When you are in a region close to warring countries, how are you expected to react when an unidentified force lands and disembark ? The mayor reaction was quite sane : aerial unidentified vehicles, possibly military, were signaled to have landed by what was supposed to be a trusted channel. Doing this kind of prank in an unstable region is like shouting "fire !" with no specific reason in the middle of a crowd. It creates apparently stupid reactions but that are perfectly logical in the context of the decision maker.
That's the norm to which we've been conditioned, yes. It's one option of many. Personally, I prefer not to be a panicky herd animal. I could do that, I guess, but it's so much more satisfying to be a thinking self-determined human being.
If I am in a theater and the guy near me yells "FIRE!", I'm not going to fly into a panic. If the guy six feet from me smells smoke or sees flames, I too should smell smoke. I too can glance around and look for flames. As none of my physical senses are impaired in any way, I can use my own judgment. Even if there IS a fire, being seized by fear like some kind of animal is not going to help me deal with it. When people do that, they create the second danger of being trampled in addition to the first danger of the fire.
If you think that's too high of a standard for average people, I would say they are more than capable but too eager to sell themselves short. It's not like public education wants a tough-minded population that's skeptical and highly skilled at critical thinking. But let's say it really is an unreasonable standard to expect average people to use their minds to overcome animal impulses. The mayor, however, is in a position of leadership. He's not fit to lead anyone if he isn't an exception to the general herd-mentality. If he's not a member of the herd-mentality, his first step would have been to check with the newspaper. They were, after all, claiming contact with extraterrestrial beings and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Not to mention that if this really happened, he would hear about it from his police (or military) forces or maybe air-traffic control long before it would appear the next day in the paper.
Instead, the mayor panicked and now he rightfully feels stupid. Too bad he's dealing with that by trying to save face. He should be thanking the newspaper for helping him become a better leader by exposing a weakness of which he was unaware. But he won't, because that would mean swallowing his pride, and he's apparently not man enough to do that. So now the newspaper might end up in a courtroom. That is not justice.
You've honestly never suspected 'planned obsolescence'?
I certainly did. Sometimes my intention is to raise a question and see if others independently come up with the answers that occurred to me. At least, I sometimes do that in cases like this, where no one has evidence either way so all of this is speculation.
If you are just now going to start designing a new optical disc format, why only 100-128GB? Why not use ultraviolet lasers (or whatever else it takes) and aim at a 1TB optical disc?
Because neither is really intended as a completely new optical disk format, they are incremental updates of Blu-Ray for specialized needs, where it is assumed that continued use of existing blu-ray disks in the same devices is important. One is essentially "BD-ROM plus BD-RW", the other is "High capacity BD-ROM".
True, but isn't that goal defeated by the fact that these new formats are already incompatible with existing players? If you are going to have to buy new hardware anyway, what's the point? A device that supports BD-XL/IH-BD with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray could also have been built to support a 1TB format with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray.
"They're not buying any blank media anymore because everyone is pirating... FROM THE CLOUD! They don't need their own media anymore thanks to that evil cloud hosting and streaming, putting us out of business!"
You make a very convincing argument. I'd like to tell you why that couldn't happen but unfortunately I can't because I think you're right. I have to concede that your scenario there is more than plausible. I know of only one thing that weakens your prediction, but does not contradict it: at least some people will want to produce physical media for use with the hardware players they own. Most people I know would prefer to watch a movie on their large-screen TVs using a set-top player, rather than play a.avi file on their much smaller computer monitor.
What I don't know is how unusual it is for people to connect a PC to their TVs and use that as a media player, but I suspect a relatively small minority of folks are doing this. A leisure activity like watching a movie is especially an area where non-technical people "just want it to work". They may not find a media PC appealing because of its complexity when compared to a set-top disc player. Then again, the people doing most of the piracy might be an exception.
Seriously, I think these asshats will keep finding excuses to sue people until the courts and society put them in their place permanently. I can only hope that happens soon.
When that happens they're going to wish they had quit while they were ahead. They remind me of the criminals who steal millions of dollars and get away with it, except that they don't know when to quit. So they keep doing it again and again and finally they get caught. The cartel behavior of the major copyright holders and their constant push for ever-tyrannical new laws is like this. It will catch up with them. The more greedy they get, the worse the customer backlash is going to be, both for them and the politicians who are in their pockets. I'd love to see a day when supporting the RIAA/MPAA becomes a great way to end your political career and be voted out.
What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
Pah, you forgot that the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
Haha.
Seriously though, when they are interoperable open standards this isn't a problem. The problem is that if you want to make a Blu-ray player, you need Sony's blessing in the form of licensing agreements. Not to mention that Sony has no incentive to make Blu-ray compatible with anyone else's standard. This makes it more difficult to economically produce a hardware device for which supporting several multiple standards is only a matter of firmware.
You also completely contradict yourself. You suggest Sony is part of some massive conspiracy because it is in their best interest to have high prices, and then immediately after say it is in their best interest to have low prices.
I wouldn't call it conspiracy, I would call it collusion. It's reminiscent of the USA cellphone industry. For example, text messages cost next-to-nothing for the carrier of a CDMA network, and absolutely nothing for the carrier of a GSM network. Yet despite multiple competing cellphone networks, none of them have text message pricing that remotely reflects the actual cost of delivering SMS.
It's not difficult to understand why. It benefits all of the cellphone companies to continue overcharging for this service, and the one company that undercuts the competition and forces all of them to lower their prices is going to ruin the high profit margins for everyone, itself included. No conspiracy is required; they didn't have to get together and plan this ahead of time. Each company only has to realize that changing this status quo will result in less profit, and they can realize this independently without consulting the other companies.
Until and unless they start losing serious sales volume because customers feel that the price is too high, the movie producers have no incentive to engage in competition that they know will reduce their profit margins. Unlike the cellphone providers, they are not even directly competing with each other because of the monopoly nature of copyright. No one but Sony can produce and distribute copies of a movie for which Sony owns the copyright, so if you want a movie made by them you cannot purchase that same title from a competitor. So there is even less competition for each unique movie title than there is among cellphone providers for mobile phone services. That means there is even less incentive for any one company to rock the boat with aggressive pricing.
Retailers ultimately set prices. And most retailers are being stupid because Amazon is massively undercutting them.
If Sony's wholesale price for copies of its movies is X, then Amazon cannot charge less than X for those titles and expect to remain in business. That's why Sony's influence on the ultimate retail price is quite strong and should not be so quickly dismissed. I would venture that Amazon's lower prices have more to do with sales volume and the fact that they don't have the expenses of maintaining brick-and-mortar stores.
Depends on how many of the players can be firmware updated to deal with the formats.
The two formats they are talking about appear to be in pipedream stage. They will be obsolete before they are released, if they are released at all.
No joke, and that's why I am having a hard time understanding the point of this. If you are just now going to start designing a new optical disc format, why only 100-128GB? Why not use ultraviolet lasers (or whatever else it takes) and aim at a 1TB optical disc? That way, by the time you have gone through the design, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing stages and finally bring a product to market, it will have a useful quantity of storage for backup and archival purposes.
Hopefully since these are both proposed by the same association, they'll pick one to go ahead with before any hardware is on the market. They won't want to be competing with themselves, they just want to shop both formats around a bit and see if there are any bites.
The problem is that if this association is one single block of harmony, it would be quite rare among trade groups. That there are two formats already tells me that there are at least two factions within this association who disagree about design decisions. If they don't come to a consensus before hardware is manufactured it will be their declaration to the rest of the world that they are not only too stupid to learn from history, but could not even learn anything from extremely recent history.
Don't forget that any media sales that the market wont bear will be blamed on piracy =/
This is physical media, not copyrighted content, so I think this is the one case where they won't try that one.
It may even be the opposite. Those countries which place a tax/levy on blank media and then send that money to the copyright cartels are assuming that at least some of those blank media will be used to make copies of copyrighted works. So if these new blank media don't sell because of another needless format war, they would be blatantly contradicting themselves if they blame that on piracy. It would be amusing to watch them try. It might even create a "boy who cried wolf" situation where any laments about piracy are no longer taken seriously by anyone.
Highly unlikely this is intended for movies. This is almost certainly designed for backup storage only. Given the exceptionally low penetration of BD on computers, it's fine.
Had there been no format war I doubt this would be the case. Apparently they haven't learned that lesson and now we again have two competing formats. In terms of customer adoption and marketshare, this deserves to fail in order to send the message to companies that "useless format wars" == "financial losses". What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
The whole thing about 'masculinity' in the IT/Engineering world is sort of a non sequitur. I've worked in industries like utilities, construction, etc. where strength is (or was, before the advent of hydraulics) an important factor in job performance. I just don't see that requirement in the white collar field. The little guy with the coke-bottle glasses, or the little Indian lady might be the best coder or engineer in the group. The need to attach the attribute of masculinity to such careers seems a bit odd.
Physical muscles are one particular kind of strength. The determination to realize your goals by facing head-on all of the difficulties you encounter is another kind of strength and often does not involve lifting heavy objects. So is the discipline to put in the extra hours, to make the extra effort, to go the extra mile. I honestly believe that what you wrote there reflects an artificially narrow concept of strength.
I've put over 15 years into a mostly-microsoft IT career. Sure, I can use/have some Linux in my environment, and I'm not a retard and can use whatever flavor of *nix you want. And I have a touch of Apple in my marketing department. And yeah, some *nix experience is mandatory now. But people who don't understand that its a Microsoft ruled world with required skills of interoperability between OS's in the corporate arena are fucking delusional and a waste of fucking space.
It's hard to look at interoperability problems and then blame them on the Open Source folks who use open standards. So perhaps people agree with you, in a way, and are just more up-front about where to assign the blame. Not to mention that it will forever remain a "Microsoft ruled world" if no one is ever willing to value alternatives.
And it might change too someday...Microsoft isn't the holy fucking mother either. There's a lot of shit that I HATE about proprietary software. But you know what? I work hard, I enjoy life, I have a good gig, and I'm fucking happy where I work...and these people could give two fucks about the FOSS community, and they're a "positive work environment"
Honestly you don't sound very happy or content to me. You sound angry and venomous. If you have a great source of joy in your life, something that makes it easy have patience and be at ease with all the things you don't like, you seem rather selective about expressing it. Even if you're right and they are indeed foolish, why would the opinions of some "fanbois" take away your happiness by making you so upset?
Last time I had to hire for a non-programming IT job, the first guy that I turfed the resume into the circular filing bin spouted on and on about his FOSS involvement. And beyond that, he didn't have a fucking class, session, certificate, traning program, or touch of experience in the Real Fucking World that actually shown he would have been useful in a real world corporate office.
If someone has no formal training and still managed to become an important part of a real software project, doesn't that tell you something about his or her resourcefulness and ability to take initiative? Why do you believe they would fare poorly in an environment like an office that comes with additional advantages like structure, training, clearly spelled-out expectations, and financial compensation?
I got hired by a large multinational company (a very large one indeed) in June 2007. I got promoted twice. My responsibilities tripled (I was a Helpdesk Analyst, then a Team Lead, now I am a Service Delivery Manager and in couple months will move to another position, or so they said), my salary raised 0% in all this time. I mean ZERO. No raise. No compensation. Nothing.
There needs to be a Web site with a well-maintained registry of companies that treat their IT workers this way. It could be modelled after the various consumer-protection sites that inform people about scams and abuses in the marketplace. The goal would be that such companies have terrible difficulty finding anyone in IT who actually wants to work for them while the talent flocks to their competitors. This could save many people from having to invest their time and hard work before they find out what you did. It's deplorable that taking three gallons of milk and paying for one of them is called stealing, but receiving 3X work and paying 1X salary is called management.
Many other industries have unions to address the same problems. The trouble with that is that a union is like any other bureaucracy; the organization takes on a life of its own that is often at odds with its original purpose. A loosely organized, grassroots type of effort based on reputation and the open exchange of information might remedy some of these problems without all of those disadvantages. What I know for sure is that this kind of mistreatment is most successful when it's unopposed.
I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I say that if critical thinking became a common skill, it would radically change our society for the better.
And rapidly for the best. Competence and contentment is much more actively communicative than prejudices, taboos, ignorances, errors, and badly managed fears.
We only just have now to discover how to get to this so atrociously novel situation.
I like you, you know.
It seems however this website does not support personal messages, so I cannot send you my little love declaration more privately just now.
Do you mind sending an email to deleted.email ATTY ymail DOTTY com, for me to reply?
That made me laugh. My assumption is that you're male. Unfortunately for you, that means I'm not interested in this "little love declaration". But it was an amusing and thoroughly unusual reply.
That's a reasonable argument and I can easily agree with it. I had a comment on one portion of it.
At best, this system will deter some gun crime, but it is not designed to prevent or deter all crime. Claiming that the system will not deter or prevent crime is a red herring because the system is not designed to prevent or deter crime.
Wouldn't it be a better idea then to abandon this project and invest the resources into things that really might deter or otherwise prevent crime? I am a lot more interested in safer streets and safer neighborhoods than in locking up as many people as possible.
At least if this is implemented, a higher chance of getting caught might deter some criminals even if that wasn't the intention of the design. Still, when I think of what kind of person is willing to murder someone or to threaten to murder them to obtain their wallets, I picture desperate people who don't care very much about what happens to them. I doubt they feel like they have anything to lose. Jail might or might not scare them enough to reconsider their career paths, but I have the strong impression that it doesn't.
Well, you could, but cats are not like squirrels. I guess it's because of how their claws are arranged, but a cat can climb up a tree and has a very hard time climbing back down. The cat is likely to be SOL if you leave it there, or it might decide that getting hurt by falling is preferable to starvation. I prefer not to let a creature die over something I can do very easily like climbing a tree, and I prefer not to sit and do nothing while a neighbor suffers from the predicament of a cherished pet. So yes, I could have left the cat in the tree, but I didn't think it was the right thing to do.
Red herring. These cameras help investigate and prosecute crimes by taking pictures when a shot is fired, of the area where the shot was fired.
Nothing was said about preventing crimes.
Now that you have demonstrated your lack of reading comprehension, please shut the fuck up.
Easy there. Crime prevention isn't a red herring, unless you think a person walking down the street should care about which particular thug wants to harm him. I can hypothetically imagine the thug now, saying "Bruce got locked up because the camera took his picture - I'm Joe and I'll be mugging you instead." If more violent crimes are being prosecuted, that's probably a good thing. But if that isn't making the streets any safer, then lack of prosecutions is not the source of the problem.
If a pipe bursts in your basement and it's flooding the place, bailing out the water is not the first step you should take. The first step you should take is to turn off the water supply. Likewise, putting criminals in jail is a way to get them out of the streets. But if one or two thugs replaces each one you put in jail, you need to find out why. Otherwise, all you have is a hammer and you think everything is a nail.
Ugh. "Gun control" != "taking away law abiding citizens'" guns. How about the requirements for legal gun ownership are as stringent as getting a drivers license? Or gun ownership is as carefully regulated as car ownership?
The regulation of automobiles and the requirement of having a license to legally operate one is based on the idea that driving is a privilege, not a right. That's why I don't think you can make a valid comparison between car ownership and gun ownership, because one of those is a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution and the other is a privilege.
Further, I appreciate that before regulations were put into place for automobiles, it was understood that those regulations needed to be justified. The justification is that driving is not a civil right, therefore there is nothing wrong with placing limits on it and deciding who may or may not do it. It follows that placing limits on a recognized civil right and deciding who may or may not exercise it needs an even stronger justification before we do it. I have seen no such justifications that were rooted in reason instead of fear.
It could also be that there is no safety net to help people get back on their feet in the US, or the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the Western world which have been shown to create criminals instead of treat them, or that violence is more celebrated in our culture, and sexuality more repressed, or that our wealth inequality is ten times more severe, but the easy access to guns doesn't seem to be helping.
I think easy access to gun doesn't even quality as a footnote, and that the other issues you mentioned are more likely to provide real answers. The War on Drugs is related to the incarceration rates, as many of these are non-violent and otherwise law-abiding except that they engage in victimless crimes. If you take these people and lock them up with gang members, rapists, and murderers, it doesn't take a genius to predict what will happen. The bothersome thing is that we know beyond doubt that this is what happens, but we aren't doing anything about it. It's as though this is a feature of our prison system and not a bug. We refuse to take a hard look at such things to protect a War on Drugs that hasn't done anything to stop anyone from obtaining drugs. The Puritannical urge to use force to make sure no one does anything you disapprove of is really that powerful.
The sexual repression doesn't make much sense to me. It's acceptable to graphically depict all kinds of violence on broadcast television, but not acceptable to show nudity. The message is that a guy getting his head blown off with a shotgun is normal and healthy but a pair of breasts is not and must be censored. This is not a healthy message.
First off, I would really like for you to provide statistical evidence to support "Give everyone a gun, and they kill each other and themselves on a more regular basis".
I'd like to see that too, and was about to ask before I noticed that you already did. Honestly, I'm not holding my breath for that one.
Second, why did you only respond to the last sentence of his argument? You also never even acknowledged anything that I said in direct response to YOU in my post #31725576.
I see that all the time. Either there is a great deal of ignorance concerning the extreme weakness of resolving contradictions this way, or people who do this are hoping that you won't notice. Little do they know, what they don't say is at least as important as what they do say. The really amazing thing is they seem totally blind to this and can't imagine why anyone would think there's something wrong with it.
I am not trying to start a flame war or be labeled as a troll, but for once I would like to get some kind of thought out arguments from anti-gun people about the issue. They seem to always ignore what they can't argue.
Many people do this, it's just that gun-control provides some particularly egregious examples. They constantly do this and then they seem to wonder why we don't consider their position "merely different but equal" to ours. Any movement that has serious problems with the legitimacy of its arguments and doesn't view that as something it should address yesterday is a religious belief, even if it doesn't call itself that.
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
Actually you are the first person in this thread to compare Switzerland with the USA. The comparison that was made, the one to which I was responding, was between Denmark and Switzerland. I find it strange that you wouldn't have noticed this, since I quoted it in my post that you responded to. I honestly don't know whether you are deliberately trying to sidetrack the discussion, but I will say it sure does look that way.
If I am making "a weak attempt at a flame" then surely you can put me in my place by telling me why I'm wrong. If my post has no facts and no valid reasoning, then surely it should be easy for you to show that my position is baseless and the facts concerning gun-control are on your side. If your disdain for my words is legitimate, then surely you can demonstrate that it is condescension and not a reasonable response to what you gave me to work with.
And finally, if I made a weak attempt at educating you, you can convince me of this. All you'd have to do is demonstrate that the way you have tried to deal with me has absolutely no connection to the response you received. I'll even help you by explaining one way you could do that. Just demonstrate that your use of emotionalism, ad-hominems, and failure to notice that the comparison was between Denmark and Switzerland are signs that you should be taken seriously.
I'm willing to listen if you are willing to do any of those things. Personally, I would love to rid myself of any false beliefs I may hold. To do that, I need to know why they are false. I don't mind being wrong for one moment if it leads to my edification, not even when the other person thinks it is a pissing contest and childishly gloats about his "victory". If you want to disabuse me of a false notion, I'm on board. I'm with you. But it will take more than your assertions and complaints to do it, and rightfully so.
I have repeatedly invited you to tell me why you think I'm wrong. Find one thing I said that is demonstrably false. Find one instance of me using a logical fallacy. Do that and I'll have no problem thanking you for correcting me, for showing the error of my ways. But you won't do that and I have to assume that's because you know that you can't.
I think I'm done here. I enjoy a good debate, and am grateful to have encountered people more knowledgable than me who have given me a lot of good information. I'm not getting that kind of impression of you. I honestly believe you just want to be right no matter what, in which case this is more about your insecurity than it's about gun-control. Unfortunately that makes it impossible to reason with you, but I sincerely tried.
It's a comparison between two countries, actually. Unless you have tunnel-vision, it's also a small part of a much larger pattern. Other components of the larger pattern include the reduction in violent crime that has happened in every U.S. state that enacted conceal-carry permits. If you don't see that larger pattern, it's because you don't want to. If you want to close your eyes, that's fine, but then don't complain that you cannot see.
Yes, this kind of attitude makes me really want to look further into the views of people who want to legalize guns. Your statistics are off, your inferences are not born out by the people in the area (ask the Swiss what they think about US gun laws) and you come across like someone who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.
This will be something more than your desire to make this into a personal matter the moment you tell me why my arguments are unsound. As it stands now, you're saying "you're wrong!" without explaining why I'm wrong, and either you're bitching or you falsely expect this to be persuasive. As you conveniently ignore, I did not just say that I believe one worldview is inferior to another. I also backed that up with an explanation. If you wish to be taken seriously, dispute my explanation. Do your own research about how the media treats this issue and tell me if you found something different than what I found when I did the same.
It's a shame, really, because guns are here to stay in the US. It's just a question of how to go about it. But sadly, it's impossible to have a civilized discussion with gun-advocates on the topic.
So I explain what I believe to be true. Rather than expecting you to take it on faith, I provide several reasons why I believe it is the truth. I'm not concerned with whether that truth is flattering or unflattering to any particular group because that's a petty concern in the face of an important issue. I am only concerned with whether it's true. Either my reasons are relevant or you can explain why they're not. Either my logic is sound or you can point out where I have committed a logical fallacy. You've so far been unwilling to do that, and now you have the nerve to complain that you can't have a civilized discussion on this subject.
If you think that what you just did is quality debate, it's no wonder your discussions have been unsatisfying. You are reacting emotionally and resorting to ad-hominems. You are not showing me what's wrong with my reasoning and how it may be corrected. You're not being honest with yourself if you think it's the other guy's fault when this doesn't work out for you. It's possible that right now, you think I'm just saying that to give you a hard time. I'm actually trying to tell you something important about yourself as it's obvious to me that no one else has been both willing and able to do it.
You probably won't like this; so be it. When I see this kind of response, my initial reaction is "get over yourself." Maybe that's a misunderstanding on my part that you can correct. Still, I'll explain why.
I never made the claim that you said you wanted to disarm anyone. To quote myself, here's what I did say:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime.
Without changing its meaning at all, it can be rephrased this way:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' (whether or not you are personally a member of this group we are discussing) notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime."
I went on to explain that the particular nuances of Swedish law have no effect on this greater point. I strongly doubt that a Swede who flips out and goes on a shooting frenzy is going to care about the fact that he had to show ID to buy the ammo. Your personal beliefs really don't change that one way or the other. It's sort of like me talking about Americans and having someone pipe up with "but I'm Australian!" That's just fine and dandy, but we can still talk about Americans. Likewise, I wasn't concerned with whether you personally want to disarm anyone.
Reasonable gun control laws aren't synonymous with disarmament. There are people who can't drive because of the danger they present to other people on the road. Similarly, there are people who shouldn't have access to guns because of the dangers they present to others. The controls only work if everyone is required to follow rules and restrictions when it comes to purchasing, keeping, and using weapons and ammunition.
And if you don't want to fill out the paperwork or spend the money on the proper gun safe, guess what... who gives a fuck. The privilege of owning deadly weapons should have a certain bureaucratic cost, just like anything else that give you destructive power, like becoming a doctor or driving a tractor trailer.
What are those regulations designed to accomplish? If someone goes nuts and goes on a rampage, how do you intend to prevent this by requiring that he show ID before purchasing the weapons/ammo? At the time of purchase, he has not yet murdered anyone. If he has to unlock his gunsafe and take the weapon out of it before committing murder, how is that going to prevent the murder? They are largely feel-good measures. The gun-safe requirements might prevent accidents by making sure young children can't play with guns, but by definition accidents are not crimes and have no place in a discussion about crime. Besides, do you honestly believe a good parent would need the government to explain this to them?
That those regulations are useless is bad enough. That would mean they are just a waste of time and resources. The other problem is that dictatorships throughout history progress in stages. One stage is they start requiring the registration of all firearms. The next stage is they confiscate those firearms, now that they know where they are and who owns them. The next stage after that is they become police states and there's nothing to stop them. It's amazing how consistent this pattern has been. Castro did this in Cuba, Hitler did this in Germany, Stalin did this in Russia, Mussolini did this in Italy, and on and on.
What benefit does registration offer that makes it worth this risk? Can anyone name a single instance where a crime was prevented by using such a registry? As a citizen I do have an interest in crime prevention. I have a strong preference for not being shot by some thug. If I saw even one good reason why registration was in my interests, I'd support it. Right now, I would explain it this way: what do you call an it when we implement an idea with an unlikely but terribly serious downside and no real benefits? Bad decision-making.
Just need a few more precious pet cats stuck up trees.
And people who let their physical condition deteriorate (i.e. obesity) to the point where they (or a neighbor) could not comfortably and confidently climb a tree with no reason to fear their own safety. That's the other condition that needs to be present before it looks like emergency services are the very best way to deal with a cat in a tree. If you're wondering, yes I have climbed a tree to retrieve a cat. No building was on fire, no bullets were flying, no one had a stroke or a heart attack, so it never crossed my mind to dial 911 in that situation. I'd probably lose the ability to sleep at night if I learned that the response to a real emergency was delayed because I called the fire department for a situation I could easily handle myself. That, and I honestly think it takes brass balls to be a firefighter, not to mention that many of them are volunteers, so I respect their time more than that.
I'm not well versed in all the novel ways there are to kill humans. But thanks for the correction.
It's not so much about being versed in how people can be harmed. It's about understanding the subject you are considering. It's not a mere technicality that is being corrected here, not when the media inaccurately uses terms like "assault rifle" in order to make something seem more threatening. When you consider that the distinction between the weapons available to civilians and the military-grade weaponry that is correctly called an "assault rifle" is well-known among anyone who has done five minutes of research, there is no excuse for the media constantly getting this wrong.
How many reporters and editors does it take to properly vet a story and ensure that blatantly false labels are not used? It would be so easy to correct this error that it has to be intentional. If it's intentional, then it's an attempt to inject emotional fear into what is otherwise a reasoned debate. No one, but no one, who does this is interested in truth.
GP is correct. An assault rifle is a weapon that has a select-fire switch. This switch is used to control whether the rifle is semiautomatic and/or fully automatic and/or three-round-burst. By comparison, the difference between a deer rifle and the AK-47s that anyone in the USA can buy is that the AK-47 looks a bit more scary. The actual results of being shot by either are quite similar.
Also, most gun owners don't want to kill anyone. Most of the time that a citizen has used a gun to stop a crime, no shots were fired. That the would-be victim demonstrated the ability to defend himself was enough. Criminals want helpless victims, they don't generally want to have shootouts, and I bet that's hard for the gun-control mentality to understand.
The media is very careful not to report this, but you can do your own research and see for yourself that this is true. I'm not kidding about that one. There is a concerted effort to downplay any positive uses of firearms for self-defense. Most cases where this is what happened, the media does not say "the citizen held the criminal at gunpoint until police arrived and no shots were fired". Instead, they say "the criminal was subdued until police arrived" and don't explain how. Yet they give you the blow-by-blow account of the situation when it's a police officer or other official who uses a gun in the line of duty. The message is clear. Please don't take my word for it. See for yourself that there is an agenda here.
The awareness that there is such an agenda, that the pro-gun-control mentality has no problem using such underhanded and dishonest tactics has probably produced more pro-gun-ownership individuals than any amount of argumentation. You really have to ask yourself why an agenda would need to use dishonest tactics if it truly knew that the facts were on its side. You really have to wonder that if they are willing to lie about the positive uses of guns by law-abiding citizens, maybe they are also lying when they say their goal is to reduce crime.
The way I see it, there are a few gun-control advocates who have media presence and political connections who are advancing an agenda and are aware that it's a dishonest one. Then there are legions of useful idiots who don't understand what's wrong with that. They mean well, and they sincerely but naively believe that gun-control is a great way to stop crime.
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That's the norm to which we've been conditioned, yes. It's one option of many. Personally, I prefer not to be a panicky herd animal. I could do that, I guess, but it's so much more satisfying to be a thinking self-determined human being.
If I am in a theater and the guy near me yells "FIRE!", I'm not going to fly into a panic. If the guy six feet from me smells smoke or sees flames, I too should smell smoke. I too can glance around and look for flames. As none of my physical senses are impaired in any way, I can use my own judgment. Even if there IS a fire, being seized by fear like some kind of animal is not going to help me deal with it. When people do that, they create the second danger of being trampled in addition to the first danger of the fire.
If you think that's too high of a standard for average people, I would say they are more than capable but too eager to sell themselves short. It's not like public education wants a tough-minded population that's skeptical and highly skilled at critical thinking. But let's say it really is an unreasonable standard to expect average people to use their minds to overcome animal impulses. The mayor, however, is in a position of leadership. He's not fit to lead anyone if he isn't an exception to the general herd-mentality. If he's not a member of the herd-mentality, his first step would have been to check with the newspaper. They were, after all, claiming contact with extraterrestrial beings and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Not to mention that if this really happened, he would hear about it from his police (or military) forces or maybe air-traffic control long before it would appear the next day in the paper.
Instead, the mayor panicked and now he rightfully feels stupid. Too bad he's dealing with that by trying to save face. He should be thanking the newspaper for helping him become a better leader by exposing a weakness of which he was unaware. But he won't, because that would mean swallowing his pride, and he's apparently not man enough to do that. So now the newspaper might end up in a courtroom. That is not justice.
You've honestly never suspected 'planned obsolescence'?
I certainly did. Sometimes my intention is to raise a question and see if others independently come up with the answers that occurred to me. At least, I sometimes do that in cases like this, where no one has evidence either way so all of this is speculation.
Because neither is really intended as a completely new optical disk format, they are incremental updates of Blu-Ray for specialized needs, where it is assumed that continued use of existing blu-ray disks in the same devices is important. One is essentially "BD-ROM plus BD-RW", the other is "High capacity BD-ROM".
True, but isn't that goal defeated by the fact that these new formats are already incompatible with existing players? If you are going to have to buy new hardware anyway, what's the point? A device that supports BD-XL/IH-BD with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray could also have been built to support a 1TB format with backwards compatibility for Blu-ray.
You make a very convincing argument. I'd like to tell you why that couldn't happen but unfortunately I can't because I think you're right. I have to concede that your scenario there is more than plausible. I know of only one thing that weakens your prediction, but does not contradict it: at least some people will want to produce physical media for use with the hardware players they own. Most people I know would prefer to watch a movie on their large-screen TVs using a set-top player, rather than play a .avi file on their much smaller computer monitor.
What I don't know is how unusual it is for people to connect a PC to their TVs and use that as a media player, but I suspect a relatively small minority of folks are doing this. A leisure activity like watching a movie is especially an area where non-technical people "just want it to work". They may not find a media PC appealing because of its complexity when compared to a set-top disc player. Then again, the people doing most of the piracy might be an exception.
When that happens they're going to wish they had quit while they were ahead. They remind me of the criminals who steal millions of dollars and get away with it, except that they don't know when to quit. So they keep doing it again and again and finally they get caught. The cartel behavior of the major copyright holders and their constant push for ever-tyrannical new laws is like this. It will catch up with them. The more greedy they get, the worse the customer backlash is going to be, both for them and the politicians who are in their pockets. I'd love to see a day when supporting the RIAA/MPAA becomes a great way to end your political career and be voted out.
What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
Pah, you forgot that the good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
Haha.
Seriously though, when they are interoperable open standards this isn't a problem. The problem is that if you want to make a Blu-ray player, you need Sony's blessing in the form of licensing agreements. Not to mention that Sony has no incentive to make Blu-ray compatible with anyone else's standard. This makes it more difficult to economically produce a hardware device for which supporting several multiple standards is only a matter of firmware.
I wouldn't call it conspiracy, I would call it collusion. It's reminiscent of the USA cellphone industry. For example, text messages cost next-to-nothing for the carrier of a CDMA network, and absolutely nothing for the carrier of a GSM network. Yet despite multiple competing cellphone networks, none of them have text message pricing that remotely reflects the actual cost of delivering SMS.
It's not difficult to understand why. It benefits all of the cellphone companies to continue overcharging for this service, and the one company that undercuts the competition and forces all of them to lower their prices is going to ruin the high profit margins for everyone, itself included. No conspiracy is required; they didn't have to get together and plan this ahead of time. Each company only has to realize that changing this status quo will result in less profit, and they can realize this independently without consulting the other companies.
Until and unless they start losing serious sales volume because customers feel that the price is too high, the movie producers have no incentive to engage in competition that they know will reduce their profit margins. Unlike the cellphone providers, they are not even directly competing with each other because of the monopoly nature of copyright. No one but Sony can produce and distribute copies of a movie for which Sony owns the copyright, so if you want a movie made by them you cannot purchase that same title from a competitor. So there is even less competition for each unique movie title than there is among cellphone providers for mobile phone services. That means there is even less incentive for any one company to rock the boat with aggressive pricing.
If Sony's wholesale price for copies of its movies is X, then Amazon cannot charge less than X for those titles and expect to remain in business. That's why Sony's influence on the ultimate retail price is quite strong and should not be so quickly dismissed. I would venture that Amazon's lower prices have more to do with sales volume and the fact that they don't have the expenses of maintaining brick-and-mortar stores.
Depends on how many of the players can be firmware updated to deal with the formats.
The two formats they are talking about appear to be in pipedream stage. They will be obsolete before they are released, if they are released at all.
No joke, and that's why I am having a hard time understanding the point of this. If you are just now going to start designing a new optical disc format, why only 100-128GB? Why not use ultraviolet lasers (or whatever else it takes) and aim at a 1TB optical disc? That way, by the time you have gone through the design, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing stages and finally bring a product to market, it will have a useful quantity of storage for backup and archival purposes.
Hopefully since these are both proposed by the same association, they'll pick one to go ahead with before any hardware is on the market. They won't want to be competing with themselves, they just want to shop both formats around a bit and see if there are any bites.
The problem is that if this association is one single block of harmony, it would be quite rare among trade groups. That there are two formats already tells me that there are at least two factions within this association who disagree about design decisions. If they don't come to a consensus before hardware is manufactured it will be their declaration to the rest of the world that they are not only too stupid to learn from history, but could not even learn anything from extremely recent history.
Don't forget that any media sales that the market wont bear will be blamed on piracy =/
This is physical media, not copyrighted content, so I think this is the one case where they won't try that one.
It may even be the opposite. Those countries which place a tax/levy on blank media and then send that money to the copyright cartels are assuming that at least some of those blank media will be used to make copies of copyrighted works. So if these new blank media don't sell because of another needless format war, they would be blatantly contradicting themselves if they blame that on piracy. It would be amusing to watch them try. It might even create a "boy who cried wolf" situation where any laments about piracy are no longer taken seriously by anyone.
Highly unlikely this is intended for movies. This is almost certainly designed for backup storage only. Given the exceptionally low penetration of BD on computers, it's fine.
Had there been no format war I doubt this would be the case. Apparently they haven't learned that lesson and now we again have two competing formats. In terms of customer adoption and marketshare, this deserves to fail in order to send the message to companies that "useless format wars" == "financial losses". What else would provide a strong enough incentive for them to cooperate long enough to reach agreement on a single good standard?
Physical muscles are one particular kind of strength. The determination to realize your goals by facing head-on all of the difficulties you encounter is another kind of strength and often does not involve lifting heavy objects. So is the discipline to put in the extra hours, to make the extra effort, to go the extra mile. I honestly believe that what you wrote there reflects an artificially narrow concept of strength.
It's hard to look at interoperability problems and then blame them on the Open Source folks who use open standards. So perhaps people agree with you, in a way, and are just more up-front about where to assign the blame. Not to mention that it will forever remain a "Microsoft ruled world" if no one is ever willing to value alternatives.
Honestly you don't sound very happy or content to me. You sound angry and venomous. If you have a great source of joy in your life, something that makes it easy have patience and be at ease with all the things you don't like, you seem rather selective about expressing it. Even if you're right and they are indeed foolish, why would the opinions of some "fanbois" take away your happiness by making you so upset?
If someone has no formal training and still managed to become an important part of a real software project, doesn't that tell you something about his or her resourcefulness and ability to take initiative? Why do you believe they would fare poorly in an environment like an office that comes with additional advantages like structure, training, clearly spelled-out expectations, and financial compensation?
There needs to be a Web site with a well-maintained registry of companies that treat their IT workers this way. It could be modelled after the various consumer-protection sites that inform people about scams and abuses in the marketplace. The goal would be that such companies have terrible difficulty finding anyone in IT who actually wants to work for them while the talent flocks to their competitors. This could save many people from having to invest their time and hard work before they find out what you did. It's deplorable that taking three gallons of milk and paying for one of them is called stealing, but receiving 3X work and paying 1X salary is called management.
Many other industries have unions to address the same problems. The trouble with that is that a union is like any other bureaucracy; the organization takes on a life of its own that is often at odds with its original purpose. A loosely organized, grassroots type of effort based on reputation and the open exchange of information might remedy some of these problems without all of those disadvantages. What I know for sure is that this kind of mistreatment is most successful when it's unopposed.
And rapidly for the best. Competence and contentment is much more actively communicative than prejudices, taboos, ignorances, errors, and badly managed fears.
We only just have now to discover how to get to this so atrociously novel situation.
I like you, you know.
It seems however this website does not support personal messages, so I cannot send you my little love declaration more privately just now.
Do you mind sending an email to deleted.email ATTY ymail DOTTY com, for me to reply?
That made me laugh. My assumption is that you're male. Unfortunately for you, that means I'm not interested in this "little love declaration". But it was an amusing and thoroughly unusual reply.
Wouldn't it be a better idea then to abandon this project and invest the resources into things that really might deter or otherwise prevent crime? I am a lot more interested in safer streets and safer neighborhoods than in locking up as many people as possible.
At least if this is implemented, a higher chance of getting caught might deter some criminals even if that wasn't the intention of the design. Still, when I think of what kind of person is willing to murder someone or to threaten to murder them to obtain their wallets, I picture desperate people who don't care very much about what happens to them. I doubt they feel like they have anything to lose. Jail might or might not scare them enough to reconsider their career paths, but I have the strong impression that it doesn't.
Why can't you leave the cat on the tree?
Well, you could, but cats are not like squirrels. I guess it's because of how their claws are arranged, but a cat can climb up a tree and has a very hard time climbing back down. The cat is likely to be SOL if you leave it there, or it might decide that getting hurt by falling is preferable to starvation. I prefer not to let a creature die over something I can do very easily like climbing a tree, and I prefer not to sit and do nothing while a neighbor suffers from the predicament of a cherished pet. So yes, I could have left the cat in the tree, but I didn't think it was the right thing to do.
Red herring. These cameras help investigate and prosecute crimes by taking pictures when a shot is fired, of the area where the shot was fired.
Nothing was said about preventing crimes.
Now that you have demonstrated your lack of reading comprehension, please shut the fuck up.
Easy there. Crime prevention isn't a red herring, unless you think a person walking down the street should care about which particular thug wants to harm him. I can hypothetically imagine the thug now, saying "Bruce got locked up because the camera took his picture - I'm Joe and I'll be mugging you instead." If more violent crimes are being prosecuted, that's probably a good thing. But if that isn't making the streets any safer, then lack of prosecutions is not the source of the problem.
If a pipe bursts in your basement and it's flooding the place, bailing out the water is not the first step you should take. The first step you should take is to turn off the water supply. Likewise, putting criminals in jail is a way to get them out of the streets. But if one or two thugs replaces each one you put in jail, you need to find out why. Otherwise, all you have is a hammer and you think everything is a nail.
The regulation of automobiles and the requirement of having a license to legally operate one is based on the idea that driving is a privilege, not a right. That's why I don't think you can make a valid comparison between car ownership and gun ownership, because one of those is a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution and the other is a privilege.
Further, I appreciate that before regulations were put into place for automobiles, it was understood that those regulations needed to be justified. The justification is that driving is not a civil right, therefore there is nothing wrong with placing limits on it and deciding who may or may not do it. It follows that placing limits on a recognized civil right and deciding who may or may not exercise it needs an even stronger justification before we do it. I have seen no such justifications that were rooted in reason instead of fear.
I think easy access to gun doesn't even quality as a footnote, and that the other issues you mentioned are more likely to provide real answers. The War on Drugs is related to the incarceration rates, as many of these are non-violent and otherwise law-abiding except that they engage in victimless crimes. If you take these people and lock them up with gang members, rapists, and murderers, it doesn't take a genius to predict what will happen. The bothersome thing is that we know beyond doubt that this is what happens, but we aren't doing anything about it. It's as though this is a feature of our prison system and not a bug. We refuse to take a hard look at such things to protect a War on Drugs that hasn't done anything to stop anyone from obtaining drugs. The Puritannical urge to use force to make sure no one does anything you disapprove of is really that powerful.
The sexual repression doesn't make much sense to me. It's acceptable to graphically depict all kinds of violence on broadcast television, but not acceptable to show nudity. The message is that a guy getting his head blown off with a shotgun is normal and healthy but a pair of breasts is not and must be censored. This is not a healthy message.
I'd like to see that too, and was about to ask before I noticed that you already did. Honestly, I'm not holding my breath for that one.
I see that all the time. Either there is a great deal of ignorance concerning the extreme weakness of resolving contradictions this way, or people who do this are hoping that you won't notice. Little do they know, what they don't say is at least as important as what they do say. The really amazing thing is they seem totally blind to this and can't imagine why anyone would think there's something wrong with it.
Many people do this, it's just that gun-control provides some particularly egregious examples. They constantly do this and then they seem to wonder why we don't consider their position "merely different but equal" to ours. Any movement that has serious problems with the legitimacy of its arguments and doesn't view that as something it should address yesterday is a religious belief, even if it doesn't call itself that.
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
Actually you are the first person in this thread to compare Switzerland with the USA. The comparison that was made, the one to which I was responding, was between Denmark and Switzerland. I find it strange that you wouldn't have noticed this, since I quoted it in my post that you responded to. I honestly don't know whether you are deliberately trying to sidetrack the discussion, but I will say it sure does look that way.
If I am making "a weak attempt at a flame" then surely you can put me in my place by telling me why I'm wrong. If my post has no facts and no valid reasoning, then surely it should be easy for you to show that my position is baseless and the facts concerning gun-control are on your side. If your disdain for my words is legitimate, then surely you can demonstrate that it is condescension and not a reasonable response to what you gave me to work with.
And finally, if I made a weak attempt at educating you, you can convince me of this. All you'd have to do is demonstrate that the way you have tried to deal with me has absolutely no connection to the response you received. I'll even help you by explaining one way you could do that. Just demonstrate that your use of emotionalism, ad-hominems, and failure to notice that the comparison was between Denmark and Switzerland are signs that you should be taken seriously.
I'm willing to listen if you are willing to do any of those things. Personally, I would love to rid myself of any false beliefs I may hold. To do that, I need to know why they are false. I don't mind being wrong for one moment if it leads to my edification, not even when the other person thinks it is a pissing contest and childishly gloats about his "victory". If you want to disabuse me of a false notion, I'm on board. I'm with you. But it will take more than your assertions and complaints to do it, and rightfully so.
I have repeatedly invited you to tell me why you think I'm wrong. Find one thing I said that is demonstrably false. Find one instance of me using a logical fallacy. Do that and I'll have no problem thanking you for correcting me, for showing the error of my ways. But you won't do that and I have to assume that's because you know that you can't.
I think I'm done here. I enjoy a good debate, and am grateful to have encountered people more knowledgable than me who have given me a lot of good information. I'm not getting that kind of impression of you. I honestly believe you just want to be right no matter what, in which case this is more about your insecurity than it's about gun-control. Unfortunately that makes it impossible to reason with you, but I sincerely tried.
It's a comparison between two countries, actually. Unless you have tunnel-vision, it's also a small part of a much larger pattern. Other components of the larger pattern include the reduction in violent crime that has happened in every U.S. state that enacted conceal-carry permits. If you don't see that larger pattern, it's because you don't want to. If you want to close your eyes, that's fine, but then don't complain that you cannot see.
This will be something more than your desire to make this into a personal matter the moment you tell me why my arguments are unsound. As it stands now, you're saying "you're wrong!" without explaining why I'm wrong, and either you're bitching or you falsely expect this to be persuasive. As you conveniently ignore, I did not just say that I believe one worldview is inferior to another. I also backed that up with an explanation. If you wish to be taken seriously, dispute my explanation. Do your own research about how the media treats this issue and tell me if you found something different than what I found when I did the same.
So I explain what I believe to be true. Rather than expecting you to take it on faith, I provide several reasons why I believe it is the truth. I'm not concerned with whether that truth is flattering or unflattering to any particular group because that's a petty concern in the face of an important issue. I am only concerned with whether it's true. Either my reasons are relevant or you can explain why they're not. Either my logic is sound or you can point out where I have committed a logical fallacy. You've so far been unwilling to do that, and now you have the nerve to complain that you can't have a civilized discussion on this subject.
If you think that what you just did is quality debate, it's no wonder your discussions have been unsatisfying. You are reacting emotionally and resorting to ad-hominems. You are not showing me what's wrong with my reasoning and how it may be corrected. You're not being honest with yourself if you think it's the other guy's fault when this doesn't work out for you. It's possible that right now, you think I'm just saying that to give you a hard time. I'm actually trying to tell you something important about yourself as it's obvious to me that no one else has been both willing and able to do it.
You probably won't like this; so be it. When I see this kind of response, my initial reaction is "get over yourself." Maybe that's a misunderstanding on my part that you can correct. Still, I'll explain why.
I never made the claim that you said you wanted to disarm anyone. To quote myself, here's what I did say:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime.
Without changing its meaning at all, it can be rephrased this way:
I submit to you that this cannot possibly be reconciled with the gun-control advocates' (whether or not you are personally a member of this group we are discussing) notion that disarming people is the best way to reduce crime."
I went on to explain that the particular nuances of Swedish law have no effect on this greater point. I strongly doubt that a Swede who flips out and goes on a shooting frenzy is going to care about the fact that he had to show ID to buy the ammo. Your personal beliefs really don't change that one way or the other. It's sort of like me talking about Americans and having someone pipe up with "but I'm Australian!" That's just fine and dandy, but we can still talk about Americans. Likewise, I wasn't concerned with whether you personally want to disarm anyone.
What are those regulations designed to accomplish? If someone goes nuts and goes on a rampage, how do you intend to prevent this by requiring that he show ID before purchasing the weapons/ammo? At the time of purchase, he has not yet murdered anyone. If he has to unlock his gunsafe and take the weapon out of it before committing murder, how is that going to prevent the murder? They are largely feel-good measures. The gun-safe requirements might prevent accidents by making sure young children can't play with guns, but by definition accidents are not crimes and have no place in a discussion about crime. Besides, do you honestly believe a good parent would need the government to explain this to them?
That those regulations are useless is bad enough. That would mean they are just a waste of time and resources. The other problem is that dictatorships throughout history progress in stages. One stage is they start requiring the registration of all firearms. The next stage is they confiscate those firearms, now that they know where they are and who owns them. The next stage after that is they become police states and there's nothing to stop them. It's amazing how consistent this pattern has been. Castro did this in Cuba, Hitler did this in Germany, Stalin did this in Russia, Mussolini did this in Italy, and on and on.
What benefit does registration offer that makes it worth this risk? Can anyone name a single instance where a crime was prevented by using such a registry? As a citizen I do have an interest in crime prevention. I have a strong preference for not being shot by some thug. If I saw even one good reason why registration was in my interests, I'd support it. Right now, I would explain it this way: what do you call an it when we implement an idea with an unlikely but terribly serious downside and no real benefits? Bad decision-making.
And people who let their physical condition deteriorate (i.e. obesity) to the point where they (or a neighbor) could not comfortably and confidently climb a tree with no reason to fear their own safety. That's the other condition that needs to be present before it looks like emergency services are the very best way to deal with a cat in a tree. If you're wondering, yes I have climbed a tree to retrieve a cat. No building was on fire, no bullets were flying, no one had a stroke or a heart attack, so it never crossed my mind to dial 911 in that situation. I'd probably lose the ability to sleep at night if I learned that the response to a real emergency was delayed because I called the fire department for a situation I could easily handle myself. That, and I honestly think it takes brass balls to be a firefighter, not to mention that many of them are volunteers, so I respect their time more than that.
It's not so much about being versed in how people can be harmed. It's about understanding the subject you are considering. It's not a mere technicality that is being corrected here, not when the media inaccurately uses terms like "assault rifle" in order to make something seem more threatening. When you consider that the distinction between the weapons available to civilians and the military-grade weaponry that is correctly called an "assault rifle" is well-known among anyone who has done five minutes of research, there is no excuse for the media constantly getting this wrong.
How many reporters and editors does it take to properly vet a story and ensure that blatantly false labels are not used? It would be so easy to correct this error that it has to be intentional. If it's intentional, then it's an attempt to inject emotional fear into what is otherwise a reasoned debate. No one, but no one, who does this is interested in truth.
GP is correct. An assault rifle is a weapon that has a select-fire switch. This switch is used to control whether the rifle is semiautomatic and/or fully automatic and/or three-round-burst. By comparison, the difference between a deer rifle and the AK-47s that anyone in the USA can buy is that the AK-47 looks a bit more scary. The actual results of being shot by either are quite similar.
Also, most gun owners don't want to kill anyone. Most of the time that a citizen has used a gun to stop a crime, no shots were fired. That the would-be victim demonstrated the ability to defend himself was enough. Criminals want helpless victims, they don't generally want to have shootouts, and I bet that's hard for the gun-control mentality to understand.
The media is very careful not to report this, but you can do your own research and see for yourself that this is true. I'm not kidding about that one. There is a concerted effort to downplay any positive uses of firearms for self-defense. Most cases where this is what happened, the media does not say "the citizen held the criminal at gunpoint until police arrived and no shots were fired". Instead, they say "the criminal was subdued until police arrived" and don't explain how. Yet they give you the blow-by-blow account of the situation when it's a police officer or other official who uses a gun in the line of duty. The message is clear. Please don't take my word for it. See for yourself that there is an agenda here.
The awareness that there is such an agenda, that the pro-gun-control mentality has no problem using such underhanded and dishonest tactics has probably produced more pro-gun-ownership individuals than any amount of argumentation. You really have to ask yourself why an agenda would need to use dishonest tactics if it truly knew that the facts were on its side. You really have to wonder that if they are willing to lie about the positive uses of guns by law-abiding citizens, maybe they are also lying when they say their goal is to reduce crime.
The way I see it, there are a few gun-control advocates who have media presence and political connections who are advancing an agenda and are aware that it's a dishonest one. Then there are legions of useful idiots who don't understand what's wrong with that. They mean well, and they sincerely but naively believe that gun-control is a great way to stop crime.