
"[W]hat's the problem with preventing minors from buying games specifically market[ed] for adults?"
Not that there aren't others, but how about this: I have a problem with the government making marketing decisions like this in the first place.
(That's aside from whether certain products are subjectively "inappropriate" for certain age ranges.)
Do such restrictions exist? Yes -- it's why you must be 18 or older to purchase spray paint most places (everywhere?) in the U.S. nowadays, and why a 15-year-old can't legally buy a.22 rifle he's cut the lawns to save for. That rankles. (And I haven't been 18 for about 15 years now.)
If a company markets a product a certain way, which happens to exclude demographic groups the company figures won't be as profitable as the ones it *does* target, well, eh, more power to them. But if someone outside the target demographic nonetheless decides they're interested and want to [read the book / see the movie / play the game], that's rightfully none of the government's damn business.
You don't have to believe me, but as I wrote elsewhere on this thread, I saw a very vicious beating (the motivation for which I never learned) curtailed when a non-participant saw the middle-aged victim getting the tar kicked out of him, and fired one shot into the air while stepping toward the 4 or 5 teenagers who were doing the beating and kicking.
"[W]hy do some people think it should take 3-14 DAYS (varies from state to state) to "cool off" when trying to buy a firearm? It's absurd."
Agreed about the absurdity, but it's worth noting that not every state has a "cooling off" period -- none of the states in which I've bought guns have a waiting period, for instance, for handguns or longarms. (Some states have a delay only for handguns, some for both, and perhaps some treat shotguns altogether differently. Don't go looking for reason in the law.)
I'm not sure if anyone's ever done a study (not that any substantial group of people would probably agree on its significance or correctness if they had!) about whether those states with such delays save more lives than they cost. The scenario that gun-rights and self-defense supporters point out is often lost in the shuffle is (roughly) like this:
"A woman is threatened by her abusive husband, ex-husband, pimp or boyfriend. He's bigger than her, and rasher, and perhaps he owns a gun, legally or not. Maybe he's hurt people before in bar fights or other confrontations. If that woman, in fear of her life, attempts to purchase hastily a handgun (since the police have no individualized responsibility to protect the safety of particular citizens, and can't be expected to watch everyone at once, except, well, in a police state), should she be hampered by a 3-14 day delay? And will tbe state pay for flowers at her funeral if the threat manifests in the meantime?"
Typical counterargument goes: "If there's a gun in the house intended for self-defense, violence will more likely erupt than if there *wasn't* a gun there, and that gun will be used against its owner."
Counter-counterargument: "The reason people would get a gun in such a case indicates that violence is already likely, and that (woman / elderly man / innocent but targeted householder) deserves a chance at self-defense."
From here on in it's often just bickering, like "For a gun to be effective, the shooter's got to be well-trained and in good practice!" "Nuh-uh!" "uh-huh!" (etc).
I think it's of course preferable that anyone with a gun learn basic safety, and if it's for self-defense, I'd like them to practice regularly and be mentally prepared for that situation, but I don't think a double-action revolver takes much physical training to aim and fire -- if a friend of mine was facing a home invasion with armed or possibly armed burglars, I'd rather she have such a gun than not. I've taken several new shooters to the range; most of them have been very pleasantly surprised.
And there *might* have been some cases where guns were purchased legally, then used by the purchaser in a crime that very same day, but I'm with you on not knowing any examples. And the Terminator doesn't count; he hadn't paid for the guns when he robs the gun store. Besides which, that's just a movie.
- Guns exist; they're not (theoretically) hard to make: see http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/ for one guy's detailed description (PDF) of how to construct a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
- People willing to kill others (or threaten to kill others) in order to rob, intimidate or rape them are probably not interested in legal niceties.
- As someone else has mentioned, in the American tradition, liberty is itself a desired end, not only a means to other aspects of happiness. Governments the world over tend toward tyranny (though some have survived pretty peacefully for a long time with very little in the way of an armed citizenry -- goes to show how complex the world can be), and discouraging -- or at least delaying -- the slide into tyranny is why the Second Amendment exists.
Are you by chance in Camden? If you'd like to go shooting in a safe, friendly environment and perhaps get a different perspective on why people are adamant about maintaining their right to self defense against both small time (mugger) criminals and big league (government) criminals, let me know by email (timothylord gmail com) -- after finals are over, several of my fellow law students and I are likely to revisit a shooting range in Philadelphia; you must pay for a training session, but I'll buy you a box of ammunition:)
"Israelis all carry firearms because all Israelis are trained army personnel, and they are surrounded by countries who want to destroy them."
The 2d part's true, but the first part's not.
Israeli gun laws are actually stricter than the conventional wisdom (among Americans, at least) would have it: JPFO has an informative page up about it. See http://www.jpfo.org/israel-firearms.htm
"Fully automatic firearms have been illegal in the US for a long time."
If you'd say "For practical purposes" first, I'd agree. And you're certainly right that you can't just "walk in and buy one" as the previous poster asserted.
However, fully automatic firearms are not illegal in the U.S. -- just very heavily restricted. (Some states do fully ban any private market in automatic weapons, and some don't even allow grandfathered ones -- this is one of the things that lead some gun-owners to call the lower-leftmost state of the continental U.S. The People's Republic of Kalifornia.)
For ordinary folk to own one, there's an expensive tax stamp, an extensive and invasive background check (Federal), and a small supply of (consquently very expensive) pre-1986 automatic weapons from which to choose. I've not heard of any sub-10,000-dollar full auto guns changing hands between civilians in a long time in the U.S. (though that's not a market I keep close tabs on).
Plenty of people do own them, though -- google "Knob Creek" for some interesting stuff on privately held machine guns. I have never fired one, but would like to eventually. At current ammo prices, I wouldn't shoot much, though. And the rules restricting full-auto guns doesn't apply to law enforcment; maybe that's why the Rock's ex-cop archenemies in "Walking Tall" got to shoot up the police station with them.
Some states, though, don't require anything at all in the way of proficiency testing. Pennsylvania, I was surprised to learn when I got my CCW, does not; Texas does. (I think this is one reason a PA permit doesn't get nearly as much reciprocal recognition.)
I don't think CCW permits should be required at all (a different issue entirely), but since they are in most states, I don't think a training requirement is an unreasonable aspect. At least "on paper" at 15 yards, say, and "well on target" at 7. I think this would also be a good way to remind people of their own abilities -- shooting at more distant targets than you're used to can be humbling. (For me, at least.)
I can't speak to the situation everywhere within the U.S. wrt mental soundness / psychological profiles, but there are sites (try packing.org) which can give a better overview of the process. Because this varies by state, the answer to many general questions about the CCW / CCP process is "it depends."
To legally purchase a handgun, though, you must at present go through a NICS check, which means your name and some other data are run through a national database, which basically gives you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down response (no gradations like "Can have a.22, but not a.308;)). The form you fill out in anticipation of purchase also requires you to attest that you have (among other things) never been committed to a mental institution, etc.
You're right that this is an issue frequently glossed over; not everyone feels that they'd be willing to kill another person under *any* circumstances, and being asked to consider that scenario rationally, over coffee, is different from actually making the decision when the chips are down. I'm glad that I've never been in that particular sort of danger. (On the other hand, the deterrent power of a gun need not involve anyone getting killed; while I was an undergraduate traveling to U. Texas, I once saw a brutal beating -- which certainly looked like it could have been fatal -- end suddenly when someone who saw the beating going on emerged from a nearby store and fired once in the air. The several attackers all fled, real quicklike, and the victim survived. Who knows how it might otherwise have ended?
I have a Pennsylvania CCW, but like Virginia Tech, my school (Temple Law) forbids carrying on school grounds. I wonder (not rhetorically) whether any of the students in that classroom were CCW holders who were unarmed for the same reason.
I installed the latest freely downloadable version of NeoOffice (as of a month ago), which I think was version 2.0 beta 3 (though don't hold me to that), because my mom finally replaced her old iBook, and wanted a word processor with which to write her letters to the editor, etc.
It isn't crazy blinding fast, but I thought it ran at least snappily on her (lowest-tier) MacBook. Now, the MacBook's low end is still what I consider a very nice machine, but I saw nothing to complain about in NeoOffice's behavior. Perhaps next time I'm there I'll upgrade her to the newest version.
(Now, the last time I'd tried NeoOffice was IIRC 2 years back, and on a 500MHz G3 iBook, and it was SLOOOOOWWWW. So I was happy for the difference this time around.)
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, thanks for *that* data point. I figured something like that -- it's also a nice, one-power-supply package. The fellow I mentioned above will be running gigantic calculations in Mathematica on it.
;))
Now, my preference is a) to run some variety of Free-with-a-big-F operating system (Linux, *BSD) and b) to have hardware to which I have no emotional / aesthetic commitment (I like plain rectangular boxes in grey, black, and if I'm feeling especially festive, putty), but Apple has for years shown the ability to create designs -- even colorful ones -- that trigger my lust, from the toaster Macs on. (There've been a few stinkers, but the Cupertino hit rate is amazing.)
(My attempt to reconcile these things, an iBook running Ubuntu, is a decent thing -- but a 500MHz G3 just seems a bit laggy these days
timothy
I ate dinner last night with a friend, just starting as a professor at Penn; for $5,400 (or was it $5,600?) he just ordered an 8-core, 16GB MacPro, including a 30" monitor. He considered dual 30" monitors, but then thought, "Eh, why go crazy?" Yes, that's twice the price of the system under discussion here, but it's a pretty powerful machine for the price. Can anyone comment on what the machine here could do better than a beefy MacPro?
:) Obviously, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and pretty soon you're talking real money ...)
(I am not discounting the price difference!
timothy
Logitech MarbleMouse. My current one is 6 or 7 years old (fewer buttons than the current ones, or the ones current when last I looked a few years ago). I'm sure there is some off-brand trackball that sells for less, but of the commonly available ones I've ever seen, this low-end logitech is by far the cheapest; I've seen them on sale for just under $20.
The ball is a reasonable size, and maintains spin better than many trackballs (in fact, better than any of the consumer-grade trackballs I've tried). I use mice sometimes -- they've gotten better, over the years -- but that's by far my favorite pointer manipulator. I only wish it were wireless USB, so the stupid cord didn't get caught on things, but that's true of anything with a cord at all.
If I could change anything else, it would be to provide an even heavier ball, so a flick of the fingers result in a pointer that keeps moving until the ball is held down with purpose. A thin shell of depleted uranium, perhaps?
timothy
What model player do you use?
...
I have (well, still possess, but it's now a useless broken piece of plastic not worthy even as a paperweight -- too light) a Sansa MP3 player, which I bought because it uses a AAA battery -- sparingly -- and had an FM tuner. It developed a problem, just out of warranty (make no mistake -- it's not like I actually had the receipt handy or would have gone through the hassle of a replacement under warranty, but this did happen just after the warranty expired), which is apparently well known, a certain pattern of errors which is unfixable and frequently recurs even on the replacements that Sansa sends out.
And it didn't play oggs, so I ended up annoyed but resigned to keep MP3 versions of most of my files, just to listen at the gym.
Your player sounds like one I'd like to get
timothy
Good point! Via seemed pretty Linux friendly (not saying they're not now, just haven't been following) for a while, when their tiny all-in-one-motherboards were the best deal going in small / power-efficient computers. I hope they follow your advice when it comes to hiring some X developers.
timothy
Linked from the Eee page at Wikipedia, I just found this (mostly) similarly equipped laptop upcoming from VIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NanoBook
... assuming that stays $200, not $279+shipping or something.
It uses a conventional hard drive, but also claims greater battery life. Also a 7" screen, but uses the space differently -- from the description and the way the photo looks (prototype?), I guess that's a trackpad next to the screen. Price will be "agressive," says that page, but it would have to be damn near ferocious to beat the $200 one from Asus
timothy
There's a decent entry already (with plentiful links to other articles etc) already up. Since Wikipedia allows a different kind of information aggregation than does Slashdot, I hope lots of people (accurately ;)) extend what's there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
timothy
I've been reading about these for several weeks now, and am really looking forward to it. Anyone who remembers the i-Opener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener) will grin to think that this, while slightly more expensive (less than double, when considering inflation, though -- and it's a laptop!) will come with Linux by default.
... tap out some notes. (I esp. like "View Your Mind" -- I hope that will run nicely on the Eee; on the 7" screen it might be annoying, but Hey, not too bad, I bet.)
:))
... eh, it sucks. Hopefully, the 10" screen version will be out soon after the 7".
I want one for school: taking notes is such ludicrous misemployment for my main laptop; I cringe each time I carry it back and forth to my law school classes to
I want one for the car / other travels: portable audio player, and (I hope!) a cool basis for a GPS system using GPS Drive (http://www.gpsdrive.de/) or similar. Can anyone recommend any works-from-the-box GPS modules for a typical Linux system?
Something this size and price, I'd feel justified to take on nearly any kind of travel -- not so much bigger than the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car a while back plus the portable keyboard for that. (Anyone want to send me a no-longer-used Visor Deluxe, so I could rescue the data from my backup cart?
The screen
timothy
To anyone who went to a summer camp somewhat recently (an American one at least, can't speak for elsewhere), "gimp" is the plasticky string used to make annoying bracelets, necklaces, etc.
timothy
I like LEDs on computer equipment. My aesthetics are clearly of the "ooh, blinky lights!" variety, but that means I like ... blinky lights.
That said, LEDs are also underused for information purposes rather than as mere decoration; anyone with an Apple battery probably likes that you can tell a battery's charge (to a rough approximation) with the built-in LED meter -- there should be more things like this. USB mics should have red LEDs when active, like "ON AIR" signs at radio stations. USB hard drives could have 10-bar meters to show how full they are, etc.
And *that* said, it would be nice if certain LEDs (like obnoxious front-of-case ultra-bright ones) were accompanied by some small black covers mated to grooves around them, so they could be used with more discretion.
timothy
I'd think that kids who are gathered in large babysitting facilities like American public schools should be taught to be more engaged and aware of their surroundings generally -- there really ought to be more "bad event" drills, done matter-of-factly.
I don't know if this was a drill, an unexpected practical joke, an *expected* practical joke, or what -- the spin machine is still whirling, but "semi-expected practical joke" is seeming about right at this point. But let's say it was a drill, for the sake of argument (because that's the best possible scenario); in that case, it was badly done, and didn't really do much except prove that the kids were docile and compliant.
It would have been more responsible to a) prepare the kids first; a fire drill, well, done, is to reduce the stress of an actual fire, not to cause panic b) debrief them afterwards about what could or should have been done differently.
Unless someone believes we've seen the last school shooting / bombing / hostage situation worldwide, it makes sense to consider such things at least momentarily as part of a school safety plan. That doesn't mean obsessing over the things Schneier calls "movie plot scenarios" -- any more than "Backdraft" being about fires means that it's unreasonable to consider the risk of fire.
timothy
(And actually, the world is more complicated than your lower-case "american" caricature; a lot of Americans would rather not send their children to State-run schools, and a lot of others who don't mind sending their kids to State-run schools would rather that teachers *not* have guns. Some think there should be heavy police presence, or at least armed guards, in every American public school. Etc.)
timothy
HOWEVER, it could be that this is small tempest in a large teapot; if the "campfire prank" version of the incident is accurate (and it does ring true, or at least true-ish), I hope that any idiot lawsuits get squashed like bugs.
timothy
I find NeoOffice runs pretty well (for the light uses I've ever put it to -- mild word processing) on a current (lowest-end) MacBook; my mom finally decided to replace her iBook (6 years old and pokey) with a MacBook, and since I was around during the purchase, I helped migrate data and put on the needed-but-not-there apps like Firefox. (Safari's fine, I'm sure, I just don't like it as much.) I put on NeoOffice as well, and other than a slowish startup time, I think it's perfectly nifty.
timothy
After all, surely even a punk rock drummer knows that soap *kills* Germs!
timothy
"[W]hat's the problem with preventing minors from buying games specifically market[ed] for adults?"
.22 rifle he's cut the lawns to save for. That rankles. (And I haven't been 18 for about 15 years now.)
Not that there aren't others, but how about this: I have a problem with the government making marketing decisions like this in the first place.
(That's aside from whether certain products are subjectively "inappropriate" for certain age ranges.)
Do such restrictions exist? Yes -- it's why you must be 18 or older to purchase spray paint most places (everywhere?) in the U.S. nowadays, and why a 15-year-old can't legally buy a
If a company markets a product a certain way, which happens to exclude demographic groups the company figures won't be as profitable as the ones it *does* target, well, eh, more power to them. But if someone outside the target demographic nonetheless decides they're interested and want to [read the book / see the movie / play the game], that's rightfully none of the government's damn business.
timothy
You don't have to believe me, but as I wrote elsewhere on this thread, I saw a very vicious beating (the motivation for which I never learned) curtailed when a non-participant saw the middle-aged victim getting the tar kicked out of him, and fired one shot into the air while stepping toward the 4 or 5 teenagers who were doing the beating and kicking.
They left.
--------------
timothy
"[W]hy do some people think it should take 3-14 DAYS (varies from state to state) to "cool off" when trying to buy a firearm? It's absurd."
Agreed about the absurdity, but it's worth noting that not every state has a "cooling off" period -- none of the states in which I've bought guns have a waiting period, for instance, for handguns or longarms. (Some states have a delay only for handguns, some for both, and perhaps some treat shotguns altogether differently. Don't go looking for reason in the law.)
I'm not sure if anyone's ever done a study (not that any substantial group of people would probably agree on its significance or correctness if they had!) about whether those states with such delays save more lives than they cost. The scenario that gun-rights and self-defense supporters point out is often lost in the shuffle is (roughly) like this:
"A woman is threatened by her abusive husband, ex-husband, pimp or boyfriend. He's bigger than her, and rasher, and perhaps he owns a gun, legally or not. Maybe he's hurt people before in bar fights or other confrontations. If that woman, in fear of her life, attempts to purchase hastily a handgun (since the police have no individualized responsibility to protect the safety of particular citizens, and can't be expected to watch everyone at once, except, well, in a police state), should she be hampered by a 3-14 day delay? And will tbe state pay for flowers at her funeral if the threat manifests in the meantime?"
Typical counterargument goes: "If there's a gun in the house intended for self-defense, violence will more likely erupt than if there *wasn't* a gun there, and that gun will be used against its owner."
Counter-counterargument: "The reason people would get a gun in such a case indicates that violence is already likely, and that (woman / elderly man / innocent but targeted householder) deserves a chance at self-defense."
From here on in it's often just bickering, like "For a gun to be effective, the shooter's got to be well-trained and in good practice!" "Nuh-uh!" "uh-huh!" (etc).
I think it's of course preferable that anyone with a gun learn basic safety, and if it's for self-defense, I'd like them to practice regularly and be mentally prepared for that situation, but I don't think a double-action revolver takes much physical training to aim and fire -- if a friend of mine was facing a home invasion with armed or possibly armed burglars, I'd rather she have such a gun than not. I've taken several new shooters to the range; most of them have been very pleasantly surprised.
And there *might* have been some cases where guns were purchased legally, then used by the purchaser in a crime that very same day, but I'm with you on not knowing any examples. And the Terminator doesn't count; he hadn't paid for the guns when he robs the gun store. Besides which, that's just a movie.
timothy
Hi there, pario.
:)
- Guns exist; they're not (theoretically) hard to make: see http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/ for one guy's detailed description (PDF) of how to construct a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
- People willing to kill others (or threaten to kill others) in order to rob, intimidate or rape them are probably not interested in legal niceties.
- As someone else has mentioned, in the American tradition, liberty is itself a desired end, not only a means to other aspects of happiness. Governments the world over tend toward tyranny (though some have survived pretty peacefully for a long time with very little in the way of an armed citizenry -- goes to show how complex the world can be), and discouraging -- or at least delaying -- the slide into tyranny is why the Second Amendment exists.
Are you by chance in Camden? If you'd like to go shooting in a safe, friendly environment and perhaps get a different perspective on why people are adamant about maintaining their right to self defense against both small time (mugger) criminals and big league (government) criminals, let me know by email (timothylord gmail com) -- after finals are over, several of my fellow law students and I are likely to revisit a shooting range in Philadelphia; you must pay for a training session, but I'll buy you a box of ammunition
Cheers,
timothy
"Israelis all carry firearms because all Israelis are trained army personnel, and they are surrounded by countries who want to destroy them."
The 2d part's true, but the first part's not.
Israeli gun laws are actually stricter than the conventional wisdom (among Americans, at least) would have it: JPFO has an informative page up about it. See http://www.jpfo.org/israel-firearms.htm
(The laws were much less restrictive until 1992.)
timothy
"Fully automatic firearms have been illegal in the US for a long time."
If you'd say "For practical purposes" first, I'd agree. And you're certainly right that you can't just "walk in and buy one" as the previous poster asserted.
However, fully automatic firearms are not illegal in the U.S. -- just very heavily restricted. (Some states do fully ban any private market in automatic weapons, and some don't even allow grandfathered ones -- this is one of the things that lead some gun-owners to call the lower-leftmost state of the continental U.S. The People's Republic of Kalifornia.)
For ordinary folk to own one, there's an expensive tax stamp, an extensive and invasive background check (Federal), and a small supply of (consquently very expensive) pre-1986 automatic weapons from which to choose. I've not heard of any sub-10,000-dollar full auto guns changing hands between civilians in a long time in the U.S. (though that's not a market I keep close tabs on).
Plenty of people do own them, though -- google "Knob Creek" for some interesting stuff on privately held machine guns. I have never fired one, but would like to eventually. At current ammo prices, I wouldn't shoot much, though. And the rules restricting full-auto guns doesn't apply to law enforcment; maybe that's why the Rock's ex-cop archenemies in "Walking Tall" got to shoot up the police station with them.
timothy
Some states, though, don't require anything at all in the way of proficiency testing. Pennsylvania, I was surprised to learn when I got my CCW, does not; Texas does. (I think this is one reason a PA permit doesn't get nearly as much reciprocal recognition.)
I don't think CCW permits should be required at all (a different issue entirely), but since they are in most states, I don't think a training requirement is an unreasonable aspect. At least "on paper" at 15 yards, say, and "well on target" at 7. I think this would also be a good way to remind people of their own abilities -- shooting at more distant targets than you're used to can be humbling. (For me, at least.)
timothy
Hi there!
.22, but not a .308 ;)). The form you fill out in anticipation of purchase also requires you to attest that you have (among other things) never been committed to a mental institution, etc.
I can't speak to the situation everywhere within the U.S. wrt mental soundness / psychological profiles, but there are sites (try packing.org) which can give a better overview of the process. Because this varies by state, the answer to many general questions about the CCW / CCP process is "it depends."
To legally purchase a handgun, though, you must at present go through a NICS check, which means your name and some other data are run through a national database, which basically gives you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down response (no gradations like "Can have a
You're right that this is an issue frequently glossed over; not everyone feels that they'd be willing to kill another person under *any* circumstances, and being asked to consider that scenario rationally, over coffee, is different from actually making the decision when the chips are down. I'm glad that I've never been in that particular sort of danger. (On the other hand, the deterrent power of a gun need not involve anyone getting killed; while I was an undergraduate traveling to U. Texas, I once saw a brutal beating -- which certainly looked like it could have been fatal -- end suddenly when someone who saw the beating going on emerged from a nearby store and fired once in the air. The several attackers all fled, real quicklike, and the victim survived. Who knows how it might otherwise have ended?
I have a Pennsylvania CCW, but like Virginia Tech, my school (Temple Law) forbids carrying on school grounds. I wonder (not rhetorically) whether any of the students in that classroom were CCW holders who were unarmed for the same reason.
timothy
Well, they call it "Professional Responsibility" in law school, but it boils down to an ethics course.
:)
Not that the ethics it teaches are especially transformative
You can find the rules here: http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/mrpc_toc.html
timothy
I installed the latest freely downloadable version of NeoOffice (as of a month ago), which I think was version 2.0 beta 3 (though don't hold me to that), because my mom finally replaced her old iBook, and wanted a word processor with which to write her letters to the editor, etc.
It isn't crazy blinding fast, but I thought it ran at least snappily on her (lowest-tier) MacBook. Now, the MacBook's low end is still what I consider a very nice machine, but I saw nothing to complain about in NeoOffice's behavior. Perhaps next time I'm there I'll upgrade her to the newest version.
(Now, the last time I'd tried NeoOffice was IIRC 2 years back, and on a 500MHz G3 iBook, and it was SLOOOOOWWWW. So I was happy for the difference this time around.)
timothy