Like, say, NAM?
Or maybe, the American Revolution?
(Talk.politics.guns FAQ)
Even today, despite the development of weapons capable of massive and indiscriminate destruction, tyranny must still be imposed at ground level, if it is to exist at all. Technology has made it far easier to kill people than to enslave them. Small arms are still sufficient to tip the balance in favor of survival and eventual victory, and when combined with the liberating communications technology that saturates the modern industrialized (and industrializing) nations, they can be potent weapons indeed. Coordination of forces, and careful choice of targets can result in the capture of heavier and deadlier weapons from the enemy, starting from the basic rifles and pistols of the infantryman, on up to artillery, tanks, helicopters, anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets, missile systems, etc.
Communications technology can be used to rally the people to the cause of liberty, much as VCRs helped the Solidarity movement win freedom for the people of Poland by putting news censored by the government onto hundreds of television screens. Even without sophisticated communications, the Afghan fighters of the mujahedeen were able to stymie the Soviet Army in Afghanistan for the first few years of the occupation, and, covertly supplied with tons of Soviet arms purchased for them by the U.S. and other sympathetic nations, as well as training and intelligence assistance, the mujahedeen were able to fight and kill tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan Communist troops during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation, forcing the much vaunted Red Army to withdraw in defeat. Most of the weaponry of the mujahedeen militia in the early years was obtained by capturing Soviet equipment, or obtained from deserters from the conscript Afghan Communist army, and by manufacturing home-made copies of captured AK-47 assault rifles with basic hand tools, and this is what gave them the edge to survive until foreign help was available, much as France helped the U.S. win her independence.
The tactical difficulty in fighting an_urban_insurgency makes tyranny a particularly dangerous task in the city as well. The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was almost liquidated by the occupying Nazis between July and September of 1942, but there were a few hundred out of the few thousands of Jews who had not yet been sent on the trains to Treblinka and who felt that they would rather fight than surrender to Hitler's Final Solution. Armed primarily with pistols, Molotov cocktails, grenades and explosives, and desperately short of ammunition, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters were able to hold off the Waffen-SS for almost a month in April of 1943, killing a dozen or more Nazis and wounding many more, before leading a few survivors out under the walls through the sewers of Warsaw, even as the Nazis demolished the Ghetto with aerial bombs and finally burned what remained to the ground.
If these Jewish fighters had been as well-armed as some of their Israeli descendants are today, who knows how history might have turned out? Even the much-celebrated German war profiteer and industrialist Oskar Schindler armed his Jewish workforce better than the Ghetto fighters. By the end of the war, many of "Schindler's Jews" had been provided with_machineguns! (A fact that Steven Spielberg chose to leave out of his award-winning movie.)
One need not be paranoid about the possibility of genocide, any more than one need be paranoid about flying in a jumbo jet. But the fact that airplane crashes that kill hundreds of people occur only_rarely_doesn't mean that we don't need the safety systems which help protect us from that eventuality, or that we ought to be dismantling them. A longstanding tradition of civilian control over the military, and a rich legacy and cultural love of liberty among soldiers and civilians willing to fight for its defense won't disappear overnight. Chances are only a few police or military would join in any tyrannical endeavor in these United States, but who knows what perils the future may hold for our great-grandchildren --and_their_grandchildren.
One hopes the military will always take seriously its oath to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution against all the enemies of liberty, both foriegn_and_domestic; and that police will refuse to enforce laws which are unconstitutional, and will refuse to be corrupted by power and illicit wealth. But history has taught us that many unthinkable things are indeed possible, and that in Alexander Hamilton's words "To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character."
The Founders of this country knew the road that "gun control" leads to quite well, no matter what "good intentions" are claimed for it. It was the British attempt on April 18-19, 1775 to seize and destroy the colonists' arsenal stored near Lexington, at Concord Massachusetts, that prompted Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott to ride and alert the countryside. The contingent of 700 British troops marched up the road from Boston, and at Lexington Green were met by 70 colonial Minutemen (so-called because they were supposedly ready to fight on a minute's notice). The British had cannon, and would use them when the Minutemen refused the British order to throw down their arms and disperse. In the subsequent skirmish there were a few casualties on each side, but the Minutemen did disperse, and the Redcoats then proceeded past Lexington to Concord, where they destroyed what few munitions and supplies the colonists had been unable to remove in the additional time that eight Minutemen had purchased with their lives.
From the countryside, alerted by the news of the riders and Minutemen, and by alarm bells and warning cannon shots, came the citizen militia, the good men of Lexington and Concord, some 4,000 strong, ready with their loaded muskets in hand. It was only then the Redcoats began their retreat to Boston, surrounded by angry colonial snipers shooting from cover behind trees, stone walls, hedgerows, and houses, who kept up the barrage in engagement after engagement along the length of the road, picking off 273 British soldiers (killing 73 of them) while incurring only 95 casualties themselves (of which 49 died). This was "The Shot Heard Round the World" and the humble beginning of the American Revolution.
OOP does produce a BUNCH of little subroutines. Thats how OOP usually works best (abstraction, encapsulation, etc.).
But in this day -n- age compilers should be able to work around that. Compilers should do more than literally translate code into assembly, they should be able to optimze, inline, and re-arrange code for speed. If I tell you to do A,B, C you can figure out that its faster to do A, C, then B, and to start the stuff for B when you do A so it'll be ready in time. A good compiler should do that too. FunOne
The HK MP5 is made by a German company. But the idea gets through, its an expensive gun and they wouldn't have it if America wasn't paying for it. Hell we even TRAIN a bunch of their soldiers. FunOne
If apple decided not to give them the computers for promotion like they do most movies then where else are they going to find CHEAP software?
Cheap software that can easily be made to look like its doing something important and is also free of any weird legal entanglements. Who would've thought they'd choose *NIX?
Besides Linux has all those WMs that look so *high tech*.:) FunOne
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
If that isn't a great reason against gun control, then I dont know what is. Kids shouldn't be able to buy guns, but adults should be able to buy what they want.
The constitution only stops the government when it agrees to stop itself. Paper barriers are the least effective when they're most needed, the founders knew this, hence why the right to bear arms is second only to FREEDOM OF SPEECH. FunOne
As many others have said, unrestricted copying is a huge boon to the HD world. Now they wanna stop that and cut a thick portion out of their revenue??? This new method requires tons of 'compatible' components and is very difficult to implement in a new setting, let alone an enstablished one.
I think the HD manufactuers got pressured into doing SOMETHING by the big record/movie people, they came up with this idea. They'll trot it around release a few HDs with it, let it fail, then go back to the record/movie people saying "We tried and it didn't work, sorry"
For this to work you need compatible HDs, Motherboards(controllers), and software. People wont want to use the software. The controllers/motherboards come from asia manufactuers (we've all heard about piracy in asia) that have a lot to lose by implementing this protection. And there will be suppliers of HDs without this 'feature.' THis is gonna flop like DIVX and I think the HD guys know it. FunOne
I just got out of AP calc, 96 test average, 68 homework average.
I ended up getting a 'B' in the class. The teacher would yell at us for not doing our homework, she would even say stuff like 'There is no way you could get these problems without doing the homework' (Yea, unless you were awake) Guess some people dont realize that some people find somethings easier than others. FunOne
Because someone is rich does not make others poor. There is NOT a limited supply of money. Money is created by market demand, his company has a good product, people buy it, they are creating money.
Larry or Bill having 30 billions dollars does NOT mean that everyone in the world is out 5 bucks. FunOne
I think we're all well aware of the problems with the carts and N's licensing, but there is a benefit.
N forced top quality control, each game had a 3 month test cycle, if a bug was found the game was sent back and had to start the 3 month cycle again. FunOne
Would you let someone tell you that you HAVE to read the dust jacket, then the preface, then you can start reading?
How about if someone told you that it was illegal to copy sections of the book for your own use? How about if they printed it in a special way so that you couldn't copy it with normal copy machines, then made a LAW that new copy machines were illegal.
Would you want what is being done to DVDs/CDs being done to books?? Books have been easily decoded and copied for quite sometime and they dont seem to have any piracy issues. Perhaps its not the format, or the ease of copying, but the industry and its practices. FunOne
Final Fantasy isn't exactly a HW pushing program. Almost everything is pre-rendered, with a few low-poy 3d models. Its Myst plus a few polys.
If by 'A lot of PC game makers just aren't that skilled' you mean 'A lot of PC games dont have a place for pre-redered graphics' then you'd be correct. FunOne
A big part of the new P4's strength wont be shown until people start compiling with the new V5 system and using the new instructions.
The branch prediction is supposed to be about 94% accurate and can be made near 100% with the use of some intelligent compiling technologies. Dont forget the performance on the new SSE-2 instructions as well.
I love AMD, but they refuse to initiate rather than imitate. Even their plan for a 64bit processor refuses to step out of the path. (64bit with x86 instructions) A vast majority of this site runs linux and are therefor mostly instruction independant. I would think this population would embrace a new architecture if it provided a performance increase. FunOne
We'll we really only have two choices for testing medical devices. Florida and monkeys. But Florida can be taken out by a big hurricane and then we'd be left with nothing. So, I chose the monkeys.
We test things on animals so we DONT HURT HUMANS.
If Bobo having wires in his brain puts us closer to helping disabled people then HOOK HIM UP.
Or you can tell the quadraplegics that the reason they still cant do anything, even with all our technology, is because giving them a semi-normal life would hurt an animal. FunOne
A new contender could overthrow the big boys EASIER with DirectCrap/OpenGL. (Yes, I have a perference)
Because the interface is standard, games dont care if you run a 3dfx or nVidia chip, just that it runs OpenGL. A new guy can come in with a new way to render x, or compute y, and (of course) speed everything up with better quality and compete because people aren't locked into a proprietary API (Glide).
Besides, a new guy doesn't need his own chip fab, nVidia doesn't even fab their own chips, you just need a design and some VC. FunOne
Slashdot Mirror
Citizens against a modern military?
Like, say, NAM?
Or maybe, the American Revolution?
(Talk.politics.guns FAQ)
Even today, despite the development of weapons capable of massive and indiscriminate destruction, tyranny must still be imposed at ground level, if it is to exist at all. Technology has made it far easier to kill people than to enslave them. Small arms are still sufficient to tip the balance in favor of survival and eventual victory, and when combined with the liberating communications technology that saturates the modern industrialized (and industrializing) nations, they can be potent weapons indeed. Coordination of forces, and careful choice of targets can result in the capture of heavier and deadlier weapons from the enemy, starting from the basic rifles and pistols of the infantryman, on up to artillery, tanks, helicopters, anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets, missile systems, etc.
Communications technology can be used to rally the people to the cause of liberty, much as VCRs helped the Solidarity movement win freedom for the people of Poland by putting news censored by the government onto hundreds of television screens. Even without sophisticated communications, the Afghan fighters of the mujahedeen were able to stymie the Soviet Army in Afghanistan for the first few years of the occupation, and, covertly supplied with tons of Soviet arms purchased for them by the U.S. and other sympathetic nations, as well as training and intelligence assistance, the mujahedeen were able to fight and kill tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan Communist troops during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation, forcing the much vaunted Red Army to withdraw in defeat. Most of the weaponry of the mujahedeen militia in the early years was obtained by capturing Soviet equipment, or obtained from deserters from the conscript Afghan Communist army, and by manufacturing home-made copies of captured AK-47 assault rifles with basic hand tools, and this is what gave them the edge to survive until foreign help was available, much as France helped the U.S. win her independence.
The tactical difficulty in fighting an_urban_insurgency makes tyranny a particularly dangerous task in the city as well. The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was almost liquidated by the occupying Nazis between July and September of 1942, but there were a few hundred out of the few thousands of Jews who had not yet been sent on the trains to Treblinka and who felt that they would rather fight than surrender to Hitler's Final Solution. Armed primarily with pistols, Molotov cocktails, grenades and explosives, and desperately short of ammunition, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters were able to hold off the Waffen-SS for almost a month in April of 1943, killing a dozen or more Nazis and wounding many more, before leading a few survivors out under the walls through the sewers of Warsaw, even as the Nazis demolished the Ghetto with aerial bombs and finally burned what remained to the ground.
If these Jewish fighters had been as well-armed as some of their Israeli descendants are today, who knows how history might have turned out? Even the much-celebrated German war profiteer and industrialist Oskar Schindler armed his Jewish workforce better than the Ghetto fighters. By the end of the war, many of "Schindler's Jews" had been provided with_machineguns! (A fact that Steven Spielberg chose to leave out of his award-winning movie.)
One need not be paranoid about the possibility of genocide, any more than one need be paranoid about flying in a jumbo jet. But the fact that airplane crashes that kill hundreds of people occur only_rarely_doesn't mean that we don't need the safety systems which help protect us from that eventuality, or that we ought to be dismantling them. A longstanding tradition of civilian control over the military, and a rich legacy and cultural love of liberty among soldiers and civilians willing to fight for its defense won't disappear overnight. Chances are only a few police or military would join in any tyrannical endeavor in these United States, but who knows what perils the future may hold for our great-grandchildren --and_their_grandchildren.
One hopes the military will always take seriously its oath to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution against all the enemies of liberty, both foriegn_and_domestic; and that police will refuse to enforce laws which are unconstitutional, and will refuse to be corrupted by power and illicit wealth. But history has taught us that many unthinkable things are indeed possible, and that in Alexander Hamilton's words "To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character."
The Founders of this country knew the road that "gun control" leads to quite well, no matter what "good intentions" are claimed for it. It was the British attempt on April 18-19, 1775 to seize and destroy the colonists' arsenal stored near Lexington, at Concord Massachusetts, that prompted Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott to ride and alert the countryside. The contingent of 700 British troops marched up the road from Boston, and at Lexington Green were met by 70 colonial Minutemen (so-called because they were supposedly ready to fight on a minute's notice). The British had cannon, and would use them when the Minutemen refused the British order to throw down their arms and disperse. In the subsequent skirmish there were a few casualties on each side, but the Minutemen did disperse, and the Redcoats then proceeded past Lexington to Concord, where they destroyed what few munitions and supplies the colonists had been unable to remove in the additional time that eight Minutemen had purchased with their lives.
From the countryside, alerted by the news of the riders and Minutemen, and by alarm bells and warning cannon shots, came the citizen militia, the good men of Lexington and Concord, some 4,000 strong, ready with their loaded muskets in hand. It was only then the Redcoats began their retreat to Boston, surrounded by angry colonial snipers shooting from cover behind trees, stone walls, hedgerows, and houses, who kept up the barrage in engagement after engagement along the length of the road, picking off 273 British soldiers (killing 73 of them) while incurring only 95 casualties themselves (of which 49 died). This was "The Shot Heard Round the World" and the humble beginning of the American Revolution.
FunOne
Filling the envelope with a printout of http://www.goatse.cx??
FunOne
What definition do you use?? The source code is availible to modify and distribute. Hence: 'OPEN SOURCE'
Just because you cant sell stuff encoded with it (supposedly because of copyright issues) doesn't make the source code any less availible.
FunOne
2 + 2 = 4 (base 10)
2 + 2 = 11 (base 3)
FunOne
OOP does produce a BUNCH of little subroutines. Thats how OOP usually works best (abstraction, encapsulation, etc.).
But in this day -n- age compilers should be able to work around that. Compilers should do more than literally translate code into assembly, they should be able to optimze, inline, and re-arrange code for speed. If I tell you to do A,B, C you can figure out that its faster to do A, C, then B, and to start the stuff for B when you do A so it'll be ready in time. A good compiler should do that too.
FunOne
All the things you've mentioned are compiler isssues.
FunOne
The HK MP5 is made by a German company. But the idea gets through, its an expensive gun and they wouldn't have it if America wasn't paying for it. Hell we even TRAIN a bunch of their soldiers.
FunOne
If apple decided not to give them the computers for promotion like they do most movies then where else are they going to find CHEAP software?
:)
Cheap software that can easily be made to look like its doing something important and is also free of any weird legal entanglements. Who would've thought they'd choose *NIX?
Besides Linux has all those WMs that look so *high tech*.
FunOne
The SWAT team has been known to knock down doors to take your stupid peice of plant material.
FunOne
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
If that isn't a great reason against gun control, then I dont know what is. Kids shouldn't be able to buy guns, but adults should be able to buy what they want.
The constitution only stops the government when it agrees to stop itself. Paper barriers are the least effective when they're most needed, the founders knew this, hence why the right to bear arms is second only to FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
FunOne
As many others have said, unrestricted copying is a huge boon to the HD world. Now they wanna stop that and cut a thick portion out of their revenue??? This new method requires tons of 'compatible' components and is very difficult to implement in a new setting, let alone an enstablished one.
I think the HD manufactuers got pressured into doing SOMETHING by the big record/movie people, they came up with this idea. They'll trot it around release a few HDs with it, let it fail, then go back to the record/movie people saying "We tried and it didn't work, sorry"
For this to work you need compatible HDs, Motherboards(controllers), and software. People wont want to use the software. The controllers/motherboards come from asia manufactuers (we've all heard about piracy in asia) that have a lot to lose by implementing this protection. And there will be suppliers of HDs without this 'feature.' THis is gonna flop like DIVX and I think the HD guys know it.
FunOne
I just got out of AP calc, 96 test average, 68 homework average.
I ended up getting a 'B' in the class. The teacher would yell at us for not doing our homework, she would even say stuff like 'There is no way you could get these problems without doing the homework' (Yea, unless you were awake) Guess some people dont realize that some people find somethings easier than others.
FunOne
A bunch of people to watch me do the stupid shit I do everyday, not to mention anger them with my fabulous wealth. I'd end up dead.
30 more people to know security codes, travel times, etc, etc, etc.
Thats why we needs ROBOTS!
FunOne
Because someone is rich does not make others poor. There is NOT a limited supply of money. Money is created by market demand, his company has a good product, people buy it, they are creating money.
Larry or Bill having 30 billions dollars does NOT mean that everyone in the world is out 5 bucks.
FunOne
The n64 has a 3 month beta cycle. If ANY bugs are found the game is sent back and it has to start the entire 3 month cycle again.
FunOne
I think we're all well aware of the problems with the carts and N's licensing, but there is a benefit.
N forced top quality control, each game had a 3 month test cycle, if a bug was found the game was sent back and had to start the 3 month cycle again.
FunOne
The ethernet isn't for local multi-player, its for the cable modem/DSL modem. Most of them connect to the computer via ethernet.
FunOne
Would you let someone tell you that you HAVE to read the dust jacket, then the preface, then you can start reading?
How about if someone told you that it was illegal to copy sections of the book for your own use? How about if they printed it in a special way so that you couldn't copy it with normal copy machines, then made a LAW that new copy machines were illegal.
Would you want what is being done to DVDs/CDs being done to books?? Books have been easily decoded and copied for quite sometime and they dont seem to have any piracy issues. Perhaps its not the format, or the ease of copying, but the industry and its practices.
FunOne
Final Fantasy isn't exactly a HW pushing program. Almost everything is pre-rendered, with a few low-poy 3d models. Its Myst plus a few polys.
If by 'A lot of PC game makers just aren't that skilled' you mean 'A lot of PC games dont have a place for pre-redered graphics' then you'd be correct.
FunOne
I dunno about MPEG4, but there IS a program that uses MPEG2 video info to re-encode down to MPEG1.
:) *whistles*
Although I have no idea what-so-ever as to what that could be used for.
FunOne
A big part of the new P4's strength wont be shown until people start compiling with the new V5 system and using the new instructions.
The branch prediction is supposed to be about 94% accurate and can be made near 100% with the use of some intelligent compiling technologies. Dont forget the performance on the new SSE-2 instructions as well.
I love AMD, but they refuse to initiate rather than imitate. Even their plan for a 64bit processor refuses to step out of the path. (64bit with x86 instructions) A vast majority of this site runs linux and are therefor mostly instruction independant. I would think this population would embrace a new architecture if it provided a performance increase.
FunOne
I feel the same way toward AOL people as I do toward people who listen to books on tape.
FunOne
We'll we really only have two choices for testing medical devices. Florida and monkeys. But Florida can be taken out by a big hurricane and then we'd be left with nothing. So, I chose the monkeys.
We test things on animals so we DONT HURT HUMANS.
If Bobo having wires in his brain puts us closer to helping disabled people then HOOK HIM UP.
Or you can tell the quadraplegics that the reason they still cant do anything, even with all our technology, is because giving them a semi-normal life would hurt an animal.
FunOne
A new contender could overthrow the big boys EASIER with DirectCrap/OpenGL. (Yes, I have a perference)
Because the interface is standard, games dont care if you run a 3dfx or nVidia chip, just that it runs OpenGL. A new guy can come in with a new way to render x, or compute y, and (of course) speed everything up with better quality and compete because people aren't locked into a proprietary API (Glide).
Besides, a new guy doesn't need his own chip fab, nVidia doesn't even fab their own chips, you just need a design and some VC.
FunOne
Just saw the movie last night:
were here to defend democracy, not practice it
FunOne