And if we took reasonable precautions like background checks and limited magazine size to no more than 10 rounds, it would greatly inconvenience people that want to do this.
No, not really. I suspect the worst gun massacre is yet to come, and it will involve the use of a shotgun (with magazine size less than 10 rounds) in a crowded area. 5.56/.223 is a weak round, comparatively speaking. Its goal is to incapacitate (i.e. wound - not necessarily kill) an enemy soldier potentially wearing light body armor at distances of 100-200 yards. It is a poor choice for someone whose goal is to cause as many deaths as possible in the minimal amount of time - a shotgun will be much more efficient for that.
That is just an argument for not letting most people have shotguns either.
The whole assault rifle/magazine size issue is a red herring anyway. You could go on a perfectly deadly shooting spree with a large calibre automatic pistol, but any talk of handgun control is, of course, taboo in the US.
Just because you can't make society 100% safe doesn't mean you should abandon all attempts to make it safer.
I know the rugged individualists on slashdot will just say that safety is a bad thing anyway since it involves "state interference" and that a bit of danger keeps us interested, the only sensible response to which is the customary "go and live in Somalia then".
No, but you don't have to facilitate their craziness. If a paranoid schizophrenic complaining about the voices in his head telling him to behead his mother walked into a DIY shop, they hopefully wouldn't sell him an axe.
We have a law like that in the UK (driving without due care and attention) but it only sort-of works. There are lots of grey areas that can only be worked out with a slow and expensive court procedure. There is outright abuse as well, like a woman arrested for taking a sip of water while waiting in the traffic lights.
Really? I bet she was also distracted and not aware of what was around her (like the cop car next to her).
The official advice is "keep your hands on the wheel at all times". Except, presumably, when changing gear or scratching a distracting itch.
As general advice, it is quite reasonable. You're much more likely to be able to control the car in an emergency if you've got both hands on the steering wheel. Obviously, you can change gear, adjust the air vents, or whatever, you just shouldn't trundle along with only one hand on the wheel because you think it looks cool.
That's bollocks. If you're stopped by traffic cops because you've got a map propped on the steering wheel and you've been weaving all over the road while you tried to read it, or your kids don't have their seatbelts on and are climbing over the driver's head, you will get a ticket for driving without due care and attention/dangerous driving or whatever.
People who use mobile phones for texting while driving aren't being picked on because they're young and techy, they're being asked to conform to the same standards as the rest of us while driving.
Are you seriously suggesting that highly trained fighter pilots are, in fact, less skilled than Joe Quarterpounder texting pictures of his dog being sick while he's getting a blowjob driving his truck home from the pub?
A HUD just gives you an efficient way to view information. It's safer than having to look down at your dashboard to view your speed or some other piece of information, because you will still be able to see what's going on on the road.
The idea of having your speed shown is fine. What would worry me would be if you ended up with the whole dashboard display, rev counter, oil pressure gauge, temperature display, clock, trip meter, odometer, radio/music playlist information, graphic equalizer settings, air conditioning settings, email and text alerts, facebook alerts, tweets, live webcam feeds of slutty blonde cheerleaders, etc.
Oh and this implementation of a speed limit indicator works, you see your speed and the speed limit all the time. You really have to willfully be speeding, you can't
speed "by mistake".
Maybe we're just super-efficient here in the UK, but I have never driven anywhere here where it wasn't perfectly clear what the speed limit was.
Anyone who "accidentally" drives at 95 mph on a motorway where the speed limit is 70 just isn't paying attention. If you don't know that the national speed limit on a motorway is 70mph, you shouldn't be driving here at all.
This is the typical thing with American education, lazy high school, crazy hard work in college (well those that actually earn degrees and not just party.)
I thought that getting a bachelor's degree in the US was about equivalent to leaving high school able to read and write in most other countries. Why are there so many post-graduates otherwise? There is no need to get a Master's or PhD unless you're going to become an academic for most of us.
I've seen countless college graduates who couldn't code for shit. Sure, they could technically code, but they couldn't do it well.
It depends what "well" means. In any field there are people who are better and worse than average at doing something. That doesn't mean that there is some absolute divide between good and bad programmers (or painters, musicians, lawyers, farmers or anything else).
If you think that most jobs are going to require programming, then you're saying that most people are going to be unemployable.
If most jobs will require programming, then computers will be doing that programming. Most people will be unemployed and will have to live lives of leisure with a small element of community service just to keep things relatively sane. Clearly, the computers will have to be owned by the community and not just a few rich oligarchs or else there will be social meltdown.
Mind if I share with you a few insights from AI research ?
1) Nobody is logical, or rational. A rational person would starve in front of the first closed door he finds. Why ? A rational person decides on actions by expected_gain * chance_of_event. Behind the door could be a bear, that would kill you. Sure the chance is tiny, but the cost of dying is -inf... So no matter the chances involved a rational person would never do anything that might cause his death. And every action can cause death. Now this is the extreme version of this argument, but it applies to everything. Rationality doesn't work. Proof that this isn't so can be mailed, in the form of a prolog program that can deal with any chaotic world, with incomplete information (chaotic in the mathematical sense). Note that AI research worldwide spent about 30 years finding such programs, and none have been found.
I think that shows the limitations of AI research more than anything actually useful or true about the world.
The classified ads in the newspaper are a registry of tax evaders that exists out in the open, any seller listed on there would be an easy target for the cops to go after for tax evasion.
HMRC (tax people) already do this here in the UK. It's not the cops you need to worry about when it comes to tax evasion.
No matter what you trade, if it has value, the state will look to control it's function.
Everything that begins free and open inevitably evolves towards lame and bureaucratic as governments and big money corporations become involved. Or, rather, government gets involved at the request of big money corporations.
You can only have freedom and openness when you live as a hunter-gatherer with a small family unit around you.
You're welcome to try that for yourself if you like and see how much fun it is. In the meantime, the rest of us like the benefits of civilisation such as ready access to food and water, somewhere to sleep, transport, education, leisure, culture and so on.
Well state seems to have pretty hard time controling bittorrent. Why do you think it will manage to control bitcoin? Sure, it can declare it illegal, so most honest merchants would probably stop using it just because of that. But if anyone is willing to engage in illegal activities, i think it will be difficult for goverment to stop him using bitcoins.
If anyone is willing to engage in illegal activities, all the state can do is punish them afterwards, bitcoins are irrelevant. If I sell smack for cash or bitcoins, it's the selling smack that's illegal.
The alternative way of looking at that is that the State is simply the legislative and administrative expression of the democratic will of the People, and that if goods are to be owned jointly and equally by all the people, then of course you need to make sure that no one is sneaking more than their fair share; and that, even if you don't have a communistic system and there is still private property, you need to be able to identify assets for tax and redistribution.
I don't imagine this interpretation will go down very well on slashdot.
There are few things more pathetically amusing than a wannabe internet tough guy who is getting worked up by what fucking gaming platform someone uses.
Racism has fuck all to do with power. It has everything to do with bigotry. You can be a powerful racist fuck or you can be a powerless racist fuck.
University kids do not dictate to the rest of us what terms mean. If it has become accepted in universities that racism requires power/authority in order for it to be racism, then what that means is that universities are fucking wrong. Only post adolescent morons would accept such bullshit.
Racism, like sexism, the acquisition and maintenance of wealth, and religious obedience are all ways of the powerful exercising control.
You may deny this if you wish, it just makes you the adolescent moron. I bet you think you are perfectly free to do and be whatever you want?
Slashdot Mirror
And if we took reasonable precautions like background checks and limited magazine size to no more than 10 rounds, it would greatly inconvenience people that want to do this.
No, not really. I suspect the worst gun massacre is yet to come, and it will involve the use of a shotgun (with magazine size less than 10 rounds) in a crowded area. 5.56/.223 is a weak round, comparatively speaking. Its goal is to incapacitate (i.e. wound - not necessarily kill) an enemy soldier potentially wearing light body armor at distances of 100-200 yards. It is a poor choice for someone whose goal is to cause as many deaths as possible in the minimal amount of time - a shotgun will be much more efficient for that.
That is just an argument for not letting most people have shotguns either.
The whole assault rifle/magazine size issue is a red herring anyway. You could go on a perfectly deadly shooting spree with a large calibre automatic pistol, but any talk of handgun control is, of course, taboo in the US.
I know the rugged individualists on slashdot will just say that safety is a bad thing anyway since it involves "state interference" and that a bit of danger keeps us interested, the only sensible response to which is the customary "go and live in Somalia then".
You can't legislate away crazy.
No, but you don't have to facilitate their craziness. If a paranoid schizophrenic complaining about the voices in his head telling him to behead his mother walked into a DIY shop, they hopefully wouldn't sell him an axe.
And a gun's a lot more dangerous than an axe.
Wouldn't it be better if we just let the smart people in our society take all the positions of power instead of dumbfuck politicians?
Well, obviously I'm the smartest person in the whole world so I'll be Prez. You seem fairly bright, so how about Secretary of State for Wars and Shit?
We have a law like that in the UK (driving without due care and attention) but it only sort-of works. There are lots of grey areas that can only be worked out with a slow and expensive court procedure. There is outright abuse as well, like a woman arrested for taking a sip of water while waiting in the traffic lights.
Really? I bet she was also distracted and not aware of what was around her (like the cop car next to her).
The official advice is "keep your hands on the wheel at all times". Except, presumably, when changing gear or scratching a distracting itch.
As general advice, it is quite reasonable. You're much more likely to be able to control the car in an emergency if you've got both hands on the steering wheel. Obviously, you can change gear, adjust the air vents, or whatever, you just shouldn't trundle along with only one hand on the wheel because you think it looks cool.
People who use mobile phones for texting while driving aren't being picked on because they're young and techy, they're being asked to conform to the same standards as the rest of us while driving.
Are you seriously suggesting that highly trained fighter pilots are, in fact, less skilled than Joe Quarterpounder texting pictures of his dog being sick while he's getting a blowjob driving his truck home from the pub?
A HUD just gives you an efficient way to view information. It's safer than having to look down at your dashboard to view your speed or some other piece of information, because you will still be able to see what's going on on the road.
The idea of having your speed shown is fine. What would worry me would be if you ended up with the whole dashboard display, rev counter, oil pressure gauge, temperature display, clock, trip meter, odometer, radio/music playlist information, graphic equalizer settings, air conditioning settings, email and text alerts, facebook alerts, tweets, live webcam feeds of slutty blonde cheerleaders, etc.
a HUD for my motorcycle, with my speed, a little direction arrow before turns
If you're on a motorcycle and you need a computer to tell you when there's a turn or bend coming up...you're doing it wrong.
Speed and revs, fair enough.
Oh and this implementation of a speed limit indicator works, you see your speed and the speed limit all the time. You really have to willfully be speeding, you can't speed "by mistake".
Maybe we're just super-efficient here in the UK, but I have never driven anywhere here where it wasn't perfectly clear what the speed limit was.
Anyone who "accidentally" drives at 95 mph on a motorway where the speed limit is 70 just isn't paying attention. If you don't know that the national speed limit on a motorway is 70mph, you shouldn't be driving here at all.
This is the typical thing with American education, lazy high school, crazy hard work in college (well those that actually earn degrees and not just party.)
I thought that getting a bachelor's degree in the US was about equivalent to leaving high school able to read and write in most other countries. Why are there so many post-graduates otherwise? There is no need to get a Master's or PhD unless you're going to become an academic for most of us.
I've seen countless college graduates who couldn't code for shit. Sure, they could technically code, but they couldn't do it well.
It depends what "well" means. In any field there are people who are better and worse than average at doing something. That doesn't mean that there is some absolute divide between good and bad programmers (or painters, musicians, lawyers, farmers or anything else).
If you think that most jobs are going to require programming, then you're saying that most people are going to be unemployable.
If most jobs will require programming, then computers will be doing that programming. Most people will be unemployed and will have to live lives of leisure with a small element of community service just to keep things relatively sane. Clearly, the computers will have to be owned by the community and not just a few rich oligarchs or else there will be social meltdown.
Mind if I share with you a few insights from AI research ? 1) Nobody is logical, or rational. A rational person would starve in front of the first closed door he finds. Why ? A rational person decides on actions by expected_gain * chance_of_event. Behind the door could be a bear, that would kill you. Sure the chance is tiny, but the cost of dying is -inf ... So no matter the chances involved a rational person would never do anything that might cause his death. And every action can cause death. Now this is the extreme version of this argument, but it applies to everything. Rationality doesn't work. Proof that this isn't so can be mailed, in the form of a prolog program that can deal with any chaotic world, with incomplete information (chaotic in the mathematical sense). Note that AI research worldwide spent about 30 years finding such programs, and none have been found.
I think that shows the limitations of AI research more than anything actually useful or true about the world.
I am a firm believer in the Open Source philosophy so proprietary software is not on my radar.
Who gives a toss what you believe?
Calling anyone who disagrees with you a fascist is a fascist thing to do.
Tell me, do you dress up the black boots and the little mustache when you spew that shit?
You are aware that you don't actually have to compare someone directly to Hitler for it to count as a Godwin? It's too easy to get round otherwise.
The classified ads in the newspaper are a registry of tax evaders that exists out in the open, any seller listed on there would be an easy target for the cops to go after for tax evasion.
HMRC (tax people) already do this here in the UK. It's not the cops you need to worry about when it comes to tax evasion.
Bitcoin is the end of the world for governments. It's the money of the swarm. It's the Internet's native currency.
They know where you live, and they will come to seize your guns and drugs just the same.
No matter what you trade, if it has value, the state will look to control it's function.
Everything that begins free and open inevitably evolves towards lame and bureaucratic as governments and big money corporations become involved. Or, rather, government gets involved at the request of big money corporations.
You can only have freedom and openness when you live as a hunter-gatherer with a small family unit around you.
You're welcome to try that for yourself if you like and see how much fun it is. In the meantime, the rest of us like the benefits of civilisation such as ready access to food and water, somewhere to sleep, transport, education, leisure, culture and so on.
Well state seems to have pretty hard time controling bittorrent. Why do you think it will manage to control bitcoin? Sure, it can declare it illegal, so most honest merchants would probably stop using it just because of that. But if anyone is willing to engage in illegal activities, i think it will be difficult for goverment to stop him using bitcoins.
If anyone is willing to engage in illegal activities, all the state can do is punish them afterwards, bitcoins are irrelevant. If I sell smack for cash or bitcoins, it's the selling smack that's illegal.
I don't imagine this interpretation will go down very well on slashdot.
There are few things more pathetically amusing than a wannabe internet tough guy who is getting worked up by what fucking gaming platform someone uses.
Racism has fuck all to do with power. It has everything to do with bigotry. You can be a powerful racist fuck or you can be a powerless racist fuck.
University kids do not dictate to the rest of us what terms mean. If it has become accepted in universities that racism requires power/authority in order for it to be racism, then what that means is that universities are fucking wrong. Only post adolescent morons would accept such bullshit.
Racism, like sexism, the acquisition and maintenance of wealth, and religious obedience are all ways of the powerful exercising control.
You may deny this if you wish, it just makes you the adolescent moron. I bet you think you are perfectly free to do and be whatever you want?
The vast majority of white people are not in positions of power so your comment is ignorant and wrong.
That's a basic logical fallacy.
All A are B does not mean that all B are A.
All rapists are men does not mean that all men are rapists.