No, it's not. The purposes of fuel taxes is for road repair. People who drive more on roads are, well, using roads more. With use comes wear. This is why diesel is so heavily taxed at the pump now (in part) - trucks do more wear/tear on roadways.
I fail to see how a mileage based tax - ie a use tax - would not be superior to a commodities tax (fuel), as it would more closely couple the tax and where it's going.
The alternative is to needlessly penalize people who drive lower MPG vehicles. You know, the people who can't afford or do not wish to afford a newer vehicle, because there's no point in getting rid of something that works, and their actual use of the vehicle is minimal enough to not justify buying a new one. Taxing the shit out of fuel will, basically, just push people to consume more cars when the old ones are still quite serviceable. (I say this as someone who only drives a diesel '86 Blazer on occasion - less than 5k a year.)
I might note that 'road tax' on gasoline isn't structured like diesel is, in case you didn't know. Vehicles used off-road are not taxed (due to the availability of 'farm diesel') road tax, which is a significant percentage of the cost of fuel. (This allows farmers and ranchers to not have to pay road taxes to fuel their tractors and farm trucks.) I see no reason why this structure should not also be used for gasoline (especially since I and people like me, as well as all the people with spiffy new TDI cars, still have to pay the added tax on diesel that heavy trucks do).
Of course, needlessly penalizing people who disagree with you is pretty much what progressive government does on an exclusive basis, so, rock on and tax 'consumption' through the roof so that you and your fellow upper middle class friends can keep doing your weekend trips to Tahoe or Aspen without the added costs of paying proportionate road tax.
(I'm going to guess you're also in favor of progressive taxation schemes - just a wiiiild guess.)
That's right, hippies. Your ego-friendly smart cart which sips fuel (if it uses petroleum fuel directly at all) is depriving the hard working government of your state of much needed revenue. Get with the program!
(Wanna bet you'll have people falsely reporting/failing to report this information?)
The point of fuel taxes is that it's supposed to roughly translate to road use and wear, so as to (hopefully) reflect the costs of necessary road repair and upkeep work done. If there's no revenue, no work can be done. This is an interesting stop-gap but I have to wonder how long it will last. There's no realistic way to track it. They're going to have to put it on something like vehicle registration: register a gas sipping vehicle, you get a bill in the month for a "minimum" number of miles driven each month above and beyond.
Unfortunately a very small number of gun deaths in the US are committed with rifles.
And yet, rifles find themselves at the top of the list of things to use in marketing getting all handguns and most rifles banned.
If efforts to ban guns were fact based, this would not be the case.
In other news, over 75% of all firearm deaths are "criminal subculture" related.
But, I know - it sure would be convenient if the scrapegoat objects used to denigrate the 2nd Amendment and its proponents were, in fact, implements of death and destruction. Almost as convenient if this were something the fascists could nail down as definitively causative to violence, overlooking the cultural and environmental aspects outright (as they already do).
Tell me, why do you think the vast majority of firearm related deaths are occurring in specific urban neighborhoods within the larger urban areas?
* white colar IT work fits your definition of a trade job * working hard and taking your lumps sucks
I've got news for you, most of those over 35 who had an office job would be all sorts of beat up in other ways - they'd have health problems from sedentary lifestyles, for starters. No, their knees, planters, and fingers wouldn't hurt as much but their backs would.
Working for yourself is always preferable to working for someone else. That's what most of these people bitch about the most, I think - as in any field.
You realize, don't you, that the Blacksmith in town was often one of the most prominent figures?
Blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, millers, and merchantmen, - you know, the people you depend upon to make or supply the tools and supplies you need to provide for yourself - were the equivalent of today's "technology" workers (except they produced quantifiable things bereft of heavy sales and marketing). Just because they worked hard does not mean they weren't successful or profitable, and that they lived in caves.
(Seriously, you think your life is more noble than their's were? They were either self employed or had a single manager, and their skills were in demand. They could go literally anywhere and ply their trades. You, on the other hand, have a hierarchy of managers, making markedly less than each and every one of them, and are a peon in comparison, most likely.)
My great grandfather was a Blacksmith at the end of an age - when blacksmithing had been relegated to the 'back burner' and welding was taking form. He was fairly wealthy due to a successful "career". Most of what he did in the later years was, as I understand it, repairing tools and shodding horses.
It's really only in recent times that the people consuming goods more than than they're producing them (you know, what we call 'white collar workers' now) were anything other than homeless or destitute. If you can't produce, then you can't survive let alone thrive.
I replaced a guy in a small company who was viewed as a coding genius. I heard the following things numerous times:
* "Luk was a genius." * "Luk wrote awesome code." * "Luk wrote genius level code it's no wonder you can't understand it" * "Maybe we should see if Luk will explain it for us" * "Well, Luk did it in x time, get better"
Luk was a genius in his own right. He had a very deep understanding of a very small subset of things and anything on the periphery were completely ignored. Not a big picture thinker. (eg. he grew up under communism but voted straight Democrat... WHAT?!) He was also a crafty, deceptive bastard who cut corners where his superiors wouldn't understand what he was doing to make himself look better.
Bringing any of these things to light didn't help matters. Management had a preconceived idea of how things were. The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter what the reality is, what management thinks is paramount and the only reality you need to concern yourself with. If management thinks he's a good coder, that's all he's got to worry about - you're obviously wrong.
Vehicles from the 1940s through 1970s, and into the 80s? Sure they are - or can be, at least.
But pretty much every automobile today is just a stylized wind tunnel tested form. They're somewhat more unique than the crap from about a decade ago and have unique bumpers, grills, etc. but for the most part there's little to distinguish them from each other, with rare exception. VW is making cars that look like Porche; BMW is making cars that look like Cadillac; and so on.
The original Batmobile (from the 60s show)? I'm sorry, but even as a kid it was pretty obvious there wasn't much distinctive about the car. They put some stylized fins on it, painted it like his underwear, and put a cockpit and jet propulsion on it to say "look, it goes fast". Sorry. That's like saying an iPhone is art: how, exactly, does it deviate from commonly expected definitions of whatever it serves functionally? It doesn't.
I can go walking down the streets of Oakland with a Nazi without the Nazi getting his shit kicked in.
I can't go walking down the streets of Oakland with a Nazi while screaming, "This guy hates niggers and wetbacks! He's a Nazi!" without either the Nazi or myself getting shitkicked.
See the difference?
What they did is akin to saying that a drug company is responsible for producing warfare chemicals after someone used them to bomb a school. (Why, yes, they do make anthrax; they also make aspirin, benzedrine, isopropol alcohol, common food additives, etc. But ignore all that other stuff - you should attack them.)
What's funny about this is that the paper wants to smear gun owners and denigrate the 2nd Amendment by hiring gun owners to protect them. Only in the minds of emotional, neurotic liberals does this make any sense...
How, exactly, does this qualify as 1st Amendment speech?
The 1st doesn't assure people of saying anything they want without repercussions.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Nowhere throughout this have I seen the government restrict the press in any which way. I do see, however, a possible legal case for a class action lawsuit, (or maybe even a criminal case ?) to be made against the paper for their actions. Reasonably, the subjects of this 'news' would be at least allowed to "petition the Government for redress of their grievances" due to the fact that the press is a state-established and protected institution in the United States.
What the paper did has more akin with a newspaper in the South during the Civil War publishing a list of "Northern sympathizers". "Oh, we're just reporting the news!" No; no, you weren't: you were publicizing a list which you hoped would serve as a hit list, "outing" them in a politically hostile environment to try to muster public sentiment (aka violence) against them.
I don't really care what TSMC's wafer yields will be; that's Apple's problem. What concerns me is that TSMC may make faulty chips that break down over time, so that iDevices start to malfunction shortly after the 1-year warranty is up.
This is different than how things are now and have been since forever, how?
I'm reminded of the 3+ generations of Macbooks which had the same (ATI?) BGA solder flow/cracking issues which Apple actively denied to even exist, 2+ generations of Macbooks with electrical grounding design problems (you know, lack of isolating material) on their wifi chips, whole chassis grounding problems on 2+ (3?) generations of Powermac resulting in the systems failing very prematurely (but the cases were very cool!), and so on. And then there's the antenna issues with iPhones and their extremely high likelihood of physical damage (screens cracking, or the whole phone bending, as is the case with the 5).
It's normal for manufacturers to have a bum product or one with problems from time to time, it happens to them all. It's only Apple that has over a decade of problems with almost every single major product and complete dissonance when it comes to admitting there's anything wrong.
But seriously, my main observation here is that so many people are spending lots of energy on inventing reasons for why nothing can be done.
Have you looked at the parts, etc. on a model T?
They are by no means less complex than modern cars where it matters. Individually, the parts are less refined and by their very nature of both being complex and unrefined, less reliable:
The degree of "less complexity" are in the things where reliability isn't impacted, and where complexity can show gains: body panels, windshields, materials, metalurgy, etc. (With firearms, we have some of the most stupidly simple but reliable machines available to us today: contrast the Glock to the "broomhandle Mauser", or an M16 to the M1, for instance: the older model took markedly more machining of complex angles and was excruciatingly less efficient but more complex.
I would argue that the height of refinement and reduction in complexity in the auto industry in the mid to late 80s, before we went to electronic fuel injection. Then things went in a different direction (for both complexity and design philosophy): we went away from making things more sturdy and rigid in preference for predictable failure modes/crumple zones and started replacing anything with electronics and plastic that we could.
(Today, a minor fender bender often totals newer cars where a hammer, a little bondo, and paint would've fixed it 20 years ago. I don't want that: if you've seen a colision between an 80s car and a recent vintage vehicle, you'd not think it's any better, either.)
But seriously, my main observation here is that so many people are spending lots of energy on inventing reasons for why nothing can be done.
That's a shortsighted observation. People are telling you it can't be done because people and companies have tried many of these things, and of the ones which have actually made it to market, all of them have failed commercially and in practice.
It's like saying you can't do tight cornering on icy roads in a sports car. People have tried; they have failed. It's counter-intuitive to insist that it can be done, baring some obfuscated metal cleat wheel which actively grips the road and is so expensive and impractical that nobody would reasonably care.
That idiot driver who did not maintain his vehicle was responsible for his own personal safety. Him. Not someone else. He was responsible to avoid a collision; he was responsible to maintain his tools and to drive them cautiously, in a defensive manner.
Likewise, every single adult who has been shot while unarmed has been guilty of neglecting their own personal safety.
(Do you really think there'd be mass shootings, or even all that many public shootings, if there was any perception of the general populace being armed?)
What these politicians are trying to do fits the formula for firearm confiscation perfectly. Quite likely by coincidence, the likely outcome is not all that dissimilar from what you propose, except substitute "gun owners" with "every single person the government in power disagrees with or dislikes". And yes, unlike what every population it happens to believes, it can happen here.
"Automatic weapon type bullets"? Why not just restrict those things that go out from the shoulder, too? That'll be effective.
In case you didn't notice, I'm being completely sarcastic. You don't understand what you're talking about. "Automatic type bullets" pretty much means everything.
And even if you banned them, it would mean nothing. These things are easy enough to manufacture that someone would do so. Lead, brass, and copper are not exactly difficult to make or come by: you'd have to ban machine shops and basement reloading benches at that point.
Note that gun safety features (not universally loved) like loaded-chamber indicators, grip safeties, and magazine disconnects are constantly evolving and have been available in some form and in various combinations for many decades, so gun makers seem to have some incentive to produce and improve them, and that the PLCAA does not prevent consumer safety lawsuits, but does shield gun makers from suits based on criminal conduct by gun buyers (though imperfectly).
Do you know why these so-called safety features can't be found on police or military firearms?
Because they're dangerous and get people killed. I wish that were overly dramatic, but it isn't: I've personally had a built-in "safety" features fail (the built-in safety lock found on some guns) and I'm not exactly what you'd consider a die hard shooter or gun owner.
We're talking about devices which are often required by professionals to go shoot anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 consecutive problem-free rounds of ammunition before they consider it 'reliable'. If the firearm has a failure, they start back at zero. By adding electronics to the mix, it adds one more point of failure. There is no beneficial trade off: firearms need to be as simple as possible because they have to do one thing, and do it every single time: accurately, consistently, and effectively propel a bullet from the barrel.
Think about it for a second. Do you really think it's a good idea to put miniaturized biometrics on a device which will be banged, dropped, get wet, be in constant contact with an acidic sweaty meat sack, etc.? They also sit untouched for (sometimes) decades. How long do you think the MTBF will be? 10,000 hours? 5,000? That'll make the handgun or shotgun in Grandma's closet or bedstand she uses for protection somewhat useless, won't it? The shorting battery will cause a couple issues for the security guard who gets jumped, too.
This isn't just the raving of some gun nut: this is pretty simple logic. If firearm manufacturers were able to make guarantee (or at least provide a reasonable method) that the person who owns the gun is the only one who can shoot it, they would, because there would be a market for it. Not only would there be a market for it, but it would be exceedingly lucrative and/or (potentially) remove them from any legal liability for someone's actions (because the person would have to go through a gov't background check to purchase that firearm).
This isn't about "gun safety". It's about denying firearms to the common person on the grounds of safety - for our own good.
This is "gun safety" like the kind of "knife safety" which resulted in the invention of the butter knife: it makes the device uselessly crippled and only applicable to a very small subset of reasons why people legitimately purchase firearms.
People scream about the evil of SecureBoot on Slashdot but yet there are so many people who would willingly require people to have something like this on a firearm. Really? Are you seriously making that argument? Are we really having this discussion with a straight face? "It'll protect legitimate users!" *sigh* And yet, it's so much more than just "freedom" we're talking about here.
If we want to talk about "gun safety" why don't we talk about putting firearm training in schools? The physical safety of firearms is already pretty damn high.
Pretty much every single Windows ME device was locked down in this (or a similar) way. Apple did with iPods and iPhones as well, to the best of their ability (and repeatedly updated said lockouts). Nintendo does it with the Wii (missing, I feel, a stellar opportunity to become the ubiquitous home "system" that everyone has, complete with the benefits of being market dominant and ubiquitous, instead of just being a "game console").
Of course, now they're just using a standardized, DMCA protected, and encrypted means of denying access instead of a more general and broad method of obfuscation.
It would be someone else's business, because they would make it their business.
You know, in the same way that we currently have people making other people's relationships their business; people making other people's non-sentient and otherwise non-violent guns their business; people making other people's cars their business, people making other people's houses, property, and income their business, and so on.
Tyranny happens. People are giant fucking jerkoffs sometimes - most of the time, really, if history is any indication. Get over it and get around it.
Eventually all hardware will be like this. What will be your solution then? Don't buy a computer?
On the contrary, smartphones have been getting more open as time has gone on - specifically, as Android has gained traction. It used to be that pretty much any portable device was locked down and took a copious amount of time to even get a working chainload; now, many (most) of the high quality phones ship "open" and unhindered.
All hardware will be like this - locked down and inaccessible - only if we end up with an antitrust-worthy monopoly controlling the industry, like the one Apple and Microsoft both want to provide us with.
Android on the iPhone was possible, IIRC, mainly because Apple neither understands or really gives half a damn about properly implementing security measures and binary signing. All nice in theory, but their practice sucks. So people ran around them.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. The purposes of fuel taxes is for road repair. People who drive more on roads are, well, using roads more. With use comes wear. This is why diesel is so heavily taxed at the pump now (in part) - trucks do more wear/tear on roadways.
I fail to see how a mileage based tax - ie a use tax - would not be superior to a commodities tax (fuel), as it would more closely couple the tax and where it's going.
The alternative is to needlessly penalize people who drive lower MPG vehicles. You know, the people who can't afford or do not wish to afford a newer vehicle, because there's no point in getting rid of something that works, and their actual use of the vehicle is minimal enough to not justify buying a new one. Taxing the shit out of fuel will, basically, just push people to consume more cars when the old ones are still quite serviceable. (I say this as someone who only drives a diesel '86 Blazer on occasion - less than 5k a year.)
I might note that 'road tax' on gasoline isn't structured like diesel is, in case you didn't know. Vehicles used off-road are not taxed (due to the availability of 'farm diesel') road tax, which is a significant percentage of the cost of fuel. (This allows farmers and ranchers to not have to pay road taxes to fuel their tractors and farm trucks.) I see no reason why this structure should not also be used for gasoline (especially since I and people like me, as well as all the people with spiffy new TDI cars, still have to pay the added tax on diesel that heavy trucks do).
Of course, needlessly penalizing people who disagree with you is pretty much what progressive government does on an exclusive basis, so, rock on and tax 'consumption' through the roof so that you and your fellow upper middle class friends can keep doing your weekend trips to Tahoe or Aspen without the added costs of paying proportionate road tax.
(I'm going to guess you're also in favor of progressive taxation schemes - just a wiiiild guess.)
That's right, hippies. Your ego-friendly smart cart which sips fuel (if it uses petroleum fuel directly at all) is depriving the hard working government of your state of much needed revenue. Get with the program!
(Wanna bet you'll have people falsely reporting/failing to report this information?)
The point of fuel taxes is that it's supposed to roughly translate to road use and wear, so as to (hopefully) reflect the costs of necessary road repair and upkeep work done. If there's no revenue, no work can be done. This is an interesting stop-gap but I have to wonder how long it will last. There's no realistic way to track it. They're going to have to put it on something like vehicle registration: register a gas sipping vehicle, you get a bill in the month for a "minimum" number of miles driven each month above and beyond.
Unfortunately a very small number of gun deaths in the US are committed with rifles.
And yet, rifles find themselves at the top of the list of things to use in marketing getting all handguns and most rifles banned.
If efforts to ban guns were fact based, this would not be the case.
In other news, over 75% of all firearm deaths are "criminal subculture" related.
But, I know - it sure would be convenient if the scrapegoat objects used to denigrate the 2nd Amendment and its proponents were, in fact, implements of death and destruction. Almost as convenient if this were something the fascists could nail down as definitively causative to violence, overlooking the cultural and environmental aspects outright (as they already do).
Tell me, why do you think the vast majority of firearm related deaths are occurring in specific urban neighborhoods within the larger urban areas?
Interesting. So what you're saying is:
* white colar IT work fits your definition of a trade job
* working hard and taking your lumps sucks
I've got news for you, most of those over 35 who had an office job would be all sorts of beat up in other ways - they'd have health problems from sedentary lifestyles, for starters. No, their knees, planters, and fingers wouldn't hurt as much but their backs would.
Working for yourself is always preferable to working for someone else. That's what most of these people bitch about the most, I think - as in any field.
You realize, don't you, that the Blacksmith in town was often one of the most prominent figures?
Blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, millers, and merchantmen, - you know, the people you depend upon to make or supply the tools and supplies you need to provide for yourself - were the equivalent of today's "technology" workers (except they produced quantifiable things bereft of heavy sales and marketing). Just because they worked hard does not mean they weren't successful or profitable, and that they lived in caves.
(Seriously, you think your life is more noble than their's were? They were either self employed or had a single manager, and their skills were in demand. They could go literally anywhere and ply their trades. You, on the other hand, have a hierarchy of managers, making markedly less than each and every one of them, and are a peon in comparison, most likely.)
My great grandfather was a Blacksmith at the end of an age - when blacksmithing had been relegated to the 'back burner' and welding was taking form. He was fairly wealthy due to a successful "career". Most of what he did in the later years was, as I understand it, repairing tools and shodding horses.
It's really only in recent times that the people consuming goods more than than they're producing them (you know, what we call 'white collar workers' now) were anything other than homeless or destitute. If you can't produce, then you can't survive let alone thrive.
No, you misunderstood my rhetoric for a sincere question.
I outline exactly how this is not 1st Amendment speech. If this is 1st Amendment speech to you, why not go to a theater and yell "fire!"?
I replaced a guy in a small company who was viewed as a coding genius. I heard the following things numerous times:
* "Luk was a genius."
* "Luk wrote awesome code."
* "Luk wrote genius level code it's no wonder you can't understand it"
* "Maybe we should see if Luk will explain it for us"
* "Well, Luk did it in x time, get better"
Luk was a genius in his own right. He had a very deep understanding of a very small subset of things and anything on the periphery were completely ignored. Not a big picture thinker. (eg. he grew up under communism but voted straight Democrat... WHAT?!) He was also a crafty, deceptive bastard who cut corners where his superiors wouldn't understand what he was doing to make himself look better.
Bringing any of these things to light didn't help matters. Management had a preconceived idea of how things were. The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter what the reality is, what management thinks is paramount and the only reality you need to concern yourself with. If management thinks he's a good coder, that's all he's got to worry about - you're obviously wrong.
Vehicles from the 1940s through 1970s, and into the 80s? Sure they are - or can be, at least.
But pretty much every automobile today is just a stylized wind tunnel tested form. They're somewhat more unique than the crap from about a decade ago and have unique bumpers, grills, etc. but for the most part there's little to distinguish them from each other, with rare exception. VW is making cars that look like Porche; BMW is making cars that look like Cadillac; and so on.
The original Batmobile (from the 60s show)? I'm sorry, but even as a kid it was pretty obvious there wasn't much distinctive about the car. They put some stylized fins on it, painted it like his underwear, and put a cockpit and jet propulsion on it to say "look, it goes fast". Sorry. That's like saying an iPhone is art: how, exactly, does it deviate from commonly expected definitions of whatever it serves functionally? It doesn't.
I can go walking down the streets of Oakland with a Nazi without the Nazi getting his shit kicked in.
I can't go walking down the streets of Oakland with a Nazi while screaming, "This guy hates niggers and wetbacks! He's a Nazi!" without either the Nazi or myself getting shitkicked.
See the difference?
What they did is akin to saying that a drug company is responsible for producing warfare chemicals after someone used them to bomb a school. (Why, yes, they do make anthrax; they also make aspirin, benzedrine, isopropol alcohol, common food additives, etc. But ignore all that other stuff - you should attack them.)
What's funny about this is that the paper wants to smear gun owners and denigrate the 2nd Amendment by hiring gun owners to protect them. Only in the minds of emotional, neurotic liberals does this make any sense...
How, exactly, does this qualify as 1st Amendment speech?
The 1st doesn't assure people of saying anything they want without repercussions.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Nowhere throughout this have I seen the government restrict the press in any which way. I do see, however, a possible legal case for a class action lawsuit, (or maybe even a criminal case ?) to be made against the paper for their actions. Reasonably, the subjects of this 'news' would be at least allowed to "petition the Government for redress of their grievances" due to the fact that the press is a state-established and protected institution in the United States.
What the paper did has more akin with a newspaper in the South during the Civil War publishing a list of "Northern sympathizers". "Oh, we're just reporting the news!" No; no, you weren't: you were publicizing a list which you hoped would serve as a hit list, "outing" them in a politically hostile environment to try to muster public sentiment (aka violence) against them.
If it's real Linux, it's inherently more secure than iOS and Android. Depending on how open the source is, it may be future proof.
WTF does this even mean?
I don't really care what TSMC's wafer yields will be; that's Apple's problem. What concerns me is that TSMC may make faulty chips that break down over time, so that iDevices start to malfunction shortly after the 1-year warranty is up.
This is different than how things are now and have been since forever, how?
I'm reminded of the 3+ generations of Macbooks which had the same (ATI?) BGA solder flow/cracking issues which Apple actively denied to even exist, 2+ generations of Macbooks with electrical grounding design problems (you know, lack of isolating material) on their wifi chips, whole chassis grounding problems on 2+ (3?) generations of Powermac resulting in the systems failing very prematurely (but the cases were very cool!), and so on. And then there's the antenna issues with iPhones and their extremely high likelihood of physical damage (screens cracking, or the whole phone bending, as is the case with the 5).
It's normal for manufacturers to have a bum product or one with problems from time to time, it happens to them all. It's only Apple that has over a decade of problems with almost every single major product and complete dissonance when it comes to admitting there's anything wrong.
Apple product quality dropping? Puhhhlease.
But seriously, my main observation here is that so many people are spending lots of energy on inventing reasons for why nothing can be done.
Have you looked at the parts, etc. on a model T?
They are by no means less complex than modern cars where it matters. Individually, the parts are less refined and by their very nature of both being complex and unrefined, less reliable:
* injectors
* electric motors
* fuel lines
* couplings
* joints
* pinions
* spark plugs
The degree of "less complexity" are in the things where reliability isn't impacted, and where complexity can show gains: body panels, windshields, materials, metalurgy, etc. (With firearms, we have some of the most stupidly simple but reliable machines available to us today: contrast the Glock to the "broomhandle Mauser", or an M16 to the M1, for instance: the older model took markedly more machining of complex angles and was excruciatingly less efficient but more complex.
I would argue that the height of refinement and reduction in complexity in the auto industry in the mid to late 80s, before we went to electronic fuel injection. Then things went in a different direction (for both complexity and design philosophy): we went away from making things more sturdy and rigid in preference for predictable failure modes/crumple zones and started replacing anything with electronics and plastic that we could.
(Today, a minor fender bender often totals newer cars where a hammer, a little bondo, and paint would've fixed it 20 years ago. I don't want that: if you've seen a colision between an 80s car and a recent vintage vehicle, you'd not think it's any better, either.)
But seriously, my main observation here is that so many people are spending lots of energy on inventing reasons for why nothing can be done.
That's a shortsighted observation. People are telling you it can't be done because people and companies have tried many of these things, and of the ones which have actually made it to market, all of them have failed commercially and in practice.
It's like saying you can't do tight cornering on icy roads in a sports car. People have tried; they have failed. It's counter-intuitive to insist that it can be done, baring some obfuscated metal cleat wheel which actively grips the road and is so expensive and impractical that nobody would reasonably care.
You have to view things from the perspective of those who say them.
This improves gun safety for those who would attempt to deprive us of our liberties. It's safer for them, not firearm owners.
Gun control is hitting what you aim. It is a very important part of firearm safety.
What you may be referring to is firearm confiscation resulting from punitively restrictive legislation.
That idiot driver who did not maintain his vehicle was responsible for his own personal safety. Him. Not someone else. He was responsible to avoid a collision; he was responsible to maintain his tools and to drive them cautiously, in a defensive manner.
Likewise, every single adult who has been shot while unarmed has been guilty of neglecting their own personal safety.
(Do you really think there'd be mass shootings, or even all that many public shootings, if there was any perception of the general populace being armed?)
Is this a 'reasonable proposal', or are you being serious? It's hard to tell.
http://theintelhub.com/2012/12/30/back-to-the-future-what-history-teaches-about-gun-confiscations/
What these politicians are trying to do fits the formula for firearm confiscation perfectly. Quite likely by coincidence, the likely outcome is not all that dissimilar from what you propose, except substitute "gun owners" with "every single person the government in power disagrees with or dislikes". And yes, unlike what every population it happens to believes, it can happen here.
LOL
"Automatic weapon type bullets"? Why not just restrict those things that go out from the shoulder, too? That'll be effective.
In case you didn't notice, I'm being completely sarcastic. You don't understand what you're talking about. "Automatic type bullets" pretty much means everything.
And even if you banned them, it would mean nothing. These things are easy enough to manufacture that someone would do so. Lead, brass, and copper are not exactly difficult to make or come by: you'd have to ban machine shops and basement reloading benches at that point.
Note that gun safety features (not universally loved) like loaded-chamber indicators, grip safeties, and magazine disconnects are constantly evolving and have been available in some form and in various combinations for many decades, so gun makers seem to have some incentive to produce and improve them, and that the PLCAA does not prevent consumer safety lawsuits, but does shield gun makers from suits based on criminal conduct by gun buyers (though imperfectly).
Do you know why these so-called safety features can't be found on police or military firearms?
Because they're dangerous and get people killed. I wish that were overly dramatic, but it isn't: I've personally had a built-in "safety" features fail (the built-in safety lock found on some guns) and I'm not exactly what you'd consider a die hard shooter or gun owner.
We're talking about devices which are often required by professionals to go shoot anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 consecutive problem-free rounds of ammunition before they consider it 'reliable'. If the firearm has a failure, they start back at zero. By adding electronics to the mix, it adds one more point of failure. There is no beneficial trade off: firearms need to be as simple as possible because they have to do one thing, and do it every single time: accurately, consistently, and effectively propel a bullet from the barrel.
Think about it for a second. Do you really think it's a good idea to put miniaturized biometrics on a device which will be banged, dropped, get wet, be in constant contact with an acidic sweaty meat sack, etc.? They also sit untouched for (sometimes) decades. How long do you think the MTBF will be? 10,000 hours? 5,000? That'll make the handgun or shotgun in Grandma's closet or bedstand she uses for protection somewhat useless, won't it? The shorting battery will cause a couple issues for the security guard who gets jumped, too.
This isn't just the raving of some gun nut: this is pretty simple logic. If firearm manufacturers were able to make guarantee (or at least provide a reasonable method) that the person who owns the gun is the only one who can shoot it, they would, because there would be a market for it. Not only would there be a market for it, but it would be exceedingly lucrative and/or (potentially) remove them from any legal liability for someone's actions (because the person would have to go through a gov't background check to purchase that firearm).
This isn't about "gun safety". It's about denying firearms to the common person on the grounds of safety - for our own good.
This is "gun safety" like the kind of "knife safety" which resulted in the invention of the butter knife: it makes the device uselessly crippled and only applicable to a very small subset of reasons why people legitimately purchase firearms.
People scream about the evil of SecureBoot on Slashdot but yet there are so many people who would willingly require people to have something like this on a firearm. Really? Are you seriously making that argument? Are we really having this discussion with a straight face? "It'll protect legitimate users!" *sigh* And yet, it's so much more than just "freedom" we're talking about here.
If we want to talk about "gun safety" why don't we talk about putting firearm training in schools? The physical safety of firearms is already pretty damn high.
Pretty much every single Windows ME device was locked down in this (or a similar) way. Apple did with iPods and iPhones as well, to the best of their ability (and repeatedly updated said lockouts). Nintendo does it with the Wii (missing, I feel, a stellar opportunity to become the ubiquitous home "system" that everyone has, complete with the benefits of being market dominant and ubiquitous, instead of just being a "game console").
Of course, now they're just using a standardized, DMCA protected, and encrypted means of denying access instead of a more general and broad method of obfuscation.
It would be someone else's business, because they would make it their business.
You know, in the same way that we currently have people making other people's relationships their business; people making other people's non-sentient and otherwise non-violent guns their business; people making other people's cars their business, people making other people's houses, property, and income their business, and so on.
Tyranny happens. People are giant fucking jerkoffs sometimes - most of the time, really, if history is any indication. Get over it and get around it.
Eventually all hardware will be like this. What will be your solution then? Don't buy a computer?
On the contrary, smartphones have been getting more open as time has gone on - specifically, as Android has gained traction. It used to be that pretty much any portable device was locked down and took a copious amount of time to even get a working chainload; now, many (most) of the high quality phones ship "open" and unhindered.
All hardware will be like this - locked down and inaccessible - only if we end up with an antitrust-worthy monopoly controlling the industry, like the one Apple and Microsoft both want to provide us with.
Android on the iPhone was possible, IIRC, mainly because Apple neither understands or really gives half a damn about properly implementing security measures and binary signing. All nice in theory, but their practice sucks. So people ran around them.