I would like to see documented cases where an otherwise-innocent civilian with no connection to the military, to law enforcement, or to private security needed more than ten rounds, or was harmed for running out of ammunition over ten rounds...
Not to go all Godwin on you, but I'm sure there are plenty of cases in Nazi Germany, Russia, China, etc. And that ties in better with the Second Amendment better than self defense arguments anyway.
By the time the secret police are kicking your door down at 4am and using a squad of armed men to stop any interference, the question of whether you have a gun in the house or not is irrelevant. They're going to get you anyway, any resistance will probably just mean a worse time for others in your family. One thing is for sure, shooting a couple of goons isn't going to make the rest of them run away.
You need something a lot more organised and with serious military and other backup when it comes to challenging a police state.
I would like to see documented cases where an otherwise-innocent civilian with no connection to the military, to law enforcement, or to private security needed more than ten rounds, or was harmed for running out of ammunition over ten rounds...
I accept your challenge. It would have been very beneficial for the civilians at Lexington and Concord to have firearms which had over 10 rounds in a magazine. There was no Continental Army in 1775, just local militias. Having a 30-round magazine weapon would have decimated the ranks of the British Army.
1. If you're fighting against the British (or other) Army, you are engaged in military activity. Whatever you think of them, the Taliban aren't simply civilians, any more than the Americans who fought against the British in 1775, or the PIRA in the 1980s.
2. Well, yes, and having helicopter gunships or cruise missiles would have been quite handy too.
3. We're still waiting for an example of a civilian requiring more than 10 rounds in a magazine.
One supposes the deterrent effect is there.
OTOH, there is no way to "prevent gun crime", period, short of the place becoming a police state.
Well, even police states will have gun crime, since you're never going to get rid of criminals. Whatever punishments you create (up to and including summary execution) for owning illegal weapons, there will still be criminals who either don't care, or think they'll never be caught.
But it is a depressing argument that because you can't make something perfect you shouldn't try to make it better.
"Some of the confusion comes from the fact that we don't really have free markets for many things, instead we have protectionist markets."
Mod up. Many people today seem to confuse crony corporatism with "capitalism", when they are not even remotely the same things. Our economic woes have not been due to capitalism at all... but rather to the lack of same.
Yeah, No True Capitalist would ever place profit above morality, for instance. That's all down to crony capitalism.
Don't make me laugh.
The only thing that has made Capitalism bearable is the fact that it's been partially watered down by Socialism. Capitalists looked at the Russian Revolution in 1917 and realised they'd have to make some sort of compromise or else lose everything.
Before I got bored reading that, it seemed to involve basic card manipulation, which is only useful if (a) you are playing real people with real cards and (b) you are the dealer.
There is nothing new about card cheats being able to deal crookedly to an accomplice or themselves.
Is it neocheating as in "Neo-from-the-Matrix" cheating, i.e. online players somehow magically altering the stream of neon-green 0s and 1s over the intarwebs to give themselves winning hands and find out what their opponents have?
Sounds like the purest of pure bullshit to me. From TFLA "The really dangerous part of neocheating is that it requires no special skills; only the secretive, special knowledge on how it is done and few hours of practice."
Yeah, and I bet there are many people willing to sell you this priceless knowledge for a bargain price.
If you do memorize a whole chess game from both sides you are of course good, so maybe it's not cheating, but it's a way to rig the game into what's hopefully your favor. As long as the computer responds with known responses you can stick to the memorized moves
Memorizing one whole chess game isn't that difficult. Actors have to remember far more than a 50 move chess game for a leading role in a play.
It's memorizing every game that's ever been played that's the problem.
If we randomized the start positions of each piece, or had more pieces/squares
Yeah, chess just isn't complicated enough is it? I bet you're an AI from the future come back to mess with the brains of humankind to distract us from the Singularity.
Actually, no. The only things limiting the length of the game for permutations where each side could, say, begin moving a few endgame pieces back and forth endlessly, are the "50-move" and "draw by threefold repetition" rules. However, claiming a draw by either of these means is -not mandatory-, so unlikely as it may be practically, both sides could elect to never claim a draw under either rule and the shuffling of pieces could go on infinitely.
Well, OK, but if you made the "50 move" and "threefold repetition" rules mandatory then the game would be theoretically finite, which it is in practice already (i.e. enforcing the two rules would make absolutely no difference to how chess is played).
That would still leave the option of both players alternately moving their two knights to row 3 and back again infinitely, but now we're just being silly.
Really? A quick calculation shows that even if you've been playing online for 25 years that's 55 games a day on average. If each game is only 10 minutes, that's 9 hours every day playing chess online.
It's not impossible, but it seems an extraordinary amount of time even if you're a full time chess professional.
Later on though, you change your argument, and say that the reason you can tell if the opponent is a computer is that it keeps taking the fool's mate too quickly , so the result doesn't count in your ranking. And presumably a human player would know this, and delay his last move by the amount necessary to reach 15 seconds. It's nothing to do with taking the obvious, easy win, it's just about timing.
You should have explained this at the beginning, it makes sense now.
(On behalf of all the non-tournament level chess players who didn't understand what is presumably an obvious matter to a tournament player).
I'll allow fools mate to happen to me twice in a row, where any normal chess player would let it pass the second time, the chess program will always take the quickest mate.
I am not a chess grandmaster or anything, but that comment makes no sense. If I played you and you kept letting me win by fool's mate, I would keep winning by fool's mate.
Admittedly, I'd get bored after a certain number of goes, and would probably have a little talk like I do with my kids when they make silly mistakes, but not the second time.
Okay, so, Closed Room + Faraday Cage + Both Competitors Sealed Inside Solid Bricks of 3 meter thick Lead Shielding + Absolute Zero Temperature + Complete Vacuum + Both Competitors Blinded, Muted, Deafened, and Lobotomized.
That oughta make chess fair again. For realz, yo.
Wouldn't the lobotomized part be enough in itself?
Roses are also commonly referred to as "flowers" around the world (or their local translations). This does not mean a rose is meant whenever the word "flower" is used.
Similarly, simply because the United States are commonly referred to as America does not mean every mention of America refers to them. As my links above show, it's a word with multiple meanings.
Bullshit. When words have different meanings, you have to look at the context. If the US President addresses a speech to "my fellow Americans" only the most pedantic twat would consider he meant to include everyone in North and South America.
If I go on holiday from the UK to "America", it will be to one of the 50 States of the USA. If I meant Mexico or Canada or Chile I would say so.
Slashdot Mirror
By your logic, the army shouldn't be allowed assault helicopters unless you are too.
I would like to see documented cases where an otherwise-innocent civilian with no connection to the military, to law enforcement, or to private security needed more than ten rounds, or was harmed for running out of ammunition over ten rounds...
Not to go all Godwin on you, but I'm sure there are plenty of cases in Nazi Germany, Russia, China, etc. And that ties in better with the Second Amendment better than self defense arguments anyway.
By the time the secret police are kicking your door down at 4am and using a squad of armed men to stop any interference, the question of whether you have a gun in the house or not is irrelevant. They're going to get you anyway, any resistance will probably just mean a worse time for others in your family. One thing is for sure, shooting a couple of goons isn't going to make the rest of them run away.
You need something a lot more organised and with serious military and other backup when it comes to challenging a police state.
I would like to see documented cases where an otherwise-innocent civilian with no connection to the military, to law enforcement, or to private security needed more than ten rounds, or was harmed for running out of ammunition over ten rounds...
I accept your challenge. It would have been very beneficial for the civilians at Lexington and Concord to have firearms which had over 10 rounds in a magazine. There was no Continental Army in 1775, just local militias. Having a 30-round magazine weapon would have decimated the ranks of the British Army.
1. If you're fighting against the British (or other) Army, you are engaged in military activity. Whatever you think of them, the Taliban aren't simply civilians, any more than the Americans who fought against the British in 1775, or the PIRA in the 1980s.
2. Well, yes, and having helicopter gunships or cruise missiles would have been quite handy too.
3. We're still waiting for an example of a civilian requiring more than 10 rounds in a magazine.
So which magizines do you subscribe to?
Are they journals specialising in academic discussion of the Three Wise Men?
"Clip" is much faster to say than "magazine", hence when under fire people tend to shout "I'm down to my last clip".
Fear, desperation and panic are no excuse for errors in vocabulary or grammar.
Posts that complain about terminology get modded 5 Insightful in an instant in discussions about "piracy" and "hacking". Why not here?
Can I just say that copyright infringement!=theft?
You're right, that's usually good for a solid +5 informative.
One supposes the deterrent effect is there. OTOH, there is no way to "prevent gun crime", period, short of the place becoming a police state.
Well, even police states will have gun crime, since you're never going to get rid of criminals. Whatever punishments you create (up to and including summary execution) for owning illegal weapons, there will still be criminals who either don't care, or think they'll never be caught.
But it is a depressing argument that because you can't make something perfect you shouldn't try to make it better.
Mod up.
"Some of the confusion comes from the fact that we don't really have free markets for many things, instead we have protectionist markets."
Mod up. Many people today seem to confuse crony corporatism with "capitalism", when they are not even remotely the same things. Our economic woes have not been due to capitalism at all... but rather to the lack of same.
Yeah, No True Capitalist would ever place profit above morality, for instance. That's all down to crony capitalism.
Don't make me laugh.
The only thing that has made Capitalism bearable is the fact that it's been partially watered down by Socialism. Capitalists looked at the Russian Revolution in 1917 and realised they'd have to make some sort of compromise or else lose everything.
NSFW
Do you work for the Taliban or something?
It's a bit of cleavage, a bit of bra FFS.
I think I understand ... does it have something to do with the time cube?
Everything has something to do with the time cube!
There is nothing new about card cheats being able to deal crookedly to an accomplice or themselves.
And it has zero relevance to chess anyway.
Sounds like the purest of pure bullshit to me. From TFLA "The really dangerous part of neocheating is that it requires no special skills; only the secretive, special knowledge on how it is done and few hours of practice."
Yeah, and I bet there are many people willing to sell you this priceless knowledge for a bargain price.
If you do memorize a whole chess game from both sides you are of course good, so maybe it's not cheating, but it's a way to rig the game into what's hopefully your favor. As long as the computer responds with known responses you can stick to the memorized moves
Memorizing one whole chess game isn't that difficult. Actors have to remember far more than a 50 move chess game for a leading role in a play.
It's memorizing every game that's ever been played that's the problem.
If we randomized the start positions of each piece, or had more pieces/squares
Yeah, chess just isn't complicated enough is it? I bet you're an AI from the future come back to mess with the brains of humankind to distract us from the Singularity.
Board games are for children. Men play poker.
"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." (Hemingway)
If you're going to be an internet tough guy, at least try to do it properly.
Actually, no. The only things limiting the length of the game for permutations where each side could, say, begin moving a few endgame pieces back and forth endlessly, are the "50-move" and "draw by threefold repetition" rules. However, claiming a draw by either of these means is -not mandatory-, so unlikely as it may be practically, both sides could elect to never claim a draw under either rule and the shuffling of pieces could go on infinitely.
Well, OK, but if you made the "50 move" and "threefold repetition" rules mandatory then the game would be theoretically finite, which it is in practice already (i.e. enforcing the two rules would make absolutely no difference to how chess is played).
That would still leave the option of both players alternately moving their two knights to row 3 and back again infinitely, but now we're just being silly.
Unlike you, I am joking.
I have played half a million games online
Really? A quick calculation shows that even if you've been playing online for 25 years that's 55 games a day on average. If each game is only 10 minutes, that's 9 hours every day playing chess online.
It's not impossible, but it seems an extraordinary amount of time even if you're a full time chess professional.
I'm just curious.
You should have explained this at the beginning, it makes sense now.
(On behalf of all the non-tournament level chess players who didn't understand what is presumably an obvious matter to a tournament player).
I guess you didn't understand my point about losing to fools mate. A person can pass it up, a computer program cannot.
It still doesn't seem like much of a test. A person could pass it up, but why would they?
I'll allow fools mate to happen to me twice in a row, where any normal chess player would let it pass the second time, the chess program will always take the quickest mate.
I am not a chess grandmaster or anything, but that comment makes no sense. If I played you and you kept letting me win by fool's mate, I would keep winning by fool's mate.
Admittedly, I'd get bored after a certain number of goes, and would probably have a little talk like I do with my kids when they make silly mistakes, but not the second time.
Okay, so, Closed Room + Faraday Cage + Both Competitors Sealed Inside Solid Bricks of 3 meter thick Lead Shielding + Absolute Zero Temperature + Complete Vacuum + Both Competitors Blinded, Muted, Deafened, and Lobotomized.
That oughta make chess fair again. For realz, yo.
Wouldn't the lobotomized part be enough in itself?
Your post is disingenious and focused on What Matters To Beancounters ("trace the money").
I think tracing the money is quite important when you're talking about alleged financial fraud
Roses are also commonly referred to as "flowers" around the world (or their local translations). This does not mean a rose is meant whenever the word "flower" is used. Similarly, simply because the United States are commonly referred to as America does not mean every mention of America refers to them. As my links above show, it's a word with multiple meanings.
Bullshit. When words have different meanings, you have to look at the context. If the US President addresses a speech to "my fellow Americans" only the most pedantic twat would consider he meant to include everyone in North and South America.
If I go on holiday from the UK to "America", it will be to one of the 50 States of the USA. If I meant Mexico or Canada or Chile I would say so.
incompetence is rarely illegal.
Try saying that to doctors, lawyers or other professionals who get struck off for incompetence.
The problem with the financial services industry is that it doesn't have the integrity of a plumbers' trade association.