I don't feel this guy is a trained sniper, because military snipers don't use small-caliber rounds like the 5.56mm/.223 -- you need NATO 7.62mm caliber or greater to take someone down reliably and consistently. Police snipers do use 5.56mm weapons, but I think in all probability the gunman is just a civilian who is very skilled in survival arts (and mentality), and in using his rifle.
It is obvious that he selects locations where he can strike from a safe distance, and can get away without being seen. Based on these facts, and with the help of some keen deductive insight, I would say that a good forensic psychologist or profiler should be able to pinpoint several key locations where he might strike next. These locations would then be covertly staked out by police/military.
If this sounds like a lot of trouble to go to, it isn't really. Serial killers have attracted far bigger and costlier police investigations.
Do the police know for sure that it was the sniper who left the calling card, and not a hoaxer?
They should've been staking out the previous hit locations. Serial killers often like to revisit the scene of the crime, in order to relive their fantasy and to taunt the authorities.
P.S. Who told you that most/. posters don't keep their cell phones on vibrate "ALL THE TIME"? I don't. I normally leave mine in the car when I go in a public place.
What, so that someone can smash the windows and steal it while you're away?
Tsk tsk...
And if you can forego carrying your phone in a public place, you don't need a phone in the first place.
My apologies, I realised I'd gotten confused by your whole ordering flow process. After I'd submitted my CC details and my account was activated, I was redirected to the domain registration and transfer page at https://www.netmar.com/cgi-bin/domreg .
Since I didn't want to register a new domain, I assumed the transfer bit was what I needed, whereas the option I actually needed was to "put my domain name in your DNS servers". This is because in the past with all the other webhosts I'd signed up with, there was an option to enter my existing domain name in your DNS servers during the sign-up process. As there was no option to do this here, I assumed wrongly that the "domain transfer" option was what I needed.
I'm still not entirely sure how to put my existing domain name in your DNS servers and where the CC payment page is for that (as there is a $15 fee), but I'll have to email the Netmar support team about that.
Anyway, to cut a long explanation short, apologies for the trouble and confusion, it just goes to show what a webhosting newbie I am.
OK I just signed up for the 100MB web space plan. This is what I got when I tried to transfer my existing domain name to Netmar:
Payment Information Note for transfers: While there is no fee to transfer your domain name to our systems, the purchase of at least one year of registration service is required as part of the transfer.
I think this is a low blow. Nowhere else on the site did it state that I would have to pay one year of rego as part of the domain transfer. It doesn't even say how much one year of rego costs. Is this sneaky or what?
I've always wondered about the bag searches here in Australia. All they get you to do is open up your bag so they can peer inside -- if your backpack happens to have three or four compartments, they're not going to check them all, coz it would take too much time if they had to do that with every Joe that came along. I suspect that a determined thief could easily hide something small and valuable in a backpack, and pass the usual cursory inspections.
So I figure, the "please present your bag for inspection" thing is more of a token gesture than anything really.
As far as I understand it, owning handguns is still legal in Australia but you have to show due cause for it, and "self-defense" is not a good enough reason to be issued a license. So basically I'm not sure who *is* allowed to own a handgun...
Anyway in the last few years since the Port Arthur massacre the violent gun crimes rate seems to have gone up... crims get their guns on the black market anyway, like they always have.
Basically I don't think the gun ban in Australia has made much of a difference. As you point out, criminals don't often walk around with semi-automatic rifles anyway. You can get nutters like at Port Arthur, but then we're talking about a whole different ballgame.
Why would crimes related to guns necessarily drop dramatically when you ban them? Criminals don't usually use registered guns anyway, that's like crashing your own registered car into a police station and trying to walk away non-chalantly.
More often, I'd say the crime rate would stay stable after a gun ban. Crims just turn to other weapons, such as knives, to commit the crimes. Or they get guns from the thriving black market. Criminals don't suddenly develop an aversion to crime just because they can't get their hands on a gun.
Besides, when's the last time you heard a non-bullshit stat? The gun lobby would say violent crime increases after a ban, the anti-gun types say crime decreases. Everyone places their own biased slant on the stats...
Are you sure? As far as I understand it, they would only recover wounded buddies under fire, not necessarily dead ones. There's no point, honour or not, to get more people killed just to recover a corpse.
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
·
· Score: 1
I think the Geneva conventions probably classifies "inhumane" weapons as ones that are virtually guaranteed to kill you with very little chance of survival, so.50caliber guns fall into this category.
Believe it or not, 5.56mm caliber rifles are "humane" weapons of war because the round they fire, the SS109 full-metal jacketed, is only "designed to wound" at typical engagement ranges. Of course, at close range it's a whole lot more lethal than that (as the FBI discovered), but nobody's going to complain except the Red Cross, really.
The man is a novelist, I'm sure he uses a bit of creative licence in every book. Whether his creative concepts are based in reality or fantasy, who knows?
God that's ridiculous. I can never understand why they allow patents like this. Any pet owner with a laser pointer will have discovered by now that they can "exercise" their pets like this. Hardly original!
Well I once read how the USA "accidentally" bombed Schaffhausen in Switzerland three times during WW2 even though it's 50 miles across the border inside Switzerland... allegedly the Swiss were making tank parts for the Germans in Schaffhausen.
So I don't really doubt that the Americans deliberately hit that Chinese embassy.
Some soldiers tend to think it's better to fire and risk killing a friendly than it is not to fire at all and possibly let an enemy get away. I think it's far better not to fire if in doubt, and preserve the lives of your own people. Friendly fire sux.
As for the light weapons, a lot of US forces are being issued the M4/M4A1 carbine which does pretty much what you ask for... flashlight, night sights, optics, lasers etc. Plus it's lighter and handier than the M16A2, though a bit less accurate at long ranges.
Heck, why not spend precious R&D on the *bigger* threat out there: small arms projectiles, i.e. bullets! After all, small arms account for the majority of deaths and injuries in most conflicts.
Why not go straight for a weapon that defeats bullets? =)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather have Fucking Good Privacy, thank you very much.
Who knows how reliable "Really Good" or "Pretty Good" actually is...
I don't feel this guy is a trained sniper, because military snipers don't use small-caliber rounds like the 5.56mm/.223 -- you need NATO 7.62mm caliber or greater to take someone down reliably and consistently. Police snipers do use 5.56mm weapons, but I think in all probability the gunman is just a civilian who is very skilled in survival arts (and mentality), and in using his rifle.
It is obvious that he selects locations where he can strike from a safe distance, and can get away without being seen. Based on these facts, and with the help of some keen deductive insight, I would say that a good forensic psychologist or profiler should be able to pinpoint several key locations where he might strike next. These locations would then be covertly staked out by police/military.
If this sounds like a lot of trouble to go to, it isn't really. Serial killers have attracted far bigger and costlier police investigations.
Do the police know for sure that it was the sniper who left the calling card, and not a hoaxer?
They should've been staking out the previous hit locations. Serial killers often like to revisit the scene of the crime, in order to relive their fantasy and to taunt the authorities.
"Set Phasers to stun!" *problem solved*
What, so that someone can smash the windows and steal it while you're away?
Tsk tsk...
And if you can forego carrying your phone in a public place, you don't need a phone in the first place.
"Accidental FBI screwup destroys evidence proving JFK was murdered by the CIA."
My apologies, I realised I'd gotten confused by your whole ordering flow process. After I'd submitted my CC details and my account was activated, I was redirected to the domain registration and transfer page at https://www.netmar.com/cgi-bin/domreg .
Since I didn't want to register a new domain, I assumed the transfer bit was what I needed, whereas the option I actually needed was to "put my domain name in your DNS servers". This is because in the past with all the other webhosts I'd signed up with, there was an option to enter my existing domain name in your DNS servers during the sign-up process. As there was no option to do this here, I assumed wrongly that the "domain transfer" option was what I needed.
I'm still not entirely sure how to put my existing domain name in your DNS servers and where the CC payment page is for that (as there is a $15 fee), but I'll have to email the Netmar support team about that.
Anyway, to cut a long explanation short, apologies for the trouble and confusion, it just goes to show what a webhosting newbie I am.
If you'd actually bothered to read my post, you'd have seen that I was talking about a domain transfer, not domain registration.
OK I just signed up for the 100MB web space plan. This is what I got when I tried to transfer my existing domain name to Netmar:
Payment Information
Note for transfers: While there is no fee to transfer your domain name to our systems, the purchase of at least one year of registration service is required as part of the transfer.
I think this is a low blow. Nowhere else on the site did it state that I would have to pay one year of rego as part of the domain transfer. It doesn't even say how much one year of rego costs. Is this sneaky or what?
Buyer please beware.
I've always wondered about the bag searches here in Australia. All they get you to do is open up your bag so they can peer inside -- if your backpack happens to have three or four compartments, they're not going to check them all, coz it would take too much time if they had to do that with every Joe that came along. I suspect that a determined thief could easily hide something small and valuable in a backpack, and pass the usual cursory inspections.
So I figure, the "please present your bag for inspection" thing is more of a token gesture than anything really.
As far as I understand it, owning handguns is still legal in Australia but you have to show due cause for it, and "self-defense" is not a good enough reason to be issued a license. So basically I'm not sure who *is* allowed to own a handgun...
Anyway in the last few years since the Port Arthur massacre the violent gun crimes rate seems to have gone up... crims get their guns on the black market anyway, like they always have.
Basically I don't think the gun ban in Australia has made much of a difference. As you point out, criminals don't often walk around with semi-automatic rifles anyway. You can get nutters like at Port Arthur, but then we're talking about a whole different ballgame.
Why would crimes related to guns necessarily drop dramatically when you ban them? Criminals don't usually use registered guns anyway, that's like crashing your own registered car into a police station and trying to walk away non-chalantly.
More often, I'd say the crime rate would stay stable after a gun ban. Crims just turn to other weapons, such as knives, to commit the crimes. Or they get guns from the thriving black market. Criminals don't suddenly develop an aversion to crime just because they can't get their hands on a gun.
Besides, when's the last time you heard a non-bullshit stat? The gun lobby would say violent crime increases after a ban, the anti-gun types say crime decreases. Everyone places their own biased slant on the stats...
Are you sure? As far as I understand it, they would only recover wounded buddies under fire, not necessarily dead ones. There's no point, honour or not, to get more people killed just to recover a corpse.
I think the Geneva conventions probably classifies "inhumane" weapons as ones that are virtually guaranteed to kill you with very little chance of survival, so .50caliber guns fall into this category.
Believe it or not, 5.56mm caliber rifles are "humane" weapons of war because the round they fire, the SS109 full-metal jacketed, is only "designed to wound" at typical engagement ranges. Of course, at close range it's a whole lot more lethal than that (as the FBI discovered), but nobody's going to complain except the Red Cross, really.
In the Vietnam war era, we had the 13-cents killers. Soon, we'll have the 25-cents killers!
The man is a novelist, I'm sure he uses a bit of creative licence in every book. Whether his creative concepts are based in reality or fantasy, who knows?
He does have a lot of military contacts though.
God that's ridiculous. I can never understand why they allow patents like this. Any pet owner with a laser pointer will have discovered by now that they can "exercise" their pets like this. Hardly original!
Well I once read how the USA "accidentally" bombed Schaffhausen in Switzerland three times during WW2 even though it's 50 miles across the border inside Switzerland... allegedly the Swiss were making tank parts for the Germans in Schaffhausen.
So I don't really doubt that the Americans deliberately hit that Chinese embassy.
Some soldiers tend to think it's better to fire and risk killing a friendly than it is not to fire at all and possibly let an enemy get away. I think it's far better not to fire if in doubt, and preserve the lives of your own people. Friendly fire sux. As for the light weapons, a lot of US forces are being issued the M4/M4A1 carbine which does pretty much what you ask for... flashlight, night sights, optics, lasers etc. Plus it's lighter and handier than the M16A2, though a bit less accurate at long ranges.
Heck, why not spend precious R&D on the *bigger* threat out there: small arms projectiles, i.e. bullets! After all, small arms account for the majority of deaths and injuries in most conflicts.
Why not go straight for a weapon that defeats bullets? =)