Of course they do. Because most OSS software won't compile without error. 9 times out of ten it takes some amount of fucking about and searching to find what's missing or what arcane thing needs typing at the console to make it build. If you're not a developer don't bother.
But such people are just exercising their freedom. Software needs to be free! And it's protected by the first amendment! You'll be taking our guns next!/s
What precisely do you tell the families of people who...
Sound policy is not made from the category of question "What precisely do you tell the families of people who..."
You can't investigate every possible crime that might have happened although no one has any evidence to say it did.
If you did you'd have to find something to tell the people who's actual reported crime wasn't investigated properly, because the police were too busy wasting time chasing someone who chose to leave home without explaining.
Plus, how do you know that somebody doesn't have unknown mental health issues?
Again, you can make policy based on "How do you know that somebody doesn't..."
Most people that disappear do so because they choose to, and it would be wrong to pursue them. And if there's foul play, there's likely to be something indicating that.
What do you tell the families of that small minority between? You'd say "I'm sorry for your loss." You can't save everyone. People die.
I.e. you do want to ban private gun ownership by law abiding citizens, you're just misleading people by calling your ban "gun control".
You're still confusing a universal logical truth, reachable by anyone, with what I "want".
(Why any European would want to hand exclusive power to a combination of corporations and governments is beyond me; have you learned nothing from your history? How stupid can you be to repeat the same mistakes over and over again?)
Are you actually capable of rational argument, or is your entire capability to claim another person says or believes something they did not say?
Is your faith in your own beliefs really that weak? It's like you know you're on the wrong side of reality, but you want guns anyway.
You've switched from UK to European. I'll switch back, because every country in Europe is different. There are no "corporations" involved. No corporation nor it's employees have any more right to carry firearms than anyone else. You're silly attempt to connect with the Nazis, isn't only a failure, it flies in the face of the facts. And that's par for the course for you.
Again, the irrationality that seems to be going through your head is not what happens in the UK, but ascribing a desire to me which I do not have. Corporations and their employees are the last people I'd give extra gun rights to.
Do you actually know anything about British history?...how come the police a hundred years ago could often manage to borrow guns from those people who didn't own any when they were chasing armed criminals?
Was your knowledge of British History gleaned from Miss Marple whodunnits?
Not really, there's a presumption that if somebody's been missing for more than a given amount of time that they're in danger, unless there's evidence to the contrary.
Then it's a bad presumption. Most people go missing because they want to. You've got to look for children, senile people and people with mental health issues, because they may not have the capacity for making a rational choice to leave, and the chances of them coming to harm are higher. But adults who get out of contact with their families. In most cases it's because they don't like them, or have some issue they'd rather get away from.
You gave Adam Lanza as an example. What form of gun control would allow legal gun ownership that would have kept Adam Lanza from obtaining a gun?
You're not being logical. Adam Lanza was an example of someone killing with a gun that was legally held be a relative and then stolen. That doesn't mean that the effectiveness of the many variants of gun control are judged by the one case of Adam Lanza. Using an example does not men that that example becomes the entirety of the topic.
All forms of gun control reduce the number of legal guns in circulation. Murderous thugs find it more difficult to get hold of guns when there are fewer guns in circulation. To argue the contrary is not logical.
Does any of that mean that the Adam Lanza case is not part of this, of course not. An example gun control measure that is not a total ban, but would have meant that Lanza's mother would have had hers: Only allow people who are cops, security guards or otherwise have a job with a specific set of justifications for firearms to have one. There. Done. QED.
That doesn't mean that there was widespread ownership of guns 100 years ago. There wasn't. There was widespread ownership of shotguns amongst farmers, and the relatively small number of gamekeepers. But that was probably about it. No notable ownership of guns in urban areas.
As to crime statistics it's impossible to say. There was no comprehensive collection of crime statistics 100 years ago. Certainly not that you could compare with today's statistics.
I notice HM is guarded by people with guns. I've even read a report that she has been known to carry a Webley.
The Queen's politics are strictly speaking unknown, though you can guess, but she certainly is part of the hunting and shooting fraternity. Never heard a rumour about "a Webley" specifically. Obviously she doesn't carry a gun for personal protection, but I'm pretty sure she's hunted with one.
But what has the views of Britain's most untypical person got to do with anything?
Interesting that the terrorists had guns. (Isn't that theoretically impossible under current British law?)
It certainly makes it difficult.
They had a single gun between two of them. There are conflicting reports of whether it was fired at all. So I'm not yet sure if it was a real gun, and if so whether it was loaded. Criminals in Britain sometimes use replica firearms to frighten people because they are easier to get hold of.
They killed the soldier by running him down with a car, then finishing him off with meat cleavers. Which suggests their access to guns/ammunition wasn't so great.
So what's the difference between this and America? In America they wouldn't have found it difficult to source real pistols or semi-automatic guns, at least one each, and plenty of ammunition and kill a whole group of people, and not just one.
It's a big "terrorist" incident here. But just one person died.
I'm surprised you thought it was a good idea to bring it up. because it certainly does nothing to help the gun-freedom argument.
But then it is the computer doing the killing not the gun.
But not the person.
Is it the computer doing your clothes washing and not the washer? Is it the computer sweeping your floor and not the Roomba?
You can separate out one technological part from another if you like, but doing so makes no philosophical difference. A machine incorporating a gun can kill or a machine can kill with a gun. Either way it makes the silliness of the phrase "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" obvious.
A gun is a tool to kill people. It's normally operated by people, but not necessarily.
The motivation behind the catchphrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is to do nothing about the tool, and only deal with the people. The motivation is no more rational than the catchphrase.
It's the only rational reading: the guns Adam Lanza obtained were legally owned by a citizen with no criminal convictions, firearms experience, and no mental illness. The only way Lanza could not have obtained those guns would have been if such citizens were prohibited by law from owning guns at all.
That is incorrect. All forms of gun control have the effect of reducing the number of guns in circulation, even if they don't ban them outright. And a reduction in the number of guns means reducing the chance that a "murderous thug" can get hold of a gun.
Ergo, you claim (1) is logically incorrect.
Where you depart from rationality is saying that your incorrect logic then reveals anything about my particular preferences for gun control. Even if your logic had been correct it wouldn't have said anything about my position.
...largely because the net difference between the two parties is (almost) nil.
Take 3 points on a plain. A, B and C.
1) If point C is a long way away from A & B, then there seems little difference between A & B.
2) If point C is near to points A & B, then the difference seems much bigger.
3) If point C is close to the line between points A & B, at any point on that line, then the difference between A & B is huge, they are diametrically opposed.
In politics most people are in categories 2 or 3. Because the media coverage of politics marginalise belief systems that are too far away from that line. And most people's opinions are chosen from those offered to them by the media.
Equally extremists of one sort or another are solidly in category 1. Unable to see the distinctions between A & B. They may be free thinkers, but equally they may have chosen from options offered by other non-mainstream information outlets. Such as extremist blogs.
Reasonable but well informed people tend to be close enough to A & B to see there's a difference, yet off to one side of the line rather than on it, able to see those things in which both A & B are wrong.
This applies to any country that has predominantly two party politics.
Well terrorism is most commonly committed against ordinary civilians. And mostly random - bombs in public places being the most common act. So it often is against little girls.
Targeting a soldier takes this one a bit closer to an act of war than terrorism usually is.
There were plenty of cases of Germans attacking the Third Reich, more obviously there were several attempts by Germans to assassinate Hitler. That didn't make WWII a civil war. Just an international war with some within the country opposed to it.
For sure the Third Reich would have called it terrorism.
Crime, Terrorism, Political act, Resistance, Freedom Fighting. All these things are a matter of perspective. Each using terms to mould the events to the way they see it.
[Godwin smodwin]
Which doesn't in any way mean I have any sympathy for the event in Woolwich, but equally I don't have any sympathy for the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. I abhor violence.
Ah, so your true intentions come out: you're not talking about gun control, you're talking about prohibiting private ownership of guns altogether and mislabeling it as gun control.
There is no rational reading of what I wrote to mean that. My comment simply proved yours incorrect.
I conclude you are irrational.
Obviously, I meant "guards" metaphorically as any person who would come to my defense.
As pointless as that statement is, it's not strictly true, and will become less so in future years. The technology is there for a computer to pick a target, aim and fire. Autonomous guns are not held back by any technological limitations, but so far only ethical ones.
And any thought that ethics will stop them for much longer should be gone with given the gross irresponsibility of that idiot putting out plans to print plastic guns.
The gun is the unavoidable component of shooting someone, not the person.
Gun control does reduce (1). Gun toting murderous thugs often use their own or a relative's legal gun. Or steal someone's legally held gun. As an obvious recent example Adam Lanza.
It need not necessarily reduce (2). If you actually mean what you say. "Guards". So that wouldn't be random members of the public carrying, that would be trained people, in uniform, who's job it is to guard. There's no reason why gun control that limits guns in the general population can't allow guards to have guns. A law can be drafted with any provisions required.
Those are still assumptions though. You don't have proof that any of those things you speak of are in fact the reason your healthcare is cheaper.
They're not assumptions at all. They are why healthcare is cheaper in the UK.
Sadly in recent years we've got a right wing government in that is trying to privatise elements of it through pure ideology, and that is causing problems. For exactly the reason you highlight. Once you have private elements in the chain you do have to start doing all this otherwise pointless internal charging.
Expecting someone to pay for bugs is like buying a new car with a broken gearbox then having to pay for a new gearbox ontop of the initial purchase.
No. A car is a mass produced vehicle. That gives you one standard for what to expect.
Contracting a software project is a one off, bespoke item. Built to your stated requirements (which are unlikely to be perfect in themselves.) It's not rational to have the same expectations as a mass produced item.
A better analogy would be builders building a house based on your drawings. And I hope you ARE a qualified architect.
Now I'm not saying that you wouldn't expect builders to come back and fix flaws. Of course you would. But it wouldn't necessarily come in with the original price. There would be a discussion about who's fault it was that the flaw happened.
But my main point is it's foolish to expect the same flawlessness from a bespoke item built to your specification, and a mass produced item.
Come to that, you could have a car analogy, but it would have to be a custom car, again built to your drawings. And if you expect that not to have flaws...
They should be replaced with consumption based taxes. Comsumption based taxes are *really hard* to cheat, don't contain many loopholes, and are much more equitable across the low income vs high income spectrum.
Absolutely the opposite. In Europe we have "consumption based taxes" on most things. It's called VAT (Value Added Tax). It's widely cheated.
And such taxes are regressive, not progressive. Which means that the poor pay relatively more than the rich. Why? Because of their income, the poor spend a higher proportion just to live.
How do I figure? Well I start with the fact we end up paying 40% of what you do on healthcare, and we cover everybody, whilst you have a lot of disenfranchised people as far as healthcare is concerned.
Why is it cheaper? No company profits. No shareholders to pay. And a single organisation has massive bargaining power when it comes to getting prices from suppliers.
Chargemaster? Never heard of one. Why would you need something like that when nothing is charged? Sounds like another salary saved.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they do. Because most OSS software won't compile without error. 9 times out of ten it takes some amount of fucking about and searching to find what's missing or what arcane thing needs typing at the console to make it build. If you're not a developer don't bother.
But such people are just exercising their freedom. Software needs to be free! And it's protected by the first amendment! You'll be taking our guns next! /s
What precisely do you tell the families of people who...
Sound policy is not made from the category of question "What precisely do you tell the families of people who..."
You can't investigate every possible crime that might have happened although no one has any evidence to say it did.
If you did you'd have to find something to tell the people who's actual reported crime wasn't investigated properly, because the police were too busy wasting time chasing someone who chose to leave home without explaining.
Plus, how do you know that somebody doesn't have unknown mental health issues?
Again, you can make policy based on "How do you know that somebody doesn't..."
Most people that disappear do so because they choose to, and it would be wrong to pursue them. And if there's foul play, there's likely to be something indicating that.
What do you tell the families of that small minority between? You'd say "I'm sorry for your loss." You can't save everyone. People die.
I.e. you do want to ban private gun ownership by law abiding citizens, you're just misleading people by calling your ban "gun control".
You're still confusing a universal logical truth, reachable by anyone, with what I "want".
(Why any European would want to hand exclusive power to a combination of corporations and governments is beyond me; have you learned nothing from your history? How stupid can you be to repeat the same mistakes over and over again?)
Are you actually capable of rational argument, or is your entire capability to claim another person says or believes something they did not say?
Is your faith in your own beliefs really that weak? It's like you know you're on the wrong side of reality, but you want guns anyway.
You've switched from UK to European. I'll switch back, because every country in Europe is different. There are no "corporations" involved. No corporation nor it's employees have any more right to carry firearms than anyone else. You're silly attempt to connect with the Nazis, isn't only a failure, it flies in the face of the facts. And that's par for the course for you.
Again, the irrationality that seems to be going through your head is not what happens in the UK, but ascribing a desire to me which I do not have. Corporations and their employees are the last people I'd give extra gun rights to.
Do you actually know anything about British history?...how come the police a hundred years ago could often manage to borrow guns from those people who didn't own any when they were chasing armed criminals?
Was your knowledge of British History gleaned from Miss Marple whodunnits?
Not really, there's a presumption that if somebody's been missing for more than a given amount of time that they're in danger, unless there's evidence to the contrary.
Then it's a bad presumption. Most people go missing because they want to. You've got to look for children, senile people and people with mental health issues, because they may not have the capacity for making a rational choice to leave, and the chances of them coming to harm are higher. But adults who get out of contact with their families. In most cases it's because they don't like them, or have some issue they'd rather get away from.
You gave Adam Lanza as an example. What form of gun control would allow legal gun ownership that would have kept Adam Lanza from obtaining a gun?
You're not being logical. Adam Lanza was an example of someone killing with a gun that was legally held be a relative and then stolen. That doesn't mean that the effectiveness of the many variants of gun control are judged by the one case of Adam Lanza. Using an example does not men that that example becomes the entirety of the topic.
All forms of gun control reduce the number of legal guns in circulation. Murderous thugs find it more difficult to get hold of guns when there are fewer guns in circulation. To argue the contrary is not logical.
Does any of that mean that the Adam Lanza case is not part of this, of course not. An example gun control measure that is not a total ban, but would have meant that Lanza's mother would have had hers: Only allow people who are cops, security guards or otherwise have a job with a specific set of justifications for firearms to have one. There. Done. QED.
You have no rational argument against this.
100 years ago Britons were freer to own guns
That doesn't mean that there was widespread ownership of guns 100 years ago. There wasn't. There was widespread ownership of shotguns amongst farmers, and the relatively small number of gamekeepers. But that was probably about it. No notable ownership of guns in urban areas.
As to crime statistics it's impossible to say. There was no comprehensive collection of crime statistics 100 years ago. Certainly not that you could compare with today's statistics.
I notice HM is guarded by people with guns. I've even read a report that she has been known to carry a Webley.
The Queen's politics are strictly speaking unknown, though you can guess, but she certainly is part of the hunting and shooting fraternity. Never heard a rumour about "a Webley" specifically. Obviously she doesn't carry a gun for personal protection, but I'm pretty sure she's hunted with one.
But what has the views of Britain's most untypical person got to do with anything?
Interesting that the terrorists had guns. (Isn't that theoretically impossible under current British law?)
It certainly makes it difficult.
They had a single gun between two of them. There are conflicting reports of whether it was fired at all. So I'm not yet sure if it was a real gun, and if so whether it was loaded. Criminals in Britain sometimes use replica firearms to frighten people because they are easier to get hold of.
They killed the soldier by running him down with a car, then finishing him off with meat cleavers. Which suggests their access to guns/ammunition wasn't so great.
So what's the difference between this and America? In America they wouldn't have found it difficult to source real pistols or semi-automatic guns, at least one each, and plenty of ammunition and kill a whole group of people, and not just one.
It's a big "terrorist" incident here. But just one person died.
I'm surprised you thought it was a good idea to bring it up. because it certainly does nothing to help the gun-freedom argument.
But then it is the computer doing the killing not the gun.
But not the person.
Is it the computer doing your clothes washing and not the washer? Is it the computer sweeping your floor and not the Roomba?
You can separate out one technological part from another if you like, but doing so makes no philosophical difference. A machine incorporating a gun can kill or a machine can kill with a gun. Either way it makes the silliness of the phrase "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" obvious.
A gun is a tool to kill people. It's normally operated by people, but not necessarily.
The motivation behind the catchphrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is to do nothing about the tool, and only deal with the people. The motivation is no more rational than the catchphrase.
It's the only rational reading: the guns Adam Lanza obtained were legally owned by a citizen with no criminal convictions, firearms experience, and no mental illness. The only way Lanza could not have obtained those guns would have been if such citizens were prohibited by law from owning guns at all.
That is incorrect. All forms of gun control have the effect of reducing the number of guns in circulation, even if they don't ban them outright. And a reduction in the number of guns means reducing the chance that a "murderous thug" can get hold of a gun.
Ergo, you claim (1) is logically incorrect.
Where you depart from rationality is saying that your incorrect logic then reveals anything about my particular preferences for gun control. Even if your logic had been correct it wouldn't have said anything about my position.
...largely because the net difference between the two parties is (almost) nil.
Take 3 points on a plain. A, B and C.
1) If point C is a long way away from A & B, then there seems little difference between A & B.
2) If point C is near to points A & B, then the difference seems much bigger.
3) If point C is close to the line between points A & B, at any point on that line, then the difference between A & B is huge, they are diametrically opposed.
In politics most people are in categories 2 or 3. Because the media coverage of politics marginalise belief systems that are too far away from that line. And most people's opinions are chosen from those offered to them by the media.
Equally extremists of one sort or another are solidly in category 1. Unable to see the distinctions between A & B. They may be free thinkers, but equally they may have chosen from options offered by other non-mainstream information outlets. Such as extremist blogs.
Reasonable but well informed people tend to be close enough to A & B to see there's a difference, yet off to one side of the line rather than on it, able to see those things in which both A & B are wrong.
This applies to any country that has predominantly two party politics.
Well terrorism is most commonly committed against ordinary civilians. And mostly random - bombs in public places being the most common act. So it often is against little girls.
Targeting a soldier takes this one a bit closer to an act of war than terrorism usually is.
I feel more free in an environment without guns. How does that fit into the quote?
There were plenty of cases of Germans attacking the Third Reich, more obviously there were several attempts by Germans to assassinate Hitler. That didn't make WWII a civil war. Just an international war with some within the country opposed to it.
For sure the Third Reich would have called it terrorism.
Crime, Terrorism, Political act, Resistance, Freedom Fighting. All these things are a matter of perspective. Each using terms to mould the events to the way they see it.
[Godwin smodwin]
Which doesn't in any way mean I have any sympathy for the event in Woolwich, but equally I don't have any sympathy for the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. I abhor violence.
Ah, so your true intentions come out: you're not talking about gun control, you're talking about prohibiting private ownership of guns altogether and mislabeling it as gun control.
There is no rational reading of what I wrote to mean that. My comment simply proved yours incorrect.
I conclude you are irrational.
Obviously, I meant "guards" metaphorically as any person who would come to my defense.
Which is not the meaning of guards, in any sense.
As pointless as that statement is, it's not strictly true, and will become less so in future years. The technology is there for a computer to pick a target, aim and fire. Autonomous guns are not held back by any technological limitations, but so far only ethical ones.
And any thought that ethics will stop them for much longer should be gone with given the gross irresponsibility of that idiot putting out plans to print plastic guns.
The gun is the unavoidable component of shooting someone, not the person.
Gun control does reduce (1). Gun toting murderous thugs often use their own or a relative's legal gun. Or steal someone's legally held gun. As an obvious recent example Adam Lanza.
It need not necessarily reduce (2). If you actually mean what you say. "Guards". So that wouldn't be random members of the public carrying, that would be trained people, in uniform, who's job it is to guard. There's no reason why gun control that limits guns in the general population can't allow guards to have guns. A law can be drafted with any provisions required.
Kevlar is plastic.
Those are still assumptions though. You don't have proof that any of those things you speak of are in fact the reason your healthcare is cheaper.
They're not assumptions at all. They are why healthcare is cheaper in the UK.
Sadly in recent years we've got a right wing government in that is trying to privatise elements of it through pure ideology, and that is causing problems. For exactly the reason you highlight. Once you have private elements in the chain you do have to start doing all this otherwise pointless internal charging.
Expecting someone to pay for bugs is like buying a new car with a broken gearbox then having to pay for a new gearbox ontop of the initial purchase.
No. A car is a mass produced vehicle. That gives you one standard for what to expect.
Contracting a software project is a one off, bespoke item. Built to your stated requirements (which are unlikely to be perfect in themselves.) It's not rational to have the same expectations as a mass produced item.
A better analogy would be builders building a house based on your drawings. And I hope you ARE a qualified architect.
Now I'm not saying that you wouldn't expect builders to come back and fix flaws. Of course you would. But it wouldn't necessarily come in with the original price. There would be a discussion about who's fault it was that the flaw happened.
But my main point is it's foolish to expect the same flawlessness from a bespoke item built to your specification, and a mass produced item.
Come to that, you could have a car analogy, but it would have to be a custom car, again built to your drawings. And if you expect that not to have flaws...
They should be replaced with consumption based taxes. Comsumption based taxes are *really hard* to cheat, don't contain many loopholes, and are much more equitable across the low income vs high income spectrum.
Absolutely the opposite. In Europe we have "consumption based taxes" on most things. It's called VAT (Value Added Tax). It's widely cheated.
And such taxes are regressive, not progressive. Which means that the poor pay relatively more than the rich. Why? Because of their income, the poor spend a higher proportion just to live.
Don't believe me? It's established fact that they are regressive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_tax
Although given you think companies don't pay taxes, facts may not feature highly in your thinking.
How do I figure? Well I start with the fact we end up paying 40% of what you do on healthcare, and we cover everybody, whilst you have a lot of disenfranchised people as far as healthcare is concerned.
Why is it cheaper? No company profits. No shareholders to pay. And a single organisation has massive bargaining power when it comes to getting prices from suppliers.
Chargemaster? Never heard of one. Why would you need something like that when nothing is charged? Sounds like another salary saved.
One of those Irish subsidiaries has paid no income taxes to any national tax authority for the past five years.
That's because it was already taxed in the country it was earned in. Which almost always wasn't Ireland.
And by the same argument, income tax is payed by employers. Which in the case of many people are the corporations you say don't pay tax...
Soda, diet soda, water, coffee, tea... You've got to drink something. Water coolers or bottles are pretty much always there if soda is provided.