Wait a second -- after carefully checking the calendar, it has been revealed to me that this is NOT April, but July. So I am confused.
Not to mention that there is little to no money doing computer repair these days. With computers so cheap these days, it does not make sense to spend more than a few bucks on repair. But that would mean that the repairman won't make much bucks either.
Some years back I had taken my CD player into a repair shop for repairs. There it sat forever. Several months later I went there to ask for it back.
When I got it home, I took it apart (it still did not work) and noted that half the parts had be gutted out.
I'll do my own frelling repairs if I want to bother with doing them at all. Usually, I'll just throw the thing out and buy something new. In the case of computers, I'll just gut them myself rather than leaving it around for the repairman to do the same.
Do we even need anything else? If you are talking ATM machines, what's wrong with a good ole password? If we are talking ID, we have that already.
If you want to ID criminals, we already have fingerprints and face shots. Why would that not be good enough? The way I see it, slapping iris patterns into massive databases will not buy anything more definitive in IDing people, and will only increase the risk of the compromise of our privacy and our freedom.
Someone could go to a public place with a good enough of a camera-telescopic lens setup and grab iris patterns left, right, and center. If iris patterns are being used seriously at all, that's the functional equivalent of being able to read the social security numbers of strangers as they pass you by.
Of course, no one will think of all the hideous ways this can be abused until it's already firmly entrenched in the infrastructure. Watch "Minority Report" to get a whiff of *some* of the possible abuses. Use your imagination to dream up a thousand more.
With fingerprints, you need direct contact with something to lift those -- you cannot so causally lift them in a public place without serious effort, if at all. With iris patterns, any joker with a camera can now steal the ID of thousands of people for "free".
Nope, iris scans, while sounding cool technically, is a really bad idea to put into practice.
Considering many DLs these days have holograms built in, etc, DLs are not that easy to fake.
And as the need arises, easier ways will be found to fake the iris. For instance, I could put that pattern on a pair of glasses, printed paper, or some other low-tech means. Not hard to fake at all.
Iris scanners can be easily and obviously foiled by contacts. Indeed, I could easily take on the identity of another person by taking a high-res picture of that person and copy his retinal pattern to a set of contact lenses. Or even easier -- just print out a life-sized picture of said person's eyes.
Iris scans are a bad idea. Not to mention what someone could do if the database of iris patterns were to be compromised.
Oh, but it would give many a great false sense of security.
As far as Security is concerned, nothing beats a well-chosen password. And if your password becomes compromised, you can easily change that. If, on the other hand, someone steals your irises, you can't change that so easily -- unless you are now willing to wear contact lenses as the result of iris identity theft!!!!
If anyone still thinks after reading this that iris scans are a good idea, I'll be more than happy to take your picture with my 10 megapixel camera!!!!:-)
I guess that depends on what you mean by "responsible"...;->
That said, how many _responsible_ gun owners are there in the US?
Anybody got any idea what % of firearms are owned by people who would, say, qualify for a carry concealed permit?
I can't help but suspect (and, feel free to correct me) that an awful lot of firearms in the US are owned by criminals...Seems like certain types of criminals would have very serious incentives to tool up.
All the more reason to promote responsible gun ownership.
We can play games with the semantics, but I think everyone knows or can conceive what a responsible gun owner would be like.
Oh, and for the record, there should be no need to get permits for concealed carry. That's giving the government too much control over what should be your inalienable right. You should be able to carry responsibly a gun anyway you see fit. If you screw up, well, that's a different story.
IMO there is no such thing as "Responsible Gun Ownership" for most people. Thats just an utopia, at the same level of "we should ban all arms in the whole world". For each people capable of that, you've got 100 short fused, highly temperamental guys who would put a bullet in the head of a guy they happend to have a traffic accident with.
I think that more guns mean more deaths by accidental discharges, more "criminal takes citizen gun, kills citizen with it".
Most people who have/want to have a gun are not willing to go through the extensive training that should be done to make sure they guy really comprehends the responsibility of having a tool capable of killing a human being with just moving a finger.
Heck! There are tons of cases of police officers killing/injuring people by mistake. And those guys are trained in the use of firearms!! Don't want to know what the untrained would do!
And if everyone and her mother was carrying a 45, police officers would be scared shitless (with a reason) and shoot every civie that makes a sudden move after being stopped for speeding.
But thats my opinion, of course.
I would point out the success of Swiss Gun Ownership as a fine example of how Responsible Gun Ownership can be done and why it's not a utopian ideal.
the strong counter argument is that while firearm ownership might somewhat lower the crime rate, it probably would raise the deadly outcome of a crime.
some criminals might be scared of armed citizens, but others, more despaired, or more sociopathic, would just shoot first, giving the victim no chance to defend himself.
i don't know about you, but i'd rather lose my purse than my life.
Surely, that is one possible scenario, but then there may be others around that would instantly shoot the man who shot someone in cold blood..
Personally, it is curious to note that I have never been mugged or bullied by street types since being a kid.
However, what I see today -- and fear the most -- is not your average street criminal, but the police, and random attempts by "ordinary individuals" to get them to turn on me simply because they don't like the way I look.
Some people just hate it if you don't look the way they do, think the way they do, or act the way they do. When they see someone different, they will go out of their way to give them hell. And the easiest way they can accomplish that is to dial 911 and claim that I "look suspicious" or I "look like I am up to something".
Then I am left to deal with cops who are responding to these hateful calls, and typically they themselves have issues.
Meanwhile, my peace has been distrubed, and not only that, but my entire family.
Perhaps a little less emphasis on dialing 911 all the time and more emphasis on responsible gun ownership is the answer to that. Then, if you actually *see* a person commiting an actual crime, you yourself can take action. And if said person never does anything wrong, no blood is lost.
That way, you'd need fewer cops on beat, and than then select higher-quality police officers to repsond intelligently to situations as opposed to those who respond with an "arrest-first" -- or ever worse, a "shoot-first" mentality.
The best way to control crime is to promote responsible gun ownership.
I disagree. Not that I don't think promoting responsible gun ownership is not worthwhile. I just don't think it will have a strong affect upon levels of violent crime in an area. The most effective way to combat violence is by attacking the justification for it. Sociology has pretty well demonstrated that the most effective deterrent is moral. The strongest moral justification for violent crime (wealth disparity) also happens to be the single strongest correlation with violent crime in the world. Reduce wealth disparity and violent crime drops dramatically. Sadly, that means certain things most libertarians oppose.
Basically, wealth is consolidating. The more money a person has, the more likely they are to make more money, because they can leverage their existing wealth to make more. Disparity constantly increases and each generation gives money to the next making it hereditary. Some countries have solved this with wealth taxes or very high inheritance taxes. It gives people a more even amount of money going into life, so people don't feel life is so unfair and consequently they commit fewer acts of violence. The other main solution, is socialism. It taxes the rich more than the poor (or should) and provides wealth (like healthcare) to everyone.
I would have to disagree with your disagreement.
Wealth disparity is not the cause of crime. Wealth deprivation is. Liberals always try to blur this not-so-subtle distinction, but it's truly bogus to think that the wealth differential causes crime.
For instance, if wealth disparity was a causative factor, why don't you see a lot of middle-class types getting violent with the millionaires in the world?
What you see instead is that those who cannot meet their basic needs tend to turn more to violence as an option, and it has everything to do with deprivation of basic needs, and nothing to do with the so-called "wealth disparity".
As further proof, you may look at the violence situation in many poor African countries, where nearly everyone is at the same level of deprivation. Since there is little disparity in income -- everyone's poor -- why is there so much more crime, and much more violent crime to boot?
The liberals in this country, just like many in politics, wants an easy thing to point to, because it easier to whine about "wealth disparity" than it is to fix the *real* causes of crime. It is too easy to cry "raise taxes on the wealthy" as a solution than to face the real work of solving the wealth problems with those without it.
And if decades of this "robbing the weathly to feed the poor" really would work, why do we still have poor in this country, and why are they still so violent?
The real solution to this problem is education. Those impoverished are that way for a reason. They lack the intellectual faculities to change and transform themselves into more productive citizens. And when "attempts" are made to "educate" them, many of those attempts fail because it was not real education with a focus on the realities of the marketplace in mind.
Fixing these problems would be "hard" and require a lot of thought, planning, and political will. It would require a strong focus that would be consistent across decades and generations.
Alas, in our world of "gotta have it now" thinking, you'll never see the real solutions put in place.
Paradoxically, you do see this level of planning when it comes to building new roads in our country. The so-called "Big Dig" project that was recently concluded in Boston took 2 decades of planning from what I understand.
But when it comes to social issues, there is no such political will to wait around for a true solution to take root and prosper. So it all gets reduced to silly emotional appeals and sound-bites that may look appealing on the surface, but as the decades of this nonsense has demonstrated, goes nowhere.
Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument.
Well if you're the one suggesting that gun ownership correlates with crime rates shouldn't you provide some proof? The truth is there is no connection between gun ownership and crime. Crime is a much more complex phenomenon than your description. Personally I think gun ownership should be allowed because there is little harm in individuals owning guns. The real truth is that high emissions automobiles are much worse than handguns.
I think you're right on about well-armed honest citizens damping down the crime rate. Make criminals think twice about purse snatchings and home-invasions.
The other lovely argument against gun control is plain-old logistics. It's too late. I could be a bit off on the numbers, but aren't there actually now more firearms in the US than citizens? Trying to enforce gun control laws is closing the barn door after the horse is long since gone.
Besides the barn door "problem", another very good reason to have widespread and open gun ownership is that it makes us as a nation far less likely to be the subject of invasion. No country would dare consider invading another when they know the number of guns outnumber the number of citizens!
Of course, everyone forgets that aspect, because everyone has grown complacent to the realities of the world over the decades.
So Widespread Responsible Gun Onwership has benefits most have not even thought of. It keeps foreign governments at bay from ever consider invasion, and -- to a certain extent, at least -- it also helps keep our own government in check.
I don't care what you are or are not. You have logic behind you, and that's what is important.
I think one of the big boons to allowing (hell, even encouraging) gun ownership is confidence and independence. People who have a gun, even if they never use (or plan to) will probably feel themselves a lot more empowered than your average "sheeple" would. That confidence impacts nearly everything we touch.
It is a shame logic is so rare a gift.
Logic. Yes, it would seem logic is lost in the political and social arena. Logic, Reasoning, Critical Thinking -- but you see, Logic and Rationality are not really taught and encouraged in our public schools. If they were, we'd be living in a MUCH different country.
The sad truth is that a rational thinking populace is a terror to those in power. The whole Iraq and Afghanistan wars would not have been possible if even 30% of the populace were rational.
Also, those in power are even more in terror of a populace that both can think and are also armed to the teeth. Why, we may actually take issue to our tax dollars being squandered, or even having to be forced to pay taxes at all at gun-point!
But I digress.
High-crime places like DC and others will of course be against more people owning guns, because they see the gun itself as "the problem", when it's only the symptom of another problem -- one that is much more difficult to fix. The cheating solution is to take everyone's guns away in hopes of being able to subject the errant populace to oppression, but that approach has two flaws:
Oppression will only exerbate the problems, not solve them,
The criminal element will still have the guns, and will become even more embolden to use them.
Limits on government power. What a dream. Every since the Civil War, the Federal government has been getting very involved in our personal lives. How ironic that in the Federal Government's "efforts" to "free the slaves", it actually wound up imprisoning us all. State sovereignty was compromised.
There's so many areas the feds need to butt out of. In many ways we've become a single-state nation. Just a couple of more steps now, with Real ID, Homeland Insecurity, etc.
One Nation Under Government, with Servitude and Injustice for all.
The best way to control crime is to promote responsible gun ownership. For those cities with high violent crime rates, if a criminal had reason to suspect many if not most were packing concealed iron, he'd be a lot less likely to commit a crime. And if he did, well...
Besides, everyone knows that if you make laws prohibiting gun ownership, that only affects law-abiding citizens. The criminals always manages to have guns anyway, thus leaving the law-abider at a severe disadvantage.
Responsible Gun Ownership is the way to go, and will result in less crime, lessen the need for police (which themselves figure into the crime component), and fix a host of other ills.
Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument. And no, I am NOT a conservative -- I am a Libertarian.
It works out in cases where you don't have heavy performance demands. Of course, no one is willing to bet that if you need the performance, 5 virtual boxes will be as fast as 5 real boxes. In that case, you've no choice but to go with 5 real boxes.
Most situations are not that compute intensive, so you can get away with virtualization. Those problem domains would work well with virtualization. But there is no substitute for live iron when you really need the performance.
As someone who does a daily commute on the order of 100 km, I do note all kinds of drivers on the roadways. Some of them scare me because they engage in lane shifts in a very dangerous manner just to gain a few car length's advantage.
I rarely see bumper stickers on the cars of these crazy drivers, though.
On the other hand, I've got tons of bumper stickers on my car, and yet I consider myself a very safe driver, as is evidence by the fact I have not had a serious accident in 30 years. I always try to maintain a buffer zone -- which has nothing to do with territory, but giving myself sufficient reaction time.
Where I do get pissed is when someone takes advantage of my buffer zone needlessly. The temptation is to tailgate to prevent that, but then that would increase my chances of an accident. And so frustration ensues.
But I do consider that I am an adult and will not fall prey of the puerile antics I observe in other drivers every day.
Having said that, I have work out driving to a fine science over the years. I usually see an accident about to happen and am able to either circumvent it or avoid it. And thus my clean accident record.
All this from a guy who has over 10 bumper stickers on his car! A Lexus, no less!!!!:-)
A colleague of mine has created this wonderful system around Puppet that now allows him to spin-up a fully-configured server in just minutes.
In our operation, virtual servers would NOT cut the mustard. They are nice for development and QA -- maybe -- but when you are dealing with thousands of simultaneous users, you need real iron, not virtual.
Ah, but you are forgetting about the HUGH trade imbalance, the thing that really matters. If more *hard goods* are flowing into this country than are flowing out, what happens to us when those hard goods are either cut off or are too expensive to afford?
You will see all those rosy stats created by the US gov go bust.
It's very simple, really. If you are the producer of hard goods, you will always have the upper hand. China can shift to selling in the EU, providing for their own internally, selling in other markets, or all of the above.
Since we don't produce as many hard goods, what do we do? Oh, I know! We put our blinders on and believe in the US stats! Yeah, that'll do it!
"Maybe if we could talk luxury manufacturers to send free watches, cars, clothes, etc to run down areas in the middle east, would that take the wind out of their sails?"
I know you meant that "tongue in cheek", but really that's the annoying thing about idealists. They are NOT going to be bought off by materialism. They want their "70 virgins in heaven", and by jove they are willing to blow themselves sky high to get it.:-)
But the US bears the heavier side of the guilt, because for decades the US has been fiddling around in the affairs of other countries and governments -- a covert op here, an assassination there, creating instability in key places with the hopes of maintaining the reigns of hegemony.
People hate being bullied and manipulated, and will fight back eventually. Alas, it's an innocent for an innocent. Since the US made their innocents suffer, they now want to make our innocents suffer in like-kind. A war on the innocent will never be "won" until there are no innocent people left to kill.
But the governments of the world will never ever "get it." And so, we need a better solution in place.
Nevermind the so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)" that poorer countries are purported to possess by the richer countries. What about the Weapons of Planetary Destruction (WPDs) that the Superpowers of the world held over all of our heads (and still do?) I mean, the whole MAD program in the US was bit of a misnomer -- it should've been called "Planetary Assured Destruction", or PAD, not "Mutually Assured Destruction." I mean, how many times do you really need to blow the planet up? Does it really make sense to have 10,000 nukes when 1000 would end all civilized life in the world?
And did anyone miss the "Dr. Strangelove" scenario (well, possible; who knows for sure?) in the US with the plane loaded with nukes being flown without authorization over US's own soil? They all try to sell us on "incompetence", but what is really going on here? If the US is that incompetent with its own nukes, why the hell worry over some stupid plans when all the would-be terrorists have to do is walk up to an army depot in the US and just take them? Or maybe some of the generals in the US have truly gone a little "funny in the head."
Yes, my friends. Weapons of Planetary Destruction is what we should worry about, not these silly distractions about silly poor terrorists who can do more effective terror blowing themselves up with a cheap homemade chemical bomb in a public place than ever worry about going through the acrimony and difficulty of building a nuke! The whole "nuclear terrorism" scare is just that -- a scare. Something used to scare all of us into giving up even more of our rights than they've already taken, and to justify yet another unwarranted war in the Middle East where even more poor innocent lives will be killed and blown up by the terrorism of rich nations.
And maybe they'll come a knocking at my door and whisk me off to Guantanamo Bay where they'll extract the "truth" out me using their latest and finest "interrogation techniques" (torture, for the mentally-challenged).
Gotta love the Sweet ole' US of A. Land of the "Free", Home of the "Brave".
"According to a leading US researcher. The digital designs, found in heavily encrypted computer files in Switzerland, are believed to be in the possession of the US authorities and..."
"Heavily encrypted?" What does that mean? Couldn't be all that heavy if the encryption was broken, right?
Oh, perhaps they mean Hollywood-style encryption! In nearly every Hollywood movie you ever see that contains anything about encryption, the encryption is always "heavy" and yet broken long before the movie ends. Since this is probably the only exposure to "encryption" most of the public sees, the public must have a very warped idea of what encryption is all about!
It always amazes me that encryption that should take longer than the Age of the Universe to break is "broken" in just a few minutes by some "super" kid that can barely even spell the word!
Maybe I should do a website on "Hollywood Mathematics" along with the one I want to do on "Hollywood Physics"...
Well, for me, that "Diamonds are forever" crap is just that. Diamonds may be "forever", but marriages certainly are not. This divorce I am going through is the most challenging thing in my life, and I've had some pretty nasty challenges. She is trying to take me for every penny and rape me financially. And it all began 16 years ago witht he purchase of that diamond ring.
My cynicism aside, jewerly in general is woefully overrated, with HUGH markups. Kind of a shame, because you'd think they'd make great investment devices. Better to use them for cool electronic devices like quantum computing!
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Not to mention that there is little to no money doing computer repair these days. With computers so cheap these days, it does not make sense to spend more than a few bucks on repair. But that would mean that the repairman won't make much bucks either.
Some years back I had taken my CD player into a repair shop for repairs. There it sat forever. Several months later I went there to ask for it back.
When I got it home, I took it apart (it still did not work) and noted that half the parts had be gutted out.
I'll do my own frelling repairs if I want to bother with doing them at all. Usually, I'll just throw the thing out and buy something new. In the case of computers, I'll just gut them myself rather than leaving it around for the repairman to do the same.
If you want to ID criminals, we already have fingerprints and face shots. Why would that not be good enough? The way I see it, slapping iris patterns into massive databases will not buy anything more definitive in IDing people, and will only increase the risk of the compromise of our privacy and our freedom.
Someone could go to a public place with a good enough of a camera-telescopic lens setup and grab iris patterns left, right, and center. If iris patterns are being used seriously at all, that's the functional equivalent of being able to read the social security numbers of strangers as they pass you by.
Of course, no one will think of all the hideous ways this can be abused until it's already firmly entrenched in the infrastructure. Watch "Minority Report" to get a whiff of *some* of the possible abuses. Use your imagination to dream up a thousand more.
With fingerprints, you need direct contact with something to lift those -- you cannot so causally lift them in a public place without serious effort, if at all. With iris patterns, any joker with a camera can now steal the ID of thousands of people for "free".
Nope, iris scans, while sounding cool technically, is a really bad idea to put into practice.
And as the need arises, easier ways will be found to fake the iris. For instance, I could put that pattern on a pair of glasses, printed paper, or some other low-tech means. Not hard to fake at all.
Iris scans are a bad idea. Not to mention what someone could do if the database of iris patterns were to be compromised.
Oh, but it would give many a great false sense of security.
As far as Security is concerned, nothing beats a well-chosen password. And if your password becomes compromised, you can easily change that. If, on the other hand, someone steals your irises, you can't change that so easily -- unless you are now willing to wear contact lenses as the result of iris identity theft!!!!
If anyone still thinks after reading this that iris scans are a good idea, I'll be more than happy to take your picture with my 10 megapixel camera!!!! :-)
I guess that depends on what you mean by "responsible"... ;->
That said, how many _responsible_ gun owners are there in the US?
Anybody got any idea what % of firearms are owned by people who would, say, qualify for a carry concealed permit?
I can't help but suspect (and, feel free to correct me) that an awful lot of firearms in the US are owned by criminals...Seems like certain types of criminals would have very serious incentives to tool up.
All the more reason to promote responsible gun ownership.
We can play games with the semantics, but I think everyone knows or can conceive what a responsible gun owner would be like.
Oh, and for the record, there should be no need to get permits for concealed carry. That's giving the government too much control over what should be your inalienable right. You should be able to carry responsibly a gun anyway you see fit. If you screw up, well, that's a different story.
Was gun ownership in Iraq responsible?
Why separately when a comprehensive solution can be had?
Perhaps NASA won't forget how to build the Ares V this time around!
IMO there is no such thing as "Responsible Gun Ownership" for most people. Thats just an utopia, at the same level of "we should ban all arms in the whole world". For each people capable of that, you've got 100 short fused, highly temperamental guys who would put a bullet in the head of a guy they happend to have a traffic accident with. I think that more guns mean more deaths by accidental discharges, more "criminal takes citizen gun, kills citizen with it". Most people who have/want to have a gun are not willing to go through the extensive training that should be done to make sure they guy really comprehends the responsibility of having a tool capable of killing a human being with just moving a finger. Heck! There are tons of cases of police officers killing/injuring people by mistake. And those guys are trained in the use of firearms!! Don't want to know what the untrained would do! And if everyone and her mother was carrying a 45, police officers would be scared shitless (with a reason) and shoot every civie that makes a sudden move after being stopped for speeding. But thats my opinion, of course.
I would point out the success of Swiss Gun Ownership as a fine example of how Responsible Gun Ownership can be done and why it's not a utopian ideal.
the strong counter argument is that while firearm ownership might somewhat lower the crime rate, it probably would raise the deadly outcome of a crime.
some criminals might be scared of armed citizens, but others, more despaired, or more sociopathic, would just shoot first, giving the victim no chance to defend himself.
i don't know about you, but i'd rather lose my purse than my life.
Surely, that is one possible scenario, but then there may be others around that would instantly shoot the man who shot someone in cold blood..
Personally, it is curious to note that I have never been mugged or bullied by street types since being a kid.
However, what I see today -- and fear the most -- is not your average street criminal, but the police, and random attempts by "ordinary individuals" to get them to turn on me simply because they don't like the way I look.
Some people just hate it if you don't look the way they do, think the way they do, or act the way they do. When they see someone different, they will go out of their way to give them hell. And the easiest way they can accomplish that is to dial 911 and claim that I "look suspicious" or I "look like I am up to something".
Then I am left to deal with cops who are responding to these hateful calls, and typically they themselves have issues.
Meanwhile, my peace has been distrubed, and not only that, but my entire family.
Perhaps a little less emphasis on dialing 911 all the time and more emphasis on responsible gun ownership is the answer to that. Then, if you actually *see* a person commiting an actual crime, you yourself can take action. And if said person never does anything wrong, no blood is lost.
That way, you'd need fewer cops on beat, and than then select higher-quality police officers to repsond intelligently to situations as opposed to those who respond with an "arrest-first" -- or ever worse, a "shoot-first" mentality.
The best way to control crime is to promote responsible gun ownership.
I disagree. Not that I don't think promoting responsible gun ownership is not worthwhile. I just don't think it will have a strong affect upon levels of violent crime in an area. The most effective way to combat violence is by attacking the justification for it. Sociology has pretty well demonstrated that the most effective deterrent is moral. The strongest moral justification for violent crime (wealth disparity) also happens to be the single strongest correlation with violent crime in the world. Reduce wealth disparity and violent crime drops dramatically. Sadly, that means certain things most libertarians oppose.
Basically, wealth is consolidating. The more money a person has, the more likely they are to make more money, because they can leverage their existing wealth to make more. Disparity constantly increases and each generation gives money to the next making it hereditary. Some countries have solved this with wealth taxes or very high inheritance taxes. It gives people a more even amount of money going into life, so people don't feel life is so unfair and consequently they commit fewer acts of violence. The other main solution, is socialism. It taxes the rich more than the poor (or should) and provides wealth (like healthcare) to everyone.
I would have to disagree with your disagreement.
Wealth disparity is not the cause of crime. Wealth deprivation is. Liberals always try to blur this not-so-subtle distinction, but it's truly bogus to think that the wealth differential causes crime.
For instance, if wealth disparity was a causative factor, why don't you see a lot of middle-class types getting violent with the millionaires in the world?
What you see instead is that those who cannot meet their basic needs tend to turn more to violence as an option, and it has everything to do with deprivation of basic needs, and nothing to do with the so-called "wealth disparity".
As further proof, you may look at the violence situation in many poor African countries, where nearly everyone is at the same level of deprivation. Since there is little disparity in income -- everyone's poor -- why is there so much more crime, and much more violent crime to boot?
The liberals in this country, just like many in politics, wants an easy thing to point to, because it easier to whine about "wealth disparity" than it is to fix the *real* causes of crime. It is too easy to cry "raise taxes on the wealthy" as a solution than to face the real work of solving the wealth problems with those without it.
And if decades of this "robbing the weathly to feed the poor" really would work, why do we still have poor in this country, and why are they still so violent?
The real solution to this problem is education. Those impoverished are that way for a reason. They lack the intellectual faculities to change and transform themselves into more productive citizens. And when "attempts" are made to "educate" them, many of those attempts fail because it was not real education with a focus on the realities of the marketplace in mind.
Fixing these problems would be "hard" and require a lot of thought, planning, and political will. It would require a strong focus that would be consistent across decades and generations.
Alas, in our world of "gotta have it now" thinking, you'll never see the real solutions put in place.
Paradoxically, you do see this level of planning when it comes to building new roads in our country. The so-called "Big Dig" project that was recently concluded in Boston took 2 decades of planning from what I understand.
But when it comes to social issues, there is no such political will to wait around for a true solution to take root and prosper. So it all gets reduced to silly emotional appeals and sound-bites that may look appealing on the surface, but as the decades of this nonsense has demonstrated, goes nowhere.
An
Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument.
Well if you're the one suggesting that gun ownership correlates with crime rates shouldn't you provide some proof? The truth is there is no connection between gun ownership and crime. Crime is a much more complex phenomenon than your description. Personally I think gun ownership should be allowed because there is little harm in individuals owning guns. The real truth is that high emissions automobiles are much worse than handguns.
I thought I dropped a hint by the title.
Check out More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott, where he presents the proof.
I think you're right on about well-armed honest citizens damping down the crime rate. Make criminals think twice about purse snatchings and home-invasions.
The other lovely argument against gun control is plain-old logistics. It's too late. I could be a bit off on the numbers, but aren't there actually now more firearms in the US than citizens? Trying to enforce gun control laws is closing the barn door after the horse is long since gone.
Besides the barn door "problem", another very good reason to have widespread and open gun ownership is that it makes us as a nation far less likely to be the subject of invasion. No country would dare consider invading another when they know the number of guns outnumber the number of citizens!
Of course, everyone forgets that aspect, because everyone has grown complacent to the realities of the world over the decades.
So Widespread Responsible Gun Onwership has benefits most have not even thought of. It keeps foreign governments at bay from ever consider invasion, and -- to a certain extent, at least -- it also helps keep our own government in check.
I don't care what you are or are not. You have logic behind you, and that's what is important.
I think one of the big boons to allowing (hell, even encouraging) gun ownership is confidence and independence. People who have a gun, even if they never use (or plan to) will probably feel themselves a lot more empowered than your average "sheeple" would. That confidence impacts nearly everything we touch.
It is a shame logic is so rare a gift.
Logic. Yes, it would seem logic is lost in the political and social arena. Logic, Reasoning, Critical Thinking -- but you see, Logic and Rationality are not really taught and encouraged in our public schools. If they were, we'd be living in a MUCH different country.
The sad truth is that a rational thinking populace is a terror to those in power. The whole Iraq and Afghanistan wars would not have been possible if even 30% of the populace were rational.
Also, those in power are even more in terror of a populace that both can think and are also armed to the teeth. Why, we may actually take issue to our tax dollars being squandered, or even having to be forced to pay taxes at all at gun-point!
But I digress.
High-crime places like DC and others will of course be against more people owning guns, because they see the gun itself as "the problem", when it's only the symptom of another problem -- one that is much more difficult to fix. The cheating solution is to take everyone's guns away in hopes of being able to subject the errant populace to oppression, but that approach has two flaws:
if that is true, why does the US as a whole, with much more open gun laws, have higher rates of gun crime than the UK?
You are speaking in aggregate when you have to look at the data city-by-city, county-by-county, and state-by-state.
When you look at the data that way, you will clearly see that those areas of our country that have more open gun laws also tend to have less crime.
There's so many areas the feds need to butt out of. In many ways we've become a single-state nation. Just a couple of more steps now, with Real ID, Homeland Insecurity, etc.
One Nation Under Government, with Servitude and Injustice for all.
Besides, everyone knows that if you make laws prohibiting gun ownership, that only affects law-abiding citizens. The criminals always manages to have guns anyway, thus leaving the law-abider at a severe disadvantage.
Responsible Gun Ownership is the way to go, and will result in less crime, lessen the need for police (which themselves figure into the crime component), and fix a host of other ills.
Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument. And no, I am NOT a conservative -- I am a Libertarian.
Most situations are not that compute intensive, so you can get away with virtualization. Those problem domains would work well with virtualization. But there is no substitute for live iron when you really need the performance.
I rarely see bumper stickers on the cars of these crazy drivers, though.
On the other hand, I've got tons of bumper stickers on my car, and yet I consider myself a very safe driver, as is evidence by the fact I have not had a serious accident in 30 years. I always try to maintain a buffer zone -- which has nothing to do with territory, but giving myself sufficient reaction time.
Where I do get pissed is when someone takes advantage of my buffer zone needlessly. The temptation is to tailgate to prevent that, but then that would increase my chances of an accident. And so frustration ensues.
But I do consider that I am an adult and will not fall prey of the puerile antics I observe in other drivers every day.
Having said that, I have work out driving to a fine science over the years. I usually see an accident about to happen and am able to either circumvent it or avoid it. And thus my clean accident record.
All this from a guy who has over 10 bumper stickers on his car! A Lexus, no less!!!! :-)
In our operation, virtual servers would NOT cut the mustard. They are nice for development and QA -- maybe -- but when you are dealing with thousands of simultaneous users, you need real iron, not virtual.
You will see all those rosy stats created by the US gov go bust.
It's very simple, really. If you are the producer of hard goods, you will always have the upper hand. China can shift to selling in the EU, providing for their own internally, selling in other markets, or all of the above.
Since we don't produce as many hard goods, what do we do? Oh, I know! We put our blinders on and believe in the US stats! Yeah, that'll do it!
I know you meant that "tongue in cheek", but really that's the annoying thing about idealists. They are NOT going to be bought off by materialism. They want their "70 virgins in heaven", and by jove they are willing to blow themselves sky high to get it. :-)
But the US bears the heavier side of the guilt, because for decades the US has been fiddling around in the affairs of other countries and governments -- a covert op here, an assassination there, creating instability in key places with the hopes of maintaining the reigns of hegemony.
People hate being bullied and manipulated, and will fight back eventually. Alas, it's an innocent for an innocent. Since the US made their innocents suffer, they now want to make our innocents suffer in like-kind. A war on the innocent will never be "won" until there are no innocent people left to kill.
But the governments of the world will never ever "get it." And so, we need a better solution in place.
And did anyone miss the "Dr. Strangelove" scenario (well, possible; who knows for sure?) in the US with the plane loaded with nukes being flown without authorization over US's own soil? They all try to sell us on "incompetence", but what is really going on here? If the US is that incompetent with its own nukes, why the hell worry over some stupid plans when all the would-be terrorists have to do is walk up to an army depot in the US and just take them? Or maybe some of the generals in the US have truly gone a little "funny in the head."
Yes, my friends. Weapons of Planetary Destruction is what we should worry about, not these silly distractions about silly poor terrorists who can do more effective terror blowing themselves up with a cheap homemade chemical bomb in a public place than ever worry about going through the acrimony and difficulty of building a nuke! The whole "nuclear terrorism" scare is just that -- a scare. Something used to scare all of us into giving up even more of our rights than they've already taken, and to justify yet another unwarranted war in the Middle East where even more poor innocent lives will be killed and blown up by the terrorism of rich nations.
And maybe they'll come a knocking at my door and whisk me off to Guantanamo Bay where they'll extract the "truth" out me using their latest and finest "interrogation techniques" (torture, for the mentally-challenged).
Gotta love the Sweet ole' US of A. Land of the "Free", Home of the "Brave".
"Heavily encrypted?" What does that mean? Couldn't be all that heavy if the encryption was broken, right?
Oh, perhaps they mean Hollywood-style encryption! In nearly every Hollywood movie you ever see that contains anything about encryption, the encryption is always "heavy" and yet broken long before the movie ends. Since this is probably the only exposure to "encryption" most of the public sees, the public must have a very warped idea of what encryption is all about!
It always amazes me that encryption that should take longer than the Age of the Universe to break is "broken" in just a few minutes by some "super" kid that can barely even spell the word!
Maybe I should do a website on "Hollywood Mathematics" along with the one I want to do on "Hollywood Physics"...
My cynicism aside, jewerly in general is woefully overrated, with HUGH markups. Kind of a shame, because you'd think they'd make great investment devices. Better to use them for cool electronic devices like quantum computing!