Imagine everyone opening fire in self-defence and no one knowing who the gunman actually was (sounds like the US Army in Iraq today!). Where you've got a lot of people carrying guns, it's been known to happen.
Some citations to back up that assertion? When and where did these incidents happen?
You do realize that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution was placed there to prevent the Federal Government from taking weapons away from the State Governments and thus emasculate the states. The Second Amendment says nothing about allowing individual citizens to run around with firearms for whatever reason. That's left to the State governments.
Bullocks. The courts have heard this argument numerous times, including the recent case versus the city of Washington D.C., and they have concluded time and time again that the 2nd Amendment does, indeed, refer to an individual right to keep and bear arms. Additionally, the 14th Amendment extends the protections inherent in the Constitution, to protection against violation by State and Local government as well.
And if you think it's a generally good idea to have random yo-yo's armed at all times, I don't want to be anywhere near you and your friends.
And if your that uneducated, paranoid and idiotic, my friends and I don't want you anywhere near us.
Aaarggh... mentally switch all those 9/11's for 911's. I've gotten so used to seeing 9/11 written for various reasons, my fingers just typed that without me realizing it.
The bad guys with guns should be dealt with by good guys who know how to properly handle guns. Not by some random John Doe or delusional 16-year-old kid playing vigilante.
You mean, like, cops? Tell me, from the time the first 9/11 call came in, until the first cop arrived at VT, how much time went by? How many people could an armed gunman kill in that time? Or, if you're at home and call 9/11, how long would it take - on average - for a cop to reach your home? What if there happens to be a major car-wreck or other emergency at the same time and all the cops in the area are even further away than normal? And there's a guy with a gun trying to break down your door...
Just to provide some context here: I used to dispatch for 9/11 for a mostly rural, and geographically large, county in North Carolina. On night shift, the sheriff's department had 3-4 deputies on duty to patrol what was the 4th or 5th largest county in the state. At any given time, a particular home might not have an officer within 20 or more miles. And if something big were going down at one extreme end of the county, the folks closer to the other end might not have a deputy within 40 miles. Now in fairness, there were also municipal cops who could respond to backup the county deputies in some situations... but the point still remains that it would not be unlikely to need a cop and find the closest one 20 minutes or more away.
Relying on other people for your self-defense is a Bad Idea, MMMKAY?
That is to say that you can only speculate that it would be better (or at least no worse) if some|many|all of the students at staff at Virginia Tech were carrying weapons.
True, but irrelevant. The *outcome* - in this case - might actually have been worse if everybody had guns (although I seriously doubt it). But regardless of that, it's still wrong to deprive people of the means to defend themselves; it's a principle issue. You are, of course, free to disagree, but I for one simply do not acknowledge that anybody has any intrinsic authority to disarm me, whatever the supposed justification. My right to defense is inalienable (as it is with everyone else).
Of course, as the old saw goes, "we have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and capable of defending.":-(
Are they looking any better to you guys in the US yet? Seriously, this needn't have happened.
If by "gun laws" you mean the laws, regulations and statutes that create Defenseless Victim Zones like Virginia Tech, then no, they're not looking any better.
Well, the gun-nuts here quickly seized the issue and even before the bodies are warm, are screaming "GUNS R GOOD MMMKAY?" all over this thread.
Conditioned response. We learned after Columbine that the gun-control nuts would quickly sieze the issue and - even before the bodies are warm, start screaming "GUNS R BADMMKAY?" all over the place. So instead of waiting for the knee-jerk reaction and all the wailing for more useless gun-control laws to begin; all of which might influence an otherwise rational person to adopt a anti-gun attitude, might as well make the point right out of the gate that gun-control is NOT the answer to issues like this.
Disgraceful.
Yes, we've lowered ourselves to the level of the anti-gun nuts, in that regard. I guess that is sad, but it would be sadder to say nothing, do nothing, and watch more innocent people die in Defenseless Victim Zones like Virginia Tech.
Every time a news of shooting breaks out, I always wonder why the possession of firearms is not banned entirely in this country. I am native of Japan, and where I grew up nobody but cops were allowed to carry guns. I live in New Jersey now, and I really miss a sense of security I used to have back home. Back there I never worried about getting killed and such, whereas I feel physically threatened where I live now since there have been a number of incidents of armed robberies on campus at Rutgers and in my neighborhood. (My own apartment was robbed several years ago, too.) Seriously, it makes a huge difference when I have to take into consideration the possibility of the possession of firearms when some strangers attacked me. I am aware that there are gun lobbies working against the ban of firearms, but it never made any sense to me.
Because in this country we - historically - believe in certain inalienable rights of all men; and that includes - in addition to the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - the idea that individuals (or groups of individuals joined together for a common good) can defend those rights, using violence if necessary. Now no sane person *wants* violence or war, or bloodshed, but our Founding Fathers acknowledged that sometimes you have to choose to utilized armed forced in order to defend your "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Case in point, the US Revolutionary War.
And to this day, US citizens generally understand that if the government ever becomes tyrannical and repressive, "we the people" have the right (and must have the means) to overthrow it.
Could anybody enlighten me as to why people want to carry guns at all?
Because there is no way to prevent crazy nuts like this guy from VT from getting guns. And some people want to be able to defend themselves when these nuts show up and start shooting.
In the absence of meaningful regulation of who gets guns - which people like you have fought vehemently against - sane people like me simply don't trust being around any number of idiots with guns. If you want more of society to accept the wisdom of having armed citizens around, you'll have to convince us that there's some method of keeping them in the right hands - which clearly did NOT happen today.
Your argument is based on a specious assumption: that most people aren't competent to own guns. I personally think that's a load of bollocks. But even if you're right, the underlying point is still this: there is NO way to guarantee that you keep guns out of the *wrong* hands. And since the "bad guys" will always have guns, it's wrong to deprive the good guys of the means to defend themselves.
On the one hand, I think it goes without saying that guns *should* be prohibited on college campuses, and they are.
I don't think that "goes without saying" at all. In fact, I for one vehemently disagree. I have an inalienable right to defend myself, wherever I may be, IMO. And I believe that extends to being armed in order to do so, if necessary.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times. If there were no restrictions on concealed carry, more people would carry. If V. Tech (like may schools) didn't ban firearms on its grounds, it's probable that some people in either group would have been armed and could have defended themselves.
Yes, the shooter was clearly out of his mind, and is to blame for the offense. However... we can blame the law for our collective lack of defense in situations like this.
And still you fight for your right to bear arms (Score:2, Offtopic) Take this as (another) wake up call. Vote for the candidate that promise to reform your gun control laws in '08.
Yeah, existing laws - making it illegal to walk on campus with a gun and shoot 30+ people - really did a lot of good, no? What makes you think passing more laws is going to help?
Something like this actually makes me MORE determined than ever to fight for my 2nd Amendment rights. You can do whatever the fuck you want if some nut with a gun shows up and starts trying to kill you, but I want to be able to defend myself. I may not succeed, but at least I won't go out cowering under a desk, praying to a god that does not exist, that the killer won't find me.
...here come the "knee jerk" reactions, which - with Democrats in control of Congress - will almost certainly include new gun-control legislation. Legislation which - if history is any indicator - will do nothing to prevent tragedies like this, and will actually make our society more susceptible to this sort of thing, as fewer people have the means to defend themselves.
Does anybody know if Virginia Tech has a policy against firearms on campus? If so, I hope people stop and ask: could one student, armed with a handgun, have prevented the death toll from climbing as high as it did?
Pages are data, not programs? That's a fine attitude for plain text content sites. Not very good for web applications though.
Well, it can be argued that there shouldn't be any such thing as a "web application," at least as we know them today. Browsers and HTML are document / data centric concepts, and everything that's been done to shoe-horn applications into them is a hack. If you want to run *applications* remotely with the display exported to your local machine, there are protocols and software designed for that express purpose: the X-Window system comes to mind.
Ugh... HTML 5 is the LAST thing the Web needs. That just works to perpetuate mistakes that we've been forced to deal with for 15+ years now... and holds back adoption of XML formats that are much easier to process and much more amenable to creating a Semantic Web.
Retire HTML and let's get XHTML2 out the door and get browser support for it... that's what the Web needs.
The issue the Utah legislators are against is (the following example is fictitious) Sony buying keyword advertisements for the "XBOX" keyword - in hopes of getting them to buy PS3s instead. The idea behind the law is that, in this example, Microsoft own the XBOX trademark, and by Sony buying ads for "XBOX", they are 'benefiting from another person's trademark'. Or something like that. To be more specific, it might be the case the Sony pay more, and people typing "XBOX" see ads for Sony, and not Microsoft. The legislators see that as "hijacking a trademark".
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit.
No, what would be "using their trademark for profit" would be what is already illegal under existing trademark law: manufacturing your own product - which is NOT an XBox - and selling it labeled as an XBox, or something confusingly similar, like XBochs.
This is just competitive advertising. If I know somebody is looking for info on XBox, why should I not be allowed to pitch my competing product - using it's own (presumably) trademarked name 'PS3' to the consumer? Then the consumer can make an informed choice between the two products.
And how do you do that if your competition has already bought those search terms from Google (including the trademarked name of your business)?
Ummm, more than one firm can have keyword ads associated with a given keyword. Google for something fairly generic, like say music and look at the list of "Sponsored Links" on the right hand side of the page. Additionally note that if you repeat the search numerous times, the list of "Sponsored Links" keeps changing to include ads you didn't see before. So what we actually see is that a LOT of firms can buy ads based on a given keyword, and if more buy than can fit on a single page, they're displayed based on some algorithm Now I don't know what the algorithm is; maybe it's round-robin, maybe it's pseudo-random, who knows? But it doesn't really matter. The point is, it appears that everybody will get their ad displayed eventually. So the idea that your competition can "buy those search terms from Google" and completely lock you out of advertising on those terms, is false.
So you would be OK if Microsoft purchased all searches for RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, Mac, etc.... And every time you tried to search for any of those Items in any search engine you got nothing but links to Microsoft Vista? This law only protects Registered trade marks. This kind of redirection from one brand to another only happens when someone at the search engine has told the search engine that RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu = Microsoft.
That's ridiculous and shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation. We're talking about keyword ads, not search results. If you Google for Red Hat you'll still find www.redhat.com, www.fedora.org, blah, etc. in the top search results, regardless of what ads Microsoft buys.
Besides which, I don't think Google makes it possible for one company to buy every position in the "ads" area to the right of the screen. I've certainly never seen the same company's ad repeated twice in that section. So presumably if MS did buy a keyword ad, their ad would just appear *alongside* anybody else's ads for that keyword... including Red Hat, Inc. if they chose to buy one.
So, for example, if I enter "Metal Gear Solid" into a google search, I don't get sent to www.DonkeyShow.com? There should be SOME relevancy between a keyword and the site's content...
Unless you click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you don't get "sent" anywhere when you do a Google search. If an ad happens to be displayed on the page for www.DonkeyShow.com, and you don't think it's relevant... DON'T CLICK ON IT! How's that for easy to understand? Suggesting that putting that ad there is somehow stealing from Metal Gear or infringing their rights is absurd.
Boo, Mozilla! I know it's cool to hate Microsoft and all, and (God|Satan|Allah|Zeus|Zoroaster|Whoever) knows I hate them as much as anybody... but this is bullshit. Software Patents are evil and insidious no matter who wields them. I personally hope Microsoft thumps Mozilla and has their patent declared invalid.
Let me repeat it again, because you and obviously many others didn't bother to read it: The fuck up is that he REMOVED rather than REPLACED the line.
That begs the question of whether or not there will ever be any actual need to relicense the Linux kernel. It's not a fuck-up if that assumption (that Linux will ever need re-licensing) is false.
Slashdot Mirror
At least the Bible tries to teach you the virtues you should follow.
Sure it does, if you consider rape, murder, incest, slavery, ethnic killings, torture, etc. to be "virtues."
Imagine everyone opening fire in self-defence and no one knowing who the gunman actually was (sounds like the US Army in Iraq today!). Where you've got a lot of people carrying guns, it's been known to happen.
Some citations to back up that assertion? When and where did these incidents happen?
You do realize that the Second Amendment of the US Constitution was placed there to prevent the Federal Government from taking weapons away from the State Governments and thus emasculate the states. The Second Amendment says nothing about allowing individual citizens to run around with firearms for whatever reason. That's left to the State governments.
Bullocks. The courts have heard this argument numerous times, including the recent case versus the city of Washington D.C., and they have concluded time and time again that the 2nd Amendment does, indeed, refer to an individual right to keep and bear arms. Additionally, the 14th Amendment extends the protections inherent in the Constitution, to protection against violation by State and Local government as well.
And if you think it's a generally good idea to have random yo-yo's armed at all times, I don't want to be anywhere near you and your friends.
And if your that uneducated, paranoid and idiotic, my friends and I don't want you anywhere near us.
Aaarggh... mentally switch all those 9/11's for 911's. I've gotten so used to seeing 9/11 written for various reasons, my fingers just typed
that without me realizing it.
The bad guys with guns should be dealt with by good guys who know how to properly handle guns. Not by some random John Doe or delusional 16-year-old kid playing vigilante.
You mean, like, cops? Tell me, from the time the first 9/11 call came in, until the first cop arrived at VT, how much time went by? How many people could an armed gunman kill in that time? Or, if you're at home and call 9/11, how long would it take - on average - for a cop to reach your home? What if there happens to be a major car-wreck or other emergency at the same time and all the cops in the area are even further away than normal? And there's a guy with a gun trying to break down your door...
Just to provide some context here: I used to dispatch for 9/11 for a mostly rural, and geographically large, county in North Carolina. On night shift, the sheriff's department had 3-4 deputies on duty to patrol what was the 4th or 5th largest county in the state. At any given time, a particular home might not have an officer within 20 or more miles. And if something big were going down at one extreme end of the county, the folks closer to the other end might not have a deputy within 40 miles. Now in fairness, there were also municipal cops who could respond to backup the county deputies in some situations... but the point still remains that it would not be unlikely to need a cop and find the closest one 20 minutes or more away.
Relying on other people for your self-defense is a Bad Idea, MMMKAY?
That is to say that you can only speculate that it would be better (or at least no worse) if some|many|all of the students at staff at Virginia Tech were carrying weapons.
:-(
True, but irrelevant. The *outcome* - in this case - might actually have been worse if everybody had guns (although I seriously doubt it). But regardless of that, it's still wrong to deprive people of the means to defend themselves; it's a principle issue. You are, of course, free to
disagree, but I for one simply do not acknowledge that anybody has any intrinsic authority to disarm me, whatever the supposed justification. My
right to defense is inalienable (as it is with everyone else).
Of course, as the old saw goes, "we have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and capable of defending."
Are they looking any better to you guys in the US yet? Seriously, this needn't have happened.
If by "gun laws" you mean the laws, regulations and statutes that create Defenseless Victim Zones like
Virginia Tech, then no, they're not looking any better.
Well, the gun-nuts here quickly seized the issue and even before the bodies are warm, are screaming "GUNS R GOOD MMMKAY?" all over this thread.
Conditioned response. We learned after Columbine that the gun-control nuts would quickly sieze the issue and - even before the bodies are warm, start screaming "GUNS R BADMMKAY?" all over the place. So instead of waiting for the knee-jerk reaction and all the wailing for more useless gun-control laws to begin; all of which might influence an otherwise rational person to adopt a anti-gun attitude, might as well make the point right out of the gate that gun-control is NOT the answer to issues like this.
Disgraceful.
Yes, we've lowered ourselves to the level of the anti-gun nuts, in that regard. I guess that is sad, but it would be sadder to say nothing, do nothing, and watch more innocent people die in Defenseless Victim Zones like Virginia Tech.
Every time a news of shooting breaks out, I always wonder why the possession of firearms is not banned entirely in this country. I am native of Japan, and where I grew up nobody but cops were allowed to carry guns. I live in New Jersey now, and I really miss a sense of security I used to have back home. Back there I never worried about getting killed and such, whereas I feel physically threatened where I live now since there have been a number of incidents of armed robberies on campus at Rutgers and in my neighborhood. (My own apartment was robbed several years ago, too.) Seriously, it makes a huge difference when I have to take into consideration the possibility of the possession of firearms when some strangers attacked me. I am aware that there are gun lobbies working against the ban of firearms, but it never made any sense to me.
Because in this country we - historically - believe in certain inalienable rights of all men; and that includes - in addition to the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - the idea that individuals (or groups of individuals joined together for a common good) can defend those rights, using violence if necessary. Now no sane person *wants* violence or war, or bloodshed, but our Founding Fathers acknowledged that sometimes you have to choose to utilized armed forced in order to defend your "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Case in point, the US Revolutionary War.
And to this day, US citizens generally understand that if the government ever becomes tyrannical and repressive, "we the people" have the right (and must have the means) to overthrow it.
Could anybody enlighten me as to why people want to carry guns at all?
Because there is no way to prevent crazy nuts like this guy from VT from getting guns. And some people want to be able to defend themselves when these nuts show up and start shooting.
In the absence of meaningful regulation of who gets guns - which people like you have fought vehemently against - sane people like me simply don't trust being around any number of idiots with guns. If you want more of society to accept the wisdom of having armed citizens around, you'll have to convince us that there's some method of keeping them in the right hands - which clearly did NOT happen today.
Your argument is based on a specious assumption: that most people aren't competent to own guns. I personally think that's a load of bollocks. But even if you're right, the underlying point is still this: there is NO way to guarantee that you keep guns out of the *wrong* hands. And since the "bad guys" will always have guns, it's wrong to deprive the good guys of the means to defend themselves.
On the one hand, I think it goes without saying that guns *should* be prohibited on college campuses, and they are.
I don't think that "goes without saying" at all. In fact, I for one vehemently disagree. I have an inalienable right to defend
myself, wherever I may be, IMO. And I believe that extends to being armed in order to do so, if necessary.
He got away with it *both* times because the law emasculates the citizen from carrying a weapon at all times. If there were no restrictions on concealed carry, more people would carry. If V. Tech (like may schools) didn't ban firearms on its grounds, it's probable that some people in either group would have been armed and could have defended themselves.
Yes, the shooter was clearly out of his mind, and is to blame for the offense. However... we can blame the law for our collective lack of defense in situations like this.
Well said, friend.
And still you fight for your right to bear arms
(Score:2, Offtopic)
Take this as (another) wake up call. Vote for the candidate that promise to reform your gun control laws in '08.
Yeah, existing laws - making it illegal to walk on campus with a gun and shoot 30+ people - really did a lot of good, no? What makes you think passing more laws is going to help?
Something like this actually makes me MORE determined than ever to fight for my 2nd Amendment rights. You can do whatever the fuck you want if some nut with a gun shows up and starts trying to kill you, but I want to be able to defend myself. I may not succeed, but at least I won't go out cowering under a desk, praying to a god that does not exist, that the killer won't find me.
...here come the "knee jerk" reactions, which - with Democrats in control of Congress - will almost certainly include new gun-control legislation. Legislation which - if history is any indicator - will do nothing to prevent tragedies like this, and will actually make our society more susceptible to this sort of thing, as fewer people have the means to defend themselves.
Does anybody know if Virginia Tech has a policy against firearms on campus? If so, I hope people stop and ask: could one student, armed with a handgun, have prevented the death toll from climbing as high as it did?
Pages are data, not programs? That's a fine attitude for plain text content sites. Not very good for web applications though.
Well, it can be argued that there shouldn't be any such thing as a "web application," at least as we know them today. Browsers and HTML are document / data centric concepts, and everything that's been done to shoe-horn applications into them is a hack. If you want to run *applications* remotely with the display exported to your local machine, there are protocols and software designed for that express purpose: the X-Window system comes to mind.
Ugh... HTML 5 is the LAST thing the Web needs. That just works to perpetuate mistakes that
we've been forced to deal with for 15+ years now... and holds back adoption of XML formats
that are much easier to process and much more amenable to creating a Semantic Web.
Retire HTML and let's get XHTML2 out the door and get browser support for it... that's what
the Web needs.
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit.
No, what would be "using their trademark for profit" would be what is already illegal under existing trademark law: manufacturing your own product - which is NOT an XBox - and selling it labeled as an XBox, or something confusingly similar, like XBochs.
This is just competitive advertising. If I know somebody is looking for info on XBox, why should I not be allowed to pitch my competing product - using it's own (presumably) trademarked name 'PS3' to the consumer? Then the consumer can make an informed choice between the two products.
And how do you do that if your competition has already bought those search terms from Google (including the trademarked name of your business)?
Ummm, more than one firm can have keyword ads associated with a given keyword. Google for something fairly generic, like say music and look at the list of "Sponsored Links" on the right hand side of the page. Additionally note that if you repeat the search numerous times, the list of "Sponsored Links" keeps changing to include ads you didn't see before. So what we actually see is that a LOT of firms can buy ads based on a given keyword, and if more buy than can fit on a single page, they're displayed based on some algorithm Now I don't know what the algorithm is; maybe it's round-robin, maybe it's pseudo-random, who knows? But it doesn't really matter. The point is, it appears that everybody will get their ad displayed eventually. So the idea that your competition can "buy those search terms from Google" and completely lock you out of advertising on those terms, is false.
So you would be OK if Microsoft purchased all searches for RedHat, SuSe, Ubuntu, Mac, etc.... And every time you tried to search for any of those Items in any search engine you got nothing but links to Microsoft Vista? This law only protects Registered trade marks. This kind of redirection from one brand to another only happens when someone at the search engine has told the search engine that RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu = Microsoft.
That's ridiculous and shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation. We're talking about keyword ads, not search results. If you Google for Red Hat you'll still find www.redhat.com, www.fedora.org, blah, etc. in the top search results, regardless of what ads Microsoft buys.
Besides which, I don't think Google makes it possible for one company to buy every position in the "ads" area to the right of the screen. I've certainly never seen the same company's ad repeated twice in that section. So presumably if MS did buy a keyword ad, their ad would just appear *alongside* anybody else's ads for that keyword... including Red Hat, Inc. if they chose to buy one.
So, for example, if I enter "Metal Gear Solid" into a google search, I don't get sent to www.DonkeyShow.com? There should be SOME relevancy between a keyword and the site's content...
Unless you click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you don't get "sent" anywhere when you do a Google search. If an ad happens to be displayed on the page for www.DonkeyShow.com, and you don't think it's relevant... DON'T CLICK ON IT!
How's that for easy to understand? Suggesting that putting that ad there is somehow stealing from Metal Gear or infringing their rights is absurd.
Or are we just all selfish assholes with selective morality?
Yeah, I think that about sums it up.
That's assuming the Martians are currently occupying those very same caves...
...aren't currently occupying...
Errr, damn typo. That should be>
Not to mention a nice place to hide from the Martians...
That's assuming the Martians are currently occupying those very same caves...
Boo, Mozilla! I know it's cool to hate Microsoft and all, and (God|Satan|Allah|Zeus|Zoroaster|Whoever) knows I hate
them as much as anybody... but this is bullshit. Software Patents are evil and insidious no matter who wields them. I personally
hope Microsoft thumps Mozilla and has their patent declared invalid.
Let me repeat it again, because you and obviously many others didn't bother to read it: The fuck up is that he REMOVED rather than REPLACED the line.
That begs the question of whether or not there will ever be any actual need to relicense the Linux kernel. It's not a fuck-up
if that assumption (that Linux will ever need re-licensing) is false.