Unfortunately in some areas of the country there isn't really a choice.
Verizon is literally the ONLY cell signal I get at my house. If I picked any other company my phone would be useless at home. My contract is up. I have no illusions that I'll be leaving them so I wouldn't have a problem taking the subsidized phone except that they also force you to give up your unlimited data plan if you do.
What would be more fair is if they set an actual fair rate for the "no contract" price. They basically jack up the prices heavily on the no contract phones to try and force you to the subsidized ones.
Google's Nexus 4 is unlocked and sold for $299, yet Verizon essentially wants $150-200 for "subsidized" versions of the similar level phones or $500-600 for no contract versions.
There could be other reasons to avoid that. Granted, I don't think the idea is that prevalent in the technology sector, but in a lot of various areas there's the attitude that anything made in SE Asia (with the exception of Japan) is junk. Doesn't really matter if it actually IS junk or not, but that's the perception.
Take pocket-knives for example. Buck Knives moved some of their lower end production to China a few years back, and despite the Chinese made products actually being pretty decent quality, the community opinion of them ranks a Chinese-made Buck about on the level of a counterfeit.
Western European countries generally don't suffer that bias. They're still known as a location of "craftsman". Like I said I don't think its as much of an issue with electronics, but I certainly do know people who absolutely won't buy something if it says "Made in " China, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. As I mentioned earlier about the only country around there that's managed to shake that image is Japan, who certainly is known for producing quality stuff.
Depends on what you're doing really. I use both GUI and CLI for different tasks.
I will say for sample that CLI works wonders for moving files around based on name.
If I want to move everything with the world "contract" in the name form one folder to another for example, then in a GUI I'm stuck looking through the list and Ctrl-clicking on each one until I've found them all and then cutting and pasting. Sorting by name doesn't work because the word may appear anywhere in the list.
In the CLI, I can just do:
mv source/*contract* destination
and I'm done. I can also create bash scripts that automate things. For instance converting from mp4 to avi. There's generally a lot of steps involved in a GUI - opening the file, setting my output options, going through and resaving the file, etc.
Using bash I can setup a script with all my desired options ahead of time and then just do:
mp4toavi source.mp4 output.avi
And it runs exactly how I want it to.
Now granted, for video EDITING (rather than coversion) I'd never give up a GUI, nor would I give it up for browsing the web or anything like that. It's about mixing them up and using each style of interface when the particular tasks suits it.
You have to understand where people are coming from. Before I made a serious effort to switch to Linux I had been using Windows for around 15 years. You have to expect a transitional period there, though if the switching user was never really that proficient with Windows in the first place then that period can be shortened.
Well, for one, if you build your own PC's and don't want to pirate software, then Linux is free. Saving the cost of an OS is big for me. You also have a system that is FAR less likely to be affected by malware.
Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows. I use a 2nd computer on a KVM switch that runs Windows for playing games, but that's literally the only thing I do on that system - I genuinely dislike using Windows beyond that. If the games were available for Linux then I'd have little reason to keep a Windows machine/install at all.
That's the issue really. Though tablets are changing that to some degree, the simple fact is that almost everyone is still going to have a PC for their regular usage. So you don't really compare to cost of a whole gaming PC to a console - you compare the price difference between a PC that can play games vs one that can't.
Most modern systems can be "gaming" PC's with the addition of a mid-range graphics card. $100-150 or so. Like the GP I also used to build PC's for fun (overclocking and all that) but I'm now in my 30's and just don't have the time to tinker anymore, but I still keep a PC able to play the occasional game. It costs nearly nothing. Do I have the latest specs? No. I'm running an older Core 2 Duo 3.2Ghz and an NVidia GTX 460. I doubt I have more than $500-600 in that system but its still playing everything I want to just fine.
Not to mention that many PC games are now coming with support out of the box for an Xbox controller combined with Steam sales that have me able to get just about any game more than a year old for $5-10, I just don't see much point in playing my console these days.
Do they have video out? It seems that a lot of these tiny Android "PC's" are going after traditional desktop PC's by bringing tablet software to the desktop form factor.
I'll personally admit that while it wouldn't be my first choice, a small Android device attached to a 23" monitor, keyboard, and mouse really wouldn't hinder my day to day (home) use that much.
Notice in my original post that I said that they would rob the house after you leave. If they know you're a gun person they're INCREDIBLY unlikely to enter the home while you're there - far moreso than a random occupied house. Its just that your home becomes more of a target when you're not there.
So the gun reduces the threat to your person, but knowledge of it may increase the threat of theft to your property.
You can't drive a car without people seeing it. You can't live in a nice house without people seeing it. Them knowing about it is tied in with its very existence. The guns however have no requirement that anyone know about it, so if keeping that knowledge private keeps them from being theft targets then that works very well with little sacrifice.
Put it this way: if you were walking around in a major city with $20,000 in your pockets, would you care to openly advertise that fact?
You do realize that home invasions aren't always a single person. Groups of 2 or 3 are quite common. 7 rounds to deal with 3 intruders is getting pretty darned dicey.
Even trained law-enforcement when shooting typically have between a 17% and a 40% hit rate (that's not a hit to a vital area - just a hit at all), varying somewhat between what department you're looking at and what they're shooting at. Which means that even if you take the upper number of 40% a trained LEO is only likely to get 2.8 hits out of 7 shots.
Of course, the law-makers realize the foolishness of that and give the cops more bullets because they need them, but apparently the average citizen defending their home isn't worth as much.
If they had to be destroyed the government would have to pay for them. Spending that much money for this feel-good nonsense would be even more unpopular. By making people sell them out of state they avoid that cost.
My guess is that this overreaching law will get struck down by SCOTUS anyways, so if I had the mags in NY I'd hang onto them as long as possible.
Guns are grandfathered - magazines are not. Anything over 7 rounds of capacity cannot be loaded to more than 7 for a period of one year, and after that year possession of any magazine that will hold more than 7 rounds is a crime. You have that 1 year grace period to sell you magazines out of state.
The problem with this is that the majority of handguns have magazines that hold more than that. The ones that don't are either really tiny for concealed carry or fire very large rounds like.45ACP. For the older models that magazines are no longer produced for, you can't legally use your gun anymore as you have to sell your magazine for it and there's no way to obtain a new magazine that fits the law because no such product exists.
Actually all magazines over 7 rounds (which includes the vast majority of handguns) have to have those magazines sold out of state within one year. Some older models have no lower capacity magazines even in production, which means that they become effectively useless.
So no, they're not taking the whole gun - just an integral part of it.
Even before the "draconian gun controls", no other country in the world has ever had as many people with guns as the USA now. While other countries have tried to reduce the risks, Americans have only gotten more and more heavily armed and suffer the consequences.
Funny how the "consequences" have been a steady drop in violent crime in the US over that last 2 decades, despite us buying more and more guns. If it were as simple as more guns = more crime then we should have been getting consistently worse here. Hasn't happened.
Also, Mexico to the south of us has gun laws that are just as strict and draconian as any of the so-called European Utopias, yet they have a murder rate that is significantly higher than here in the US.
The reality is that there are far more dynamic factors involved in crime rate than simply the presence of guns.
Guns are a thing that exist in this world. Pandora's box has been opened and they're not going away. A good machinist can MAKE a decent gun out of steel bar-stock, and anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of how they work can make a crappy slamfire shotgun out of less than $40 worth of stuff from any hardware store. The recent advances in 3D printing are making home-grown firearms even more simple and capable too.
So yes, if there were no guns then no one would need guns, but since the world if fresh out of genies in order to magically wish them away, then we deal with the situation as best we can: by making sure that as responsible citizens and family members we prepare ourselves to meet a threat to our lives or the lives of our loved ones with equal force. That means carrying a firearm. Police are expected to carry a gun in order to protect themselves from the threats right on our streets - why do you think we should be less armed when we walk down those same streets?
If you need weapons to protect yourself, something else is quite badly wrong.
Different mindsets. You see, there is nowhere on this entire planet where there's no possibility of you being attacked. If you truly believe that you cannot be a victim of violence where you're at then you're just naive beyond hope. Now, anywhere where I feel an attack is actually probable, I'm not going, or if I'm already there I'm leaving. In short, if I think I'm going to need a weapon then I don't go there.
The weapon comes with me for all the places where I think I probably WON'T need it, but the cost of not having it in the rare event that I do is too great, and I choose not to gamble with my life. Within my state's concealed carry laws, I am armed with at a minimum a Ruger LCP in my pocket at all times (if the weather is cold enough that dress allows it, then I may carry something larger).
Most smart gun people that I know don't put NRA stickers on their vehicles. It's a dead giveaway that the person is a gun-owner. That invites break-ins to the vehicle to see if they're possibly keeping a gun in the car, or possibly even following the vehicle home and then robbing the home after its been ID'd and the owner has left.
No, I'm arguing that only things that directly harm someone should be illegal, because making things illegal that don't cause harm don't prevent them, and UNTIL they cause harm to another individual then there's no reason another person should be punished for something.
Unjustifiably shooting someone with a gun should be illegal. Owning a gun (of whatever type) should not.
Just because it's impossible to, by law, prevent me from sneaking up on you and clobbering you with a brick then bashing your skull in doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.
The point there though is that by doing that you've already committed direct harm to an individual. An object hurts no one, and making laws about what you MIGHT do with something is completely asinine - particularly when the laws do virtually nothing to prevent you from doing it anyways.
Its like outlawing hex-editors. Hackers use them, and we don't care about you nerds, so we might as well outlaw them. Doesn't matter that you can code your own in a matter of a few hours, we just need to make our authority known. Its stupid, and hurts only the people who weren't going to do anything wrong in the first place.
Copying or possessing an unauthorized copy of an mp3 is also illegal, but you can see how well that's working. "Illegal" means nothing to people who are already going to break the law.
Hey I know, why don't we just make killing people illegal? That would solve all this nonsense and keep everyone safe.
unless they can afford preban magazines, which will undoubtedly be more expensive
At no time during the previous ban did pre-ban magazines go above about $100 each, and I was able to find 30-rnd pre-ban magazines for one of my handguns during the middle of the last AWB for $25.
Now at this point, every magazine made for law enforcement use during that 1994 to 2004 period is now legal (and many have been surplused to the public). We also have had nearly 10 years of time when civilian production of normal capacity magazines resumed, and the companies right now are cranking them out and a maddening pace due to the public being afraid of another ban. There are enough on the market now to keep the shooting public going for probably close to a century. Prices will be higher, but not unattainable.
Now think: do you think anybody who's planning on committing a mass shooting followed by a suicide really cares how much the magazines cost? They'll throw 5 or 6 on their credit card bill that they're never going to pay again and then go off on their rampage.
Its stupid. It won't prevent anything, but it does force the average gun owner who ISN'T planning a suicide run to pay more for pre-ban magazines.
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Unfortunately in some areas of the country there isn't really a choice.
Verizon is literally the ONLY cell signal I get at my house. If I picked any other company my phone would be useless at home. My contract is up. I have no illusions that I'll be leaving them so I wouldn't have a problem taking the subsidized phone except that they also force you to give up your unlimited data plan if you do.
What would be more fair is if they set an actual fair rate for the "no contract" price. They basically jack up the prices heavily on the no contract phones to try and force you to the subsidized ones.
Google's Nexus 4 is unlocked and sold for $299, yet Verizon essentially wants $150-200 for "subsidized" versions of the similar level phones or $500-600 for no contract versions.
There could be other reasons to avoid that. Granted, I don't think the idea is that prevalent in the technology sector, but in a lot of various areas there's the attitude that anything made in SE Asia (with the exception of Japan) is junk. Doesn't really matter if it actually IS junk or not, but that's the perception.
Take pocket-knives for example. Buck Knives moved some of their lower end production to China a few years back, and despite the Chinese made products actually being pretty decent quality, the community opinion of them ranks a Chinese-made Buck about on the level of a counterfeit.
Western European countries generally don't suffer that bias. They're still known as a location of "craftsman". Like I said I don't think its as much of an issue with electronics, but I certainly do know people who absolutely won't buy something if it says "Made in " China, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. As I mentioned earlier about the only country around there that's managed to shake that image is Japan, who certainly is known for producing quality stuff.
Depends on what you're doing really. I use both GUI and CLI for different tasks.
I will say for sample that CLI works wonders for moving files around based on name.
If I want to move everything with the world "contract" in the name form one folder to another for example, then in a GUI I'm stuck looking through the list and Ctrl-clicking on each one until I've found them all and then cutting and pasting. Sorting by name doesn't work because the word may appear anywhere in the list.
In the CLI, I can just do:
mv source/*contract* destination
and I'm done. I can also create bash scripts that automate things. For instance converting from mp4 to avi. There's generally a lot of steps involved in a GUI - opening the file, setting my output options, going through and resaving the file, etc.
Using bash I can setup a script with all my desired options ahead of time and then just do:
mp4toavi source.mp4 output.avi
And it runs exactly how I want it to.
Now granted, for video EDITING (rather than coversion) I'd never give up a GUI, nor would I give it up for browsing the web or anything like that. It's about mixing them up and using each style of interface when the particular tasks suits it.
You have to understand where people are coming from. Before I made a serious effort to switch to Linux I had been using Windows for around 15 years. You have to expect a transitional period there, though if the switching user was never really that proficient with Windows in the first place then that period can be shortened.
Not sure. I've never been one for local multiplayer anyways though. If I want multiplayer I'll play online.
Well, for one, if you build your own PC's and don't want to pirate software, then Linux is free. Saving the cost of an OS is big for me. You also have a system that is FAR less likely to be affected by malware.
Also, once you get good on Linux the power of having a Unix command line available really becomes a boon. It took me a good year to 18 months of primary use on Linux, but at this point I truly feel more comfortable and efficient in Linux than in Windows. I use a 2nd computer on a KVM switch that runs Windows for playing games, but that's literally the only thing I do on that system - I genuinely dislike using Windows beyond that. If the games were available for Linux then I'd have little reason to keep a Windows machine/install at all.
That's the issue really. Though tablets are changing that to some degree, the simple fact is that almost everyone is still going to have a PC for their regular usage. So you don't really compare to cost of a whole gaming PC to a console - you compare the price difference between a PC that can play games vs one that can't.
Most modern systems can be "gaming" PC's with the addition of a mid-range graphics card. $100-150 or so. Like the GP I also used to build PC's for fun (overclocking and all that) but I'm now in my 30's and just don't have the time to tinker anymore, but I still keep a PC able to play the occasional game. It costs nearly nothing. Do I have the latest specs? No. I'm running an older Core 2 Duo 3.2Ghz and an NVidia GTX 460. I doubt I have more than $500-600 in that system but its still playing everything I want to just fine.
Not to mention that many PC games are now coming with support out of the box for an Xbox controller combined with Steam sales that have me able to get just about any game more than a year old for $5-10, I just don't see much point in playing my console these days.
Do they have video out? It seems that a lot of these tiny Android "PC's" are going after traditional desktop PC's by bringing tablet software to the desktop form factor.
I'll personally admit that while it wouldn't be my first choice, a small Android device attached to a 23" monitor, keyboard, and mouse really wouldn't hinder my day to day (home) use that much.
Notice in my original post that I said that they would rob the house after you leave. If they know you're a gun person they're INCREDIBLY unlikely to enter the home while you're there - far moreso than a random occupied house. Its just that your home becomes more of a target when you're not there.
So the gun reduces the threat to your person, but knowledge of it may increase the threat of theft to your property.
You can't drive a car without people seeing it. You can't live in a nice house without people seeing it. Them knowing about it is tied in with its very existence. The guns however have no requirement that anyone know about it, so if keeping that knowledge private keeps them from being theft targets then that works very well with little sacrifice.
Put it this way: if you were walking around in a major city with $20,000 in your pockets, would you care to openly advertise that fact?
Australia has also seen a 47% increase in the rate of violent assault and a 22% increase in the rate of sexual assault since enacting that ban.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
In their case the lack of guns has resulted in fewer murders but an overall increase in violent crime.
You do realize that home invasions aren't always a single person. Groups of 2 or 3 are quite common. 7 rounds to deal with 3 intruders is getting pretty darned dicey.
Even trained law-enforcement when shooting typically have between a 17% and a 40% hit rate (that's not a hit to a vital area - just a hit at all), varying somewhat between what department you're looking at and what they're shooting at. Which means that even if you take the upper number of 40% a trained LEO is only likely to get 2.8 hits out of 7 shots.
Of course, the law-makers realize the foolishness of that and give the cops more bullets because they need them, but apparently the average citizen defending their home isn't worth as much.
If they had to be destroyed the government would have to pay for them. Spending that much money for this feel-good nonsense would be even more unpopular. By making people sell them out of state they avoid that cost.
My guess is that this overreaching law will get struck down by SCOTUS anyways, so if I had the mags in NY I'd hang onto them as long as possible.
Guns are grandfathered - magazines are not. Anything over 7 rounds of capacity cannot be loaded to more than 7 for a period of one year, and after that year possession of any magazine that will hold more than 7 rounds is a crime. You have that 1 year grace period to sell you magazines out of state.
The problem with this is that the majority of handguns have magazines that hold more than that. The ones that don't are either really tiny for concealed carry or fire very large rounds like .45ACP. For the older models that magazines are no longer produced for, you can't legally use your gun anymore as you have to sell your magazine for it and there's no way to obtain a new magazine that fits the law because no such product exists.
Actually all magazines over 7 rounds (which includes the vast majority of handguns) have to have those magazines sold out of state within one year. Some older models have no lower capacity magazines even in production, which means that they become effectively useless.
So no, they're not taking the whole gun - just an integral part of it.
Even before the "draconian gun controls", no other country in the world has ever had as many people with guns as the USA now. While other countries have tried to reduce the risks, Americans have only gotten more and more heavily armed and suffer the consequences.
Funny how the "consequences" have been a steady drop in violent crime in the US over that last 2 decades, despite us buying more and more guns. If it were as simple as more guns = more crime then we should have been getting consistently worse here. Hasn't happened.
Also, Mexico to the south of us has gun laws that are just as strict and draconian as any of the so-called European Utopias, yet they have a murder rate that is significantly higher than here in the US.
The reality is that there are far more dynamic factors involved in crime rate than simply the presence of guns.
Guns are a thing that exist in this world. Pandora's box has been opened and they're not going away. A good machinist can MAKE a decent gun out of steel bar-stock, and anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of how they work can make a crappy slamfire shotgun out of less than $40 worth of stuff from any hardware store. The recent advances in 3D printing are making home-grown firearms even more simple and capable too.
So yes, if there were no guns then no one would need guns, but since the world if fresh out of genies in order to magically wish them away, then we deal with the situation as best we can: by making sure that as responsible citizens and family members we prepare ourselves to meet a threat to our lives or the lives of our loved ones with equal force. That means carrying a firearm. Police are expected to carry a gun in order to protect themselves from the threats right on our streets - why do you think we should be less armed when we walk down those same streets?
If you need weapons to protect yourself, something else is quite badly wrong.
Different mindsets. You see, there is nowhere on this entire planet where there's no possibility of you being attacked. If you truly believe that you cannot be a victim of violence where you're at then you're just naive beyond hope. Now, anywhere where I feel an attack is actually probable, I'm not going, or if I'm already there I'm leaving. In short, if I think I'm going to need a weapon then I don't go there.
The weapon comes with me for all the places where I think I probably WON'T need it, but the cost of not having it in the rare event that I do is too great, and I choose not to gamble with my life. Within my state's concealed carry laws, I am armed with at a minimum a Ruger LCP in my pocket at all times (if the weather is cold enough that dress allows it, then I may carry something larger).
Most smart gun people that I know don't put NRA stickers on their vehicles. It's a dead giveaway that the person is a gun-owner. That invites break-ins to the vehicle to see if they're possibly keeping a gun in the car, or possibly even following the vehicle home and then robbing the home after its been ID'd and the owner has left.
No, I'm arguing that only things that directly harm someone should be illegal, because making things illegal that don't cause harm don't prevent them, and UNTIL they cause harm to another individual then there's no reason another person should be punished for something.
Unjustifiably shooting someone with a gun should be illegal. Owning a gun (of whatever type) should not.
Just because it's impossible to, by law, prevent me from sneaking up on you and clobbering you with a brick then bashing your skull in doesn't mean it shouldn't be illegal.
The point there though is that by doing that you've already committed direct harm to an individual. An object hurts no one, and making laws about what you MIGHT do with something is completely asinine - particularly when the laws do virtually nothing to prevent you from doing it anyways.
Its like outlawing hex-editors. Hackers use them, and we don't care about you nerds, so we might as well outlaw them. Doesn't matter that you can code your own in a matter of a few hours, we just need to make our authority known. Its stupid, and hurts only the people who weren't going to do anything wrong in the first place.
Copying or possessing an unauthorized copy of an mp3 is also illegal, but you can see how well that's working. "Illegal" means nothing to people who are already going to break the law.
Hey I know, why don't we just make killing people illegal? That would solve all this nonsense and keep everyone safe.
You can see how well that worked with LibCSS or torrented music.
No matter how much you stamp your feet and scream "illegal!", information will flow freely.
unless they can afford preban magazines, which will undoubtedly be more expensive
At no time during the previous ban did pre-ban magazines go above about $100 each, and I was able to find 30-rnd pre-ban magazines for one of my handguns during the middle of the last AWB for $25.
Now at this point, every magazine made for law enforcement use during that 1994 to 2004 period is now legal (and many have been surplused to the public). We also have had nearly 10 years of time when civilian production of normal capacity magazines resumed, and the companies right now are cranking them out and a maddening pace due to the public being afraid of another ban. There are enough on the market now to keep the shooting public going for probably close to a century. Prices will be higher, but not unattainable.
Now think: do you think anybody who's planning on committing a mass shooting followed by a suicide really cares how much the magazines cost? They'll throw 5 or 6 on their credit card bill that they're never going to pay again and then go off on their rampage.
Its stupid. It won't prevent anything, but it does force the average gun owner who ISN'T planning a suicide run to pay more for pre-ban magazines.