There is a "Connect with Facebook" button on the front page of myspace.com It blew my mind
Of course. If you were running a social media company, given all the press Facebook gets on a daily basis, would you want partners and investors thinking your company is a direct competitor to Facebook? This is part of MySpace's new messaging, that it offers something unique and complementary to the other social networks.
Translation: They're up for sale, and devs are part of the more valuable "human capital". I wonder who would be buying?
That doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sell, you don't fire the employees first yourself -- what would be the point? Once you're out, you don't care how many employees the company has. Instead, you invite possible buyers to the office and make sure every single body is at a desk, working away like a busy little beaver on countless amazing things, making the company look like an incredible value and pushing the bidding price up. Then the investor walks away thinking, "Wow, they sure do great stuff there -- but they seem to have too many employees. If we buy the company, we can fire half of them and we'll end up with a real bargain!"
It is a case of the rights being sold. Publishers and authors often negotiate different rights agreements in different countries around the world. A book published by Random House here in the U.S. might be sold as Penguin imprint in the UK, or some other arrangement. You are supposed to buy the book from your locally-licensed imprint. European resellers are generally not permitted to stock U.S. editions of books (or if they do, they are excessively expensive due to the additional shipping duties and taxes imposed). Barnes & Noble has been forbidden to sell books outside the U.S. by the publishers; it's not that it doesn't want to sell them.
The top sellers list on amazon, the prize winners and Oprah boasted "books".
Love the quotes. I suppose you're suggesting that everything promoted by Oprah's Book Club is pointless trash. You're probably not aware, then, that Oprah has chosen books by Charles Dickens, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, John Steinbeck, and other classic authors, not to mention current literature by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, Jeffrey Eugenides, Barbara Kingsolver, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. In fact, I'm not sure you could accurately describe anything she's recommended as trash. In the interest of raising the public awareness of fiction an literature and the overall intelligence of the country, Oprah's Book Club is a net force for good. Better to point the finger at Geraldo Rivera, who has enjoyed the same media access as Oprah but, to my knowledge, never encouraged anyone to read a book in his life.
The top sellers on Amazon are just a popularity contest, but your disdain for literary prizewinners is a little baffling, too. In my experience, an author who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature has probably produced at least something worthy of an intelligent reader's attention. Why do you assume otherwise? Similarly, is there something about the Man Booker Prize or the Pulitzer that discredits them in your eyes?
But then, your entire post reeks of a general distaste for fiction and literature. It's not for everybody, I guess, but if you would pull your head out of a math book and try some fiction for time to time you'll be a broader, more cultured, more worldly human being. There's more value in a lot of this "entertainment" that you so scorn than you seem to realize.
Sure, the DRM still sucks, but at least the device gives you a little interoperability and the option of selecting your source to some degree in the DRM world, unlike the Kindle.
And in case anybody's wondering, yes, much like the Kindle, it is trivial to strip the DRM from Nook-compatible books with a few Python scripts.
I guess it depends what you mean by a reboot. In the case of my Android phone, a power cycle will fix the problems. You don't need to pull the battery (and I seldom did it on my BlackBerry), you just need to let it shut down and start up again (a classic reboot, in PC parlance). FWIW, though, in addition to the reboot the BlackBerry feature in question saved me enough battery so that I didn't actually have to plug it in but every 3-4 days. That's a lot better than the Android phone, which (while typical) needs to be recharged pretty much every day.
If by "developer phone" you mean the HTC Magic that's branded the Google Ion, I have one. I've had it since they gave them out at Google I/O, and I've never really used it, because it sucks. I tried it out for a few days, then stuck it back in the box and went back to my BlackBerry.
And this may sound strange to you, but although I suspect I know a lot more about IT than you (I certainly don't need an IT guy to "make the transition to smart phones"), I don't want to have to dick around with a modded ROM just to use a phone. I want a phone, not a hobby. I spend all day in front of the computer already. Twiddling around with a phone like it's a hot rod is a waste of time.
One should note that this is specific to the crappy Motorola software.
If you read my post I believe you'll see that I did note it.
On the other hand, the Motorola software gives me capabilities I don't get with stock Android, and I use them often enough that I'll be sad if my next phone doesn't have something similar. So it's kind of a toss-up. I guess that's the real source of some of my frustration: Stock Android doesn't really work for me, and Motorola's mods... don't work [all the time].
But isn't every Android phone (except the Nexus) a non-stock build? So when you buy an Android phone, how do you even know what you're getting? People act like they can look at the screen, read the specs on the processor speed etc., and go "oh great, and it's Android" -- as if that means it's the same as every other Android phone. It's not, and that's definitely a platform issue, not a Motorola issue.
I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is... a feature?
You make a good point. The fact that I get turn-by-turn for free on my phone is pretty damn neat. I live in a city, though, where that kind of thing seldom really matters, so I get a lot less use of that than most, I'm sure. It came in handy when I was out of town for the holidays, though.
Just forward all of your email to your new Gmail account, configure it appropriately, and you'll be golden. Integrated inbox? Check!
Motorola's Integrated Inbox combines all your SMS text messaging, Facebook and/or MySpace mail, and email in one place. Yeah -- in my other post I said some people hate it. I get that. But I'm used to the BlackBerry, where messages are messages and you read them one at a time, one after the other.
You're blaming the entire platform for your handset manufacturer's faulty software.
Am I? I bought a phone. It's an Android phone. I like it better than other Android phones I've used in the past, but it's still buggy, like all the other Android phones I've used. When a consumer goes to the store and buys an Android phone, what are the chances they are going to know how well that particular implementation works, any more than I can know how well mine works before I buy it? My understanding is that unless you get a Nexus phone you are always using non-stock Android, so I assume my experience is pretty typical.
As for Motorola's modified email clients, my understanding is that until FroYo the stock email client couldn't even attach a signature to outgoing email. Seriously? At least Motorola could cobble together that particular high-tech feature...
How about "it's easy, if you accept Google as your one true email provider"? The default Gmail client works great, and you're required (at least on my D1) to set it up at first boot.
Ah, you've pointed out another example on my Defy. I like Motorola's Motoblur Integrated Inbox feature. Some people hate it but it works well for me. One reason why it works well, though, may be because I don't really use my GMail account for mail. If I did, it would annoy me, because GMail is one mail provider that does not integrate smoothly. You can set it up as an IMAP account but I understand you lose some functionality, so you'll probably want to continue to use the standalone GMail app. GMail Contacts import fine, though.
And then simply be done, and try to enjoy and use the thing you've bought, you fucking pedant.
I said I do. What I also said, is that it's buggy and inferior to the iPhone. And fuck you, too.
Have you tried alternative email clients like K9 and MailDroid?
No, because I like Motorola's integrated inbox feature. But this is typical of the answers I get from other Android people: "Oh yeah, it's easy, provided you ditch the software it came with and use some third-party alternative." Again, I don't believe iPhone users have these problems. On the extreme end of things I hear answers like, "Oh yeah, it's easy, as long as you root your phone." But now you're talking about something that's typically beyond the understanding of your average phone user, and for something like messaging -- which seems like a basic, core feature of a communications device -- it seems totally unnecessary.
No, I don't think U.S. owners can expect a 2.2 upgrade until Q2 2011, and even then, Motorola's track record with upgrades is a little spotty.
My problems with email are not Exchange-related, though (and I think Motorola's "skin" adds some of the Exchange capabilities 2.2. brings anyway). My initial email problem, actually, was that it absolutely would not work when I tried to connect my email via IMAP. I wouldn't see any messages at all. Reconfigure the same account for POP, though, and everything works fine -- including push-like delivery within a minute or two of receiving the mail. If that makes any kind of sense to you, please explain it to me.
Still, although I am confused by the behavior, as I said before, ultimately it works for me (until it silently stops working and I need to reboot the phone). But someone else might never know to pick POP instead of IMAP if the guy at the store told them IMAP is better. I don't think iPhone users have this kind of problem.
I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.
The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)
I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.
So we don't actually sound like we disagree on much. My question is: Why is it so easy to get the angry, scared rhetoric to take root in people's minds and so hard to get it out again, no matter how sensible the evidence to the contrary might seem? I don't mean just on the gun control issue, I mean on everything across the board. My parents retired from California to Arizona a number of years ago and under the influence of their neighbors they've switched from fairly run-of-the-mill California conservatives to right-wing whackos who think the financial crisis was caused by illegal immigration, healthcare reform is about letting bums and Mexicans get free medical care while the rest of us have to pay for it, and Obama was really born in Mexico. These are not stupid people. But when I offer them evidence to the contrary on just about any issue -- I don't mean blue-in-the-face arguing now, just "hey, don't you think it could be..." -- they sort of nod, agree, say I've got a point, and then the next time they open their mouths its right back to the anger, vengefulness, and conspiracy theories.
Your violent crime statistics are misleading also. Your chart lists total incidence of violent crimes. So naturally California would probably top the list -- California is the most populous state in the union. Better to look at it per capita.
So, take Wyoming, with a population of 544,270 and 1,234 violent crimes. 1234/544270 = 0.0023
California, by comparison, shows a whopping 194,120 violent crimes. But it also has a population of 36,961,664, seventy times that of Wyoming. 194120/36961664 = 0.0052, making it overall just a little more than twice as violent as Wyoming.
Arizona, with 30,916 violent crimes and a population of 6,595,778 comes to 30915/6595779 = 0.0046, making it just slightly less violent overall than California, despite the fact that its gun laws are much less lax.
Agreed that there's little correlation between gun laws and violent crime, if you look at this spread. So why do people in states like Arizona keep clamoring for gun ownership as a way to reduce violent crime? By your own admission, whether individuals are allowed to own guns or not has little to no bearing on violent crime in their state.
He's a self-confessed Brit. I don't think he's ever heard the term "home invasion."
FWIW, my UK friends, a home invasion, in U.S. law enforcement parlance, is when armed criminals enter your home while you are present, for purposes of robbery, rape, murder, or whatever.
In the USA, our cities which have the strictest gun control laws, are the cities which have the highest homicide rates.
Care to support that claim with some data?
San Francisco (my home city) doesn't rank anywhere near New Orleans or Detroit in murders, and it actually tried to ban handguns altogether a couple of years ago. (It couldn't, because it was ruled only the federal government has that authority.)
Meanwhile, Phoenix just passed a law that allows gun owners to carry handguns concealed on their persons without a permit -- and Phoenix's murder rate is about the same as that of L.A.
However, I'm sure you've noticed the press is rarely accurate with these things and I'm sure we'll find out later it was just a regular semi-automatic handgun of no particular note.
The Washington Post is reporting that the weapon was a Glock handgun of unspecified caliber with an extended magazine. (Meaning, most likely, a clip that sticks out of the bottom of the handgun so it can hold a lot of bullets.) The gun is pretty typical for American handgun owners. The magazine is of some particular note, because extended magazines are themselves illegal in many states.
Compared to my home state (California), though, Arizona's gun laws are particularly lax. Phoenix recently passed a law eliminating the concealed-carry permit... meaning, Phoenix gun owners may now carry their firearms concealed on their persons in most public places. (I think schools and bars are excepted.)
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There is a "Connect with Facebook" button on the front page of myspace.com It blew my mind
Of course. If you were running a social media company, given all the press Facebook gets on a daily basis, would you want partners and investors thinking your company is a direct competitor to Facebook? This is part of MySpace's new messaging, that it offers something unique and complementary to the other social networks.
Translation: They're up for sale, and devs are part of the more valuable "human capital". I wonder who would be buying?
That doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sell, you don't fire the employees first yourself -- what would be the point? Once you're out, you don't care how many employees the company has. Instead, you invite possible buyers to the office and make sure every single body is at a desk, working away like a busy little beaver on countless amazing things, making the company look like an incredible value and pushing the bidding price up. Then the investor walks away thinking, "Wow, they sure do great stuff there -- but they seem to have too many employees. If we buy the company, we can fire half of them and we'll end up with a real bargain!"
It is a case of the rights being sold. Publishers and authors often negotiate different rights agreements in different countries around the world. A book published by Random House here in the U.S. might be sold as Penguin imprint in the UK, or some other arrangement. You are supposed to buy the book from your locally-licensed imprint. European resellers are generally not permitted to stock U.S. editions of books (or if they do, they are excessively expensive due to the additional shipping duties and taxes imposed). Barnes & Noble has been forbidden to sell books outside the U.S. by the publishers; it's not that it doesn't want to sell them.
The top sellers list on amazon, the prize winners and Oprah boasted "books".
Love the quotes. I suppose you're suggesting that everything promoted by Oprah's Book Club is pointless trash. You're probably not aware, then, that Oprah has chosen books by Charles Dickens, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, John Steinbeck, and other classic authors, not to mention current literature by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, Jeffrey Eugenides, Barbara Kingsolver, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. In fact, I'm not sure you could accurately describe anything she's recommended as trash. In the interest of raising the public awareness of fiction an literature and the overall intelligence of the country, Oprah's Book Club is a net force for good. Better to point the finger at Geraldo Rivera, who has enjoyed the same media access as Oprah but, to my knowledge, never encouraged anyone to read a book in his life.
The top sellers on Amazon are just a popularity contest, but your disdain for literary prizewinners is a little baffling, too. In my experience, an author who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature has probably produced at least something worthy of an intelligent reader's attention. Why do you assume otherwise? Similarly, is there something about the Man Booker Prize or the Pulitzer that discredits them in your eyes?
But then, your entire post reeks of a general distaste for fiction and literature. It's not for everybody, I guess, but if you would pull your head out of a math book and try some fiction for time to time you'll be a broader, more cultured, more worldly human being. There's more value in a lot of this "entertainment" that you so scorn than you seem to realize.
Sure, the DRM still sucks, but at least the device gives you a little interoperability and the option of selecting your source to some degree in the DRM world, unlike the Kindle.
And in case anybody's wondering, yes, much like the Kindle, it is trivial to strip the DRM from Nook-compatible books with a few Python scripts.
I guess it depends what you mean by a reboot. In the case of my Android phone, a power cycle will fix the problems. You don't need to pull the battery (and I seldom did it on my BlackBerry), you just need to let it shut down and start up again (a classic reboot, in PC parlance). FWIW, though, in addition to the reboot the BlackBerry feature in question saved me enough battery so that I didn't actually have to plug it in but every 3-4 days. That's a lot better than the Android phone, which (while typical) needs to be recharged pretty much every day.
It must have been a third-party app as it's not a feature found on any BB I've ever had.
It's stock. http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2988/blackberry_set_your_device_to_automatically_turn_on_and_off/
Buy THE DEVELOPER PHONE!
If by "developer phone" you mean the HTC Magic that's branded the Google Ion, I have one. I've had it since they gave them out at Google I/O, and I've never really used it, because it sucks. I tried it out for a few days, then stuck it back in the box and went back to my BlackBerry.
And this may sound strange to you, but although I suspect I know a lot more about IT than you (I certainly don't need an IT guy to "make the transition to smart phones"), I don't want to have to dick around with a modded ROM just to use a phone. I want a phone, not a hobby. I spend all day in front of the computer already. Twiddling around with a phone like it's a hot rod is a waste of time.
One should note that this is specific to the crappy Motorola software.
If you read my post I believe you'll see that I did note it.
On the other hand, the Motorola software gives me capabilities I don't get with stock Android, and I use them often enough that I'll be sad if my next phone doesn't have something similar. So it's kind of a toss-up. I guess that's the real source of some of my frustration: Stock Android doesn't really work for me, and Motorola's mods... don't work [all the time].
But isn't every Android phone (except the Nexus) a non-stock build? So when you buy an Android phone, how do you even know what you're getting? People act like they can look at the screen, read the specs on the processor speed etc., and go "oh great, and it's Android" -- as if that means it's the same as every other Android phone. It's not, and that's definitely a platform issue, not a Motorola issue.
I suppose iPhones lack of turn-by-turn navigation is ... a feature?
You make a good point. The fact that I get turn-by-turn for free on my phone is pretty damn neat. I live in a city, though, where that kind of thing seldom really matters, so I get a lot less use of that than most, I'm sure. It came in handy when I was out of town for the holidays, though.
Just forward all of your email to your new Gmail account, configure it appropriately, and you'll be golden. Integrated inbox? Check!
Motorola's Integrated Inbox combines all your SMS text messaging, Facebook and/or MySpace mail, and email in one place. Yeah -- in my other post I said some people hate it. I get that. But I'm used to the BlackBerry, where messages are messages and you read them one at a time, one after the other.
You're blaming the entire platform for your handset manufacturer's faulty software.
Am I? I bought a phone. It's an Android phone. I like it better than other Android phones I've used in the past, but it's still buggy, like all the other Android phones I've used. When a consumer goes to the store and buys an Android phone, what are the chances they are going to know how well that particular implementation works, any more than I can know how well mine works before I buy it? My understanding is that unless you get a Nexus phone you are always using non-stock Android, so I assume my experience is pretty typical.
As for Motorola's modified email clients, my understanding is that until FroYo the stock email client couldn't even attach a signature to outgoing email. Seriously? At least Motorola could cobble together that particular high-tech feature...
How about "it's easy, if you accept Google as your one true email provider"? The default Gmail client works great, and you're required (at least on my D1) to set it up at first boot.
Ah, you've pointed out another example on my Defy. I like Motorola's Motoblur Integrated Inbox feature. Some people hate it but it works well for me. One reason why it works well, though, may be because I don't really use my GMail account for mail. If I did, it would annoy me, because GMail is one mail provider that does not integrate smoothly. You can set it up as an IMAP account but I understand you lose some functionality, so you'll probably want to continue to use the standalone GMail app. GMail Contacts import fine, though.
And then simply be done, and try to enjoy and use the thing you've bought, you fucking pedant.
I said I do. What I also said, is that it's buggy and inferior to the iPhone. And fuck you, too.
Have you tried alternative email clients like K9 and MailDroid?
No, because I like Motorola's integrated inbox feature. But this is typical of the answers I get from other Android people: "Oh yeah, it's easy, provided you ditch the software it came with and use some third-party alternative." Again, I don't believe iPhone users have these problems. On the extreme end of things I hear answers like, "Oh yeah, it's easy, as long as you root your phone." But now you're talking about something that's typically beyond the understanding of your average phone user, and for something like messaging -- which seems like a basic, core feature of a communications device -- it seems totally unnecessary.
No, I don't think U.S. owners can expect a 2.2 upgrade until Q2 2011, and even then, Motorola's track record with upgrades is a little spotty.
My problems with email are not Exchange-related, though (and I think Motorola's "skin" adds some of the Exchange capabilities 2.2. brings anyway). My initial email problem, actually, was that it absolutely would not work when I tried to connect my email via IMAP. I wouldn't see any messages at all. Reconfigure the same account for POP, though, and everything works fine -- including push-like delivery within a minute or two of receiving the mail. If that makes any kind of sense to you, please explain it to me.
Still, although I am confused by the behavior, as I said before, ultimately it works for me (until it silently stops working and I need to reboot the phone). But someone else might never know to pick POP instead of IMAP if the guy at the store told them IMAP is better. I don't think iPhone users have this kind of problem.
I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.
The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)
I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.
So we don't actually sound like we disagree on much. My question is: Why is it so easy to get the angry, scared rhetoric to take root in people's minds and so hard to get it out again, no matter how sensible the evidence to the contrary might seem? I don't mean just on the gun control issue, I mean on everything across the board. My parents retired from California to Arizona a number of years ago and under the influence of their neighbors they've switched from fairly run-of-the-mill California conservatives to right-wing whackos who think the financial crisis was caused by illegal immigration, healthcare reform is about letting bums and Mexicans get free medical care while the rest of us have to pay for it, and Obama was really born in Mexico. These are not stupid people. But when I offer them evidence to the contrary on just about any issue -- I don't mean blue-in-the-face arguing now, just "hey, don't you think it could be..." -- they sort of nod, agree, say I've got a point, and then the next time they open their mouths its right back to the anger, vengefulness, and conspiracy theories.
The law you ware referring to was a state law, not a city law.
My mistake; it was explained to me by Phoenix residents in a way that made it sound like it was a city/municipality-wide law.
Correction: Arizona's gun laws are much more lax than California's overall. Got my wires crossed.
Your violent crime statistics are misleading also. Your chart lists total incidence of violent crimes. So naturally California would probably top the list -- California is the most populous state in the union. Better to look at it per capita.
So, take Wyoming, with a population of 544,270 and 1,234 violent crimes. 1234/544270 = 0.0023
California, by comparison, shows a whopping 194,120 violent crimes. But it also has a population of 36,961,664, seventy times that of Wyoming. 194120/36961664 = 0.0052, making it overall just a little more than twice as violent as Wyoming.
Arizona, with 30,916 violent crimes and a population of 6,595,778 comes to 30915/6595779 = 0.0046, making it just slightly less violent overall than California, despite the fact that its gun laws are much less lax.
Agreed that there's little correlation between gun laws and violent crime, if you look at this spread. So why do people in states like Arizona keep clamoring for gun ownership as a way to reduce violent crime? By your own admission, whether individuals are allowed to own guns or not has little to no bearing on violent crime in their state.
Getting rid of permits entirely would be a terrible thing for Arizona residents.
How so? Out here in California, you pretty much have to be a politician, certain classes of law enforcement, or a judge to get a permit -- thankfully.
He's a self-confessed Brit. I don't think he's ever heard the term "home invasion."
FWIW, my UK friends, a home invasion, in U.S. law enforcement parlance, is when armed criminals enter your home while you are present, for purposes of robbery, rape, murder, or whatever.
In the USA, our cities which have the strictest gun control laws, are the cities which have the highest homicide rates.
Care to support that claim with some data?
San Francisco (my home city) doesn't rank anywhere near New Orleans or Detroit in murders, and it actually tried to ban handguns altogether a couple of years ago. (It couldn't, because it was ruled only the federal government has that authority.)
Meanwhile, Phoenix just passed a law that allows gun owners to carry handguns concealed on their persons without a permit -- and Phoenix's murder rate is about the same as that of L.A.
If someone would like you dead and they don't have a gun then the obstacles are nearly always insurmountable and the feeling passes.
Tell that to Michael Myers.
No, seriously, the more I'm hearing about the shooter in this case, he was obviously mentally disturbed, probably suffering a psychotic episode.
However, I'm sure you've noticed the press is rarely accurate with these things and I'm sure we'll find out later it was just a regular semi-automatic handgun of no particular note.
The Washington Post is reporting that the weapon was a Glock handgun of unspecified caliber with an extended magazine. (Meaning, most likely, a clip that sticks out of the bottom of the handgun so it can hold a lot of bullets.) The gun is pretty typical for American handgun owners. The magazine is of some particular note, because extended magazines are themselves illegal in many states.
Compared to my home state (California), though, Arizona's gun laws are particularly lax. Phoenix recently passed a law eliminating the concealed-carry permit... meaning, Phoenix gun owners may now carry their firearms concealed on their persons in most public places. (I think schools and bars are excepted.)