Perhaps I'm a moron for not understanding this, but once all the offered shares are sold, what does Google gain by having these brokers recommend it? A share sold between 2 investors, all money is transferred between them, including any profit or loss. Wouldn't being off this post-IPO radar be a good thing? Sure, you miss some of the good press too, but you don't have ijits devaluing your stock even though your business is strong.
It amazes me that some companies have gotten away with not even offering dividends at all, turning all of this into some high-stakes gamble on multi-player financial chicken (who will be the last to pull out?) instead of the investment it's supposed to be.
Exactly. When a neighbor of mine became unemployed due this off-shoring phenomena, he opened up his own business selling used and small goods. Household stuff mostly. His computer, tv, the living room furniture. Unfortunately, he didn't have the business sense to roll that revenue back into buying more merchandise. He unwisely chose to pay his electric bill and mortgage instead. But even that didn't stop him, he then start leasing his own body to those that wanted quick sexual gratification.
So as you can see, it's a blessing in disguise when you lose your job to an Indian that can barely speak english, and gets paid 14 cents per 16 hour day.
Haha. Asking the question doesn't prove that there is no answer. Nothing comes to mind, but your sneaky little suggestion that there is no way those drugs would have been invented is dishonest.
If that were all, though, I'd chalk it up to some sort of adolescent sarcasm. Millions of people will suffer horribly and die early deaths, in part because of the very system you're sitting here and defending.
I won't even mention that you only dare say it as AC...
That's what the government mandated copyright awareness education is for. Brainwash the gullible while children, and even the non-gullible will feel nervous, guilty and alone when failing to be good little sheepsumers.
Just yesterday on slashdot, some ijit was telling me how I can't simply have my own morals, but that morality comes from the laws themselves! WTF? I mean, he was serious, non-trolling, and suggested I was obligated to follow that law until overturned.
If congress passed a law that no one was allowed to feed babies, would he let his kid wither away, while fervently trying to get the law overturned? I'm sure he would ignore something *that* absurd. But take something that's only slightly less absurd, remove the "life-or-death" consequences (well, not entirely... IP prevents poor african nations from making cheap generic anti-AIDS drugs) and people act like God handed the damn law to Moses on a stone tablet. Fuck that. With the "No Feeding Babies Act" not only would you ignore it, you'd not even bother to try to get it overturned. Working in a system so corrupt and devoid of reason, there'd be no point, right?
Someone explain to me why that is different from the situation we're now in?
I was going to say that I knew of none that included libraries with such important symbols as "Man with head inserted in anus" and "The whipmaster". However, it seems you only need an application that has computer and network symbols, so you have your pick of several.
Of course, they won't be able to do managerial or organizational charts...
I wasn't going to say anything, but I can't help it, I wish to take credit for this. I still haven't read the CNN story, nor do I intend to, but if I got this one right, and there is a pseudo-christian reference in the last paragraph or so (because if we're unique that proves God exists, right?) please let me know. It wouldn't be out of character for them, at the very least.
Generally, if I ever use those things at all, I'm looking for things that can't be bought. I'm weird that way, collecting these things. If I ever give any to someone else, again, it's those things that can't be bought.
Go to hell, bitch.
For the record:
Old software for vintage computers. Some jazz that hasn't released on CD, ever. Bootlegs of concerts that were never released on official CDs. BBC scifi shows that aren't on DVD. The Star Wars Christmas special. Ok, so maybe it is morally wrong to not destroy the copy of this. Some Disney movies, mostly because Disney considers them embarrassing.
I'm not off the mark too wildly then. It's 3 dimensional, so each additional LY gives you even more volume... definitely only the first 15 light year's worth.
No, they aren't putting them inn guns because noone has designed one that works. If you have no ability to design such a thing, why do you assume that others can do so?
Let's see, can I list the major reasons? 1) I'm not a firearms engineer. 2) As an amateur firearms engineer, I'm pretty incompetent. I don't even know if they stamp out these metal parts, or if they're cast. 3) I don't have a machine shop. 4) Wooden guns are subpar. 5) I have no money to develop firearms mechanisms. 6) I have little interest in designing firearm mechanisms. 7) There is no great reason for me to be personally interested in designing firearms mechanisms much past conversation on web forums. 8) My lack of firearm safety mechanism designs can't be said to have directly let to anyone being killed.
But, the most important reason of all... even if I did design something truly miraculous, the existing gun makers don't care, they wouldn't want it, not even to steal the idea and leave me penniless. That is my contention, it's not the most ridiculous opinion ever uttered here on slashdot, and I don't feel the need to make a fulltime career of proving my opinion. Not that even that would matter if I could, because people like you would choose to argue rather than saying to themselves "That's an interesting idea, I wonder if it's true or not, I'll mentally file that for later, if I can check it out.".
Umm, no. An idiot pointing a gun at someone else caused a tragedy. The design of the gun had little, if anything to do with it.
Yes, and yet nearly every car accident ever is caused by idiots, one way or another. Even a part failing, brakes or steering... that person should have been checking and performing maintenance. We all know cars can kill. What, maybe 1 out of 100 accidents happen, when a part fails, and no reasonable person can say they could have predicted it would, with normal maintenance.
That being the case, is it wrong if GM makes a car that explodes into flames if it's tapped in the rear end? After all, only wreckless driving can lead to that anyway. It's not like the car just explodes sitting there, you do have to be in a minor accident, which is almost always caused by an idiot. Is it ok to make and market such a car?
If not, why then, is it ok to market such a gun? Maybe because guns are a religion, and blaspheming is wrong no matter what?
100 systems is what, the first 10 light years radius? (If that?) How large is our own galaxy, how many galaxies are there, and much is all this constantly changing?
"Gee, we've sampled 100 star systems out of 900 trillion, and none so far are like our own. Nevermind that the technology we have can't even detect earth-like planets except by the dumbest luck, I think we have a CNN science story! Don't forget to add something vaguely religious the last paragraph of the article."
Yeh, so then why does every moron who thinks himself some elite conservative, lawful and proper do-gooder, start cheering when the AG's send out this letter, hinting that they want p2p gone? Despite what they think, they're cheering on the very people who rape these artists that they're so adamant about defending.
#1 My inability, lack of capital, or any other obstacle keeping me from inventing these features has nothing to do with it. Rather, it's the corporations who should be interested, but aren't, simply because legal strategy dictates what they can and can't research that is at issue.
#2 The police and military don't keep guns at home, where children might find them, or some visiting inlaw will stumble across them. So that's irrelevant.
#3 I didn't fail to state that the person who was unloading this gun was an idiot. Simply that this gun company failed to live up to even the minimal safety standards that other gunmakers somehow manage to meet. This is a perfect example of a defective design, that if it had been corrected, could have prevented a tragedy. Could other circumstances, including a non-idiot unloading that gun, have prevented this accident? Did I immediately jump to the gun control fanatic conclusion, that all guns should be banned? Hardly. Not that it seems to cut me any slack at all.
Handguns that can only be fired by their owner (or those whose identity is imprinted on it). Built-in triggerlocks. A host of ideas, some of which might not actually work. Some might.
I'm not denying that the person who accidentally caused the gun to fire is anything other than a complete idiot. But this particular incident involves a gun company that made what is, by all standards, a truly defective safety. A safety that could have protected the kid, even when the idiot handling the gun didn't.
Can there be even better safety features that wouldn't cause as much damage as they prevent? We'll never know, gun companies aren't interested in doing that research.
Ah, but that is the problem isn't it. There are times I wonder if anyone should get paid to make music. Certainly not like the rockstar earnings we see from time to time. But then there are those that really are artists, and when I hear them, I think it's good that they earn enough off of music that they can devote their life to it. So yes, we need a system that does that, and it might even involve something like copyright.
But what does that have to do with what's going on? The RIAA has made billions, by stealing the money that was supposed to be for artists, they have no interest in giving them more than table scraps. And in doing so, they've pumped up the price of music so high, that people who would never have thought of listening to music that they didn't pay for, started using napster. Napster was popular when it often took up to a half hour to download a longer song. If a person could go down to their local store, and buy an entire album for $1-2, no one would have cared for it. $1-2 per cd, even half that going to the artist, would make most unbelievably rich, and even the niche genres much more comfortable than they are now. But we have to pay for the big machine that is the RIAA too. Pay them, so they can use that money to bribe politicians to extend copyright another 20 years. But even this is bullshit, because even factoring in us paying them for, among other things their lobbying to have our rights stolen, they still charged even more! Even as corrupt as our government institutions are, they were still forced to find that the RIAA colluded to jack up prices not a few cents, but roughly $5 per CD! 25 fucking %. This is an organization that stamps out manufactured "artists" and "bands" like a GM factory stamps out car fenders. They have no interst in art, except that once in awhile it's necessary for them to maintain their wealth, power, and influence.
Now why are artists so up in arms? Lots of reasons. The RIAA promises them.0004% more royalties on their next album, if they do the public support thing. Or they're dumb, and think it's hurting them. Or maybe it is.. when you're only getting 0.01% of your album sales, and they sell less albums, because no one wants to buy something with a price inflated by as much as 1000%... maybe you see a financial pinch. Sorry, even if you are a music genius, selling out should have its penalties too.
As soon as 6 months from now, I'll hopefully be trying to sell something (not music) myself which might easily be traded on a p2p network. I'm thinking that $5 for a CD mailed to you (with lifetime upgrades) sounds like a fair price. And yet, I can't imagine that if it somehow ends up on kazaa that I'd be anything other than pleasantly amused.
One kid out in California is paralyzed from the neck down, because the the gun could only be unloaded with the safety off. (Or maybe it was that the magazine could only be unloaded, I'm not a gun expert).
Other, better safety features have been thought of. These companies won't even explore the ideas.
But I bet you're one of those gun nuts that has to defend them no matter what. Oh well.
Vote with your wallet: In this parody of a free market? The corporations (and in no small amount, the RIAA itself) voted with *their* wallets, directly to congress which writes laws. How can my wallet vote nearly as much? And if I have no more real vote in the matter, does that absolve me dcc'ing a song I like to a friend?
Illegal: If I suddenly become a billionaire (big if, that), and I buy laws to make something or other illegal, how does this hold any moral weight at all? If it holds no moral weight, why make such a big deal out of him breaking that law? I suppose that in theory he is obligated to try and get that law repealed... but again, corporations vote with their wallets. He can't compete.
Distribution rights: How can you purchase something like this, it's dumb. Distribution is only meaningful in a commercial sense, and that being the case, if he uploads mp3's on condition of payment, if he insists I paypal him $1, then he *is* an asshole. Even so, that would be a matter to settle in civil court. It's the RIAA's problem not mine, and I shouldn't be required to payroll their court case through my tax money. Did you hear about the federal prosecutor's being allowed to bring "civil" cases to court, on behalf of the RIAA? Unbelievable.
Oh, you'll toss me a few crumbs, on one or two details, but chastise me for not working within the system. They bought the system a long time ago, so I choose to fight the battles I can win. P2P is one of them, of course... look at it. They're using every dirty trick, and billions in campaign contributions, and they've yet to stem the tide.
It could be said that guns are designed to intimidate. More guns are waved threateningly than actually shot, one would think. Therefor, gun companies are profiting from people wishing to warn off idiots, bullies and criminals.
Would you take guns away from police, too? How about the military? If not, then those companies will still be around (though certainly les profitable) even after your gun control dreams are realized. That said, we can't eliminate "profiting from death". What we can do, is make sure that only people other than ourselves have guns, which sounds rather naive. I don't want to live in a country where only people other than myself can own them.
I don't own a gun, but I'd like to reserve that right. Let's say I act on it, is it guaranteed I'll kill someone? I've used things much more dangerous to myself and others before, and no one has paid for it with their life. Assuming I can keep this winning streak going, even after I buy this hypothetical gun, then that gun company will not have profited off of death at all. I will have spent hundreds of dollars, and they only profited off of my insecurity, real or imagined.
So, if all that is true, why do gun companies still feel evil to you? Not being a gun nut, I'm hesitant to chalk it up as you being a dumbass or a hippy faggot, or whatever it is that they're calling pro-gun control proponents now. As a matter of fact, there are times I feel the same way. They're evil because they fail to make guns with safety features. Even gun nuts only want to shoot the targets that they want to shoot, which usually doesn't include their own feet, children, or innocent bystanders. The gun companies claim that introducing safety features will make them liable, which true or not, is complete bullshit. I wish the government would grant them amnesty or whatever it's called, on the condition that they start making guns with these features.
Then again, this is the same big corporation type of evil that you see in all evil companies, gun manufacturers or not.
Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
#1 The Tau Cetans arrived, and contrary to current hippy theory, they're mean sons of bitches. Neither you nor I feel like being slaves for GribblegribbleDak, and so it might be convenient to have some weapons more advanced than thrown rocks.
#2 Some mutant form of fungus, bacteria, or virus emerges into the world (and you're allowed to take a potshot here... it might very well be an escaped bioweapon). A cure is unlikely, and the infection spreads too rapidly to be contained via traditional quarantine methods. Assuming that it's still within a fairly small geographic area, and those people will die anyway (or already dead), it might be nice to be able to sterilize the outbreak. Despite bad Kevin Spacey movies, nukes are the only option for that.
#3 We want to build a probe capable of meaningful interstellar flight. I doubt that it will be manned, so I'm thinking something more like Voyager. Right now, the only non-science fiction drive would be nuclear. It's an engineering problem, maybe a logistical problem, not a theoretical one.
BONUS: #4 (Biological) My cat (and by extension our carpet) has had a bad infestation of fleas, that is almost impossible to get rid of. Even now, I hope it's over, but won't know for a few more weeks. If there were such a thing as "flea pox" and it wasn't dangerous to pets or humans, I'd have loaded up at the local Bio-WeaponsMart. I want the nasty little vampires dead.
Hanging out at the IRC channel I listed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Doesn't take a stretch of the imagination for me to think some of the people who've done so might have been invited.
If you're somewhere other than the US, ask me. Chances are I'd gladly let you on.
If you're in the US, you could always find that canadian/european buddy from AIM, tell him about it. Maybe if he were to be invited himself, he'd feel grateful enough to invite you. ("Gee, anoncow tipped me off to this, but didn't invite me himself, even though he'd be allowed to... maybe he needs someone to invite him?")
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I'm a moron for not understanding this, but once all the offered shares are sold, what does Google gain by having these brokers recommend it? A share sold between 2 investors, all money is transferred between them, including any profit or loss. Wouldn't being off this post-IPO radar be a good thing? Sure, you miss some of the good press too, but you don't have ijits devaluing your stock even though your business is strong.
It amazes me that some companies have gotten away with not even offering dividends at all, turning all of this into some high-stakes gamble on multi-player financial chicken (who will be the last to pull out?) instead of the investment it's supposed to be.
Exactly. When a neighbor of mine became unemployed due this off-shoring phenomena, he opened up his own business selling used and small goods. Household stuff mostly. His computer, tv, the living room furniture. Unfortunately, he didn't have the business sense to roll that revenue back into buying more merchandise. He unwisely chose to pay his electric bill and mortgage instead. But even that didn't stop him, he then start leasing his own body to those that wanted quick sexual gratification.
So as you can see, it's a blessing in disguise when you lose your job to an Indian that can barely speak english, and gets paid 14 cents per 16 hour day.
Haha. Asking the question doesn't prove that there is no answer. Nothing comes to mind, but your sneaky little suggestion that there is no way those drugs would have been invented is dishonest.
If that were all, though, I'd chalk it up to some sort of adolescent sarcasm. Millions of people will suffer horribly and die early deaths, in part because of the very system you're sitting here and defending.
I won't even mention that you only dare say it as AC...
That's what the government mandated copyright awareness education is for. Brainwash the gullible while children, and even the non-gullible will feel nervous, guilty and alone when failing to be good little sheepsumers.
Just yesterday on slashdot, some ijit was telling me how I can't simply have my own morals, but that morality comes from the laws themselves! WTF? I mean, he was serious, non-trolling, and suggested I was obligated to follow that law until overturned.
If congress passed a law that no one was allowed to feed babies, would he let his kid wither away, while fervently trying to get the law overturned? I'm sure he would ignore something *that* absurd. But take something that's only slightly less absurd, remove the "life-or-death" consequences (well, not entirely... IP prevents poor african nations from making cheap generic anti-AIDS drugs) and people act like God handed the damn law to Moses on a stone tablet. Fuck that. With the "No Feeding Babies Act" not only would you ignore it, you'd not even bother to try to get it overturned. Working in a system so corrupt and devoid of reason, there'd be no point, right?
Someone explain to me why that is different from the situation we're now in?
Duh. They don't want to get rid of them, they just want the DRM to auto-deduct $9.99 per insanity-inducing thought loops of the song.
Wait til you see your bank balance the month after the UHF seinfeld/friends marathon...
I was going to say that I knew of none that included libraries with such important symbols as "Man with head inserted in anus" and "The whipmaster". However, it seems you only need an application that has computer and network symbols, so you have your pick of several.
Of course, they won't be able to do managerial or organizational charts...
That's the only real question. They should be more careful wording the requirement.
I wasn't going to say anything, but I can't help it, I wish to take credit for this. I still haven't read the CNN story, nor do I intend to, but if I got this one right, and there is a pseudo-christian reference in the last paragraph or so (because if we're unique that proves God exists, right?) please let me know. It wouldn't be out of character for them, at the very least.
Generally, if I ever use those things at all, I'm looking for things that can't be bought. I'm weird that way, collecting these things. If I ever give any to someone else, again, it's those things that can't be bought.
Go to hell, bitch.
For the record:
Old software for vintage computers.
Some jazz that hasn't released on CD, ever.
Bootlegs of concerts that were never released on official CDs.
BBC scifi shows that aren't on DVD.
The Star Wars Christmas special. Ok, so maybe it is morally wrong to not destroy the copy of this.
Some Disney movies, mostly because Disney considers them embarrassing.
Remember, it's completely random. Quite possibly, we've found the only 99 star systems in the entire universe that *don't* have life.
So, 99.999999999% of the universe is FULL OF LIFE? OMG!
I'm not off the mark too wildly then. It's 3 dimensional, so each additional LY gives you even more volume... definitely only the first 15 light year's worth.
And BTW, the closest is under 5 LYs away (4.6?).
No, they aren't putting them inn guns because noone has designed one that works. If you have no ability to design such a thing, why do you assume that others can do so?
Let's see, can I list the major reasons?
1) I'm not a firearms engineer.
2) As an amateur firearms engineer, I'm pretty incompetent. I don't even know if they stamp out these metal parts, or if they're cast.
3) I don't have a machine shop.
4) Wooden guns are subpar.
5) I have no money to develop firearms mechanisms.
6) I have little interest in designing firearm mechanisms.
7) There is no great reason for me to be personally interested in designing firearms mechanisms much past conversation on web forums.
8) My lack of firearm safety mechanism designs can't be said to have directly let to anyone being killed.
But, the most important reason of all... even if I did design something truly miraculous, the existing gun makers don't care, they wouldn't want it, not even to steal the idea and leave me penniless. That is my contention, it's not the most ridiculous opinion ever uttered here on slashdot, and I don't feel the need to make a fulltime career of proving my opinion. Not that even that would matter if I could, because people like you would choose to argue rather than saying to themselves "That's an interesting idea, I wonder if it's true or not, I'll mentally file that for later, if I can check it out.".
Umm, no. An idiot pointing a gun at someone else caused a tragedy. The design of the gun had little, if anything to do with it.
Yes, and yet nearly every car accident ever is caused by idiots, one way or another. Even a part failing, brakes or steering... that person should have been checking and performing maintenance. We all know cars can kill. What, maybe 1 out of 100 accidents happen, when a part fails, and no reasonable person can say they could have predicted it would, with normal maintenance.
That being the case, is it wrong if GM makes a car that explodes into flames if it's tapped in the rear end? After all, only wreckless driving can lead to that anyway. It's not like the car just explodes sitting there, you do have to be in a minor accident, which is almost always caused by an idiot. Is it ok to make and market such a car?
If not, why then, is it ok to market such a gun? Maybe because guns are a religion, and blaspheming is wrong no matter what?
100 systems is what, the first 10 light years radius? (If that?) How large is our own galaxy, how many galaxies are there, and much is all this constantly changing?
"Gee, we've sampled 100 star systems out of 900 trillion, and none so far are like our own. Nevermind that the technology we have can't even detect earth-like planets except by the dumbest luck, I think we have a CNN science story! Don't forget to add something vaguely religious the last paragraph of the article."
Bwahaha. Nice semantics. By that logic, you can't kill without being composed of atoms. Therefor, guns are designed to be composed of atoms.
Ability != intent. The intent here, is at stake. If the intent is to kill, then 99% of guns made are complete failures.
Yeh, so then why does every moron who thinks himself some elite conservative, lawful and proper do-gooder, start cheering when the AG's send out this letter, hinting that they want p2p gone? Despite what they think, they're cheering on the very people who rape these artists that they're so adamant about defending.
Haha, resorting to fallacies.
#1 My inability, lack of capital, or any other obstacle keeping me from inventing these features has nothing to do with it. Rather, it's the corporations who should be interested, but aren't, simply because legal strategy dictates what they can and can't research that is at issue.
#2 The police and military don't keep guns at home, where children might find them, or some visiting inlaw will stumble across them. So that's irrelevant.
#3 I didn't fail to state that the person who was unloading this gun was an idiot. Simply that this gun company failed to live up to even the minimal safety standards that other gunmakers somehow manage to meet. This is a perfect example of a defective design, that if it had been corrected, could have prevented a tragedy. Could other circumstances, including a non-idiot unloading that gun, have prevented this accident? Did I immediately jump to the gun control fanatic conclusion, that all guns should be banned? Hardly. Not that it seems to cut me any slack at all.
Read it on Fark
Handguns that can only be fired by their owner (or those whose identity is imprinted on it). Built-in triggerlocks. A host of ideas, some of which might not actually work. Some might.
I'm not denying that the person who accidentally caused the gun to fire is anything other than a complete idiot. But this particular incident involves a gun company that made what is, by all standards, a truly defective safety. A safety that could have protected the kid, even when the idiot handling the gun didn't.
Can there be even better safety features that wouldn't cause as much damage as they prevent? We'll never know, gun companies aren't interested in doing that research.
Ah, but that is the problem isn't it. There are times I wonder if anyone should get paid to make music. Certainly not like the rockstar earnings we see from time to time. But then there are those that really are artists, and when I hear them, I think it's good that they earn enough off of music that they can devote their life to it. So yes, we need a system that does that, and it might even involve something like copyright.
.0004% more royalties on their next album, if they do the public support thing. Or they're dumb, and think it's hurting them. Or maybe it is.. when you're only getting 0.01% of your album sales, and they sell less albums, because no one wants to buy something with a price inflated by as much as 1000%... maybe you see a financial pinch. Sorry, even if you are a music genius, selling out should have its penalties too.
But what does that have to do with what's going on? The RIAA has made billions, by stealing the money that was supposed to be for artists, they have no interest in giving them more than table scraps. And in doing so, they've pumped up the price of music so high, that people who would never have thought of listening to music that they didn't pay for, started using napster. Napster was popular when it often took up to a half hour to download a longer song. If a person could go down to their local store, and buy an entire album for $1-2, no one would have cared for it. $1-2 per cd, even half that going to the artist, would make most unbelievably rich, and even the niche genres much more comfortable than they are now. But we have to pay for the big machine that is the RIAA too. Pay them, so they can use that money to bribe politicians to extend copyright another 20 years. But even this is bullshit, because even factoring in us paying them for, among other things their lobbying to have our rights stolen, they still charged even more! Even as corrupt as our government institutions are, they were still forced to find that the RIAA colluded to jack up prices not a few cents, but roughly $5 per CD! 25 fucking %. This is an organization that stamps out manufactured "artists" and "bands" like a GM factory stamps out car fenders. They have no interst in art, except that once in awhile it's necessary for them to maintain their wealth, power, and influence.
Now why are artists so up in arms? Lots of reasons. The RIAA promises them
As soon as 6 months from now, I'll hopefully be trying to sell something (not music) myself which might easily be traded on a p2p network. I'm thinking that $5 for a CD mailed to you (with lifetime upgrades) sounds like a fair price. And yet, I can't imagine that if it somehow ends up on kazaa that I'd be anything other than pleasantly amused.
One kid out in California is paralyzed from the neck down, because the the gun could only be unloaded with the safety off. (Or maybe it was that the magazine could only be unloaded, I'm not a gun expert).
Other, better safety features have been thought of. These companies won't even explore the ideas.
But I bet you're one of those gun nuts that has to defend them no matter what. Oh well.
Vote with your wallet: In this parody of a free market? The corporations (and in no small amount, the RIAA itself) voted with *their* wallets, directly to congress which writes laws. How can my wallet vote nearly as much? And if I have no more real vote in the matter, does that absolve me dcc'ing a song I like to a friend?
Illegal: If I suddenly become a billionaire (big if, that), and I buy laws to make something or other illegal, how does this hold any moral weight at all? If it holds no moral weight, why make such a big deal out of him breaking that law? I suppose that in theory he is obligated to try and get that law repealed... but again, corporations vote with their wallets. He can't compete.
Distribution rights: How can you purchase something like this, it's dumb. Distribution is only meaningful in a commercial sense, and that being the case, if he uploads mp3's on condition of payment, if he insists I paypal him $1, then he *is* an asshole. Even so, that would be a matter to settle in civil court. It's the RIAA's problem not mine, and I shouldn't be required to payroll their court case through my tax money. Did you hear about the federal prosecutor's being allowed to bring "civil" cases to court, on behalf of the RIAA? Unbelievable.
Oh, you'll toss me a few crumbs, on one or two details, but chastise me for not working within the system. They bought the system a long time ago, so I choose to fight the battles I can win. P2P is one of them, of course... look at it. They're using every dirty trick, and billions in campaign contributions, and they've yet to stem the tide.
It could be said that guns are designed to intimidate. More guns are waved threateningly than actually shot, one would think. Therefor, gun companies are profiting from people wishing to warn off idiots, bullies and criminals.
Would you take guns away from police, too? How about the military? If not, then those companies will still be around (though certainly les profitable) even after your gun control dreams are realized. That said, we can't eliminate "profiting from death". What we can do, is make sure that only people other than ourselves have guns, which sounds rather naive. I don't want to live in a country where only people other than myself can own them.
I don't own a gun, but I'd like to reserve that right. Let's say I act on it, is it guaranteed I'll kill someone? I've used things much more dangerous to myself and others before, and no one has paid for it with their life. Assuming I can keep this winning streak going, even after I buy this hypothetical gun, then that gun company will not have profited off of death at all. I will have spent hundreds of dollars, and they only profited off of my insecurity, real or imagined.
So, if all that is true, why do gun companies still feel evil to you? Not being a gun nut, I'm hesitant to chalk it up as you being a dumbass or a hippy faggot, or whatever it is that they're calling pro-gun control proponents now. As a matter of fact, there are times I feel the same way. They're evil because they fail to make guns with safety features. Even gun nuts only want to shoot the targets that they want to shoot, which usually doesn't include their own feet, children, or innocent bystanders. The gun companies claim that introducing safety features will make them liable, which true or not, is complete bullshit. I wish the government would grant them amnesty or whatever it's called, on the condition that they start making guns with these features.
Then again, this is the same big corporation type of evil that you see in all evil companies, gun manufacturers or not.
Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
#1 The Tau Cetans arrived, and contrary to current hippy theory, they're mean sons of bitches. Neither you nor I feel like being slaves for GribblegribbleDak, and so it might be convenient to have some weapons more advanced than thrown rocks.
#2 Some mutant form of fungus, bacteria, or virus emerges into the world (and you're allowed to take a potshot here... it might very well be an escaped bioweapon). A cure is unlikely, and the infection spreads too rapidly to be contained via traditional quarantine methods. Assuming that it's still within a fairly small geographic area, and those people will die anyway (or already dead), it might be nice to be able to sterilize the outbreak. Despite bad Kevin Spacey movies, nukes are the only option for that.
#3 We want to build a probe capable of meaningful interstellar flight. I doubt that it will be manned, so I'm thinking something more like Voyager. Right now, the only non-science fiction drive would be nuclear. It's an engineering problem, maybe a logistical problem, not a theoretical one.
BONUS: #4 (Biological) My cat (and by extension our carpet) has had a bad infestation of fleas, that is almost impossible to get rid of. Even now, I hope it's over, but won't know for a few more weeks. If there were such a thing as "flea pox" and it wasn't dangerous to pets or humans, I'd have loaded up at the local Bio-WeaponsMart. I want the nasty little vampires dead.
Hanging out at the IRC channel I listed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Doesn't take a stretch of the imagination for me to think some of the people who've done so might have been invited.
If you're somewhere other than the US, ask me. Chances are I'd gladly let you on.
If you're in the US, you could always find that canadian/european buddy from AIM, tell him about it. Maybe if he were to be invited himself, he'd feel grateful enough to invite you. ("Gee, anoncow tipped me off to this, but didn't invite me himself, even though he'd be allowed to... maybe he needs someone to invite him?")