I can decide to go somewhere, jump in my truck and be at my destination in about 10 minutes most of the time.
With a decent bus service you could do the same, except you might have to walk a few hundred yards to a bus stop.
With the bus I have to pay attention to the time, wait for the bus out in the weather, take an extra hour of time getting to within a couple blocks of my destination, normally arrive there an hour early, etc..
That just means you've got a crappy bus service, it's nothing inherent in the idea of buses.
Hold on, so if in Latin times I walked up to a high class prostitute and said "can I have a freebie because I don't get my salary til next week" she couldn't say "no"?
For instance I remembering hearing that shaking your head to mean 'no' is a reflex you (or your ancestors!) learn at your mother's breast - it's the most direct way to disengage from drinking when you don't want any more.
I'd have thought a short sharp bite would be more effective, although I can see that would cause social difficulties in adult life.
There is more cognitive dissonance with the "guns are bad" people on this issue, since they love seeing men with "military grade" assault weapons at airports, and enthusiastically support air marshals armed with "automatic pistols" with "high-capacity" magazines
It is not "cognitive dissonance" to admire a chef finely chopping vegetables with a large razor sharp kitchen knife, but to be fearful when you see one in the hands of a maniac running naked down the street.
Guns are tools. They belong in the hands of people who have a use for them, not perpetually adolescent man-boys who think an AR15 with laser sights and a bipod makes their dick bigger.
I think the primary explanation is that fully automatic assault rifles are sexy, in the eyes of gun-nuts. They want their big toys to play with. They are never realistically going to stage an armed revolution, never mind assassinate a politician, it's just more fun running around a forest shooting an AK47 or AR15 than a handgun.
It's like asking a car-nut why a Ferrari's better than a Ford, when both will get you to the shops and back the same.
You can't stop murder. But you can make the consequences severe enough to strongly discourage it. Any law's the same. This is regardless of whether you think the law is right.
Yes, because the first automobile rolled off a perfectly tuned assembly line with 500 horsepower and heated leather bucket seats...
The first light bulb cost a few pennies to make and could be seen a half mile away...
The first mobile phone could fit in your pocket and play Angry Birds...
Yep, no need to get excited folks.
The rather obvious point you're missing is that we have had guns for hundreds of years, and know perfectly well how to make a decent one. It is pure fantasy to suppose that there will be such advances in plastic technology that it will become trivial to make a properly functioning gun from it.
Don't care if OP likes Mr. Wilson or not, but spreading false information is simply childish. Cody Wilson is not an "anarchist". He is a CRYPTO-ANARCHIST. There is a tremendous difference. I would have thought the/. crowd would know the difference, but I guess ignorance knows no boundaries.
Agreed, crypto-anarchists are basically anarcho-capitalists which is another way of saying libertarian (in the US sense).
I know slashdot readers don't like to use these terms, but true anarchists are left wing while crypto-anarchists are right wing.
Most left wing thinkers would classify anything based on capitalism (such as anarcho-capitalism) as right wing by definition, and say that the term "anarchist" has been hijacked to create confusion. It is mainly in the US that the free market/capitalism/the exploitation of the poor by the rich is seen as the best way to organise humankind.
A system without government which results in the rich becoming powerful without hindrance is not anarchism, as that depends on all three of liberty, equality and fraternity, and no coercive power structure at all. In the absence of unlimited shared resources and wealth, and without the democratic expression of the majority to correct things, the rich will always have power.
Now militia style groups mostly in rural areas are going to be recruiting geeks to operate the 3D printers.
Anyone fancy making up a t-shirt saying: "Will print for moonshine"
And after the geeks have printed a couple of weapons, they get to "volunteer" to be target practice.
You already can make assassination weapons from schematics from Internet - if you have skills and good understanding of physics involved.
This is why 3D printed guns are a game changer: the average Joe Blow can get himself a gun without needing any sort of gunsmithing skills.
Another game changer: you can melt them when the crime is done. No hassles with getting rid of the gun, just melt it. Traces on bullets won't have any value then.
Even better you could recycle it in your 3D printer, thereby making your murder a green one. Ethical pluses and minuses.
Heck, and do you know how many "real guns" have accidentally made it through security. Hundreds....
Hundreds out of how million journeys? We know the probability must be really low or else there would have been more plane hijackings since 9/11 if terrorists had a reasonable chance of getting a gun through.
Once you've got an armed terrorist gang on a plane, I don't care how strong the cockpit door is, the terrorists will get their publicity one way or another when the plane has to land.
I think the bigger issue about the 3d printed gun is combining the fact that a nearly unskilled person could make it with the fact that security scanners will have a difficult time detecting it.
You are assuming that an all-plastic gun will ever be viable as a serious weapon. Presumably, someone somewhere would be manufacturing undetectable guns for spies/hitmen/terrorists/people exercising their Constitutional rights already if that were true.
While you have violent criminals, those of us with no particular horse in the gun race would prefer that they were unarmed.
The thing I don't understand is why, if I were a criminal in a society where everyone was armed, I wouldn't just ambush people with a group of friends and shoot them dead before they even know they're in danger, never mind giving them a chance to draw their weapon.. Oh, that's right, I probably already do.
I doubt that drug dealers who shoot each other play by the Queensberry rules, nor by the Wild West duelling mythology beloved of movies.
To add to this, the UK is considering a ban on "pointed kitchen knives", the "reason", "no one needs a pointed kitchen knife",
No one needs a large pointed kitchen knife in public. If you're a chef on the way to work, fine, you can have it in your tool roll, in the same way that lumberjacks can carry their chainsaws to work in the back of their pick-ups, but not down the pub.
Slashdot Mirror
I can decide to go somewhere, jump in my truck and be at my destination in about 10 minutes most of the time.
With a decent bus service you could do the same, except you might have to walk a few hundred yards to a bus stop.
With the bus I have to pay attention to the time, wait for the bus out in the weather, take an extra hour of time getting to within a couple blocks of my destination, normally arrive there an hour early, etc..
That just means you've got a crappy bus service, it's nothing inherent in the idea of buses.
That's just pure boring. Isn't the whole point of such a car that you drive it yourself for your enjoyment?
If you want enjoyment buy a motorbike. Cars are for moving people and things from A to B.
Hold on, so if in Latin times I walked up to a high class prostitute and said "can I have a freebie because I don't get my salary til next week" she couldn't say "no"?
why would we assume life began on Earth in the first place?
Occam's Razor: we only know one place where there is life, and that's Earth.
To say "obviously the universe is full of life so it could easily have come from elsewhere" is begging the question.
Obviously, the first language was the one taught by God to Adam and Eve. All other languages evolved from that one language.
What, the English of the King James Bible?
I always knew civilization started in England.
For instance I remembering hearing that shaking your head to mean 'no' is a reflex you (or your ancestors!) learn at your mother's breast - it's the most direct way to disengage from drinking when you don't want any more.
I'd have thought a short sharp bite would be more effective, although I can see that would cause social difficulties in adult life.
It's a lower level version of saying that "mother" in English is similar to "mater" in Latin.
This is a pretty lame summary. If there are words preserved from the Ice Age, list like five of them!
My hovercraft is full of eels.
OK, that's 6.
Google translate says it means "wobble pussy". I think OP has issues if that's what he calls his dear old mum.
Japanese is rife with homophones
Really? I thought it was quite a gay-friendly culture?
There's no snob like a geek who's learned Japanese.
How could you tell it was Portuguese?
Because it looked like someone writing Spanish while drunk?
There is more cognitive dissonance with the "guns are bad" people on this issue, since they love seeing men with "military grade" assault weapons at airports, and enthusiastically support air marshals armed with "automatic pistols" with "high-capacity" magazines
It is not "cognitive dissonance" to admire a chef finely chopping vegetables with a large razor sharp kitchen knife, but to be fearful when you see one in the hands of a maniac running naked down the street.
Guns are tools. They belong in the hands of people who have a use for them, not perpetually adolescent man-boys who think an AR15 with laser sights and a bipod makes their dick bigger.
It's like asking a car-nut why a Ferrari's better than a Ford, when both will get you to the shops and back the same.
You can't stop home made guns
You can't stop murder. But you can make the consequences severe enough to strongly discourage it. Any law's the same. This is regardless of whether you think the law is right.
Yes, because the first automobile rolled off a perfectly tuned assembly line with 500 horsepower and heated leather bucket seats...
The first light bulb cost a few pennies to make and could be seen a half mile away...
The first mobile phone could fit in your pocket and play Angry Birds...
Yep, no need to get excited folks.
The rather obvious point you're missing is that we have had guns for hundreds of years, and know perfectly well how to make a decent one. It is pure fantasy to suppose that there will be such advances in plastic technology that it will become trivial to make a properly functioning gun from it.
Don't care if OP likes Mr. Wilson or not, but spreading false information is simply childish. Cody Wilson is not an "anarchist". He is a CRYPTO-ANARCHIST. There is a tremendous difference. I would have thought the /. crowd would know the difference, but I guess ignorance knows no boundaries.
Agreed, crypto-anarchists are basically anarcho-capitalists which is another way of saying libertarian (in the US sense).
I know slashdot readers don't like to use these terms, but true anarchists are left wing while crypto-anarchists are right wing.
Most left wing thinkers would classify anything based on capitalism (such as anarcho-capitalism) as right wing by definition, and say that the term "anarchist" has been hijacked to create confusion. It is mainly in the US that the free market/capitalism/the exploitation of the poor by the rich is seen as the best way to organise humankind.
A system without government which results in the rich becoming powerful without hindrance is not anarchism, as that depends on all three of liberty, equality and fraternity, and no coercive power structure at all. In the absence of unlimited shared resources and wealth, and without the democratic expression of the majority to correct things, the rich will always have power.
Now militia style groups mostly in rural areas are going to be recruiting geeks to operate the 3D printers. Anyone fancy making up a t-shirt saying: "Will print for moonshine"
And after the geeks have printed a couple of weapons, they get to "volunteer" to be target practice.
Catapults don't really have the convenience and they certainly don't have the fear-inducing capacity of a gun.
You already can make assassination weapons from schematics from Internet - if you have skills and good understanding of physics involved.
This is why 3D printed guns are a game changer: the average Joe Blow can get himself a gun without needing any sort of gunsmithing skills.
Another game changer: you can melt them when the crime is done. No hassles with getting rid of the gun, just melt it. Traces on bullets won't have any value then.
Even better you could recycle it in your 3D printer, thereby making your murder a green one. Ethical pluses and minuses.
Heck, and do you know how many "real guns" have accidentally made it through security. Hundreds....
Hundreds out of how million journeys? We know the probability must be really low or else there would have been more plane hijackings since 9/11 if terrorists had a reasonable chance of getting a gun through.
Once you've got an armed terrorist gang on a plane, I don't care how strong the cockpit door is, the terrorists will get their publicity one way or another when the plane has to land.
I think the bigger issue about the 3d printed gun is combining the fact that a nearly unskilled person could make it with the fact that security scanners will have a difficult time detecting it.
You are assuming that an all-plastic gun will ever be viable as a serious weapon. Presumably, someone somewhere would be manufacturing undetectable guns for spies/hitmen/terrorists/people exercising their Constitutional rights already if that were true.
In many ways, owning and USING a gun is the ultimate vote
It's certainly a lot easier than all that pesky democracy stuff, if you're a few rounds short of a full clip in the brains department.
The thing I don't understand is why, if I were a criminal in a society where everyone was armed, I wouldn't just ambush people with a group of friends and shoot them dead before they even know they're in danger, never mind giving them a chance to draw their weapon.. Oh, that's right, I probably already do.
I doubt that drug dealers who shoot each other play by the Queensberry rules, nor by the Wild West duelling mythology beloved of movies.
To add to this, the UK is considering a ban on "pointed kitchen knives", the "reason", "no one needs a pointed kitchen knife",
No one needs a large pointed kitchen knife in public. If you're a chef on the way to work, fine, you can have it in your tool roll, in the same way that lumberjacks can carry their chainsaws to work in the back of their pick-ups, but not down the pub.