Holy fuck, I'm a liberal, and this made me feel ashamed for a moment.
I hope people like you will never get a chance to do anything more than screech. The latter, we'll still keep protecting, though, because despite what you say, it's important enough to justify the annoyance.
Licensing to possess (and not just to buy or to carry) is part of the Czech model, yes. And the one I don't have a problem with.
The NRA won't support it, of course. But the world doesn't end with the NRA. Just like NRA fanatics believe that everyone else is a "gun grabber", there's this pervasive myth on the left that all gun owners are either hunters with bolt action rifles, or else NRA fanatics. But that's not the case, and the spectrum of gun control vs gun rights is more gradual than that - and there are plenty of people on it who e.g. oppose assault weapon bans while supporting universal background checks or extreme risk protection orders. Some of those people are left-wing, even. But they are completely excluded from the mainstream liberal gun control discourse - and not because they don't want to participate.
I think that the focus really has to be on who can own, and less on what they can own. Look at Czechia for a good example - they have no assault weapon bans, no magazine capacity limits, handguns are legal, and concealed carry is legal and shall-issue. So, almost like US... except you also need a rigorous background check to own any of that. And they don't have a shooting spree problem, or a more general gun violence problem.
If there's a realistic model for US, I think it's that, not Australia or UK.
Amusingly, the gun laws in Canada are generally much more permissive than UK laws. If anything, just going by the types of guns that civilians can own, for example, I'd say that Canada is much closer to US than it is to UK.
Yet, when you look at the crime rates etc, Canada is more like UK.
It's almost as if it's not the gun laws that make the difference between these two, and US.
He's an asshole because he doesn't care about the suffering of other people. It's this thing that we call "empathy", that's generally (except for nuts like the Randians) considered a prerequisite to function well in society.
In many of those cases, it was actually earned by us. It's not like that money magically materialized in the pockets of all those people - ultimately, someone, somewhere, made a product or service (or, more likely, a small part of it - but still made it with their own labor) that someone else needed. All those people that OP listed are just rentiers who cash in on that transaction, because the economy is structured in a way that allows them to collect economic rent from all wealth generated by people who actually work.
Both parties gerrymander, but there's also ample evidence that Republicans do it more often and on a broader scale. Democrats never had a "Project REDMAP".
And the reason why it does so is because the Congress passed a law mandating single-seat districts. The Constitution itself allocates House seats to the states, but it doesn't say how exactly those seats are to be filled - a state might decide to fill those seats on the basis of the state-wide popular party vote, for example.
It shouldn't require "being clearly unarmed" to avoid getting shot by police in a sudden interaction. If that's the standard, a lot of innocent people are going to die.
The reasonable standard is that you don't get shot unless you're clearly armed (and acting dangerously).
On top, of that, the job (SWAT especially) is advertised as adrenaline rush kicking down doors and such. Have you watched any American police recruiting videos lately?
You're missing his point. Cops do have the right of self-defense, but not at the expense of their primary duty, which is to protect non-cops from violence. Many (indeed, most) situations where cops have to use force to defend themselves are not ambiguous. But in those that are, it becomes a question of risk to the cop's life vs risk to the life of the other person (if they're innocent). It appears that the cops routinely choose to risk the other person's life in such situations, justifying it by claiming that they may have been in danger. I don't think that's reasonable - if, say, there's a 50% chance that the other person is actually dangerous, and 50% chance that they're not, it's not acceptable for the officer to shoot. And we've seen a bunch of police shootings where the chance that the person is dangerous is much less than that, and yet they ended up being shot because there was a very slim possibility they were a threat. Essentially, the cops prioritize their safety over the safety of those they supposedly "protect and serve". Why even have cops then?
That cop wasn't merely following his training. He had a customized AR-15 as his primary weapon, and its dust cover was replaced with the one that says "you're fucked".
Coincidentally, the court ruled this inadmissible as evidence, so the jury (which acquitted said cop) didn't see it.
I would much prefer a language that allows me low level things (there is no reason you cannot implement a Pascal-style string in C, for instance) instead of forcing some restricted choice of operations decided by the language or library committees.
Well, except for the part where you still have to use functions for concatenation, comparison etc. And if you want anything more than fixed-sized string (or just hope it fits into 255 bytes, as Pascal programmers did back in the day), then you also need to manage memory - which, of course, you'll still have to do manually in C, including for all the possible temporaries you might generate.
C++, on the other hand, offers you exactly what you ask: namely, language facilities that are powerful enough to actually implement a string type of your own, complete with memory management and convenient operators, the way you want. You also get std::string, because it's a pretty basic type that should really be in the standard library - but you don't have to use it, and even the rest of the standard library doesn't require you to.
You can legalize hand grenades for recreational use too
It may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but hand grenades are legal in US for recreational use. So are grenade launchers, and grenades for them. The only catch is that you have to pay a $200 transfer tax to the ATF whenever you acquire one (either launcher or grenade) - so it's a very expensive hobby, especially if you actually blow them up rather than just collect them. But, it is legal, in most states at least.
I don't think it would be reasonable to require this for guns that are practically useful for personal self-defense, hunting, or recreation. This would be revolvers, and bolt/lever/pump-action firearms.
For semi-auto handguns and long guns, sure, why not?
Because you could easily make the argument like that regarding strong crypto - if only NSA could intercept everything, who knows how many terrorist attacks would have been prevented?
In fact, that is exactly the argument that they're making.
The point is, VPNs are an existing technology that is directly supported in pretty much all computer OSes, and is easy to use. If you ban them, sure, there are workarounds - but they require a lot more effort. They don't need to make things foolproof; they just need to make them hard enough, that most people don't bother.
In Russia, it is "extremism" to say things like "Crimea belongs to Ukraine". Or even "there should be a referendum in Crimea to determine its future status".
No. The whole point of this is to implement blocks on ISP level. They already have the existing blacklist system that is currently used to take down "extremist" websites in this manner - it'll just make use of that.
So, anyone who is using a Russian ISP will have problems with VPNs, even foreign VPNs.
Have you ever heard of the Kennewick man? 9 thousand years old. People have tried to argue that he was not related to modern Native American tribes living in the area. DNA testing proved them wrong - not only was he related, but he was particularly closely related to the tribes that still live in the area where remains were found.
There is not enough money to give every person every medical service that they would like. At some point, someone would have to decide who gets what. In a western culture, that decision maker would most likely be a panel ('cause that's how we roll). That panel would be deciding who lives and dies, i.e. a Death Panel.
Of course, this is true regardless of whether you have socialized healthcare or not, for all the same reasons (not enough money in the system to service everyone for everything). So with private healthcare, you still have a "death panel". The only difference is where it is - in the insurance company's actuarial department; and whom it is responsible to - shareholders, via the board of directors.
Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is arguably that. Not to the extent of breeding supermen, but her showcase liberal utopia (Beta Colony) does prescreen for and fix genetic defects, and people can get a "certified clean genes" certificate if they want to. It's implied that the same technology is broadly used on other developed worlds in the universe.
Furthermore, there's a case of an "eugenics done wrong" transitioning to "eugenics done right" in the books, as well. The primary setting - a backwards planet of Barrayar recently reintegrated into the broader galactic economy - has a spartan-like cultural attitudes towards mutations (and any physical defects they suspect of being such, even when they really aren't), where mothers are expected to kill such children at birth. By the beginning of the series, it's already officially outlawed, and not widely practiced in the cities, but prevalent in rural areas. By the end of the series, some 40 years later, it's mostly stamped out in rural areas, and galactic genetic screening and treatment technologies are broadly used by the urban middle class.
All Win10 UWP apps can be unmaximized or resized. The "full screen only" thing was back in Win8/8.1 days, and backtracking from that was one of the big changes that Win10 made.
If you've last seen the music app in Win8, I'm not surprised. If I remember correctly, it was all about the Microsoft's own online subscription music service, and setting it up to play local stuff was convoluted and inconvenient.
The one that's in Win10 right now actually asks you which folders to index first thing when you launch it, and then gives the usual artist/album centric UI. Nothing special about it, and I've certainly seen better players, but it's "good enough" for most users.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy fuck, I'm a liberal, and this made me feel ashamed for a moment.
I hope people like you will never get a chance to do anything more than screech. The latter, we'll still keep protecting, though, because despite what you say, it's important enough to justify the annoyance.
Licensing to possess (and not just to buy or to carry) is part of the Czech model, yes. And the one I don't have a problem with.
The NRA won't support it, of course. But the world doesn't end with the NRA. Just like NRA fanatics believe that everyone else is a "gun grabber", there's this pervasive myth on the left that all gun owners are either hunters with bolt action rifles, or else NRA fanatics. But that's not the case, and the spectrum of gun control vs gun rights is more gradual than that - and there are plenty of people on it who e.g. oppose assault weapon bans while supporting universal background checks or extreme risk protection orders. Some of those people are left-wing, even. But they are completely excluded from the mainstream liberal gun control discourse - and not because they don't want to participate.
I think that the focus really has to be on who can own, and less on what they can own. Look at Czechia for a good example - they have no assault weapon bans, no magazine capacity limits, handguns are legal, and concealed carry is legal and shall-issue. So, almost like US... except you also need a rigorous background check to own any of that. And they don't have a shooting spree problem, or a more general gun violence problem.
If there's a realistic model for US, I think it's that, not Australia or UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Amusingly, the gun laws in Canada are generally much more permissive than UK laws. If anything, just going by the types of guns that civilians can own, for example, I'd say that Canada is much closer to US than it is to UK.
Yet, when you look at the crime rates etc, Canada is more like UK.
It's almost as if it's not the gun laws that make the difference between these two, and US.
He's an asshole because he doesn't care about the suffering of other people. It's this thing that we call "empathy", that's generally (except for nuts like the Randians) considered a prerequisite to function well in society.
In many of those cases, it was actually earned by us. It's not like that money magically materialized in the pockets of all those people - ultimately, someone, somewhere, made a product or service (or, more likely, a small part of it - but still made it with their own labor) that someone else needed. All those people that OP listed are just rentiers who cash in on that transaction, because the economy is structured in a way that allows them to collect economic rent from all wealth generated by people who actually work.
Both parties gerrymander, but there's also ample evidence that Republicans do it more often and on a broader scale. Democrats never had a "Project REDMAP".
And the reason why it does so is because the Congress passed a law mandating single-seat districts. The Constitution itself allocates House seats to the states, but it doesn't say how exactly those seats are to be filled - a state might decide to fill those seats on the basis of the state-wide popular party vote, for example.
While we're at it, an "open primary system" is properly called runoff voting.
It shouldn't require "being clearly unarmed" to avoid getting shot by police in a sudden interaction. If that's the standard, a lot of innocent people are going to die.
The reasonable standard is that you don't get shot unless you're clearly armed (and acting dangerously).
They're not "under-trained". They're over-trained in a wrong way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/na...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
On top, of that, the job (SWAT especially) is advertised as adrenaline rush kicking down doors and such. Have you watched any American police recruiting videos lately?
You're missing his point. Cops do have the right of self-defense, but not at the expense of their primary duty, which is to protect non-cops from violence. Many (indeed, most) situations where cops have to use force to defend themselves are not ambiguous. But in those that are, it becomes a question of risk to the cop's life vs risk to the life of the other person (if they're innocent). It appears that the cops routinely choose to risk the other person's life in such situations, justifying it by claiming that they may have been in danger. I don't think that's reasonable - if, say, there's a 50% chance that the other person is actually dangerous, and 50% chance that they're not, it's not acceptable for the officer to shoot. And we've seen a bunch of police shootings where the chance that the person is dangerous is much less than that, and yet they ended up being shot because there was a very slim possibility they were a threat. Essentially, the cops prioritize their safety over the safety of those they supposedly "protect and serve". Why even have cops then?
That cop wasn't merely following his training. He had a customized AR-15 as his primary weapon, and its dust cover was replaced with the one that says "you're fucked".
Coincidentally, the court ruled this inadmissible as evidence, so the jury (which acquitted said cop) didn't see it.
I would much prefer a language that allows me low level things (there is no reason you cannot implement a Pascal-style string in C, for instance) instead of forcing some restricted choice of operations decided by the language or library committees.
Well, except for the part where you still have to use functions for concatenation, comparison etc. And if you want anything more than fixed-sized string (or just hope it fits into 255 bytes, as Pascal programmers did back in the day), then you also need to manage memory - which, of course, you'll still have to do manually in C, including for all the possible temporaries you might generate.
C++, on the other hand, offers you exactly what you ask: namely, language facilities that are powerful enough to actually implement a string type of your own, complete with memory management and convenient operators, the way you want. You also get std::string, because it's a pretty basic type that should really be in the standard library - but you don't have to use it, and even the rest of the standard library doesn't require you to.
You can legalize hand grenades for recreational use too
It may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but hand grenades are legal in US for recreational use. So are grenade launchers, and grenades for them. The only catch is that you have to pay a $200 transfer tax to the ATF whenever you acquire one (either launcher or grenade) - so it's a very expensive hobby, especially if you actually blow them up rather than just collect them. But, it is legal, in most states at least.
I don't think it would be reasonable to require this for guns that are practically useful for personal self-defense, hunting, or recreation. This would be revolvers, and bolt/lever/pump-action firearms.
For semi-auto handguns and long guns, sure, why not?
How many dead people is sufficient?
Because you could easily make the argument like that regarding strong crypto - if only NSA could intercept everything, who knows how many terrorist attacks would have been prevented?
In fact, that is exactly the argument that they're making.
Don't forget about the part where lower personal income tax rates are temporary, and will expire in 10 years - but the corporate tax cut is permanent.
So, eventually, it's going to screw all working class Americans.
The point is, VPNs are an existing technology that is directly supported in pretty much all computer OSes, and is easy to use. If you ban them, sure, there are workarounds - but they require a lot more effort. They don't need to make things foolproof; they just need to make them hard enough, that most people don't bother.
In Russia, it is "extremism" to say things like "Crimea belongs to Ukraine". Or even "there should be a referendum in Crimea to determine its future status".
No. The whole point of this is to implement blocks on ISP level. They already have the existing blacklist system that is currently used to take down "extremist" websites in this manner - it'll just make use of that.
So, anyone who is using a Russian ISP will have problems with VPNs, even foreign VPNs.
Have you ever heard of the Kennewick man? 9 thousand years old. People have tried to argue that he was not related to modern Native American tribes living in the area. DNA testing proved them wrong - not only was he related, but he was particularly closely related to the tribes that still live in the area where remains were found.
There is not enough money to give every person every medical service that they would like. At some point, someone would have to decide who gets what. In a western culture, that decision maker would most likely be a panel ('cause that's how we roll). That panel would be deciding who lives and dies, i.e. a Death Panel.
Of course, this is true regardless of whether you have socialized healthcare or not, for all the same reasons (not enough money in the system to service everyone for everything). So with private healthcare, you still have a "death panel". The only difference is where it is - in the insurance company's actuarial department; and whom it is responsible to - shareholders, via the board of directors.
Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is arguably that. Not to the extent of breeding supermen, but her showcase liberal utopia (Beta Colony) does prescreen for and fix genetic defects, and people can get a "certified clean genes" certificate if they want to. It's implied that the same technology is broadly used on other developed worlds in the universe.
Furthermore, there's a case of an "eugenics done wrong" transitioning to "eugenics done right" in the books, as well. The primary setting - a backwards planet of Barrayar recently reintegrated into the broader galactic economy - has a spartan-like cultural attitudes towards mutations (and any physical defects they suspect of being such, even when they really aren't), where mothers are expected to kill such children at birth. By the beginning of the series, it's already officially outlawed, and not widely practiced in the cities, but prevalent in rural areas. By the end of the series, some 40 years later, it's mostly stamped out in rural areas, and galactic genetic screening and treatment technologies are broadly used by the urban middle class.
All Win10 UWP apps can be unmaximized or resized. The "full screen only" thing was back in Win8/8.1 days, and backtracking from that was one of the big changes that Win10 made.
If you've last seen the music app in Win8, I'm not surprised. If I remember correctly, it was all about the Microsoft's own online subscription music service, and setting it up to play local stuff was convoluted and inconvenient.
The one that's in Win10 right now actually asks you which folders to index first thing when you launch it, and then gives the usual artist/album centric UI. Nothing special about it, and I've certainly seen better players, but it's "good enough" for most users.