What if someone is out in the range adjusting some equipment, and the thing that was supposed to disconnect the Internet death trigger malfunctioned...
That mysterious and magical device is known as a human. There is always someone there whenever firing can go on, and I stroungly suspect that the firearm is removed from the device that fires it whenever anything is to be adjusted downrange. In other words the same precautions that are taken on a regular firing range.
This is not a totally automated device. Someone has to be there to reload, clear jams, oversee the firing mechanism to assure there are no human casualties. It is NOT done with a device, it is done by a human being who is also likely the one going downrange, and will be protecting his own butt.
Also note that this isn't like a magic 8 ball, or a webcam that you can control. It is something that only one person gets to use at a time. Time on it must be scheduled, and a membership be purchased. It is not by any means a point and shoot situation.
Re:What happens when a human gets shot
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 1
It's going to be possible for off site hunting accidents and off site manslaughter.
Go to www.live-shot.com to see how it actually works.
It isn't a case of whoever clicks in can shoot. You must register and pay, then schedule a time.
During any scheduled shooting a human is present to answer questions, maintain the firearm, and assure safety
It is pretty safe. Kind of dumb but rather safe.
There are real consequences to this hunting. Animals die.
Well, it isn't hunting yet, and I seriously doubt that it will be. From the sample video, it will be far too difficult to aim quickly given the motorized setup. Add that to serious network lag, no matter how fast the connection, and actually killing an animal becomes infeasable. Brutally murdering a paper target on the other hand...
You wouldn't pilot an aircraft with real people in it by remote control via a flight sim or camera setup. If there were a real pilot in the seat to take over should something go wrong it wouldn't be so bad. Right now most commercial airliners are 'flown' by computer with the pilot only taking over for some takeoffs and landings, and when something goes wrong, and I trust a remote control system far more than I trust a computer, and should something go wrong, and there is no pilot (say he dies for example), a remote control system is infinitly superior to NO autopilot and NO pilot.
Well, no. Hunting, in a nutshell, is taking pleasure in killing something else. Kind of bigoted aren't you? Just how in the hell do you know what is going on in someone else's mind? Sure SOME hunters are exactly what you think. Others want the meat. Others like the social aspects. Some just like the challenge.You have no idea what others are thinking and feeling.
But let's not pretend hunting's anything noble or magnificent. Or anything more than overweight white people in camaflouge and masked odors, Still more bigotry. Most hunters I know are in excellent shape, and of course we all know from school and TV that being white means you are responsible for ALL The evil that was ever done by anyone else white.
killing from several football fields away with a high-powered rifle.
Have you ever actually fired a gun? It isn't something magical. Most people can not hit an average sized animal at "several football fields". Most killing shots take place well within 100 yards and often within 50.
If you can't get to a supermarket, okay, I can understand why you'd need to hunt.
1. If you don't go out and keep your skills up, you won't be able to do it when you NEED to.
2. For those skilled hunting is extremely cheap. I know people who haven't bought meat for more than a decade, eat meat every day, and spend less than $100 dollars a year on the meat. For poor families this IS how they get the meat they eat.
3. Maybe they like vennison or elk. You can't get that in the supermarket.
As it stands now, though, I have nothing but contempt for the overweight rednecks who need a rifle and a corpse to feel like men.
Boy, we're not giving into stereotyping a bit are we? Have you ever thought that you are simply viewing things through the skewed anti-hunter viewpoint of much of the media?
You really need to move out of the big city, and see what life is really like outside the artifical reality such places are.
Finally somebody pointing this out. One of the primary purposes of the patent system is (or at least was) to assure that ideas are not lost. Benjamin Franklin also did not like patents. One of his inventions, the glass armonica disappeared completely, and although it has been re-reverse engineered, it is difficult to know how close to Franklin's original designs the new ones come.
Even if you want to give your invention to the world, you should patent it. You can then release the patent for the general public (there is a term for this, but I forget what it is). Simply saying "I'm not going to patent it because I am a better person than all those other fools" is not only quite arrogant, but forgets entirely about half of the entire purpose of the patent system, namely to document useful and interesting inventions for use in the future.
Slashdot REALLY hates patents because of the issues with software patents. I would argue that many software patents are indeed stupid, others do have value. For example, patents involving lossy compression where what is lost is determined by thousands of hours of human perceptual study costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. This research most likely wouldn't happen if there wasn't some hope of return on investment. On the other hand, Amazon's one click shopping patent is plain stupid. What's in-between is a grey area, LZW compression for instance it is non-obvious, but not that hard.
However in the real world (software is wierd, it moves too fast) seventeen years just isn't that long (maybe when you're seventeen it seems like it, but trust me after about 25 time just starts to fly by).
Whatever you feel about peopel who try to make money on what they do, patents are a good way to make sure you indeed help mankind, not just now but later. If for whatever reason your invention should disappear, someone can find it and make it again. If you don't, people will have to guess from inadequate plans.
Just a little note. I was going to travel overseas for an extended period of time, and I bought luggage. Three bags. Different brands, different stores. Each had an included lock. All three locks had the same key. Later I took and found that they opened 90% of the locks I tried. So if you're using a standard luggage lock, they can likely get in anyway no matter the color of the hat.
How many were stabbed? Are you saying that Just because it's a gun, it's somehow worse than some other means of dying? If you somehow were to make it totally impossible to have any form of firearm, those who would have used guns will use knives, or clubs or rocks or bare hands, or poison, or something else.
Guns are an efficent means of killing someone. They are by no means the only method. By removing the gun (assuming for the moment that you can), you simply force the criminal to use another method.
That is why your data is horribly skewed. You seem to only count gun deaths. Why don't we compare deaths for heat stroke between Death Vally, and Antartica? That should be just as informative.
I really couldn't care less about your numbers. To anyone who actually looks at them, they report only one thing GUN deaths. It doesn't take into account how many of those deaths would have happened anyway if there were no guns. It doesn't take into account how many death WOULD have been 'gun deaths' had there been easier access to guns.
Ancient Rome had very few gun deaths too. That isn't to say that it wasn't a pretty bloody time. Just because there is a gun involved doesn't indicate ANYTHING. You seem to assume that none of those deaths would have happened were there no guns, and anyone who bothers to apply any thought should see differently.
That is not to say that the pro gun side doesn't distort facts too, however this one was far too simpleminded to let go.
Most of that is besides the point. In the UK there are normally less then 100 fatalities due to guns per year. Please compare that to the 30,000 fatalities per year in the US.
Of course if you actually LOOK at those numbers you really should notice a few things.
1. There are more people in the U.S. Naturally a direct comparison of nearly U.S. vs U.K. is going to show more in the U.S.
2. This neatly eliminates the number 1 source of gun death, suicide. If someone wants to kill themselves, a gun is convienent, quick and probably painless (I haven't tried it so I couldn't say for sure) if you do it right, because death is almost instantanious. However if someone wants to die, taking the gun away doesn't help. You can take pills, slit wrists, jump of buildings or other high places, hang yourself, suffocate yourself with a plastic bag a la heaven's gate, or drive your car into something fairly solid at speed.
3. It neatly ignores the number of 'gun deaths' where someone with a gun legally defended themselves or another from violence, either gun or non-gun. If someone pulls a knife on me, and I shoot him, it's self defense. If someone is trying to stab someone else and I shoot him, it is not a crime. It would still be a 'gun death', but it just gets lumpped into that figure that the gun controll advocates try to pass off as a good reason to eliminate guns.
4. It doesn't take into account the shift from 'gun deaths' to 'knife deaths' or other such ways to kill a person. Just because a gun isn't involved doesn't make everything ok.
Maybe it would be more efficient to compare the MURDER rate in the U.S. vs the U.K., rather than just those deaths involving guns.
All of the arguments I've seen on both sides of the argument, even when using the same data is horribly skewed to whatever side the person happens to be on, but this one is pretty lame.
I was not aware Louisiana had finally raised their drinking age. Likewise, I thought Montana still had no speed limit. Sorry for the mistake.
When the federal government allowed states to set their own speed limits on interstate highways, Montana quickly removed the speed limit. The problem was that suddenly the accident statistics jumpped by a great deal. Germany can get away with no speed limit because they have very strict training, and auto maintainece standards, as well as laws that make it possible to drive very fast.
For example, in Germany, you MUST drive in the right lane, and are only allowed into the left lane to pass. If you happen to be in the left lane, or not in the far right lane, and someone comes up behind you, you MUST move over, which means you MUST be watching what's behind you.
In the U.S. however, Drivers training is about 6 weeks, you can drive pretty much anything, there is little to no lane dicipline, and I actually know people that insist that the rear view mirror is a BAD thing.
Anyway, the result was that Montana quickly rose to #1 on the highway statistics, and they basically had to put the speed limit back.
Ironically enough, according to some people the real reason was that Europeans, particularly Germans came to Montana so they could go flat out for an extended period of time, something that increasing population has made impossible, even on the autobann.
In fact, speed limits are posted near population centers, and even where there is no legal speed limit, there is often a practical speed limit, because of the traffic.
I'm not anti-gun, but I question whether you want to start them at 4. Does a 4-year-old understand death?
Since I used to work in day care, I can tell you that many 2 year olds understand death pretty well. It depends greatly on their expierences, and their own intelligence, but yes, many young children do have at least some understanding of death. Usually this comes from members of the extended family, or pets dying. My great-grandmother died before I was in school, and I understood it then.
Your answer however seems like flamebait to me. On many levels it appears that you are assuming that the only reason to shoot is to kill, or that someone will be killed.
However I do agree that 4 is a little young to begin shooting. Maybe low powered air rifles, or even spring bb guns would work, but nothing more powerful. 4 year olds tend to lack some maturity and self control, and more importantly can seriously lack dexterity coordination and visual acuity. It would be easy to get someone shot because a trigger was bumped, accidently etc. Something sufficiently low powered could reduce the risks, but I would personally wait for five or six at least.
Has it occured to anyone that to a lay person, that a missile defense system and an asteroid defense system could look very much alike?
After thinking about it for quite a while, I really see only one use for an missile shield. A front for an asteroid shield. Nothing else I can think of really makes sense. The threat isn't from missiles anymore, it doesn't give us leverage anywhere since everyone else knows that missiles arent where the threat lies. All I can think of that makes sense is as a front for a different project.
If you remember, a few years ago, Clinton tried to build an asteroid defense system. There was virutually no public support. There IS enough support for a missile defense system that it might go through. If my hunch is correct, it won't be a missile shield, but an asteroid shield, and the government is just lying to get us to get us to pay for it.
Of couse I could be wrong, but that's what my gut tells me.
Unless you are a person like me, who can remember everything. You only forget something if you don't care about it. So, on that note, I disagree with your professor.
Lucky Bastard. Mere mortals like myself however don't have that particular luxury.:-P
But, I am afraid the problem is much deeper, whereas I tutor students who are almost in college or who are in college who can't figure out basic fractions or exponential functions without the use of a calculator. They never learned how to do it by hand. Especially the students who store notes from class in their calculators so they never even tried to learn it in the first place.
This is a problem with the Public schools who can't appear to teach their way out of a paper bag. With the way education is taught in the Universities, which require no courses that require real thought. With a learning environment that encourages the read and regurgutate learning method.
I could go on for hundreds of pages about how the public schools are destroying millions of young minds every year, but I won't. I cound go on for hundreds more about the hell that those who insist on retaining intelligence go through, but Katz has already done that. I could go on more about how the public education system is too broken for repair, and like a some buildings, it's better just to knock it down and build something that works, but I won't.
I don't believe in restricting the use of calculators in most instances, there ARE times when it is necessary, but in most cases after junior high school, an intelligent teacher can simply make the requirments preclude letting the calculator do all the work.
From what you said, however I do believe that the case can be made that some classes and particularly some individuals need to not be allowed to use a calculator untill the basic skills are developed.
In fact, from what I've heard, Cheyanne Mountain in the U.S. is a co U.S. Canada venture, and the militaries of both countries use it.
It IS actually suprising to me that the NSA is licensing this. It wouldn't be hard for them to simply demonstrate that they had it first. Whether they really did or not is immaterial.
Moreover I'm rather shocked that the NSA wouldn't have something better. That IS really all they do. It leads to one of two conclusions. The NSA is falling way behind, or the NSA there is a hidden flaw in the algorithm, and the NSA wants people to think there isn't and use it so they can read their stuff.
What should really happen is graphic calculators that are able to store any alpha numeric information should be banned in any school below undergraduate level (and even then not until about sophmore/junior year of college).
Why? All you really have to do is place requirments on the tests that preclude letting the calculator do ALL the work for you. Things such as showing your work.
Let the machine do the stuff that isn't a part of what you're learning, and require that the work be shown for the stuff you are.
One of my professors always said "If you use something often enough it will memorize itself. If you don't use it that often, there is no point in memorizing it, as you can look it up." The only time you really can't when it comes to advanced mathematics is during artificial situations such as tests.
Generally on tests we could bring in 'cheat sheets' he kept the size limited because it forced students to put the students to only put the stuff that hadn't memorized itself yet there.
During finals however, he didn't care what we used, and during take home tests we could even ask others for help. His tests however were hard enough that after having one of them, nobody wanted a take home test.
So I ask you, Why ban these things. A good professor can make the tests bloody hard even given access to all sorts of resources.
Of course if someone insists on using multiple choice electronicly graded tests, you you can't make good math tests. The only real way to make those difficult is to give potential answers that are very much like common mistakes. This doesn't test actual knowledge of the subject. Only how careful someone is.
Basically, we underestimated the willingness of our enemy.
Exactly my point. We had perfectly good examples of hardened cockpits. It wasn't that nobody ever thought of it, as was alleged upthread, but that we saw it and dismissed it as unnecessary.
The question isn't about developing weapons to protect your cousin, it's developing weapons that will kill him. KILL, not DEFEND. The technology that is being developed, the science that is researched, will be defensive, will be useful, will be peaceful, but it will also be deadly.
Very few weapons that can be used to defend, can't be used to kill. Even weapons that are designed to avoid killing, often do. Tear gas is designed not to kill, but every so often someone dies. The Russians tried some sort of anesthetic gas to quell a situation (I forget the details). Several people died from a reaction. The simple fact is that there are times when you either HAVE to kill someone or they WILL kill you or someone you want to protect.
Now the question is, would you willingly work on that system knowing this, with the very strong possibility that such rifles will be used against your cousin in the dissident south? Or your brother at college, who is protesting the Viet Nam war? Or any number of situations?
In a flash, also knowing that those rifles are protecting MY country, and my rights and freedoms.
Because developing technology that makes it easier to kill has *nothing* to do with defense. It means when a mugger has such a weapon, when a policeman has such a weapon, when a kid steals such a weapon, then it's that much easier for your cousin, son, brother, sister, mother to be killed.
Once again, name a technology that offers reasonable defense that can't be used to kill. Your argument is moronic. However preventing people from having weapons also prevents them from protecting themselves adequately.
One thing Police officers say is that most of the time, a fleeing criminal will flee from a handgun, but when he hears the 12 gague cock, he gives up. Why? Because anyone with an entire synapse knows that a handgun is pretty hard to aim, and not a sure kill. With a shotgun however, it's pretty hard to miss, and guaranteed to mess you up.
Do you have a moral or ethical responsibility, knowing that, to abstain from such research?
Nope.
Some of these scientists feel that kind of moral guilt.
Some scientists need to exit their ivory towers and try to live in the real world for a time.
Yeah, yeah, there were surely some people who advocated impermeable doors, but I wouldn't call it obvious.
El Al the Israleii airline felt it was obvious enough to have them. They've had them for some time now. The simple fact is that there was an airline that did it, but it was dismissed as it was felt that the risk was too small and the cost too great.
At least someone took the time to prove alchemy wrong.
Where exactly was alchemy wrong? Sure alchemy started being called chemistry, and the magical overtones were dropped, but I would call technology the modern magic.
Early alchemists likely knew a lot about what they were doing, but trying to explain it to those not versed in the art proved impossible. By the time you got the fifth word out their eyes would be glazed over, and once you had explained in detail how it worked, they turn around and ask again.
Ask someone who isn't a geek, how most special effects are done, and the confident answer you're likely to get is that they use computers. If you press them for more detail, (and I've tried this) you get that the computer figures it out. There is not even a basic comprehension among the majority of the populace about how things work inside. A computer is just a magic box that doesn't work they way you want it to.
They have no more understanding of what's going on than the people talking to the alchemist. Substitute the word technology for magic, and the descriptions of how things work could come from 2000 years ago.
Oh yea... the arc of the covenant (aka the worlds first battery). Put the top on and close the circuit.... bam... sparks and heat everywhere.
More likely a capicitor, but a good point. Note the directive never to touch it, unless it was on the ground and open. Also notice that the poles it was carried with would have insulated those carrying it from any discharge, but touch it directly and ground yourself...
Certainly their results have been duplicated by many, but for every duplication that produced excess heat, their has been two that fail to do so. An experiment that can only be replicated by believers isn't science, it's charlatanism.
Not quite what's happening here. It's obvious that most people here haven't read anything about what's going on with those studying 'cold fusion'. Most of those who do study it agree that whatever is happening, it isn't fusion. It retains the name for historical reasons.
What IS happening doesn't seem to conform to what anyone understands about physics. People performing (as far as they can tell) the exact same expierment will get different results. Even the same person doing the same expierment multiple times gets different results.
Often there is a significant amount of heat generated, often not. Somtimes there are neutrons, sometimes not. Most of those who are looking into it will freely say that it isn't fusion, and that most likely it isn't going to be too useful. The fact that there are some anomolous results happening, that aren't easily accounted for, indicates that it's at least worth studying.
Anyone who advocates FOR the standardization of the Linux desktop has completely missed how Unix, Linux, programming and Open Source work. They can't or won't understand the true nature of what is going on.
People choose a GUI for themselves, because they like it best (or in a lot of cases hate it least). If someone were to try to lock Linux down to a single gui, the nature of UNIX would make it easy to strip out the offending GUI and put in another. This would be done by many, and the nature of open source gives them the ability and the right to do so. I would certainly resent someone tryint to force me to go with a particular gui, and would likely choose a different one just on that basis.
What SHOULD be done however is standardize a way to make all GUI's interoperate correctly, and perhaps create some easy to use general tools to create gui indifferent interfaces. xlib does this some, but xlib is a pain, which is why gtk, qt motif and whatever have been developed.
The nice thing is that for the most part, the various libraries for the various wm's work together pretty well. I can have a kde app running with a gnome app without problem, and I do it often.
I tend to hope that the complaint about Linux having multiple gui's will eventually settle down. Younger kids growing up with multiple interfaces will become accustomed to it. Before long, it hopefully won't be an issue. However lately, I've started to wonder. A lot of people seem to have difficulty with any interface more complex than a single button, so I might be disappointed.
The other thing I've wanted to point out is that the people who say that we shouldn't care how well Linux does as long as we can use it are flat out wrong.
Linus can say that he doesn't care, becasue he will always end up working on a Linux box. Others who don't have jobs, or aren't stuck working in a windows world can talk about not caring if Linux wins, because they aren't stuck on a windows box.
I want Linux to be popular enough that hardware manufacturers have no choice but support Linux. I want Software developers to have no choice but support Linux, I want companies to have no reasonable objection to someone having Linux instead of windows their desktop.
I don't really care if YOU use windows, I don't care whether or not windows goes away. I just want Linux to become popular enough that Windows isn't one of MY major headaches. By this standard, Linux isn't nearly popular enough. However I do feel strongly that enforcing a standard gui would go a long way to eliminate one of the major reasons I choose Linux. And if anyone ever tries to eliminate my commane line, let's just say it won't be pretty.
I think even Joe Sixpack can figure out that a water connection and a high voltage connection need to be physically seperate.
Are you sure? Given that things such as hair dryers tend to have warning labels such as "Do not use while showering", I tend to doubt it. (And yes, I've seen such a label).
Lots are. I had expierences in the Dominician Republic similar to those in the parent post, although I had no hope of being mistaken for a native there, there were times I often found myself ashamed to be from the same country as some of the complete assholes I met. Most of the other Americans I associated with regularly felt the same way.
After all even though I'm using a system admined by someone else, and even though it isn't directly vunerable to direct attack, and even though the attachments but not the messages are filtered, and even though my mail client won't run attachments, I've still lost half a dozen important email messages in the noise of the massive amounts of mail I've gotten from the past couple of worms.
Important stuff has been missed because these past two (or is it three) worms have made email nearly unusable. I didn't get enough spam to worry about filtering it. It was getting close, but I still didn't bother. This has made me learn procmail just to deal with mass numbers of bogus messages. It IS a colossal headache. Moreso I imagine for mail admins who have to deal with flooded machines that aren't actually vunerable either.
I find it facinating that you blame Bush for all of the supposed threats to freedom of speech. I was nearly fired from a job in 97 because I voiced the opinion that the rules reguarding celebration of holidays coming down from the "National association for the education of young children" (NAYEC)[1] were immoral, and that people ought to be free to celebrate what they wanted.
This was a Liberal organization. It nearly mandated that it's members vote for Clinton, then Gore. If you voice the opinion that abortion is wrong, you're fired to work there you are required to believe 100% that abortion is OK. If you voice the opinion that children are better off with a parent than in daycare 15 hours/day, you are fired if you work there, you are required to preach that parents should have the children in daycare as long as possible.
I dare you to try being a Conservative at a Liberal school. I've failed classes because I disagreed with a professor.
You do have a decent point, not one I totally agree with, but you do support it well. You just don't seem to have seen the other side. You assume that all of the opression is comming from Georgie Junior and his cronies, this might be because YOU never had any of YOUR speech supressed. I certianly have had MY speech opressed by the Liberal side.
However I do believe that you take it a bit too far. Death threats are unacceptable to silence any speech, however if someone's speech is threatening your livelyhood, say an employee is insulting customers, you have the right to fire him.
If someone says something you don't like, you have the right not to buy things from him. If he pisses off enough people and he can't make money any more, tough.
If someone wants to organize a boycott for whatever reason, good for them. It's their right. If you don't agree don't boycott. Actually from your example, I think being a country singer is reason enough to boycott, but that's just me.
Free speech DOES have consequences. You shouldn't be locked up, and there should be reasonable limits on those consequences, however if you make a complete ass out of yourself multiple times on national television, should you expect to get a staring role in a television sitcom? If the mere sight of you makes people switch, probably not.
If Bush were as bad as you are trying to say, you would already have been disappeared.
[1] A subsidiary of the National Education Association.
If the RIAA music is so shit why do some many people want to steal it?
Well, there are a lot of reasons people "steal" the RIAA's music. One, even though the vast majority of the stuff most 'artists' put out is complete crap, there is an occasional good song. One that would be worth buying for a nominial fee, but not worth buying the entire CD to get.
This single decent song often isn't even the one put out on the radio. It's something just on the CD. The mentality is that it's pretty cheap to create a cd full of crap with a single good song. Then you have to buy the entire CD. Then the band makes another cd with a single good song, with the rest of the CD complete crap. If you want to make a decent mix you have to buy 10-15 CD's at $20.00 per ($200-$300 for a single CD with GOOD music).
Another reason is that it's far easier to grab large numbers of songs without really paying attention to what you're getting. Your network connection is idle most of the time, so it can use the extra bandwidth, and your downtime to get songs. File traders often end up with multiple copies of the same song with slightly different names. The RIAA consideres each and every song downloaded whether or not it actually IS a song and not just something that from the file name appears to be, whether or not it's a duplicate, whether or not the person who downloaded wanted it, and whether or not they would have bought it had they not downloaded it, a lost sale. This is plainly stupid.
If I want to find out if a song is good before I blow $20 on the CD, I would download it first and take a listen. Perhaps several. There are a lot of songs that sound good at first, but after a few listenings you realize they are crap. If I wanted to hear a particular song for some reason, but I really didn't care to listen to the song regularly, I would find it and according to your post 'steal' it. I would probably delete it after listening to it a couple of times. I'm not going to pay $20 to listen to a song a couple of times. For that matter if I'm going to pay any more than a fraction of a cent, I want to be able to listen to the song as often as I want.
Myself, I've become so disgusted with the RIAA that I've stopped listening to any music that is still in copyright. For that matter, I've generally stopped listening to music that was written since the development of copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
What if someone is out in the range adjusting some equipment, and the thing that was supposed to disconnect the Internet death trigger malfunctioned...
That mysterious and magical device is known as a human. There is always someone there whenever firing can go on, and I stroungly suspect that the firearm is removed from the device that fires it whenever anything is to be adjusted downrange. In other words the same precautions that are taken on a regular firing range.
This is not a totally automated device. Someone has to be there to reload, clear jams, oversee the firing mechanism to assure there are no human casualties. It is NOT done with a device, it is done by a human being who is also likely the one going downrange, and will be protecting his own butt.
Also note that this isn't like a magic 8 ball, or a webcam that you can control. It is something that only one person gets to use at a time. Time on it must be scheduled, and a membership be purchased. It is not by any means a point and shoot situation.
Go to
www.live-shot.com to see how it actually works.
It is pretty safe. Kind of dumb but rather safe.
There are real consequences to this hunting. Animals die.
Well, it isn't hunting yet, and I seriously doubt that it will be. From the sample video, it will be far too difficult to aim quickly given the motorized setup. Add that to serious network lag, no matter how fast the connection, and actually killing an animal becomes infeasable. Brutally murdering a paper target on the other hand...
You wouldn't pilot an aircraft with real people in it by remote control via a flight sim or camera setup.
If there were a real pilot in the seat to take over should something go wrong it wouldn't be so bad. Right now most commercial airliners are 'flown' by computer with the pilot only taking over for some takeoffs and landings, and when something goes wrong, and I trust a remote control system far more than I trust a computer, and should something go wrong, and there is no pilot (say he dies for example), a remote control system is infinitly superior to NO autopilot and NO pilot.
Well, no. Hunting, in a nutshell, is taking pleasure in killing something else.
Kind of bigoted aren't you? Just how in the hell do you know what is going on in someone else's mind? Sure SOME hunters are exactly what you think. Others want the meat. Others like the social aspects. Some just like the challenge.You have no idea what others are thinking and feeling.
But let's not pretend hunting's anything noble or magnificent. Or anything more than overweight white people in camaflouge and masked odors,
Still more bigotry. Most hunters I know are in excellent shape, and of course we all know from school and TV that being white means you are responsible for ALL The evil that was ever done by anyone else white.
killing from several football fields away with a high-powered rifle.
Have you ever actually fired a gun? It isn't something magical. Most people can not hit an average sized animal at "several football fields". Most killing shots take place well within 100 yards and often within 50.
If you can't get to a supermarket, okay, I can understand why you'd need to hunt.
1. If you don't go out and keep your skills up, you won't be able to do it when you NEED to.
2. For those skilled hunting is extremely cheap. I know people who haven't bought meat for more than a decade, eat meat every day, and spend less than $100 dollars a year on the meat. For poor families this IS how they get the meat they eat.
3. Maybe they like vennison or elk. You can't get that in the supermarket.
As it stands now, though, I have nothing but contempt for the overweight rednecks who need a rifle and a corpse to feel like men.
Boy, we're not giving into stereotyping a bit are we? Have you ever thought that you are simply viewing things through the skewed anti-hunter viewpoint of much of the media?
You really need to move out of the big city, and see what life is really like outside the artifical reality such places are.
Finally somebody pointing this out. One of the primary purposes of the patent system is (or at least was) to assure that ideas are not lost. Benjamin Franklin also did not like patents. One of his inventions, the glass armonica disappeared completely, and although it has been re-reverse engineered, it is difficult to know how close to Franklin's original designs the new ones come.
Even if you want to give your invention to the world, you should patent it. You can then release the patent for the general public (there is a term for this, but I forget what it is). Simply saying "I'm not going to patent it because I am a better person than all those other fools" is not only quite arrogant, but forgets entirely about half of the entire purpose of the patent system, namely to document useful and interesting inventions for use in the future.
Slashdot REALLY hates patents because of the issues with software patents. I would argue that many software patents are indeed stupid, others do have value. For example, patents involving lossy compression where what is lost is determined by thousands of hours of human perceptual study costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. This research most likely wouldn't happen if there wasn't some hope of return on investment. On the other hand, Amazon's one click shopping patent is plain stupid. What's in-between is a grey area, LZW compression for instance it is non-obvious, but not that hard.
However in the real world (software is wierd, it moves too fast) seventeen years just isn't that long (maybe when you're seventeen it seems like it, but trust me after about 25 time just starts to fly by).
Whatever you feel about peopel who try to make money on what they do, patents are a good way to make sure you indeed help mankind, not just now but later. If for whatever reason your invention should disappear, someone can find it and make it again. If you don't, people will have to guess from inadequate plans.
Just a little note. I was going to travel overseas for an extended period of time, and I bought luggage. Three bags. Different brands, different stores. Each had an included lock. All three locks had the same key. Later I took and found that they opened 90% of the locks I tried. So if you're using a standard luggage lock, they can likely get in anyway no matter the color of the hat.
How many were stabbed? Are you saying that Just because it's a gun, it's somehow worse than some other means of dying? If you somehow were to make it totally impossible to have any form of firearm, those who would have used guns will use knives, or clubs or rocks or bare hands, or poison, or something else.
Guns are an efficent means of killing someone. They are by no means the only method. By removing the gun (assuming for the moment that you can), you simply force the criminal to use another method.
That is why your data is horribly skewed. You seem to only count gun deaths. Why don't we compare deaths for heat stroke between Death Vally, and Antartica? That should be just as informative.
I really couldn't care less about your numbers. To anyone who actually looks at them, they report only one thing GUN deaths. It doesn't take into account how many of those deaths would have happened anyway if there were no guns. It doesn't take into account how many death WOULD have been 'gun deaths' had there been easier access to guns.
Ancient Rome had very few gun deaths too. That isn't to say that it wasn't a pretty bloody time. Just because there is a gun involved doesn't indicate ANYTHING. You seem to assume that none of those deaths would have happened were there no guns, and anyone who bothers to apply any thought should see differently.
That is not to say that the pro gun side doesn't distort facts too, however this one was far too simpleminded to let go.
"GUN DEATH" != person living were there no guns.
Most of that is besides the point. In the UK there are normally less then 100 fatalities due to guns per year. Please compare that to the 30,000 fatalities per year in the US.
Of course if you actually LOOK at those numbers you really should notice a few things.
1. There are more people in the U.S. Naturally a direct comparison of nearly U.S. vs U.K. is going to show more in the U.S.
2. This neatly eliminates the number 1 source of gun death, suicide. If someone wants to kill themselves, a gun is convienent, quick and probably painless (I haven't tried it so I couldn't say for sure) if you do it right, because death is almost instantanious. However if someone wants to die, taking the gun away doesn't help. You can take pills, slit wrists, jump of buildings or other high places, hang yourself, suffocate yourself with a plastic bag a la heaven's gate, or drive your car into something fairly solid at speed.
3. It neatly ignores the number of 'gun deaths' where someone with a gun legally defended themselves or another from violence, either gun or non-gun. If someone pulls a knife on me, and I shoot him, it's self defense. If someone is trying to stab someone else and I shoot him, it is not a crime. It would still be a 'gun death', but it just gets lumpped into that figure that the gun controll advocates try to pass off as a good reason to eliminate guns.
4. It doesn't take into account the shift from 'gun deaths' to 'knife deaths' or other such ways to kill a person. Just because a gun isn't involved doesn't make everything ok.
Maybe it would be more efficient to compare the MURDER rate in the U.S. vs the U.K., rather than just those deaths involving guns.
All of the arguments I've seen on both sides of the argument, even when using the same data is horribly skewed to whatever side the person happens to be on, but this one is pretty lame.
I was not aware Louisiana had finally raised their drinking age. Likewise, I thought Montana still had no speed limit. Sorry for the mistake.
When the federal government allowed states to set their own speed limits on interstate highways, Montana quickly removed the speed limit. The problem was that suddenly the accident statistics jumpped by a great deal. Germany can get away with no speed limit because they have very strict training, and auto maintainece standards, as well as laws that make it possible to drive very fast.
For example, in Germany, you MUST drive in the right lane, and are only allowed into the left lane to pass. If you happen to be in the left lane, or not in the far right lane, and someone comes up behind you, you MUST move over, which means you MUST be watching what's behind you.
In the U.S. however, Drivers training is about 6 weeks, you can drive pretty much anything, there is little to no lane dicipline, and I actually know people that insist that the rear view mirror is a BAD thing.
Anyway, the result was that Montana quickly rose to #1 on the highway statistics, and they basically had to put the speed limit back.
Ironically enough, according to some people the real reason was that Europeans, particularly Germans came to Montana so they could go flat out for an extended period of time, something that increasing population has made impossible, even on the autobann.
In fact, speed limits are posted near population centers, and even where there is no legal speed limit, there is often a practical speed limit, because of the traffic.
I'm not anti-gun, but I question whether you want to start them at 4. Does a 4-year-old understand death?
Since I used to work in day care, I can tell you that many 2 year olds understand death pretty well. It depends greatly on their expierences, and their own intelligence, but yes, many young children do have at least some understanding of death. Usually this comes from members of the extended family, or pets dying. My great-grandmother died before I was in school, and I understood it then.
Your answer however seems like flamebait to me. On many levels it appears that you are assuming that the only reason to shoot is to kill, or that someone will be killed.
However I do agree that 4 is a little young to begin shooting. Maybe low powered air rifles, or even spring bb guns would work, but nothing more powerful. 4 year olds tend to lack some maturity and self control, and more importantly can seriously lack dexterity coordination and visual acuity. It would be easy to get someone shot because a trigger was bumped, accidently etc. Something sufficiently low powered could reduce the risks, but I would personally wait for five or six at least.
Speaking of missile defense.
Has it occured to anyone that to a lay person, that a missile defense system and an asteroid defense system could look very much alike?
After thinking about it for quite a while, I really see only one use for an missile shield. A front for an asteroid shield. Nothing else I can think of really makes sense. The threat isn't from missiles anymore, it doesn't give us leverage anywhere since everyone else knows that missiles arent where the threat lies. All I can think of that makes sense is as a front for a different project.
If you remember, a few years ago, Clinton tried to build an asteroid defense system. There was virutually no public support. There IS enough support for a missile defense system that it might go through. If my hunch is correct, it won't be a missile shield, but an asteroid shield, and the government is just lying to get us to get us to pay for it.
Of couse I could be wrong, but that's what my gut tells me.
Unless you are a person like me, who can remember everything. You only forget something if you don't care about it. So, on that note, I disagree with your professor.
Lucky Bastard. Mere mortals like myself however don't have that particular luxury.
But, I am afraid the problem is much deeper, whereas I tutor students who are almost in college or who are in college who can't figure out basic fractions or exponential functions without the use of a calculator. They never learned how to do it by hand. Especially the students who store notes from class in their calculators so they never even tried to learn it in the first place.
This is a problem with the Public schools who can't appear to teach their way out of a paper bag. With the way education is taught in the Universities, which require no courses that require real thought. With a learning environment that encourages the read and regurgutate learning method.
I could go on for hundreds of pages about how the public schools are destroying millions of young minds every year, but I won't. I cound go on for hundreds more about the hell that those who insist on retaining intelligence go through, but Katz has already done that. I could go on more about how the public education system is too broken for repair, and like a some buildings, it's better just to knock it down and build something that works, but I won't.
I don't believe in restricting the use of calculators in most instances, there ARE times when it is necessary, but in most cases after junior high school, an intelligent teacher can simply make the requirments preclude letting the calculator do all the work.
From what you said, however I do believe that the case can be made that some classes and particularly some individuals need to not be allowed to use a calculator untill the basic skills are developed.
In fact, from what I've heard, Cheyanne Mountain in the U.S. is a co U.S. Canada venture, and the militaries of both countries use it.
It IS actually suprising to me that the NSA is licensing this. It wouldn't be hard for them to simply demonstrate that they had it first. Whether they really did or not is immaterial.
Moreover I'm rather shocked that the NSA wouldn't have something better. That IS really all they do. It leads to one of two conclusions. The NSA is falling way behind, or the NSA there is a hidden flaw in the algorithm, and the NSA wants people to think there isn't and use it so they can read their stuff.
What should really happen is graphic calculators that are able to store any alpha numeric information should be banned in any school below undergraduate level (and even then not until about sophmore/junior year of college).
Why? All you really have to do is place requirments on the tests that preclude letting the calculator do ALL the work for you. Things such as showing your work.
Let the machine do the stuff that isn't a part of what you're learning, and require that the work be shown for the stuff you are.
One of my professors always said "If you use something often enough it will memorize itself. If you don't use it that often, there is no point in memorizing it, as you can look it up." The only time you really can't when it comes to advanced mathematics is during artificial situations such as tests.
Generally on tests we could bring in 'cheat sheets' he kept the size limited because it forced students to put the students to only put the stuff that hadn't memorized itself yet there.
During finals however, he didn't care what we used, and during take home tests we could even ask others for help. His tests however were hard enough that after having one of them, nobody wanted a take home test.
So I ask you, Why ban these things. A good professor can make the tests bloody hard even given access to all sorts of resources.
Of course if someone insists on using multiple choice electronicly graded tests, you you can't make good math tests. The only real way to make those difficult is to give potential answers that are very much like common mistakes. This doesn't test actual knowledge of the subject. Only how careful someone is.
You're using a perl script to make this stuff up, right? If you are, post the code please! I can see this might be good for hours of entertainment...
Nah, he's just channeling Karl Marx.
Basically, we underestimated the willingness of our enemy.
Exactly my point. We had perfectly good examples of hardened cockpits. It wasn't that nobody ever thought of it, as was alleged upthread, but that we saw it and dismissed it as unnecessary.
The question isn't about developing weapons to protect your cousin, it's developing weapons that will kill him. KILL, not DEFEND. The technology that is being developed, the science that is researched, will be defensive, will be useful, will be peaceful, but it will also be deadly.
Very few weapons that can be used to defend, can't be used to kill. Even weapons that are designed to avoid killing, often do. Tear gas is designed not to kill, but every so often someone dies. The Russians tried some sort of anesthetic gas to quell a situation (I forget the details). Several people died from a reaction. The simple fact is that there are times when you either HAVE to kill someone or they WILL kill you or someone you want to protect.
Now the question is, would you willingly work on that system knowing this, with the very strong possibility that such rifles will be used against your cousin in the dissident south? Or your brother at college, who is protesting the Viet Nam war? Or any number of situations?
In a flash, also knowing that those rifles are protecting MY country, and my rights and freedoms.
Because developing technology that makes it easier to kill has *nothing* to do with defense. It means when a mugger has such a weapon, when a policeman has such a weapon, when a kid steals such a weapon, then it's that much easier for your cousin, son, brother, sister, mother to be killed.
Once again, name a technology that offers reasonable defense that can't be used to kill. Your argument is moronic. However preventing people from having weapons also prevents them from protecting themselves adequately.
One thing Police officers say is that most of the time, a fleeing criminal will flee from a handgun, but when he hears the 12 gague cock, he gives up. Why? Because anyone with an entire synapse knows that a handgun is pretty hard to aim, and not a sure kill. With a shotgun however, it's pretty hard to miss, and guaranteed to mess you up.
Do you have a moral or ethical responsibility, knowing that, to abstain from such research?
Nope.
Some of these scientists feel that kind of moral guilt.
Some scientists need to exit their ivory towers and try to live in the real world for a time.
Yeah, yeah, there were surely some people who advocated impermeable doors, but I wouldn't call it obvious.
El Al the Israleii airline felt it was obvious enough to have them. They've had them for some time now. The simple fact is that there was an airline that did it, but it was dismissed as it was felt that the risk was too small and the cost too great.
At least someone took the time to prove alchemy wrong.
...
Where exactly was alchemy wrong? Sure alchemy started being called chemistry, and the magical overtones were dropped, but I would call technology the modern magic.
Early alchemists likely knew a lot about what they were doing, but trying to explain it to those not versed in the art proved impossible. By the time you got the fifth word out their eyes would be glazed over, and once you had explained in detail how it worked, they turn around and ask again.
Ask someone who isn't a geek, how most special effects are done, and the confident answer you're likely to get is that they use computers. If you press them for more detail, (and I've tried this) you get that the computer figures it out. There is not even a basic comprehension among the majority of the populace about how things work inside. A computer is just a magic box that doesn't work they way you want it to.
They have no more understanding of what's going on than the people talking to the alchemist. Substitute the word technology for magic, and the descriptions of how things work could come from 2000 years ago.
Oh yea... the arc of the covenant (aka the worlds first battery). Put the top on and close the circuit.... bam... sparks and heat everywhere.
More likely a capicitor, but a good point. Note the directive never to touch it, unless it was on the ground and open. Also notice that the poles it was carried with would have insulated those carrying it from any discharge, but touch it directly and ground yourself
Certainly their results have been duplicated by many, but for every duplication that produced excess heat, their has been two that fail to do so. An experiment that can only be replicated by believers isn't science, it's charlatanism.
Not quite what's happening here. It's obvious that most people here haven't read anything about what's going on with those studying 'cold fusion'. Most of those who do study it agree that whatever is happening, it isn't fusion. It retains the name for historical reasons.
What IS happening doesn't seem to conform to what anyone understands about physics. People performing (as far as they can tell) the exact same expierment will get different results. Even the same person doing the same expierment multiple times gets different results.
Often there is a significant amount of heat generated, often not. Somtimes there are neutrons, sometimes not. Most of those who are looking into it will freely say that it isn't fusion, and that most likely it isn't going to be too useful. The fact that there are some anomolous results happening, that aren't easily accounted for, indicates that it's at least worth studying.
Anyone who advocates FOR the standardization of the Linux desktop has completely missed how Unix, Linux, programming and Open Source work. They can't or won't understand the true nature of what is going on.
People choose a GUI for themselves, because they like it best (or in a lot of cases hate it least). If someone were to try to lock Linux down to a single gui, the nature of UNIX would make it easy to strip out the offending GUI and put in another. This would be done by many, and the nature of open source gives them the ability and the right to do so. I would certainly resent someone tryint to force me to go with a particular gui, and would likely choose a different one just on that basis.
What SHOULD be done however is standardize a way to make all GUI's interoperate correctly, and perhaps create some easy to use general tools to create gui indifferent interfaces. xlib does this some, but xlib is a pain, which is why gtk, qt motif and whatever have been developed.
The nice thing is that for the most part, the various libraries for the various wm's work together pretty well. I can have a kde app running with a gnome app without problem, and I do it often.
I tend to hope that the complaint about Linux having multiple gui's will eventually settle down. Younger kids growing up with multiple interfaces will become accustomed to it. Before long, it hopefully won't be an issue. However lately, I've started to wonder. A lot of people seem to have difficulty with any interface more complex than a single button, so I might be disappointed.
The other thing I've wanted to point out is that the people who say that we shouldn't care how well Linux does as long as we can use it are flat out wrong.
Linus can say that he doesn't care, becasue he will always end up working on a Linux box. Others who don't have jobs, or aren't stuck working in a windows world can talk about not caring if Linux wins, because they aren't stuck on a windows box.
I want Linux to be popular enough that hardware manufacturers have no choice but support Linux. I want Software developers to have no choice but support Linux, I want companies to have no reasonable objection to someone having Linux instead of windows their desktop.
I don't really care if YOU use windows, I don't care whether or not windows goes away. I just want Linux to become popular enough that Windows isn't one of MY major headaches. By this standard, Linux isn't nearly popular enough. However I do feel strongly that enforcing a standard gui would go a long way to eliminate one of the major reasons I choose Linux. And if anyone ever tries to eliminate my commane line, let's just say it won't be pretty.
I think even Joe Sixpack can figure out that a water connection and a high voltage connection need to be physically seperate.
Are you sure? Given that things such as hair dryers tend to have warning labels such as "Do not use while showering", I tend to doubt it. (And yes, I've seen such a label).
Dude, I wish all americans were like you.
Lots are. I had expierences in the Dominician Republic similar to those in the parent post, although I had no hope of being mistaken for a native there, there were times I often found myself ashamed to be from the same country as some of the complete assholes I met. Most of the other Americans I associated with regularly felt the same way.
After all even though I'm using a system admined by someone else, and even though it isn't directly vunerable to direct attack, and even though the attachments but not the messages are filtered, and even though my mail client won't run attachments, I've still lost half a dozen important email messages in the noise of the massive amounts of mail I've gotten from the past couple of worms.
Important stuff has been missed because these past two (or is it three) worms have made email nearly unusable. I didn't get enough spam to worry about filtering it. It was getting close, but I still didn't bother. This has made me learn procmail just to deal with mass numbers of bogus messages. It IS a colossal headache. Moreso I imagine for mail admins who have to deal with flooded machines that aren't actually vunerable either.
I find it facinating that you blame Bush for all of the supposed threats to freedom of speech. I was nearly fired from a job in 97 because I voiced the opinion that the rules reguarding celebration of holidays coming down from the "National association for the education of young children" (NAYEC)[1] were immoral, and that people ought to be free to celebrate what they wanted.
This was a Liberal organization. It nearly mandated that it's members vote for Clinton, then Gore. If you voice the opinion that abortion is wrong, you're fired to work there you are required to believe 100% that abortion is OK. If you voice the opinion that children are better off with a parent than in daycare 15 hours/day, you are fired if you work there, you are required to preach that parents should have the children in daycare as long as possible.
I dare you to try being a Conservative at a Liberal school. I've failed classes because I disagreed with a professor.
You do have a decent point, not one I totally agree with, but you do support it well. You just don't seem to have seen the other side. You assume that all of the opression is comming from Georgie Junior and his cronies, this might be because YOU never had any of YOUR speech supressed. I certianly have had MY speech opressed by the Liberal side.
However I do believe that you take it a bit too far. Death threats are unacceptable to silence any speech, however if someone's speech is threatening your livelyhood, say an employee is insulting customers, you have the right to fire him.
If someone says something you don't like, you have the right not to buy things from him. If he pisses off enough people and he can't make money any more, tough.
If someone wants to organize a boycott for whatever reason, good for them. It's their right. If you don't agree don't boycott. Actually from your example, I think being a country singer is reason enough to boycott, but that's just me.
Free speech DOES have consequences. You shouldn't be locked up, and there should be reasonable limits on those consequences, however if you make a complete ass out of yourself multiple times on national television, should you expect to get a staring role in a television sitcom? If the mere sight of you makes people switch, probably not.
If Bush were as bad as you are trying to say, you would already have been disappeared.
[1] A subsidiary of the National Education Association.
If the RIAA music is so shit why do some many people want to steal it?
Well, there are a lot of reasons people "steal" the RIAA's music. One, even though the vast majority of the stuff most 'artists' put out is complete crap, there is an occasional good song. One that would be worth buying for a nominial fee, but not worth buying the entire CD to get.
This single decent song often isn't even the one put out on the radio. It's something just on the CD. The mentality is that it's pretty cheap to create a cd full of crap with a single good song. Then you have to buy the entire CD. Then the band makes another cd with a single good song, with the rest of the CD complete crap. If you want to make a decent mix you have to buy 10-15 CD's at $20.00 per ($200-$300 for a single CD with GOOD music).
Another reason is that it's far easier to grab large numbers of songs without really paying attention to what you're getting. Your network connection is idle most of the time, so it can use the extra bandwidth, and your downtime to get songs. File traders often end up with multiple copies of the same song with slightly different names. The RIAA consideres each and every song downloaded whether or not it actually IS a song and not just something that from the file name appears to be, whether or not it's a duplicate, whether or not the person who downloaded wanted it, and whether or not they would have bought it had they not downloaded it, a lost sale. This is plainly stupid.
If I want to find out if a song is good before I blow $20 on the CD, I would download it first and take a listen. Perhaps several. There are a lot of songs that sound good at first, but after a few listenings you realize they are crap. If I wanted to hear a particular song for some reason, but I really didn't care to listen to the song regularly, I would find it and according to your post 'steal' it. I would probably delete it after listening to it a couple of times. I'm not going to pay $20 to listen to a song a couple of times. For that matter if I'm going to pay any more than a fraction of a cent, I want to be able to listen to the song as often as I want.
Myself, I've become so disgusted with the RIAA that I've stopped listening to any music that is still in copyright. For that matter, I've generally stopped listening to music that was written since the development of copyright.