The ironic thing is, those d-bags that openly carry the assault rifles on their back to prove a point would be my 1st target if I were going to wreck havoc. Take them out, now I have my original weapon and an AR.
Two things:
1) "assault rifles" are generally illegal. What you're trying to conflate with military weapons are "assault weapons" which were specified by law in a couple of bills, in such a way that that Mini-14 (.223, semi-auto, capable of using 35+ round magazines, pistol grip (if off-the-shelf stock is replaced)) was NOT an assault weapon, and could not be designated as such, while the AR-15 (same basic description) was defined as an "assault weapon" and sale was banned.
2) If your original weapon was a 12 gauge shotgun, you're better off leaving the AR-15 on the ground. A 12 ga. is a MUCH better weapon for killing lots of people than a.223, and it really doesn't take all that long to reload a shotgun, contrary to popular rumour.
Hell, I have a concealed carry permit and I don't even carry my little 7-shot.22, much less my 15-round 9mm or my AR-15.
I find myself curious about the relationship between your concealed carry permit and your AR-15. Is there any way to actually carry an AR15 "concealed" that fits the definitions in applicable law?
Honest question: You have a ticket to the ISS. You can choose a rocket that just came out of the VAB* or one that recently launched and returned whole and was turned around for this flight. Which do you trust more?
So, let's look at history for a (possible) answer. The Apollo flights were all "just came out of the VAB" flights. There were 40 of them, including a loong unmanned test series (17 manned flights). Counting Apollo 13, two of them failed. Which gives you 5% failure rate (including 13), or 2.5% failure rate (not).
Shuttle had 135 missions, with two failures. Failure rate ~1.5%.
So, shuttle, which "returned whole and was turned around for this flight" had a better safety record than Apollo, which "just came out of the VAB".
Note that if you substitute Soyuz for Apollo, you get similar results. Yes, Soyuz had two loss-of-crew failures, just like Shuttle, but in fewer than 135 flights....
This is almost meaningless in terms of Mars. Mars surface gravity is low enough that, for instance, a Falcon 9 first stage could land from orbit and take back off without even having to refuel.
That said, you probably want a different shape to your rocket on Mars - shorter and broader across the base, to minimize surface area per unit volume. It's not like air resistance there is enough to need the skinny pointy things we use here....
If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven.
Or not.
We can do that with CGI now. In 100 years, maybe we'll be able to do it live-action.
When your CUSTOMERS start complaining about this sort of thing, you do something about it.
When a professor somewhere complains that your customers are doing it wrong by buying things that they want then tossing them when they break, you don't waste time worrying about it.
Note that any redesign of most devices to make them more repairable will almost certainly make them more expensive to buy in the first place. Whether you can make something that is repairable and lower cost over the life of the device (as opposed to buying cheaper and replacing instead of repairing) is debatable.
There is many other women better qualified for the job out there.
Are you trying to suggest she was picked for the job because she was a woman?
Isn't it a violation of all sorts of anti-discrimination laws to pick someone for a job based on irrelevancies like what's between their legs? Aren't qualifications for the job the only thing that matters?
On the other hand, she's a woman, so obviously discrimination can only be done TO her, never by her or in her favour....
It's not like they invented regulations to block Uber.
No, they're just using the regulations meant to block competition that they put into place 100 years ago to block competition today.
Did you know that there are places where laws required automobiles to be preceded by a man waving a red flag existed at one time? And may still exist. Pointless laws frequently are ignored, rather than repealed. Be funny to find a place with such a law still on the books, and start suing everyone in sight, from the Police Department to Metro Transit Authority to private individuals everywhere.
In favour of your Horse & Buggy taxicabs, of course....
I'm not sure of an issue that has such unanimous approval as net neutrality.
Y'know, for something that has "such unanimous approval", I never actually hear much about it outside/.
Somehow, I'm suspecting that it's like the "unanimous approval" you see for a larger DoD budget on Army/Air Force/Navy bases all over the USA. In other words, the people who think that they would come out ahead under the law approve of it unanimously, and most everyone else hardly notices it.
Have you read the entirety of the 21st Amendment? It completely breaks interstate commerce.
Well, no. What it does is say you can't violate the laws of the various States you buy and sell things in. Pretty much status quo ante bellum, actually.
Or did you somehow think that alcohol was legal everywhere before Prohibition? Or prostitution, for that matter? (note that your argument would require that prostitution be legal everywhere if it were legal ANYWHERE (i.e. Colorado)).
If corporate personhood wasn't recognized during the first 200 years of the Bill of Rights existence
Alas for your theories, it was. Which is why Corporations have always had the power to enter into lawsuits.
Or didn't anyone explain to you that the court system was for "persons"?
BLOCKQUOTE>Genius, the "monkeying with the Bill of RIghts" happened at the Citizens United decision.
Nope. Citizens United didn't touch the Bill of Rights. Read them sometime, if you'd like. Versions from the '40s look just the same as they do now....
The thing I find most interesting about the "getting money out of politics" crowd is how they always assume that if the money is removed, THEIR SIDE will come out ahead on the deal.
Useful hint: won't work that way. There's not any way you can phrase such a law/Constitutional Amendment that it can't be gamed. And it will be.
Note, by the way, that if you really want to get the money out of politics, get the POWER out of Washington.
When the Feds can wave their hand and pass a law granting you Railroad Right-of-Ways for a continent, they're going to be worth bribing.
When all they really do is handle foreign affairs, well, they might still be worth bribing, but not so much, unless you're a defense contractor (and before WW-ONE, we didn't maintain enough military to make serious bribes worth the bother).
BLOCKQUOTE>Don't you care about the intent of the founding fathers?
Yeah, but I never found a part where they thought that "certain types of speech" didn't really count" for First Amendment protections. The only way you can play that game is to insist that no communications involving the use of electricity is protected by the First Amendment - just unamplified voices, and newspapers published using handset printing presses.
Now, a fair number of people seem to think the Second should be interpreted that way, but I've never heard of anyone (except possibly you) that believes that about the First.
But, by all means, push for a Constitutional Amendment trying to modify the First to suit you. But don't come back crying when you find out that it didn't guarantee that only people who agree with you would get elected.
Don't you care about the destructive aspects of corporatism and fascism?
So, which of these destructive aspects are you seeing in the USA now? And if they really worry you, why not strike at the root of the problem (which isn't the First Amendment) by trying for an Amendment forbidding the creation of corporations?
That would solve a lot of your problems, I suspect. Nothing even close to the size of government (by "close to" I mean "as much as 1/1000000th as big) would exist in that case, since noone is going to risk being sued PERSONALLY for the failure of an employee seventeen years ago. So, we'd go back to cottage industries locally, and if we made the law strict enough, even foreign corporations couldn't operate here.
Sure would be nice living without computers, cars, refrigerators, stoves (well, we could probably manage woodstoves most places), that sort of thing....
Note that this particular star is going to pass a bit over ONE lightyear away, not three.
On the other hand, 0.03c makes the 16 ly trip in less than 600 years. As opposed to a quarter million years.
On the gripping hand, it's useful to keep in mind that those stars are moving relative to us, and that over long enough timescales, our skies aren't going to be constant....
It should be noted that the rats used in cancer research were BRED to be especially susceptible to cancer. Because it's a royal pain to raise 1000 rats, of whom only three get the cancer you want to study....
Hint: the overwhelming majority of the radioactivity is gone in 50 years.
Because that's how radioactivity works - the shorter the half-life, the hotter it is. The stuff that'll still be radioactive for a thousand years will be about as radioactive as coal (or the human body) for the vast majority of that time.
Nuclear is fine, but it is expensive and it takes forever to build outside China. 15 years from decision to first power is a typical figure.
Of course, much of that delay you mention is the endless lawsuits by the anti-nukes and NIMBY types.
If the nuke plants were built based only on technical issues, they'd go up much faster (and be much cheaper - yeah, decades of lawsuits have to be paid for).
No, I'm an advocate of not having children. And yes, I started with myself.
Good. It's always nice when bad genes get removed from the pool. And not wanting to reproduce is pretty much synonymous with "I'm getting my genes out of the genepool"....
We don't know how many Universes exist in some sense, and it's quite reasonable that infinitely many do, with all possible variations. (This is, of course, unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, but if true it would completely nullify the divine argument.)
So, you'd nullify the divine argument by making another argument that is every bit as specious as the one you're nullifying?
Me, I'll pass on the subject. One of the following cases is true:
1) there is one God.
2) there is more than one God
3) there are zero Gods
When we get more evidence that any of these propositions is true, I'll change my behaviour to match the evidence.
And no, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I'd pay up to 50% more for a car I didn't have to drive. Maybe more if it took me to work, maybe I could send it home so my wife and/or kids could use during the day when I'm away at work.
This.
My family has three cars. if one of them was capable of taking me to work, then going home to be available to the rest of the family the rest of the day, I could cut back to two cars.
So, even if they cost 50% more (which I don't believe they will - the hardware will tend toward the trivial like all computer hardware), they'd be, at worst, breakeven on costs for me.
And I'd have extra time to do things worthwhile instead of staring through a "dirty pane of silica glass" watching all the other potential lunatics around me....
How often does the thief in the party actually steal from team-mates in the electronic versions? Yet our team had a thief character who would do exactly that -- swipe anything that wasn't nailed down -- and sometimes use a crowbar if it was.:)
Just curious - did y'all treat your Party thief like any other (NPC) thief? Or did he get special treatment because he was part of the Party?
Slashdot Mirror
Two things:
1) "assault rifles" are generally illegal. What you're trying to conflate with military weapons are "assault weapons" which were specified by law in a couple of bills, in such a way that that Mini-14 (.223, semi-auto, capable of using 35+ round magazines, pistol grip (if off-the-shelf stock is replaced)) was NOT an assault weapon, and could not be designated as such, while the AR-15 (same basic description) was defined as an "assault weapon" and sale was banned.
2) If your original weapon was a 12 gauge shotgun, you're better off leaving the AR-15 on the ground. A 12 ga. is a MUCH better weapon for killing lots of people than a .223, and it really doesn't take all that long to reload a shotgun, contrary to popular rumour.
I find myself curious about the relationship between your concealed carry permit and your AR-15. Is there any way to actually carry an AR15 "concealed" that fits the definitions in applicable law?
Note that I can't prove that YOU are sentient and fully autonomous, much less my kid....
So, let's look at history for a (possible) answer. The Apollo flights were all "just came out of the VAB" flights. There were 40 of them, including a loong unmanned test series (17 manned flights). Counting Apollo 13, two of them failed. Which gives you 5% failure rate (including 13), or 2.5% failure rate (not).
Shuttle had 135 missions, with two failures. Failure rate ~1.5%.
So, shuttle, which "returned whole and was turned around for this flight" had a better safety record than Apollo, which "just came out of the VAB".
Note that if you substitute Soyuz for Apollo, you get similar results. Yes, Soyuz had two loss-of-crew failures, just like Shuttle, but in fewer than 135 flights....
This is almost meaningless in terms of Mars. Mars surface gravity is low enough that, for instance, a Falcon 9 first stage could land from orbit and take back off without even having to refuel.
That said, you probably want a different shape to your rocket on Mars - shorter and broader across the base, to minimize surface area per unit volume. It's not like air resistance there is enough to need the skinny pointy things we use here....
Or not.
We can do that with CGI now. In 100 years, maybe we'll be able to do it live-action.
What, you don't? My shower has a knob you rotate to adjust temp, and push/pull to adjust flow. The motions are completely disjoint....
No, you ignore this idiot.
When your CUSTOMERS start complaining about this sort of thing, you do something about it.
When a professor somewhere complains that your customers are doing it wrong by buying things that they want then tossing them when they break, you don't waste time worrying about it.
Note that any redesign of most devices to make them more repairable will almost certainly make them more expensive to buy in the first place. Whether you can make something that is repairable and lower cost over the life of the device (as opposed to buying cheaper and replacing instead of repairing) is debatable.
Are you trying to suggest she was picked for the job because she was a woman?
Isn't it a violation of all sorts of anti-discrimination laws to pick someone for a job based on irrelevancies like what's between their legs? Aren't qualifications for the job the only thing that matters?
On the other hand, she's a woman, so obviously discrimination can only be done TO her, never by her or in her favour....
No, they're just using the regulations meant to block competition that they put into place 100 years ago to block competition today.
Did you know that there are places where laws required automobiles to be preceded by a man waving a red flag existed at one time? And may still exist. Pointless laws frequently are ignored, rather than repealed. Be funny to find a place with such a law still on the books, and start suing everyone in sight, from the Police Department to Metro Transit Authority to private individuals everywhere.
In favour of your Horse & Buggy taxicabs, of course....
Y'know, for something that has "such unanimous approval", I never actually hear much about it outside /.
Somehow, I'm suspecting that it's like the "unanimous approval" you see for a larger DoD budget on Army/Air Force/Navy bases all over the USA. In other words, the people who think that they would come out ahead under the law approve of it unanimously, and most everyone else hardly notices it.
Well, no. What it does is say you can't violate the laws of the various States you buy and sell things in. Pretty much status quo ante bellum, actually.
Or did you somehow think that alcohol was legal everywhere before Prohibition? Or prostitution, for that matter? (note that your argument would require that prostitution be legal everywhere if it were legal ANYWHERE (i.e. Colorado)).
Alas for your theories, it was. Which is why Corporations have always had the power to enter into lawsuits.
Or didn't anyone explain to you that the court system was for "persons"?
BLOCKQUOTE>Genius, the "monkeying with the Bill of RIghts" happened at the Citizens United decision.
Nope. Citizens United didn't touch the Bill of Rights. Read them sometime, if you'd like. Versions from the '40s look just the same as they do now....
The thing I find most interesting about the "getting money out of politics" crowd is how they always assume that if the money is removed, THEIR SIDE will come out ahead on the deal.
Useful hint: won't work that way. There's not any way you can phrase such a law/Constitutional Amendment that it can't be gamed. And it will be.
Note, by the way, that if you really want to get the money out of politics, get the POWER out of Washington.
When the Feds can wave their hand and pass a law granting you Railroad Right-of-Ways for a continent, they're going to be worth bribing.
When all they really do is handle foreign affairs, well, they might still be worth bribing, but not so much, unless you're a defense contractor (and before WW-ONE, we didn't maintain enough military to make serious bribes worth the bother).
BLOCKQUOTE>Don't you care about the intent of the founding fathers?
Yeah, but I never found a part where they thought that "certain types of speech" didn't really count" for First Amendment protections. The only way you can play that game is to insist that no communications involving the use of electricity is protected by the First Amendment - just unamplified voices, and newspapers published using handset printing presses.
Now, a fair number of people seem to think the Second should be interpreted that way, but I've never heard of anyone (except possibly you) that believes that about the First.
But, by all means, push for a Constitutional Amendment trying to modify the First to suit you. But don't come back crying when you find out that it didn't guarantee that only people who agree with you would get elected.
So, which of these destructive aspects are you seeing in the USA now? And if they really worry you, why not strike at the root of the problem (which isn't the First Amendment) by trying for an Amendment forbidding the creation of corporations?
That would solve a lot of your problems, I suspect. Nothing even close to the size of government (by "close to" I mean "as much as 1/1000000th as big) would exist in that case, since noone is going to risk being sued PERSONALLY for the failure of an employee seventeen years ago. So, we'd go back to cottage industries locally, and if we made the law strict enough, even foreign corporations couldn't operate here.
Sure would be nice living without computers, cars, refrigerators, stoves (well, we could probably manage woodstoves most places), that sort of thing....
Amending the First Amendment. On general principles, I'd rather have no Net Neutrality than start monkeying with the Bill of Rights.
Note that this particular star is going to pass a bit over ONE lightyear away, not three.
On the other hand, 0.03c makes the 16 ly trip in less than 600 years. As opposed to a quarter million years.
On the gripping hand, it's useful to keep in mind that those stars are moving relative to us, and that over long enough timescales, our skies aren't going to be constant....
It should be noted that the rats used in cancer research were BRED to be especially susceptible to cancer. Because it's a royal pain to raise 1000 rats, of whom only three get the cancer you want to study....
Hint: the overwhelming majority of the radioactivity is gone in 50 years.
Because that's how radioactivity works - the shorter the half-life, the hotter it is. The stuff that'll still be radioactive for a thousand years will be about as radioactive as coal (or the human body) for the vast majority of that time.
Of course, much of that delay you mention is the endless lawsuits by the anti-nukes and NIMBY types.
If the nuke plants were built based only on technical issues, they'd go up much faster (and be much cheaper - yeah, decades of lawsuits have to be paid for).
Actually, it's an acronym for NAtionale soZIalist, the political party.
What, you didn't know the NAZIs were socialists?
Yeah, about as socialist as the KKK....
Advanced Squad Leader...***sighs*** haven't found anyone to play that with since my regular opponent died. I really need to get out more.
Good. It's always nice when bad genes get removed from the pool. And not wanting to reproduce is pretty much synonymous with "I'm getting my genes out of the genepool"....
Excluding immigration, US birth rates are already below replacement rate.
The only reason population in the US is increasing is the illegals....
So, you'd nullify the divine argument by making another argument that is every bit as specious as the one you're nullifying?
Me, I'll pass on the subject. One of the following cases is true:
1) there is one God.
2) there is more than one God
3) there are zero Gods
When we get more evidence that any of these propositions is true, I'll change my behaviour to match the evidence.
And no, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This.
My family has three cars. if one of them was capable of taking me to work, then going home to be available to the rest of the family the rest of the day, I could cut back to two cars.
So, even if they cost 50% more (which I don't believe they will - the hardware will tend toward the trivial like all computer hardware), they'd be, at worst, breakeven on costs for me.
And I'd have extra time to do things worthwhile instead of staring through a "dirty pane of silica glass" watching all the other potential lunatics around me....
Just curious - did y'all treat your Party thief like any other (NPC) thief? Or did he get special treatment because he was part of the Party?