Agreed on the centuries. Though not too long before the post here I was talking to someone that said / thought the same thing. He was young though, and his "justification" was music. Like "This song is a hit from the 70's, the 2000's, and the 2010's" Which I *guess* if you wanted to classify music be decades... then fine. But the fact of the matter is it's always been "the 1900s" meant the entire century.
Go to more rural areas and you can buy ammo at a gas station, at least in Minnesota. Also those out state hardware stores sell it as well. There is also the option of mail order ammo.
But again, the gun buying thing is regional. As I said, some states sell them everywhere. Others only sell guns in official gun shops. Obviously mail-order guns and gun-show guns are everywhere.
But I was speaking more to how some Europeans think the entire USA has guns for sale at the local grocery store or something. I've had some colleagues in Europe that just assumed that it was every state / every general-store / etc. Since they saw a TV show where a buy bought a gun at a local Walmart or something.
Ammo... yeh I'd heard you could get that online without issue. But not being a gun owner I never bothered to check.
Obviously that's one of the stupid points: getting their hands on a 3D printer and learning how to use it. And I agree that the whole thing is kind of stupid for the reasons you post and more.
I'm just saying that point "B" has way more weight than point "A" since 3D printed guns don't change the "restriction" scenario any more than plumbing supplies.
Though, as a thug, one could imagine someone in his gang has stolen one. Meanwhile some gangs "know a guy" who is fairly smart. Being in a gang doesn't mean you have a low IQ... just poor judgement skills and/or little choice.
As for untraceable... unlike a regular ballistic test where they can say "it looks like this bullet was fired from one of these gun models" and then compare suspect's gun to the bullet and say "gotcha."
Now they have a plastic gun. Sure, ballistics might be able to tell it's a plastic gun but might not be able to tell it from gun A to gun B. Then there's the fact that it's plastic... it makes it a lot easier to get rid of. Sure you could ALWAYS throw that Glock or revolver in the river but lots of criminals don't because they might need that expensive piece again. Which is, of course, how they get caught.
With a plastic one: melt it (or throw it away) and have your pal make another one.
There are two parts to the whole "3D printed gun debate" that I've heard people spouting.
A) Gun restrictions are pointless because I can just print a gun B) I can print an untraceable metal-less gun
A... is pointless because as you say it was always possible to make a cheap gun from common parts. Especially when it doesn't have to be particularly re-usable or reliable or accurate.
B... is kind of an issue. Some thug needs a burner gun for just one or two shots and he can dispose of it or melt it down. Granted, I guess it could always have been done with PVC piping and a 22, but this was does make it more convenient.
For what it's worth... here in the US it varies from region to region.
Sure, some states have guns and ammo available at general stores. Others, like mine... not as easy. Guns are only sold in gun shops as well as ammo. No "Walmart" or "KMart" gun shops here.
So buying bullets would be more of a pain than, say, Texas. Since there aren't THAT many places here.
But I don't know if there's a restriction of "needing to be a gun owner" to buy them here. I don't THINK so but I don't know.
I don't agree. Then again I have disagreements about the term "Next Tuesday" since a co-worker thinks that means this upcoming Tuesday while I believe it means the following-Tuesday (2 Tuesdays from now).
Since 2010... people have been using the term "2000's" to mean 2000 through 2009. Like for Music and such.
But prior to that, I heard (and used) the term 1900s and such to include anything from 1900 to 1999.
I banned iTunes from my PC long ago, along with iDevices and Apple's DRM'ed media content. Thanks for keeping me off of that $#!+ train, iTunes!
For what it's worth, I think they dropped DRM from their music. I think they just watermark it and/or tag it so they can track it back to the purchaser if it winds up online.
Movies though... well I can't think of any legal service that offers downloadable blockbuster movies drm-free. Save for the rare indie release.
For what it's worth, a couple of years back I noticed a similar thing with the same service. I forget which version of Windows (XP? Vista?), what kind of machine I had at the time (single-core, core 2 duo, etc), or which iTunes version I had... but it was the same thing.
However, I haven't had (or at least noticed) the problem since.
Purely anecdotal. Though there are many-a-thread about similar issues on various forums... or at least there used to be when I was looking during my experience.
Here in the US, the speed limits vary state-to-state and region-to-region. In New Jersey, many of the highway speed limits are 65mph (~104kph). On said highways, NOT during rush hour, people in the "fast lane" tend to go at least 80+mph (~128kph). At least, when there's 3+ lanes. When there's only 2 lanes, the sheer amount of traffic often prevents going that fast. And rush hour prevents it from traffic as well.
Unfortunately, people also stay in the fast lane going UNDER the speed limit and don't want to move over. Even if you flash your brights at them. I don't mean they're "only" going 5mph over the limit, I mean they're doing 55mph in a 65mph highway, on the fast lane. Which of course is highly infuriating, especially when there are speed limit signs every couple of miles and a "left-lane-for-passing-only" sign every 5 miles or so.
Said people are especially infuriating, when they're keeping pace with the truck next to them and said truck is letting tiny bits of debris fly off. So you can't pass them and thus are getting pelted with bits of gravel / rubber / wood / etc.
Yeh, because drivers licenses work SO well now-a-days. Having a license NEVER means you have an accident. And that driver's test course weeds out ALL of the bad drivers.
I imagine a license for something like this would require something heavily like a pilots license. And for the most part those work out pretty well. Partially because getting one is not trivial and you have to get access to a plane. So the whole thing is a serious undertaking that requires commitment.
But the idea here is to bring flight to the general masses. Kind of like how cars are to the general masses. So we'd see the same thing: people doing "just well enough" to pass and then phoning it in for the rest of their drives / flights.
And in this case, instead of just worrying about endangering motorists and pedestrians... now homes and apartment buildings are at risk.
Face it, most people have a hard enough time on a (relatively) 2 dimensional plane. Accidents all over the place. Now you have to worry about people coming from all 3 dimensions... forget about it.
Add to that, at least it is normally hard for someone to go through the side of a house unless the accident is really bad or they were driving really fast. Now anyone would be EASILY able to go through a roof.
Fine, Apple and Google and the rest are WAY over-rated. And as I said, tons of smaller yet innovative firms were around.
But considering the work they've done in the past, did around the time of Do Not Fly list, and have done since... tapping a decent firm to put something together would have solved a lot of issues.
In 2001, there is no excuse for this multi-billion dollar system to only be a names-list and nothing else. So picking some firm or some guy who just threw something together quickly and accepting "that's the best that can be done" with something so pitiful is poor judgement.
First, I realize this, I'm in IT. But it's a good monologue. Pocket device != large database.
Second: he wasn't saying give everyone an iPod. He was using it as an example, a token of "look what an innovative company can do... maybe hire THEM instead of some guy"
Even in 2001 (or whatever) the idea of a distributed system wasn't unheard of. Heck at our college we had access to large-infrastructure database systems shared among campuses across the country. Said databases had searchable articles with bilbiographic meta-data, images of the pages, and a whole bunch of features. I can't speak for whether it was encrypted but I do know you needed a login.
The systems are obviously already networked to be able to get to the (I imagine) encrypted database. I can't imagine a scenario where a 2001-era PC would have a hard time also getting extra meta-data besides just a names-list (age, gender, etc). Heck we were even doing pictures.
And as Alan Shore said in the monologue: this is a country with some innovative tech companies are there. Apple, Microsoft (yeh they count), Google, loads of small companies. All advanced. All innovative. All doing incredible things at the time.
And you're saying the best that they could do, after throwing billions of dollars at the problem, was come up with a simple encrypted names list? No meta-data? No pictures? Nothing?
Fine, maybe slightly more expensive but wouldn't it be better to have a BETTER system than a names list that count stops a 10-year-old from getting on a plane?
We've come a long way in 12 years. But even back then things were advanced enough to do a better job on the system they picked.
I like David E Kelley's Boston Legal in general. Granted, lots of people hated his shows because his main characters tended to go on rants and act as mouth-pieces for his political views, but I enjoyed his shows and think that even if you disagree that he would at least make good points about them.
Anyway, there was an episode about the No Fly list and that monologue always stuck with me.
The main character (Alan Shore) went on and on about how poorly contrived it was and how INSANE it was that a system that cost SOOOO much money was less advanced than an iPod that fits in his pocket. That the iPod could store meta-data AND pictures for 20,000+ items but the No Fly List only handled names. Names which could be faked AND shared with others.
How it's insane that in a country that has Google, Apple, and even small-yet-innovative companies that the contract went to a system as worthless as what became the no-fly-list.
The plot-point was "Denny Crane" couldn't even fly on his private jet because his name was an alias for a terrorist. Then the main character had a dozen+ people named Denny Crane from the Boston area to come in to show how ridiculous it was they couldn't fly (even the children).
LOL, fine be a jerk. I wasn't astro-turfing. Honestly, I'm not a fan of MS's products.
It's just kind of a weird world: where renting/leasing out flippin' airplanes to take pictures of neighborhoods... is somehow less of a legal-nightmare and invasion of privacy than a car with a panoramic camera. There was a time when people feared "black helicopters" invading their rights and such more than people in cars.
Hey, some guy driving the car made a mistake going where he/she shouldn't... some private road, some really long driveway that looked like a continuation of the road, etc. It was a mistake by a poor guy that probably got fired / reprimanded for his goof, not some company trying to be evil. Now the whole WiFi thing... meh. Haven't been following up on it.
I hate to admit it, but I kind of like Bing's various bird's-eye views. They offer plane-shots at around a 45-60 degree angle. And from all 4 major directions (N/S/E/W).
The quality is actually decent enough that, unless you're in a city with really tall buildings, you can make out the store fronts fairly well and see what the roads/turns are going to be like on your trip before-hand.
Sure, no-where near as good as high-quality as street view. But this way you have a view of ALL of the minor / small streets that Google's Street View hasn't taken yet. And I imagine this kind of thing is a lot quicker to do than Street View so it has the (potential) benefit of being more up-to-date and thus show a more accurate depiction of what the area looks like NOW vs a couple years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I LIKE street view. But for my region, the Bing bird's-eye view kind of works out better unless I'm looking at something on a major road.
What? You mean you can't "Zoom and enhance" a 640x480 video to the point that you can see the fingerprint left on a window 25' away
Unfortunately, I know people that actually think that stuff is legit. Which of course leads to "fun" arguments / questions about "Why can't you do THIS, I see them do it on TV all the time."
I'm not a huge fan of paintball, though admittedly the last time I played was when I still wore glasses. Which would then fog up along with the goggles making visibility practically impossible. I've had eye surgery since then so that fixes THAT issue, but now I have bad knees so squatting-and-hiding for long periods would no longer be pleasant.
So with paintball you have the fog-issue, running through the woods (depending on the course / company / etc), worrying about ticks (here in NJ), the pellets can hurt when you get hit, etc. Sure, some people love. But I can't fault anyone for not liking it due to the reasons I listed (and there are probably others).
As for your showing statement... there's showering and then there's SHOWERING. After a jog or whatever taking a shower is no big deal. But after being covered in mud, grass, possibly ticks, etc... that shower is going to be a longer thing. If for no other reason than checking yourself for ticks. But that's more of a regional thing.
The idea is: the more crud we put into orbit the more garbage we have to deal with. So when we launch (rocket, shuttle-type-craft, etc) now we've got all of these ballistic metal+plastic slugs flying around that we either have to avoid or watch them damage/pierce the hull. Those things move fast: factor in many many of them and avoidance becomes near impossible if we start putting up too much.
Keep that going, and we'll need flippin armored vehicles to get past orbit which means heavier vehicles which means more fuel and less payload.
The orbit-leaving scene in WALL-E was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but you get the idea.
So yes, we NEED to put stuff into orbit. Communications satellites, weather / monitoring satellites, GPS satellites, even various research satellites. But we should be careful about how MUCH we put up there.
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Agreed on the centuries. Though not too long before the post here I was talking to someone that said / thought the same thing. He was young though, and his "justification" was music. Like "This song is a hit from the 70's, the 2000's, and the 2010's" Which I *guess* if you wanted to classify music be decades... then fine. But the fact of the matter is it's always been "the 1900s" meant the entire century.
Go to more rural areas and you can buy ammo at a gas station, at least in Minnesota. Also those out state hardware stores sell it as well. There is also the option of mail order ammo.
But again, the gun buying thing is regional. As I said, some states sell them everywhere. Others only sell guns in official gun shops. Obviously mail-order guns and gun-show guns are everywhere.
But I was speaking more to how some Europeans think the entire USA has guns for sale at the local grocery store or something. I've had some colleagues in Europe that just assumed that it was every state / every general-store / etc. Since they saw a TV show where a buy bought a gun at a local Walmart or something.
Ammo... yeh I'd heard you could get that online without issue. But not being a gun owner I never bothered to check.
Obviously that's one of the stupid points: getting their hands on a 3D printer and learning how to use it. And I agree that the whole thing is kind of stupid for the reasons you post and more.
I'm just saying that point "B" has way more weight than point "A" since 3D printed guns don't change the "restriction" scenario any more than plumbing supplies.
Though, as a thug, one could imagine someone in his gang has stolen one. Meanwhile some gangs "know a guy" who is fairly smart. Being in a gang doesn't mean you have a low IQ... just poor judgement skills and/or little choice.
As for untraceable... unlike a regular ballistic test where they can say "it looks like this bullet was fired from one of these gun models" and then compare suspect's gun to the bullet and say "gotcha."
Now they have a plastic gun. Sure, ballistics might be able to tell it's a plastic gun but might not be able to tell it from gun A to gun B. Then there's the fact that it's plastic... it makes it a lot easier to get rid of. Sure you could ALWAYS throw that Glock or revolver in the river but lots of criminals don't because they might need that expensive piece again. Which is, of course, how they get caught.
With a plastic one: melt it (or throw it away) and have your pal make another one.
There are two parts to the whole "3D printed gun debate" that I've heard people spouting.
A) Gun restrictions are pointless because I can just print a gun
B) I can print an untraceable metal-less gun
A... is pointless because as you say it was always possible to make a cheap gun from common parts. Especially when it doesn't have to be particularly re-usable or reliable or accurate.
B... is kind of an issue. Some thug needs a burner gun for just one or two shots and he can dispose of it or melt it down. Granted, I guess it could always have been done with PVC piping and a 22, but this was does make it more convenient.
For what it's worth... here in the US it varies from region to region.
Sure, some states have guns and ammo available at general stores. Others, like mine... not as easy. Guns are only sold in gun shops as well as ammo. No "Walmart" or "KMart" gun shops here.
So buying bullets would be more of a pain than, say, Texas. Since there aren't THAT many places here.
But I don't know if there's a restriction of "needing to be a gun owner" to buy them here. I don't THINK so but I don't know.
I don't agree. Then again I have disagreements about the term "Next Tuesday" since a co-worker thinks that means this upcoming Tuesday while I believe it means the following-Tuesday (2 Tuesdays from now).
Since 2010... people have been using the term "2000's" to mean 2000 through 2009. Like for Music and such.
But prior to that, I heard (and used) the term 1900s and such to include anything from 1900 to 1999.
So it's probably a regional / preference thing.
Seriously, this is just a science-fiction disaster waiting to happen.
I, for one, welcome our new "Thing" overlords.
I banned iTunes from my PC long ago, along with iDevices and Apple's DRM'ed media content. Thanks for keeping me off of that $#!+ train, iTunes!
For what it's worth, I think they dropped DRM from their music. I think they just watermark it and/or tag it so they can track it back to the purchaser if it winds up online.
Movies though... well I can't think of any legal service that offers downloadable blockbuster movies drm-free. Save for the rare indie release.
For what it's worth, a couple of years back I noticed a similar thing with the same service. I forget which version of Windows (XP? Vista?), what kind of machine I had at the time (single-core, core 2 duo, etc), or which iTunes version I had... but it was the same thing.
However, I haven't had (or at least noticed) the problem since.
Purely anecdotal. Though there are many-a-thread about similar issues on various forums... or at least there used to be when I was looking during my experience.
Here in the US, the speed limits vary state-to-state and region-to-region. In New Jersey, many of the highway speed limits are 65mph (~104kph). On said highways, NOT during rush hour, people in the "fast lane" tend to go at least 80+mph (~128kph). At least, when there's 3+ lanes. When there's only 2 lanes, the sheer amount of traffic often prevents going that fast. And rush hour prevents it from traffic as well.
Unfortunately, people also stay in the fast lane going UNDER the speed limit and don't want to move over. Even if you flash your brights at them. I don't mean they're "only" going 5mph over the limit, I mean they're doing 55mph in a 65mph highway, on the fast lane. Which of course is highly infuriating, especially when there are speed limit signs every couple of miles and a "left-lane-for-passing-only" sign every 5 miles or so.
Said people are especially infuriating, when they're keeping pace with the truck next to them and said truck is letting tiny bits of debris fly off. So you can't pass them and thus are getting pelted with bits of gravel / rubber / wood / etc.
are you really this ####### retarded?
Yeh, because drivers licenses work SO well now-a-days. Having a license NEVER means you have an accident. And that driver's test course weeds out ALL of the bad drivers.
I imagine a license for something like this would require something heavily like a pilots license. And for the most part those work out pretty well. Partially because getting one is not trivial and you have to get access to a plane. So the whole thing is a serious undertaking that requires commitment.
But the idea here is to bring flight to the general masses. Kind of like how cars are to the general masses. So we'd see the same thing: people doing "just well enough" to pass and then phoning it in for the rest of their drives / flights.
And in this case, instead of just worrying about endangering motorists and pedestrians... now homes and apartment buildings are at risk.
In other news, farmers markets will need to start equipping anti air guns and flak cannons.
If you though there were a lot of elderly driving into these things before, just wait until they could decided to land in the middle of them.
Face it, most people have a hard enough time on a (relatively) 2 dimensional plane. Accidents all over the place. Now you have to worry about people coming from all 3 dimensions... forget about it.
Add to that, at least it is normally hard for someone to go through the side of a house unless the accident is really bad or they were driving really fast. Now anyone would be EASILY able to go through a roof.
In related news, the students were found to have changed their grades and purchased airplane tickets.
In other news, the WOPR unit in NORAD is reported to be acting funny. It keeps asking to play games.
Fine, Apple and Google and the rest are WAY over-rated. And as I said, tons of smaller yet innovative firms were around.
But considering the work they've done in the past, did around the time of Do Not Fly list, and have done since... tapping a decent firm to put something together would have solved a lot of issues.
In 2001, there is no excuse for this multi-billion dollar system to only be a names-list and nothing else. So picking some firm or some guy who just threw something together quickly and accepting "that's the best that can be done" with something so pitiful is poor judgement.
First, I realize this, I'm in IT. But it's a good monologue. Pocket device != large database.
Second: he wasn't saying give everyone an iPod. He was using it as an example, a token of "look what an innovative company can do... maybe hire THEM instead of some guy"
Even in 2001 (or whatever) the idea of a distributed system wasn't unheard of. Heck at our college we had access to large-infrastructure database systems shared among campuses across the country. Said databases had searchable articles with bilbiographic meta-data, images of the pages, and a whole bunch of features. I can't speak for whether it was encrypted but I do know you needed a login.
The systems are obviously already networked to be able to get to the (I imagine) encrypted database. I can't imagine a scenario where a 2001-era PC would have a hard time also getting extra meta-data besides just a names-list (age, gender, etc). Heck we were even doing pictures.
And as Alan Shore said in the monologue: this is a country with some innovative tech companies are there. Apple, Microsoft (yeh they count), Google, loads of small companies. All advanced. All innovative. All doing incredible things at the time.
And you're saying the best that they could do, after throwing billions of dollars at the problem, was come up with a simple encrypted names list? No meta-data? No pictures? Nothing?
Fine, maybe slightly more expensive but wouldn't it be better to have a BETTER system than a names list that count stops a 10-year-old from getting on a plane?
We've come a long way in 12 years. But even back then things were advanced enough to do a better job on the system they picked.
Agreed on all points.
Bender's Big Score was OK in parts; I kind of dug it. I particularly liked how stuck-in-the-past Fry realized he was Lars and had the emotional bit.
But after that, weak sauce.
I like David E Kelley's Boston Legal in general. Granted, lots of people hated his shows because his main characters tended to go on rants and act as mouth-pieces for his political views, but I enjoyed his shows and think that even if you disagree that he would at least make good points about them.
Anyway, there was an episode about the No Fly list and that monologue always stuck with me.
The main character (Alan Shore) went on and on about how poorly contrived it was and how INSANE it was that a system that cost SOOOO much money was less advanced than an iPod that fits in his pocket. That the iPod could store meta-data AND pictures for 20,000+ items but the No Fly List only handled names. Names which could be faked AND shared with others.
How it's insane that in a country that has Google, Apple, and even small-yet-innovative companies that the contract went to a system as worthless as what became the no-fly-list.
The plot-point was "Denny Crane" couldn't even fly on his private jet because his name was an alias for a terrorist. Then the main character had a dozen+ people named Denny Crane from the Boston area to come in to show how ridiculous it was they couldn't fly (even the children).
The monologue was found here: http://www.boston-legal.org/script/BL03x12.pdf
But the delivery of it was quite solid and emotional.
Isn't GI Joe made by Hasbro?
Darn it, you're right. I get those old companies confused.
LOL, fine be a jerk. I wasn't astro-turfing. Honestly, I'm not a fan of MS's products.
It's just kind of a weird world: where renting/leasing out flippin' airplanes to take pictures of neighborhoods... is somehow less of a legal-nightmare and invasion of privacy than a car with a panoramic camera. There was a time when people feared "black helicopters" invading their rights and such more than people in cars.
Hey, some guy driving the car made a mistake going where he/she shouldn't... some private road, some really long driveway that looked like a continuation of the road, etc. It was a mistake by a poor guy that probably got fired / reprimanded for his goof, not some company trying to be evil. Now the whole WiFi thing... meh. Haven't been following up on it.
I hate to admit it, but I kind of like Bing's various bird's-eye views. They offer plane-shots at around a 45-60 degree angle. And from all 4 major directions (N/S/E/W).
The quality is actually decent enough that, unless you're in a city with really tall buildings, you can make out the store fronts fairly well and see what the roads/turns are going to be like on your trip before-hand.
Sure, no-where near as good as high-quality as street view. But this way you have a view of ALL of the minor / small streets that Google's Street View hasn't taken yet. And I imagine this kind of thing is a lot quicker to do than Street View so it has the (potential) benefit of being more up-to-date and thus show a more accurate depiction of what the area looks like NOW vs a couple years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I LIKE street view. But for my region, the Bing bird's-eye view kind of works out better unless I'm looking at something on a major road.
In other news, Mattel to sue StopRotor for copying its various GI Joe and Cobra toys from the 80s
What? You mean you can't "Zoom and enhance" a 640x480 video to the point that you can see the fingerprint left on a window 25' away
Unfortunately, I know people that actually think that stuff is legit. Which of course leads to "fun" arguments / questions about "Why can't you do THIS, I see them do it on TV all the time."
I'm not a huge fan of paintball, though admittedly the last time I played was when I still wore glasses. Which would then fog up along with the goggles making visibility practically impossible. I've had eye surgery since then so that fixes THAT issue, but now I have bad knees so squatting-and-hiding for long periods would no longer be pleasant.
So with paintball you have the fog-issue, running through the woods (depending on the course / company / etc), worrying about ticks (here in NJ), the pellets can hurt when you get hit, etc. Sure, some people love. But I can't fault anyone for not liking it due to the reasons I listed (and there are probably others).
As for your showing statement... there's showering and then there's SHOWERING. After a jog or whatever taking a shower is no big deal. But after being covered in mud, grass, possibly ticks, etc... that shower is going to be a longer thing. If for no other reason than checking yourself for ticks. But that's more of a regional thing.
Yes and no.
The idea is: the more crud we put into orbit the more garbage we have to deal with. So when we launch (rocket, shuttle-type-craft, etc) now we've got all of these ballistic metal+plastic slugs flying around that we either have to avoid or watch them damage/pierce the hull. Those things move fast: factor in many many of them and avoidance becomes near impossible if we start putting up too much.
Keep that going, and we'll need flippin armored vehicles to get past orbit which means heavier vehicles which means more fuel and less payload.
The orbit-leaving scene in WALL-E was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but you get the idea.
So yes, we NEED to put stuff into orbit. Communications satellites, weather / monitoring satellites, GPS satellites, even various research satellites. But we should be careful about how MUCH we put up there.