More stuff about the maximum setting. In the video the LRAD has a toggle for the override. The one i used had a Key on a cable. Can't tell how the police version is setup. All the datasheets i can find are next to useless.. more like PR booklets than datasheets.
The military version that i used has a Key that unlocks maximum. The version the police has is configured differently but has the same safeguards. The system won't go to harmful levels unless unlocked.
no, i think your body weight idea is good, i was just saying i don't recall it being brought up in training.
Yes, i think you hit it on the head. Why go for a better/harder solution when you can just taser them and get it over with. That's tough. Especially if the rules of engagement allow you to use the taser but you know that talking them down (and possibly letting them get closer to you.. SCARY!) is better.
I have enjoyed this discussion with you. It's obvious we are on different sides of the fence in regards to use of force. But we both want a peaceful solution. I still maintain that i think the Taser should remain a tool for Police to use. But i admit it should be improved to reduce deaths or its use needs to become more limited otherwise. Perhaps change the Taser's category from non-lethal to less-than-lethal? Less-than-lethal weapons aren't designed to kill but can cause death (like rubber bullets.. they can go into someone's eye and into the brain).
I am not a police officer, btw. When deployed to Iraq my unit had to go down to Camp Bucca to put down riots. The AirForce could not control a detainee population of around 10,000. It only took ~100 US Army soldier's to put down any riot. Not because we were rough, but because we were fair and open about our procedures.
The detainee population never rioted when we were in charge because we treated them extremely well and with dignity. We also punished any detainee vs detainee crime to the letter of the law. To be honest, i had better conversations with detainees than much of the AirForce stationed there.
(I apologize to any Airmen reading this, you guys just weren't trained for all the up-close ground fighting)
I can agree that one taser fits all is impossible. In-fact i don't remember target body weight being a factor in deciding whether or not to use the taser.
I hate to say it but guns, tasers, peperspray, batons, knuckles.. all of them probably cause deaths (direct or indirectly). The point of the taser is an attempt to minimize deaths.
Being able to deal with those kinds of high-stress environments is not easy. Can you imagine walking into a scene with two people fighting. You see if they have weapons, you scan the immediate area for weapons they could pick up. You see nothing and mentally switch to non-lethal mindset. You approach and attempt to diffuse the situation with talking. One of the men attack you.. do you a) Draw baton (close range), b) Draw taser (medium range), c) Draw pepper spray (medium range but affects everyone), d) move to grapple with him (last resort!).
So you draw your taser, zat-zat-zat he's down. You say "Don't move, stop resisting" he charges you and you zap him again.. he falls down dead. Guess what? You'll be playing that scene over and over in your head for the rest of your life.. what could you have done differently?
Now if you tased the guy 28 times? You're going to jail. If a guy under me did that, i'd crush him, friend or not.
No, i do have an idea of what i'm talking about. I have been tased many times (requirement to use one).
The taser is not supposed to be used 28 times on anybody. The user of that weaponsystem must have been untrained and murdered the guy tased 28 times. I realize that nobody wants the police to have a non-lethal weapon that is actually lethal. The Taser when used properly is very safe and an excellent tool for law-enforcement.
Please direct your anger at the Police Officer(s) involved!
Honestly, it doesn't hurt.. just feels very odd and you can't control your arms/legs/body.
I did not say that abuse can't kill you.
I did say there is a safety mechanism in place that prevents the user from shocking someone to death.. UNLESS they continuously pull the trigger once each 5 second cycle. That is a decision from the user, not the taser. Which means the user of the taser killed the victim.
You can put in earplugs if you want, that's ok too. It means you cannot communicate with others or via phone/radio. Makes it harder to organize anything on the spot.
As far as why they dispersed a crowd of a few hundred? My guess is the crowd wasn't peaceful.
Tasers have a timelimit on them. You pull the trigger and get 5 seconds of shock. You have to release and pull it again to continue tasing. You obviously haven't been tasered before, doesn't hurt at all. Just debilitating. Like losing control of your body or something. It's a very odd feeling. But the sound and speed of the weapon makes it scary. You are afraid of something you don't understand, Mr. AC.
There is actually two settings on the LRAD, normal and maximum. Maximum can only be unlocked with a key. Normal settings wouldn't damage anyone's hearing/ears. From the videos i'm guessing it's on normal.. or people seriously would have been running away from it.
I actually like Valve's Steam system. The main reason i like it is there isn't much cheating. Cheaters/Hackers that get caught, cannot play on a VAC server anymore. The customer still owns the game but isn't allowed to play on the "general population" servers, only on non-VAC servers. Some things like maphacks don't qualify as hacking but an admin can perma-ban your STEAMID (not just an ip addr, but the actual paid for game copy). I also love the unified update/news/changelog system.
Hah, just a moment as i wave the Steam flag for a moment. There are also TONs of indie games on there!
I absolutely agree that we are preprogrammed to care for young/helpless children. But it is still a choice (imo of course).
Emotions were the most useful when we were still animals. Now, emotions take a backseat to rational thought. But that doesn't mean there can't be a backseat driver.. if the driver lets it happen.
Also, it just occured to me how many people feel uncomfortable just holding a baby, like they'll accidently break it or something. Maybe people are afraid of babies because of the strange mixture of emotions? But i know people bond to kittens pretty easily. i dunno
Like selling ebook readers the way cell phones are done. Cheap up front with several year contract lock-ins to pay off the reader. News/Content could even be delivered as a paid service.
My experience with Windows 7 had several driver problems. I had to reinstall XP, windows 7 simply could not do what i wanted.
1st Problem: Sata drivers were needed to install windows 7, i had to dig out a floppy drive *shudders*
2nd Problem: Win7 would not allow me to install an older video card driver. Why older? Because the default windows one did not work properly with my vendor specific Mobo drivers. I had to use all default windows drivers which gave my games terrible performance over my previous XP install. If i installed the mobo nForce drivers the microsoft video card driver didn't work, i was stuck with some horrid resolution. I couldn't install another videocard driver because windows insisted the newer win7 driver was better and would literally decide that for me.
My point: Windows 7's hardware drivers are an issue.
I think that's a good attitude though. MS isn't known for telling the whole truth. ECMA has a code of conduct for Standards they approve. It mostly covers Patents. Bottom line is a standard with patents cannot be approved if it can't be licensed on a reasonable, non-discriminatory basis.
I don't think MS should have to release any of their.Net stuff with an open source license. Not yet anyways. Remember how it happened with Java? What started as closed ended up open.
The promise covers several specifications, most importantly this: C# Language Specification - Ecma-334, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23270:2006 Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) - Ecma-335, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23271:2006
I won't use Mono for that reason alone. Guess what? You can use Mono now. yay!
I personally, don't care who wrote what and why. It works and it's available for use. To not use code because you think the programmer is immoral? That's awfully pious.
What's wrong with Mono? Microsoft racism aside, Mono seems to work very well to me. Deciding to include a package should be based on how useful and usable it is, not who wrote it.
That's because it was optional, you had to decide you wanted to take that class. They can't make you learn chemistry. I was actually in the US Government DOD school system my entire life. Every school had a decent chem, bio, and physics lab (comp labs didn't get nice until aound 2000).
Seeking promotion so you can afford a 1200$ yearly phone bill is kind of crazy.
Also, i read your sig link "VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT - Asthma Patients Left Gasping for Air - consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.html"
I think that article should be renamed to "VICTIMS OF CORPORATE GREED". From the article, the government ban on CFCs is driven by citizens to preseve the environment. The even bigger problem is her insurance company turning her down on something she worked so hard to prepare for. Now she can't do anything, jump ship to another insurance company? Hope they accept pre-existing conditions (not likely).
I agree, the idea sounds dangerous. The only way it seems useful to me is if the kid is naturally very curious and school is holding him/her back. Even then, there should be a regimented learning program.
Parents can't compete with the combined knowledge and resources a typical public school provides. Just as schools can't ever compete with parents when it comes to one on one face time and intimate knowledge of the kid's strengths/weaknesses in learning. But to just let a kid wander about picking up knowledge? I agree with you, it sounds dangerous!
It could be the other way around you know. Some parents could view public school as teaching for lazy parents. All those mediocre kids learning at only a moderate pace. Maybe they want to accelerate their kids learning, not slow it down. Just saying:)
I thought it went down differently than that. Zelaya was trying to rewrite the constitution to allow him more than two terms as president, a step in the direction of dictatorship.
A judge issued a warrant for his arrest because he had no right to call a vote to rewrite the constitution. The military followed the Judge's order but expelled him from the country instead of arresting him. They later said they did this to prevent his followers from getting access to Zelaya.
The military was never in charge of the government.. with the order for removal of the President, the Vice President was promoted to full president. The current president of Honduras did not claim power, it was thrust upon him by the line of succession.
The same thing could happen in the United States.. the Military swears an oath to the Constitution FIRST, then the president. The process to remove the president from power would be different though. He would have to be impeached.. which again comes from the judicial side of the house. The Chief Justice would preside over it and congress would do the voting.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myWxwNQfo-8 checkout 07:00
More stuff about the maximum setting. In the video the LRAD has a toggle for the override. The one i used had a Key on a cable. Can't tell how the police version is setup. All the datasheets i can find are next to useless.. more like PR booklets than datasheets.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lrad.htm
Scroll to the bottom, it talks about normal and Maximum mode (with override)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/lrad2.htm
Please just read the first paragraph.
The military version that i used has a Key that unlocks maximum. The version the police has is configured differently but has the same safeguards. The system won't go to harmful levels unless unlocked.
no, i think your body weight idea is good, i was just saying i don't recall it being brought up in training.
Yes, i think you hit it on the head. Why go for a better/harder solution when you can just taser them and get it over with. That's tough. Especially if the rules of engagement allow you to use the taser but you know that talking them down (and possibly letting them get closer to you.. SCARY!) is better.
I have enjoyed this discussion with you. It's obvious we are on different sides of the fence in regards to use of force. But we both want a peaceful solution. I still maintain that i think the Taser should remain a tool for Police to use. But i admit it should be improved to reduce deaths or its use needs to become more limited otherwise. Perhaps change the Taser's category from non-lethal to less-than-lethal? Less-than-lethal weapons aren't designed to kill but can cause death (like rubber bullets.. they can go into someone's eye and into the brain).
I am not a police officer, btw. When deployed to Iraq my unit had to go down to Camp Bucca to put down riots. The AirForce could not control a detainee population of around 10,000. It only took ~100 US Army soldier's to put down any riot. Not because we were rough, but because we were fair and open about our procedures.
The detainee population never rioted when we were in charge because we treated them extremely well and with dignity. We also punished any detainee vs detainee crime to the letter of the law. To be honest, i had better conversations with detainees than much of the AirForce stationed there.
(I apologize to any Airmen reading this, you guys just weren't trained for all the up-close ground fighting)
I can agree that one taser fits all is impossible. In-fact i don't remember target body weight being a factor in deciding whether or not to use the taser.
I hate to say it but guns, tasers, peperspray, batons, knuckles.. all of them probably cause deaths (direct or indirectly). The point of the taser is an attempt to minimize deaths.
Being able to deal with those kinds of high-stress environments is not easy. Can you imagine walking into a scene with two people fighting. You see if they have weapons, you scan the immediate area for weapons they could pick up. You see nothing and mentally switch to non-lethal mindset. You approach and attempt to diffuse the situation with talking. One of the men attack you.. do you a) Draw baton (close range), b) Draw taser (medium range), c) Draw pepper spray (medium range but affects everyone), d) move to grapple with him (last resort!).
So you draw your taser, zat-zat-zat he's down. You say "Don't move, stop resisting" he charges you and you zap him again.. he falls down dead. Guess what? You'll be playing that scene over and over in your head for the rest of your life.. what could you have done differently?
Now if you tased the guy 28 times? You're going to jail. If a guy under me did that, i'd crush him, friend or not.
No, i do have an idea of what i'm talking about. I have been tased many times (requirement to use one).
The taser is not supposed to be used 28 times on anybody. The user of that weaponsystem must have been untrained and murdered the guy tased 28 times. I realize that nobody wants the police to have a non-lethal weapon that is actually lethal. The Taser when used properly is very safe and an excellent tool for law-enforcement.
Please direct your anger at the Police Officer(s) involved!
Honestly, it doesn't hurt.. just feels very odd and you can't control your arms/legs/body.
I did not say that abuse can't kill you.
I did say there is a safety mechanism in place that prevents the user from shocking someone to death.. UNLESS they continuously pull the trigger once each 5 second cycle. That is a decision from the user, not the taser. Which means the user of the taser killed the victim.
It's like most things, misuse can be fatal!
Hopefully the businesses with broken windows and normal citizens with trashed cars can get some good lawyers too
"big guns"? No sir, those are just the toys.
Fight back against your neighbors? Because seriously the citizens that put down that riot ARE your neighbors.
You can put in earplugs if you want, that's ok too. It means you cannot communicate with others or via phone/radio. Makes it harder to organize anything on the spot.
As far as why they dispersed a crowd of a few hundred? My guess is the crowd wasn't peaceful.
Tasers have a timelimit on them. You pull the trigger and get 5 seconds of shock. You have to release and pull it again to continue tasing. You obviously haven't been tasered before, doesn't hurt at all. Just debilitating. Like losing control of your body or something. It's a very odd feeling. But the sound and speed of the weapon makes it scary. You are afraid of something you don't understand, Mr. AC.
There is actually two settings on the LRAD, normal and maximum. Maximum can only be unlocked with a key. Normal settings wouldn't damage anyone's hearing/ears. From the videos i'm guessing it's on normal.. or people seriously would have been running away from it.
I actually like Valve's Steam system. The main reason i like it is there isn't much cheating. Cheaters/Hackers that get caught, cannot play on a VAC server anymore. The customer still owns the game but isn't allowed to play on the "general population" servers, only on non-VAC servers. Some things like maphacks don't qualify as hacking but an admin can perma-ban your STEAMID (not just an ip addr, but the actual paid for game copy). I also love the unified update/news/changelog system.
Hah, just a moment as i wave the Steam flag for a moment. There are also TONs of indie games on there!
I absolutely agree that we are preprogrammed to care for young/helpless children. But it is still a choice (imo of course).
Emotions were the most useful when we were still animals. Now, emotions take a backseat to rational thought. But that doesn't mean there can't be a backseat driver.. if the driver lets it happen.
Also, it just occured to me how many people feel uncomfortable just holding a baby, like they'll accidently break it or something. Maybe people are afraid of babies because of the strange mixture of emotions? But i know people bond to kittens pretty easily. i dunno
Like selling ebook readers the way cell phones are done. Cheap up front with several year contract lock-ins to pay off the reader. News/Content could even be delivered as a paid service.
You can love a child that you know for a fact isn't yours. There is a choice involved. Babies found in dumpsters probably prove that.
My experience with Windows 7 had several driver problems. I had to reinstall XP, windows 7 simply could not do what i wanted.
1st Problem: Sata drivers were needed to install windows 7, i had to dig out a floppy drive *shudders*
2nd Problem: Win7 would not allow me to install an older video card driver. Why older? Because the default windows one did not work properly with my vendor specific Mobo drivers. I had to use all default windows drivers which gave my games terrible performance over my previous XP install. If i installed the mobo nForce drivers the microsoft video card driver didn't work, i was stuck with some horrid resolution. I couldn't install another videocard driver because windows insisted the newer win7 driver was better and would literally decide that for me.
My point: Windows 7's hardware drivers are an issue.
I think that's a good attitude though. MS isn't known for telling the whole truth. ECMA has a code of conduct for Standards they approve. It mostly covers Patents. Bottom line is a standard with patents cannot be approved if it can't be licensed on a reasonable, non-discriminatory basis.
I don't think MS should have to release any of their .Net stuff with an open source license. Not yet anyways. Remember how it happened with Java? What started as closed ended up open.
Microsoft's promise not to sue: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp/default.mspx
The promise covers several specifications, most importantly this:
C# Language Specification - Ecma-334, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23270:2006
Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) - Ecma-335, 4th Edition and ISO/IEC 23271:2006
I won't use Mono for that reason alone.
Guess what? You can use Mono now. yay!
I personally, don't care who wrote what and why. It works and it's available for use. To not use code because you think the programmer is immoral? That's awfully pious.
What's wrong with Mono? Microsoft racism aside, Mono seems to work very well to me. Deciding to include a package should be based on how useful and usable it is, not who wrote it.
That's because it was optional, you had to decide you wanted to take that class. They can't make you learn chemistry. I was actually in the US Government DOD school system my entire life. Every school had a decent chem, bio, and physics lab (comp labs didn't get nice until aound 2000).
Seeking promotion so you can afford a 1200$ yearly phone bill is kind of crazy.
Also, i read your sig link "VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT - Asthma Patients Left Gasping for Air - consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.html"
I think that article should be renamed to "VICTIMS OF CORPORATE GREED". From the article, the government ban on CFCs is driven by citizens to preseve the environment. The even bigger problem is her insurance company turning her down on something she worked so hard to prepare for. Now she can't do anything, jump ship to another insurance company? Hope they accept pre-existing conditions (not likely).
I agree, the idea sounds dangerous. The only way it seems useful to me is if the kid is naturally very curious and school is holding him/her back. Even then, there should be a regimented learning program.
Parents can't compete with the combined knowledge and resources a typical public school provides. Just as schools can't ever compete with parents when it comes to one on one face time and intimate knowledge of the kid's strengths/weaknesses in learning. But to just let a kid wander about picking up knowledge? I agree with you, it sounds dangerous!
It could be the other way around you know. Some parents could view public school as teaching for lazy parents. All those mediocre kids learning at only a moderate pace. Maybe they want to accelerate their kids learning, not slow it down. Just saying :)
I thought it went down differently than that. Zelaya was trying to rewrite the constitution to allow him more than two terms as president, a step in the direction of dictatorship.
A judge issued a warrant for his arrest because he had no right to call a vote to rewrite the constitution. The military followed the Judge's order but expelled him from the country instead of arresting him. They later said they did this to prevent his followers from getting access to Zelaya.
The military was never in charge of the government.. with the order for removal of the President, the Vice President was promoted to full president. The current president of Honduras did not claim power, it was thrust upon him by the line of succession.
The same thing could happen in the United States.. the Military swears an oath to the Constitution FIRST, then the president. The process to remove the president from power would be different though. He would have to be impeached.. which again comes from the judicial side of the house. The Chief Justice would preside over it and congress would do the voting.