I am one of/.'s few Christians, and spend a good deal of my time defending Christianity around here. Although not Christian per se, MAVAV is gounded in socially conservative ideals many Christians share. As such, I feel it necessary to lend a voice of balance and moderation to this issue.
... the holes are a feature of the design, not a bug. If it were air-tight it would melt.
So, reactor #3 is still in operation, which means that plant workers show up to work several feet away from a nuclear pile reacting in open air. I wonder what they have to be thinking every time a warm breeze wafts over from the sarcophagus.
For years I've had friends who think I'm an idiot for not swallowing the blue pill (MCSE), and instead insisting on learning Linux and the requisite scripting languages to work in it.
It warms my heart to know that those brainless, cert-chasing mercenaries will have to learn Perl. Bwahhahahahaha!
In your zeal to protray me as an exclusivist crusader, you overlooked one minor fact with regard to my post. I flamebaited Slashdot, but said nothing about Raelians.
So, in summary, you have either stereotyped me, or believe Slashdot is a religion.
Re:So where's the story here?
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 1
hahaha!
Damn, that was funny. I never have mod points when I need them.
This idea is no different from palladium or DRM. Both have the potential to negatively affect your ability to exercise a right. In the case of palladium/DRM, the right is the first amendment, and smart guns infringe upon the second.
The only way this parallel fails is that no state legislature is considering forcing you to use palladium.
Agreed. Let's throw in a few more, as long as we're on this course of analysis.
If you own a gun, you are [insert statistic here] more likely to kill yourself with it.
If you own a gun, your kids are [insert statistic here] more likely to kill each other with it.
Your point seems to be that to attempt to cast the gun control question in terms of a deterministic analysis of possible future need of deadly protection is absurd. I very much agree. The very practice is of no greater value than fortune telling.
Indeed, I embrace further appreciation of uncertainty with regard to this issue. Countless movies of the week have taught us that using a gun in home defense will result in shooting your family, getting your gun taken away from you by the bad guys, etc. etc. etc. This event has challenged my understanding of how we, as a society, attempt to predict situations calling for gun use.
The determinism argument is pointless. Unless each of us individually has the experiences of everyone involved in every situation in which guns were ever used, we cannot directly establish the merits of either side's arguments/numbers. The simple fact is that statisticians at Gun Control, inc. can't tell you what will happen if someone tries to rob you(or worse).
The second amendment is not based on what follows the "if", but the very presence of the "if". We are armed because the government cannot tell us what will happen, and can't necessarily protect us from danger and/or opression. If people are going to be free in an uncertain world, they must be allowed to prepare for that uncertainty.
I have a hard time seeing defeat in this situation. The only endeavour that failed was theft of property. Is that the locus of your claim that home defense failed in my friend's situation?
I suppose you may be making the point, via obtuse troll, that gun grabbers are communists. Nothing else explains the ineptitude of your argument.
For an example that's rather settled now, see what happened when people first started claiming the Earth was round rather than flat.
Agreed. Social institutions, especially poweful ones, don't like disruption.
Those weren't failures of science, those were failures to use and listen to science properly.
I guess I just don't see science as a social authority to which it would be appropriate to "listen". Science is an organized method of answering questions. I recognize that the scientific community may be the authority to which you refer when you use the word "science". The reason I distinguish the two is to draw an understanding of where questioning stops and accepting truth from a trusted authority begins.
I see that this story has unleashed the obligatory pissing match between those who believe that the/. idea of freedom - freedom of information - goes hand in hand with the freedom to be armed, and those who believe that the idea of personal armament is an outdated and dangerous concept in modern society.
On Friday night, a good friend, colleague, and fellow slashdotter defended his household and family from intruders with a 12 gauge Mossberg shotgun. He stopped the robbery and scared the suspects off. The police caught them a short while later. No one was hurt. In reflecting upon this event, he and I look at the issue of gun control, and indeed the entire issue of gun culture, with a degree of clarity previously unachieved.
He, like many in our generation, is a reluctant gun owner. We've been bombarded with social engineering that seeks to cast gun ownership in a bizarre, almost psychotic light, which has created, in my opinion, a sort of cultural "gun guilt". Despite this, he recognized about a year ago that he needed a weapon for personal protection, and asked for my advice in selecting it.
I was raised around guns. I was taught to shoot at a very early age, and participated in official tournaments when I was 13. I own several weapons, including a shotgun and what some like to consider an "assault rifle". I've never been in doubt with regard to the necessity for weapons ownership in a free society, but even I have been affected by the discomfort weapons owners are subjected to in our culture these days. Before this recent event, I might even be known not to have a "ready weapon" for use in a home defense situation.
I was therefore his "gun nut friend", and took him to the range to learn to shoot safely and effectively. While fully capable of using it, and with a confident, demonstrated, and consistent application of gun safety practices, he never felt comfortable as a gun owner for precisely the same reason so many around here chime in gleefully when something as ridiculous as smart guns gets proposed. (Are you prepared to stake your life on the speed and accuracy of modern biometric identification?) He, and indeed I as well, are victims of the great lie of the modern American anti-gun culture, and it could have cost him his life.
So before you chime in on this one, and run with the crowd of those who believe guns are vehicles of evil and that those who own and use them are psychotic redneck madmen seeking only to kill schoolchildren, take a second to question your views, what cultural influences formed those views, and the possible agenda of those who exterted those influences. Your life may one day depend on it.
I was just wondering how and when the corporate scandal news would finally pass from the minds of large corporate investors, and now this.
I wonder if this qualifies as enabling technology for comitting corporate crime, much like watching DVDs on Linux is for copyright violations. I wonder if it would be pursued as stridently.
They're trying to undermine the faith that society has in science.
That is a bizarre point of view for someone who appears to embrace science for its own sake. That comment, along with your creationism cut, appears to betray a regard for science that borders on religion.
My understanding of science is that faith is irrelevant. You ask a question, test the question, and analyze the results. I fail to understand how its purpose or value can be affected by public belief in it. Indeed, given DDT, PCBs, thalidomide, agent orange, phlogiston, the Hanford site, etc., etc., etc., I should rather hope that public policy toward science be critical enough to question it effectively. In fact, I am horrified by the thought of the public having "faith" in science.
What an interesting parallel
on
802.11 RF Amp
·
· Score: 1
People put amps on their CB's so that people in other states can hear them cuss. Now you can put an amp on your WAP so that people in other states can surf your pr0n!
the reasons for war that the US has proposed (iraq's possession of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons) are suspect
You're starting to reveal a political bent which is capable of blinding you to facts. I suppose these people were killed with rancid peanut butter.
I find it interesting that you are concerned about making friends, yet you seem to want to fight a mickey mouse war (referencing cultural intrusion) to do so. The really legitimate overseas complaints against the United States have to do with the commercial activities of our megacorps, so I find it amusing that you think this course of action will make friends.
I think, rather than trying to honestly put forth ideas that will work, you are simply being obstructionist with regard to our current policies.
Directv has finally decided to tell its subscribers. I just now got the e-mail.
Re:fear mongering
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
first, he is reluctant to take military action against US civilians -- if you listen to the rhetoric coming from washington at the moment (take out saddam) you will note little indication that the loss of civilian lives weighs heavy on the minds of military planners (considering large civilian losses are expected if an invasion is to actually take out saddam).
The contrast you are attempting to make is poorly supported by the practices and doctrine of the US military, which takes incredible measures to protect the lives of enemy civilians, and by the fact that the only people being shot at in Iraq right now are U.S. pilots. I therefore find your suggestion as to the state of mind of military planners with regard to said civilians to be extremely suspect.
it's a situation that we havn't encountered but we should be flexible enough to handle these situations. a lame analogy to my line of work would be having a production server crashing while i'm eating lunch and lesurely enjoying my lunch instead of fixing the problem. the point is that people (i won't point fingers) didn't do their job.
Your lunch analogy has a very big problem in being applied to the 9/11 crisis. In your example, you have complete awareness of the problem, its scope, and the solution that is required. You do not depend on thousands of people in various organizations that lie between the president and a radar operator for the FAA to impart the knowledge that radar operator has that Something Is Wrong.
Can you identify for me a point of view, be it Air Force One, the cockpit of an F-16 searching the skies for the missing plane, a fire truck parked in front of the twin towers, or anywhere else in the country from which a clarity of vision sufficient to kill hundreds of airline passengers could have been obtained? Given the pain and tragedy of that morning, I would consider such conceit not only hopelessly divorced from reality, but also viciously unfair to those who struggled to find the right thing to do that day, many at the expense of their lives.
I spend a great deal of time studying history, particularly moments of crisis such as Pearl Harbor. I find that we are instinctively driven to find a meaning in disaster, so that we can try to create a construct of belief that we can avoid it in the future. It is therefore much easier to find blame in the actions of those in crisis than to admit that given the millions of life's uncertainties, combined with our own imperfections, nothing could have been done. I admit that it is a painful, powerless confession to make, but I simply believe that the honor of those who died that day demands it. Somehow, I think that our ability to truly learn from those events depends upon it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am one of /.'s few Christians, and spend a good deal of my time defending Christianity around here. Although not Christian per se, MAVAV is gounded in socially conservative ideals many Christians share. As such, I feel it necessary to lend a voice of balance and moderation to this issue.
These people are fucking wacked.
Um, that's about all.
Thanks for the clue, dude.
So, reactor #3 is still in operation, which means that plant workers show up to work several feet away from a nuclear pile reacting in open air. I wonder what they have to be thinking every time a warm breeze wafts over from the sarcophagus.
For years I've had friends who think I'm an idiot for not swallowing the blue pill (MCSE), and instead insisting on learning Linux and the requisite scripting languages to work in it.
It warms my heart to know that those brainless, cert-chasing mercenaries will have to learn Perl. Bwahhahahahaha!
And AOL probably presses more discs than every record label in the world combined..
I suddenly find myself ambivalent about this whole affair.
Oh. So that's why Debian is supposed to be so much cooler than Red Hat.
I'm off to Debian's site to install it for the first time...
In your zeal to protray me as an exclusivist crusader, you overlooked one minor fact with regard to my post. I flamebaited Slashdot, but said nothing about Raelians.
So, in summary, you have either stereotyped me, or believe Slashdot is a religion.
hahaha!
Damn, that was funny. I never have mod points when I need them.
Ah yes, Slashdot logic:
flamebaiting Christians via AC is +1 insightful.
Now personal privacy concerns will include painting all my door handles with matte paint.
This idea is no different from palladium or DRM. Both have the potential to negatively affect your ability to exercise a right. In the case of palladium/DRM, the right is the first amendment, and smart guns infringe upon the second.
The only way this parallel fails is that no state legislature is considering forcing you to use palladium.
If is a stupid word...
Agreed. Let's throw in a few more, as long as we're on this course of analysis.
If you own a gun, you are [insert statistic here] more likely to kill yourself with it.
If you own a gun, your kids are [insert statistic here] more likely to kill each other with it.
Your point seems to be that to attempt to cast the gun control question in terms of a deterministic analysis of possible future need of deadly protection is absurd. I very much agree. The very practice is of no greater value than fortune telling.
Indeed, I embrace further appreciation of uncertainty with regard to this issue. Countless movies of the week have taught us that using a gun in home defense will result in shooting your family, getting your gun taken away from you by the bad guys, etc. etc. etc. This event has challenged my understanding of how we, as a society, attempt to predict situations calling for gun use.
The determinism argument is pointless. Unless each of us individually has the experiences of everyone involved in every situation in which guns were ever used, we cannot directly establish the merits of either side's arguments/numbers. The simple fact is that statisticians at Gun Control, inc. can't tell you what will happen if someone tries to rob you(or worse).
The second amendment is not based on what follows the "if", but the very presence of the "if". We are armed because the government cannot tell us what will happen, and can't necessarily protect us from danger and/or opression. If people are going to be free in an uncertain world, they must be allowed to prepare for that uncertainty.
Home defence is a losing game.
Interesting idea. Let's test your theorem...
I have a hard time seeing defeat in this situation. The only endeavour that failed was theft of property. Is that the locus of your claim that home defense failed in my friend's situation?
I suppose you may be making the point, via obtuse troll, that gun grabbers are communists. Nothing else explains the ineptitude of your argument.
For an example that's rather settled now, see what happened when people first started claiming the Earth was round rather than flat.
Agreed. Social institutions, especially poweful ones, don't like disruption.
Those weren't failures of science, those were failures to use and listen to science properly.
I guess I just don't see science as a social authority to which it would be appropriate to "listen". Science is an organized method of answering questions. I recognize that the scientific community may be the authority to which you refer when you use the word "science". The reason I distinguish the two is to draw an understanding of where questioning stops and accepting truth from a trusted authority begins.
That's a very brilliant and compelling comment.
Wow. Good comment.
Mod parent up.
I see that this story has unleashed the obligatory pissing match between those who believe that the /. idea of freedom - freedom of information - goes hand in hand with the freedom to be armed, and those who believe that the idea of personal armament is an outdated and dangerous concept in modern society.
On Friday night, a good friend, colleague, and fellow slashdotter defended his household and family from intruders with a 12 gauge Mossberg shotgun. He stopped the robbery and scared the suspects off. The police caught them a short while later. No one was hurt. In reflecting upon this event, he and I look at the issue of gun control, and indeed the entire issue of gun culture, with a degree of clarity previously unachieved.
He, like many in our generation, is a reluctant gun owner. We've been bombarded with social engineering that seeks to cast gun ownership in a bizarre, almost psychotic light, which has created, in my opinion, a sort of cultural "gun guilt". Despite this, he recognized about a year ago that he needed a weapon for personal protection, and asked for my advice in selecting it.
I was raised around guns. I was taught to shoot at a very early age, and participated in official tournaments when I was 13. I own several weapons, including a shotgun and what some like to consider an "assault rifle". I've never been in doubt with regard to the necessity for weapons ownership in a free society, but even I have been affected by the discomfort weapons owners are subjected to in our culture these days. Before this recent event, I might even be known not to have a "ready weapon" for use in a home defense situation.
I was therefore his "gun nut friend", and took him to the range to learn to shoot safely and effectively. While fully capable of using it, and with a confident, demonstrated, and consistent application of gun safety practices, he never felt comfortable as a gun owner for precisely the same reason so many around here chime in gleefully when something as ridiculous as smart guns gets proposed. (Are you prepared to stake your life on the speed and accuracy of modern biometric identification?) He, and indeed I as well, are victims of the great lie of the modern American anti-gun culture, and it could have cost him his life.
So before you chime in on this one, and run with the crowd of those who believe guns are vehicles of evil and that those who own and use them are psychotic redneck madmen seeking only to kill schoolchildren, take a second to question your views, what cultural influences formed those views, and the possible agenda of those who exterted those influences. Your life may one day depend on it.
I was just wondering how and when the corporate scandal news would finally pass from the minds of large corporate investors, and now this.
I wonder if this qualifies as enabling technology for comitting corporate crime, much like watching DVDs on Linux is for copyright violations. I wonder if it would be pursued as stridently.
They're trying to undermine the faith that society has in science.
That is a bizarre point of view for someone who appears to embrace science for its own sake. That comment, along with your creationism cut, appears to betray a regard for science that borders on religion.
My understanding of science is that faith is irrelevant. You ask a question, test the question, and analyze the results. I fail to understand how its purpose or value can be affected by public belief in it. Indeed, given DDT, PCBs, thalidomide, agent orange, phlogiston, the Hanford site, etc., etc., etc., I should rather hope that public policy toward science be critical enough to question it effectively. In fact, I am horrified by the thought of the public having "faith" in science.
People put amps on their CB's so that people in other states can hear them cuss. Now you can put an amp on your WAP so that people in other states can surf your pr0n!
I look at this article the same way I look at an obvious troll so eloquent it's been modded funny.
Now that's what I call FUD!
the reasons for war that the US has proposed (iraq's possession of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons) are suspect
You're starting to reveal a political bent which is capable of blinding you to facts. I suppose these people were killed with rancid peanut butter.
I find it interesting that you are concerned about making friends, yet you seem to want to fight a mickey mouse war (referencing cultural intrusion) to do so. The really legitimate overseas complaints against the United States have to do with the commercial activities of our megacorps, so I find it amusing that you think this course of action will make friends.
I think, rather than trying to honestly put forth ideas that will work, you are simply being obstructionist with regard to our current policies.
1: The sys-admin had enough access to the systems that he could change the configuration and clean up and prevent the changes from being detected.
Right on the money. This situation is yet another good reason why you should have a large enough IT staff.
I also couldn't help noticing that only *nix is capable of meeting your system change policy with any degree of reliability. Fancy that.
Directv has finally decided to tell its subscribers. I just now got the e-mail.
first, he is reluctant to take military action against US civilians -- if you listen to the rhetoric coming from washington at the moment (take out saddam) you will note little indication that the loss of civilian lives weighs heavy on the minds of military planners (considering large civilian losses are expected if an invasion is to actually take out saddam).
The contrast you are attempting to make is poorly supported by the practices and doctrine of the US military, which takes incredible measures to protect the lives of enemy civilians, and by the fact that the only people being shot at in Iraq right now are U.S. pilots. I therefore find your suggestion as to the state of mind of military planners with regard to said civilians to be extremely suspect.
it's a situation that we havn't encountered but we should be flexible enough to handle these situations. a lame analogy to my line of work would be having a production server crashing while i'm eating lunch and lesurely enjoying my lunch instead of fixing the problem. the point is that people (i won't point fingers) didn't do their job.
Your lunch analogy has a very big problem in being applied to the 9/11 crisis. In your example, you have complete awareness of the problem, its scope, and the solution that is required. You do not depend on thousands of people in various organizations that lie between the president and a radar operator for the FAA to impart the knowledge that radar operator has that Something Is Wrong.
Can you identify for me a point of view, be it Air Force One, the cockpit of an F-16 searching the skies for the missing plane, a fire truck parked in front of the twin towers, or anywhere else in the country from which a clarity of vision sufficient to kill hundreds of airline passengers could have been obtained? Given the pain and tragedy of that morning, I would consider such conceit not only hopelessly divorced from reality, but also viciously unfair to those who struggled to find the right thing to do that day, many at the expense of their lives.
I spend a great deal of time studying history, particularly moments of crisis such as Pearl Harbor. I find that we are instinctively driven to find a meaning in disaster, so that we can try to create a construct of belief that we can avoid it in the future. It is therefore much easier to find blame in the actions of those in crisis than to admit that given the millions of life's uncertainties, combined with our own imperfections, nothing could have been done. I admit that it is a painful, powerless confession to make, but I simply believe that the honor of those who died that day demands it. Somehow, I think that our ability to truly learn from those events depends upon it.