You don't get grades here. It is either pass or fail.
Some will want to know your GPA. Most just want to know you got the little piece of paper that says you've reached a certain level of academic achievement.
If you really want to set yourself apart, don't repeat, don't finish, but keep moving forward and get your masters degree.
Not only am I moderately deaf, but my healthcare coverage (USA) is so poor that I don't have coverage for hearing aids or anything that would give me any relief. So I just have to crank the volume up and hope for the best. Youtube videos tend to have very poor audio, with a lot of background noise, so I do miss out on a lot there.
Realistically, I seriously doubt that most producers (and I'm including YouTubers in that group) are going to subtitle any video that they aren't legally required to. And I don't support any legal requirement to do so.
Basically, I think those of us that are deaf or hard of hearing are either going to have to just suck it up or find another way around the problem.
OK so I think we're on the same page just coming from different angles. The Finnish Mosin-Nagants were not wholly manufactured in Finland but were "frankenguns" built off of captured Soviet receivers and using improved parts (like the barrel and such).
I get a karma bonus because, by and large, the/. community has found my posts to be insightful.
Americans don't have guns out of a sense of paranoia about others. Americans have guns, historically, out of a distrust of large powerful governments. We were admonished by our founding fathers to dismantle our government by violent revolt if necessary when it became despotic in nature. Unfortunately years of leftist propaganda, unconstitutional gun control laws, and the like have largely disarmed the American people.
"You are correct; the ak mostly takes its "inspiration" from other (American) designs."
Who needs TV when I get entertainment like this...
OK I'll bite. What US designed weapons is the AK a ripoff of?
Because I've got a nice collection going, and I do take my guns apart often to maintain them, and the AK is a pretty unique weapon. The Simonov (SKS) is the closest thing to it and even that is a very different design.
So Slashdot is going to become a gun registration site? This is ridiculous. If you are calling for gun registration and accountability, "the people" cannot do that. A government agency must.
A government that cannot trust its citizens with guns does not trust its citizens at all, and thus has larger issues to deal with.
It's interesting how the US government becomes more restrictive of civilian gun ownership at the same time as doing things that are likely to agitate the populace (like engaging in nation building, stifling of free speech, spying on its own citizens, engaging in unjustified wars, etc)
The STG44 was first on the field. The AK47 design was started three years before that. If you've ever had the opportunity to take them both apart (I have) you will see that they are both original designs.
"The AK47 is a 7.62/54R (rimmed.311), the NATO design is 7.62/51 (rimless.308)."
Please check your facts before posting this.
The Kalashnikov uses 7.62x39, not rimmed. Before the Kalashnikov the Soviets issues the Simonov (SKS) which was also 7.62x39. Prior to that was the Mosin-Nagant, which was indeed chambered in 7.62x54R.
The closest thing to a Kalashnikov chambered in 7.62x54R is the PSL which is used in modern warfare by nations such as Romania in the role of a designated marksman.
"Perhaps the way to sort out the AK-47 patent issue is to allow Russia the royalties on the patent but allow the relatives of anyone who has been killed with one to bring suit againt the factory and the Russian state"
While you're at it, sue the automobile manufacturers on behalf of people who have been struck by motorists, and spoon manufacturers on behalf of the obese.
"It's not a patent Russia says it's trying to protect. It's the AK trademark!"
Even if that were true, it wouldn't hold up, either.
For example, most of the Kalashnikov's being sold new in the US market today are not called "AK" but rather "WASR" or "SAR". There is a derivative design being imported from Romania being marketed as "PSL" or "Romanian Dragunov" or a few other names. But not "AK".
"Um, unless the russians are willing to fuck with the chinese over royalties, which is how the majority of AK clones are currently made and then sold to US companies in the US [...]"
Where do you people get this stuff from?
The US has a blanket ban on weapons originating from both Russia *and* China. The Kalashnikovs coming into the US market today are overwhelmingly coming from Romania. And even then they are not complete weapons due to 18 USC 922(r). So they use a Romanian receiver and a few other parts, combined with a fire control group and barrel (possibly more) from US manufacturers to produce a gun that is, according to US law, a US-made gun due to the number of parts that were made in the US.
"Also, in response to the original post, the Russians licensed production of the AK-47. They did not give the design away."
False.
The Soviets owned the intellectual property. Russia was just a member state of the Soviet Union and should enjoy no advantage over the other former Soviet member states in controlling Soviet state-owned intellectual property.
"It is trivial to make. It is designed to very very lax tolerances, with the result that almost any machine shop in the world can make one. You could make one almost by hand."
While they are fairly simple to manufacture as guns go, it's clear you've never actually tried making a Kalashnikov. You still do need a machine shop. Not a terribly sophisticated one, but you still need one nonetheless.
"Interesting. Finland also produced the best and most accurate Mosin-Nagants (M28-30, M-39), and they're copies of a Russian rifle as well, or in some case reworked guns captured during the wars."
In what arsenal was Finland producing Mosin-Nagants? I had been under the impression that all of the "Finnish" Mosin-Nagants were captured Russian weapons that had been refined and reissued.
"AK-47's are not by any means inferior products. AK-47's are extremely cheap, easy to build and never break, where as an M16 during Vietnam and earlier were exactly the opposite"
I own and train with both and need to de-FUD this a bit.
In Vietnam, American soldiers were being trained on the M14 and then issued the M16 in combat. The M16 is a completely different weapons system from the M14. It had not yet been tested in combat, and the soldiers weren't trained on their maintenance. In fact, it is widely reported that soldiers were told that these new guns didn't need maintenance.
Stoner's design does have some shortcomings and trade-offs. It is often said that the M16/AR15/M4 "shits where it eats". Daily cleaning & maintenance is a fact of life with these weapons. When the cleaning and maintenance is done correctly every day, the weapon functions fine. The weapon is insanely accurate and has much greater range than the Kalashnikov.
Kalashnikov's design was made for conscripts who were not expected to care as deeply about the state of their weapon as the soldiers of a volunteer army like the Americans (most of the time it's volunteer, anyway). You could reasonably expect to leave the gun laying in the dirt, pick it up and kick it a couple of times to shake the big clods of mud off, and then go into combat with a fully functional weapon. It's not terribly accurate, and beyond 300 meters the ballistics are extremely poor for the 7.62x39 cartridge. But it is incredibly reliable and incredibly cheap to manufacture. The ergonomics of the Kalashnikov, frankly, suck.
In the US militia service, where one must furnish their own weapon and gear, it is common to see someone start with a Kalashnikov due to the low cost of entry and then save up for an AR15 to replace the Kalashnikov with.
"For better or for worse (and I'm thinking worse), the AK-47 is absolutely ubiquitous with almost every non-Western (from ex-USSR to Somalia to Iraq to Afghanistan) armed force."
So the western hemisphere is "non-Western"?
There is this little island here called SOUTH AMERICA where you will see Kalashnikovs all over in the jungles of places like Colombia.
In North America, the Kalashnikov is one of the most widely owned guns in the United States (I'm a Kalashnikov owner, myself).
"There was a very recent book published about the AK-47. The author did an interview on C-SPAN radio about it. He talked about a TV show where they flew Kalashnikov in to meet Eugene Stoner (inventor of the M-16) and shoot each other's weapons. He said that Kalashnikov was poor and the producers of the show wound up buying him some nice shoes and things. He has recently been using his name on vodka and things, but if this author is to be believed, then before that he was not well off, certainly not by Western standards."
The book may have been published recently, but that meeting happened shortly after the fall of Communism, before Kalashnikov had a chance to cash in on his name. Eugene Stoner has been dead for ten years now. USSR fell in 1991. The meeting was sometime between 1991 and 1997.
"The guy who invented the AR-15 aka M-16 gets a dollar for everyone that is made."
Did you really think you could make up something like that without getting caught in an utter lie here? Eugene Stoner died 10 years ago!
"hanks to the communist regime at the time when Mikhail Kalashnikov invented it he didn't get one cent. He was born a poor man, and died a poor man."
You just keep making this up as you go along. Kalashnikov is alive and well today! He is a national hero and while he makes no money on the Avtomat Kalashnikova (just a state pension) that is normal for a worker of a COMMUNIST REGIME. Today, in modern Russia, he makes money off of his name which can be found on Vodka and pocket knives among other items branded with his name.
"The AK-47 has been considered an obsolete arm by the Russians ever since they introduced the AK-M and AK-74, which are direct design descendants."
The AK-74 was a flash in the pan. Kalashnikov himself warned his superiors of trying to copy NATO with a varmint round like 5.45x39 and has been quite outspoken about what a mistake this was. The 7.62x39 is still the superior of the two for general urban warfare, and Russia has apparently reverted to preferring it over the 5.45x39 cartridge in most cases.
Something closer to a 6.5x45 probably would have been better but the Soviets did not want to change the cartridge length (which causes greater engineering costs in reworking the action and magazines) and for whatever reason were trying to mimic NATO's direction on cartridge diameter (joke was on them.... 5.56mm isn't even well liked in the west!)
"Does this mean we'll start to see greater adoption of rifles using the "Open Bullet Format" 5.56 NATO round rather than the odd 7.62 caliber that pretty much only the AK uses?"
The Simonov (SKS) also uses the 7.62x39 and there are tens of millions of them in the United States alone, in civilian hands.
The Kalashnikov (AK) is the most widely owned gun design in the world. 7.62x39 is far from an oddball caliber when one keeps in mind just how many of these are out there. I wouldn't be surprised at all if over a billion have been made in the last 60 years. And it's not just piss-poor African nations buying them up, either. Go to any gun show in the USA and you will see them all over the place, second only to the homegrown AR15.
Slashdot Mirror
USB 1.1? MicroSD instead of SDHC?
I think this is a fantastic idea whose time has come but really would it be so hard to release it with modern hardware specs?
The editors are asleep again. The summary says the discovery was made at University of North Carolina, which really surprised me because all of the good engineering is happening at North Carolina State University.
It might seem like a trivial slip but to those around here there is a pretty huge difference.
Oh yeah, and DUKE SUCKS.
You don't get grades here. It is either pass or fail.
Some will want to know your GPA. Most just want to know you got the little piece of paper that says you've reached a certain level of academic achievement.
If you really want to set yourself apart, don't repeat, don't finish, but keep moving forward and get your masters degree.
Not only am I moderately deaf, but my healthcare coverage (USA) is so poor that I don't have coverage for hearing aids or anything that would give me any relief. So I just have to crank the volume up and hope for the best. Youtube videos tend to have very poor audio, with a lot of background noise, so I do miss out on a lot there.
Realistically, I seriously doubt that most producers (and I'm including YouTubers in that group) are going to subtitle any video that they aren't legally required to. And I don't support any legal requirement to do so.
Basically, I think those of us that are deaf or hard of hearing are either going to have to just suck it up or find another way around the problem.
"There is no such thing as a western hemisphere."
Here you go, genius. Do you want some tobasco sauce to go with that foot in your mouth?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere
I did, and it doesn't even come close to even tenuously supporting an "almost".
OK so I think we're on the same page just coming from different angles. The Finnish Mosin-Nagants were not wholly manufactured in Finland but were "frankenguns" built off of captured Soviet receivers and using improved parts (like the barrel and such).
I get a karma bonus because, by and large, the /. community has found my posts to be insightful.
Americans don't have guns out of a sense of paranoia about others. Americans have guns, historically, out of a distrust of large powerful governments. We were admonished by our founding fathers to dismantle our government by violent revolt if necessary when it became despotic in nature. Unfortunately years of leftist propaganda, unconstitutional gun control laws, and the like have largely disarmed the American people.
"You are correct; the ak mostly takes its "inspiration" from other (American) designs."
Who needs TV when I get entertainment like this...
OK I'll bite. What US designed weapons is the AK a ripoff of?
Because I've got a nice collection going, and I do take my guns apart often to maintain them, and the AK is a pretty unique weapon. The Simonov (SKS) is the closest thing to it and even that is a very different design.
"Why us of course"
So Slashdot is going to become a gun registration site? This is ridiculous. If you are calling for gun registration and accountability, "the people" cannot do that. A government agency must.
A government that cannot trust its citizens with guns does not trust its citizens at all, and thus has larger issues to deal with.
It's interesting how the US government becomes more restrictive of civilian gun ownership at the same time as doing things that are likely to agitate the populace (like engaging in nation building, stifling of free speech, spying on its own citizens, engaging in unjustified wars, etc)
"The AK-47 is just a rip-off of the German MP44."
Stop the myths, please.
The STG44 was first on the field. The AK47 design was started three years before that. If you've ever had the opportunity to take them both apart (I have) you will see that they are both original designs.
"The AK47 is a 7.62/54R (rimmed .311), the NATO design is 7.62/51 (rimless .308)."
Please check your facts before posting this.
The Kalashnikov uses 7.62x39, not rimmed. Before the Kalashnikov the Soviets issues the Simonov (SKS) which was also 7.62x39. Prior to that was the Mosin-Nagant, which was indeed chambered in 7.62x54R.
The closest thing to a Kalashnikov chambered in 7.62x54R is the PSL which is used in modern warfare by nations such as Romania in the role of a designated marksman.
"Perhaps the way to sort out the AK-47 patent issue is to allow Russia the royalties on the patent but allow the relatives of anyone who has been killed with one to bring suit againt the factory and the Russian state"
While you're at it, sue the automobile manufacturers on behalf of people who have been struck by motorists, and spoon manufacturers on behalf of the obese.
"It's not a patent Russia says it's trying to protect. It's the AK trademark!"
Even if that were true, it wouldn't hold up, either.
For example, most of the Kalashnikov's being sold new in the US market today are not called "AK" but rather "WASR" or "SAR". There is a derivative design being imported from Romania being marketed as "PSL" or "Romanian Dragunov" or a few other names. But not "AK".
"Um, unless the russians are willing to fuck with the chinese over royalties, which is how the majority of AK clones are currently made and then sold to US companies in the US [...]"
Where do you people get this stuff from?
The US has a blanket ban on weapons originating from both Russia *and* China. The Kalashnikovs coming into the US market today are overwhelmingly coming from Romania. And even then they are not complete weapons due to 18 USC 922(r). So they use a Romanian receiver and a few other parts, combined with a fire control group and barrel (possibly more) from US manufacturers to produce a gun that is, according to US law, a US-made gun due to the number of parts that were made in the US.
"Also, in response to the original post, the Russians licensed production of the AK-47. They did not give the design away."
False.
The Soviets owned the intellectual property. Russia was just a member state of the Soviet Union and should enjoy no advantage over the other former Soviet member states in controlling Soviet state-owned intellectual property.
"It is trivial to make. It is designed to very very lax tolerances, with the result that almost any machine shop in the world can make one. You could make one almost by hand."
While they are fairly simple to manufacture as guns go, it's clear you've never actually tried making a Kalashnikov. You still do need a machine shop. Not a terribly sophisticated one, but you still need one nonetheless.
"Interesting. Finland also produced the best and most accurate Mosin-Nagants (M28-30, M-39), and they're copies of a Russian rifle as well, or in some case reworked guns captured during the wars."
In what arsenal was Finland producing Mosin-Nagants? I had been under the impression that all of the "Finnish" Mosin-Nagants were captured Russian weapons that had been refined and reissued.
"Can you get money from mostly illegal gun makers selling AK's to poor third world people around the planet for the price of a few goats?"
Where do you get this from? "illegal gun makers"? LOL. The arsenals manufacturing Kalashnikovs for the most part operate legally.
The United States is far from a poor third world nation and many of those Kalashnikovs end up here. They can't get them here fast enough!
"AK-47's are not by any means inferior products. AK-47's are extremely cheap, easy to build and never break, where as an M16 during Vietnam and earlier were exactly the opposite"
I own and train with both and need to de-FUD this a bit.
In Vietnam, American soldiers were being trained on the M14 and then issued the M16 in combat. The M16 is a completely different weapons system from the M14. It had not yet been tested in combat, and the soldiers weren't trained on their maintenance. In fact, it is widely reported that soldiers were told that these new guns didn't need maintenance.
Stoner's design does have some shortcomings and trade-offs. It is often said that the M16/AR15/M4 "shits where it eats". Daily cleaning & maintenance is a fact of life with these weapons. When the cleaning and maintenance is done correctly every day, the weapon functions fine. The weapon is insanely accurate and has much greater range than the Kalashnikov.
Kalashnikov's design was made for conscripts who were not expected to care as deeply about the state of their weapon as the soldiers of a volunteer army like the Americans (most of the time it's volunteer, anyway). You could reasonably expect to leave the gun laying in the dirt, pick it up and kick it a couple of times to shake the big clods of mud off, and then go into combat with a fully functional weapon. It's not terribly accurate, and beyond 300 meters the ballistics are extremely poor for the 7.62x39 cartridge. But it is incredibly reliable and incredibly cheap to manufacture. The ergonomics of the Kalashnikov, frankly, suck.
In the US militia service, where one must furnish their own weapon and gear, it is common to see someone start with a Kalashnikov due to the low cost of entry and then save up for an AR15 to replace the Kalashnikov with.
"For better or for worse (and I'm thinking worse), the AK-47 is absolutely ubiquitous with almost every non-Western (from ex-USSR to Somalia to Iraq to Afghanistan) armed force."
So the western hemisphere is "non-Western"?
There is this little island here called SOUTH AMERICA where you will see Kalashnikovs all over in the jungles of places like Colombia.
In North America, the Kalashnikov is one of the most widely owned guns in the United States (I'm a Kalashnikov owner, myself).
"There was a very recent book published about the AK-47. The author did an interview on C-SPAN radio about it. He talked about a TV show where they flew Kalashnikov in to meet Eugene Stoner (inventor of the M-16) and shoot each other's weapons. He said that Kalashnikov was poor and the producers of the show wound up buying him some nice shoes and things. He has recently been using his name on vodka and things, but if this author is to be believed, then before that he was not well off, certainly not by Western standards."
The book may have been published recently, but that meeting happened shortly after the fall of Communism, before Kalashnikov had a chance to cash in on his name. Eugene Stoner has been dead for ten years now. USSR fell in 1991. The meeting was sometime between 1991 and 1997.
Kalashnikov is not hurting for cash today.
"The guy who invented the AR-15 aka M-16 gets a dollar for everyone that is made."
Did you really think you could make up something like that without getting caught in an utter lie here? Eugene Stoner died 10 years ago!
"hanks to the communist regime at the time when Mikhail Kalashnikov invented it he didn't get one cent. He was born a poor man, and died a poor man."
You just keep making this up as you go along. Kalashnikov is alive and well today! He is a national hero and while he makes no money on the Avtomat Kalashnikova (just a state pension) that is normal for a worker of a COMMUNIST REGIME. Today, in modern Russia, he makes money off of his name which can be found on Vodka and pocket knives among other items branded with his name.
"The AK-47 has been considered an obsolete arm by the Russians ever since they introduced the AK-M and AK-74, which are direct design descendants."
The AK-74 was a flash in the pan. Kalashnikov himself warned his superiors of trying to copy NATO with a varmint round like 5.45x39 and has been quite outspoken about what a mistake this was. The 7.62x39 is still the superior of the two for general urban warfare, and Russia has apparently reverted to preferring it over the 5.45x39 cartridge in most cases.
Something closer to a 6.5x45 probably would have been better but the Soviets did not want to change the cartridge length (which causes greater engineering costs in reworking the action and magazines) and for whatever reason were trying to mimic NATO's direction on cartridge diameter (joke was on them.... 5.56mm isn't even well liked in the west!)
"Does this mean we'll start to see greater adoption of rifles using the "Open Bullet Format" 5.56 NATO round rather than the odd 7.62 caliber that pretty much only the AK uses?"
The Simonov (SKS) also uses the 7.62x39 and there are tens of millions of them in the United States alone, in civilian hands.
The Kalashnikov (AK) is the most widely owned gun design in the world. 7.62x39 is far from an oddball caliber when one keeps in mind just how many of these are out there. I wouldn't be surprised at all if over a billion have been made in the last 60 years. And it's not just piss-poor African nations buying them up, either. Go to any gun show in the USA and you will see them all over the place, second only to the homegrown AR15.