No, because bricks have other legitimate uses.
There are legitimate uses for laser pointers, at least up to 5mW (class IIIa). As I said, if you need one for your job you should be able to get a license.
It's not really that they respect the law. What happens is that the police continually harass them with random SUS searches. Since the law prohibits them carrying anything which can used as a weapon, if they caught carrying one they get busted. News spreads and the other chavs realise that carrying weapons is a bad idea. I lived in High Wycombe in a bad area a few years ago and the police decided to have a crackdown on chavs carrying CS gas by prosecuting a few people they caught carrying it under the draconian Firearms act. The net effect is that a fashion for CS gassing people in night clubs died down.
It would be possible to make it illegal just to shine the laser in someone's eyes, and it probably already is. The problem with that is that a few non chavs will get blinded. Making the lasers illegal avoids this.
Spend some time in the UK in a poor area and see how you feel about whether these people should have the right to carry weapons. Or any rights at all for that matter.
Wikipedia is the worst place in the world to read about politically charged scientific dispues. Usually one side will end up winning and make sure the article only reflects their views.
Free will means that you are not bound to act in a particular way based on initial conditions and some laws. I'm not sure your definition of free will is exact enough. Will implies intent or desire. Weather may be non-deterministic but that's a far car from concluding it has free will. Plus it seems that assessing if something is deterministic requires one knowing all the "initial conditions and laws" that govern. Knowing a few historical conditions and assuming a few rudimentary laws, could make any deterministic system seem chaotic. Ok, I'm not seriously suggesting the weather is conscious - I don't see any evidence for that. But non deterministic behaviour does seem to be one of the components of free will.
And you're right that if you didn't know some of the rules a deterministic system may seem chaotic. But I don't really believe that there are 'hidden rules' that will be discovered that will suddenly make chaotic systems become predictable. The unpredictability seems to come from a sensitivity to initial conditions, and I can't see how discovering new rules would help.
China is much further into a theocratic dark age than America. It's just that the theocracy is based on Chinese nationalism. The net effect is that lots of PRC scientists believe that -
Which I think is nonsense. If we don't all share a common African ancestor, how come we can interbreed? As someone else puts it
By my understanding, it is almost a statistical impossibility for the same species to originate independently in several places at once. Modern Chinese are, without a doubt, Homo sapiens, as are all other humans, by the only objective test for species: Chinese and all other humans can interbreed and give birth to fertile children. Homo erectus was a different species from Homo sapiens. If Chinese were descended from a different species, they ought to be even more different from Homo sapiens than Homo erectus was, and therefore not interfertile with other people. But this is not the case.
Which is why I likened his trailer to the Spanish Inquisition. I wasn't expecting that!
I dunno really, I believe there is no God and Dawkins is his prophet. But it does seem to be very dangerous if people are losing their jobs for writing papers about "creation science" or "intelligent design" or whatever they call it. I think it's all bollocks quite frankly. But who knows, lots of theories have languished in kookdom for hundreds of years and then a mutated version of them has turned out to be quite relevant. E.g. non Euclidean geometry was for ages considered a mathematical curiosity, but it turned to be useful in phyics.
I think, for reasons that will hopefully enrage the people doing it, "intelligent design" studies should be publically funded on the off chance that some future mutated version of it becomes useful in some part of science. Though I doubt it will look anything like the stuff I see now.
Free will means that you are not bound to act in a particular way based on initial conditions and some laws. So an automaton that was programmed and had to follow its programming would not have free will. Naively, a Newtonian system is deterministic - give the initial conditions and the laws of motion we can predict its behaviour at any point in the future. For simple Newtonian systems like the solar system that is true. But for slightly less simple ones, chaos takes over and we cannot. The weather is complex enough to be chaotic. You can't determine the future state of the weather from the current state because of chaotic effects. Even if you understand the equations that govern it, any initial errors in the current state will cause the predictions to rapidly diverge from reality.
And hence it has free will like us, but not like the solar system or the automaton.
Maybe they have a pack of say 10 kids all shining their laser pointers up the descent path of the aircraft. That way you just need to hold it steady, not track an arc.
My right not to be blinded trumps your right to burst balloons when drunk.
No it doesn't. Your right to not be blinded can only trump someone's right to point a fucking laser pointer at your eyes.
What you are saying is equivalent to "nobody should be allowed to carry a knife because they *might* stab me with it". Pure idiocy. If we all lived in a nice libertarian utopia full of moderately intelligent people that would work well. They could be trusted to carry a weapon but not use it unless they were under mortal danger since they wouldn't want to harm anyone or go to prison. But we don't. In Australia and the UK there are packs of chavs that dazzle drivers with lasers as they pull up to stop signs to amuse their friends. Sometimes those drivers get out of the car. Then if they're lucky they beat the shit out of the chavs, and if they're unlucky the chavs beat the shit out of them. Basically the chavs want to pick a fight with people to kill time.
When you're dealing with people like that, it's unfortunately necessary to take away people's right to carry lasers that could actually cause eye damage. And come to think of it, pretty much any weapon. The problem is that the chav scum basically have nothing to do other than pick fights with random passers by. They have absolutely no ability to see that in the long run this will land them in prison. If you let them have low power lasers they will dazzle people to try to start some drama. If you give them high power lasers they will blind someone and if you let them have knives or guns they will kill someone. In both cases they will be very surprised that they get sent to prison for life for doing this since they are too stupid to see the inevitable progression from picking fights with strangers to killing or maiming someone to serious jail time. This makes them very unlike the moderately intelligent citizens of a hypothetical libertarian utopia and that is why libertarian rules are not applied to them.
In the UK if you want to carry a knife, expect the police to ask for a good reason if they search you and find it. Which if you're a chav they will do if you hang around causing trouble. If you don't provide one, you'll get done for carrying an offensive weapon. So carrying kitchen knives is out unless you're a chef on your way to work for example. Actually, if you're chav vermin, then expect to get done for carrying anything at all that could possibly harm someone, regardless of whether you're a chef or not.
That's right! First they'll take laser pointers from stupid vandals, then they'll take away our right to free speech, then they'll enslave us and treat us like beasts of burden! That's excellent. I'm going to use that in future.
"They" won't "ban" everything that is misused by drunken children. What they will do to some extent is license things where the risk of people carrying them outweighs the benefit.
Ultra high power laser pointers are a special category - they can blind someone permanently from a distance but there is no legitimate reason to carry one in your pocket. Thus carrying them without a license should be illegal and people that break the law should be punished. The rationale for that is the otherwise kids will shine them in people's eyes either deliberately or accidentally (maybe they were aiming at balloons) permanently blind them.
From what I've read, there are people that need these things for their jobs, and they will get a license to have one and training on how to use it.
In the UK there is similar legislation recommended http://www.liv.ac.uk/radiation/pdf/laserpointers.pdf The HPA considers the professional use of a Class 1 or Class 2 laser pointer as a training aid in the workplace to be justified, and regards these Classes of laser product as being generally adequate for such use. The use of Class 3R laser pointers up to 5 mW may be justified for some applications in the workplace where the user has received adequate training.
The HPA advises that the sale of laser products to the general public for use as laser pointers should be restricted to Class 1 or Class 2 devices which should be classified in accordance with the requirements of the current British Standard and should be sold with sufficient accompanying information to enable the user to operate the product in a safe manner. Toys should be Class 1 or of such low output that they do not need to be classified.
After seeking advice from NRPB (now the Radiation Protection Division of the HPA) the Department of Trade and Industry urged Trading Standards Authorities to use their existing powers under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 5 to remove laser pointers of a Class higher than Class 2 (as defined in the British Standard) from the general market. Such devices are too powerful for general use as laser pointers and present an unacceptable risk in the hands of the consumer because they may cause eye injury in normal reasonably foreseeable use.
Now lots of other things are potentially lethal but are mostly used legitimately. Cars for example. And at least in America guns are protected by the Second Amendment.
High power laser pointers seem to be popular with idiots who use them for tricks in an unsafe way - other posters have talked about kids zapping drivers at stop lights and TFA talks about people shining them at pilots in planes. I once went to a computer user group meeting at a pub where someone had a HeNe laser and was shining out at people on the street. Later on he actually said it would cause blindness if you looked into it. Unbelievable.
I think for that reason they should be controlled by a license. If you need one for your job, apply for a license. If not, expect a prison term if you carry one around in most countries.
I really hate idiots who play with laser pointers. The ones being banned in Australia are Class III and Class IV ones which can easily blind someone.
personally, popping balloons with the things is a lawful reason to carry:) It seems like if it can pop balloons, it's not the sort of thing you want drunken kids playing with. My right not to be blinded trumps your right to burst balloons when drunk.
"THIS LAPTOP IS STOLEN FROM LUMPY. THIS IS STOLEN PROPERTY AND YOU NEED TO CALL XXX-XXX-XXXX for a $200 reward" I like the phone and social security numbers filter to Xs here. E.g.
XXX-XX-XXXX
When you preview it's there, but after you post it's converted to Xs.
When I was working in London, I knew a French guy that went to an illegal club in Brixton. Someone phoned him on his new cameraphone, back when cameraphones were very rare, and there was a spate of muggings for cell phones. He talked for a while and noticed a big black guy was staring at him. He hung up. Big black guy walked over, looking menacing and said "Does dat phone have a trackuh?" French guy says "A what?". Black guy "A trackuh, so da po-lice can find it when it's stolen". French guy "Yes, it does have a tracker". Big black guy walks off.
If you get a laptop with an HSDPA modem / GPS receiver you could easily write some code which reads from the GPS com port and sends the coordintes to a machine back home. You have a web page somewhere with the coordinates. If your laptop is stolen, call the police and explain.
Yeah because the only sort of threat possible against the US is one from a sovereign state. Non state actors can't possibly organise terrorist attacks.
Neither 9/11 or the 7/7 bombings in London nor the Madrid train bombings killed anyone. Since the governments of Muslim countries are not formally committed to attacking America, there is no threat whatsoever.
Actually I think the US would be a lot safer if it was a conventional war against a state, as you say the US would win that in a matter of hours.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really that they respect the law. What happens is that the police continually harass them with random SUS searches. Since the law prohibits them carrying anything which can used as a weapon, if they caught carrying one they get busted. News spreads and the other chavs realise that carrying weapons is a bad idea. I lived in High Wycombe in a bad area a few years ago and the police decided to have a crackdown on chavs carrying CS gas by prosecuting a few people they caught carrying it under the draconian Firearms act. The net effect is that a fashion for CS gassing people in night clubs died down.
It would be possible to make it illegal just to shine the laser in someone's eyes, and it probably already is. The problem with that is that a few non chavs will get blinded. Making the lasers illegal avoids this.
Spend some time in the UK in a poor area and see how you feel about whether these people should have the right to carry weapons. Or any rights at all for that matter.
Lol! The more I read I read this thread, the more I think mockery is the way to deal with gun crazy militia types.
Until we can ship them off to UN death camps in black helicopters that is. All hail the Jewluminati!
Thanks. I'll try to make that mistake fewer.
Wikipedia is the worst place in the world to read about politically charged scientific dispues. Usually one side will end up winning and make sure the article only reflects their views.
And you're right that if you didn't know some of the rules a deterministic system may seem chaotic. But I don't really believe that there are 'hidden rules' that will be discovered that will suddenly make chaotic systems become predictable. The unpredictability seems to come from a sensitivity to initial conditions, and I can't see how discovering new rules would help.
China is much further into a theocratic dark age than America. It's just that the theocracy is based on Chinese nationalism. The net effect is that lots of PRC scientists believe that -
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t3575.html
For nationalistic purposes, many Chinese scholars maintain that Peking Man evolved indigenously in north China, rather than sharing an origin point in Africa like other human ethnic groups.
Which I think is nonsense. If we don't all share a common African ancestor, how come we can interbreed? As someone else puts it
By my understanding, it is almost a statistical impossibility for the same species to originate independently in several places at once. Modern Chinese are, without a doubt, Homo sapiens, as are all other humans, by the only objective test for species: Chinese and all other humans can interbreed and give birth to fertile children. Homo erectus was a different species from Homo sapiens. If Chinese were descended from a different species, they ought to be even more different from Homo sapiens than Homo erectus was, and therefore not interfertile with other people. But this is not the case.
I dunno really, I believe there is no God and Dawkins is his prophet. But it does seem to be very dangerous if people are losing their jobs for writing papers about "creation science" or "intelligent design" or whatever they call it. I think it's all bollocks quite frankly. But who knows, lots of theories have languished in kookdom for hundreds of years and then a mutated version of them has turned out to be quite relevant. E.g. non Euclidean geometry was for ages considered a mathematical curiosity, but it turned to be useful in phyics.
I think, for reasons that will hopefully enrage the people doing it, "intelligent design" studies should be publically funded on the off chance that some future mutated version of it becomes useful in some part of science. Though I doubt it will look anything like the stuff I see now.
Actually the weather does have free will.
No, hear me out.
Free will means that you are not bound to act in a particular way based on initial conditions and some laws. So an automaton that was programmed and had to follow its programming would not have free will. Naively, a Newtonian system is deterministic - give the initial conditions and the laws of motion we can predict its behaviour at any point in the future. For simple Newtonian systems like the solar system that is true. But for slightly less simple ones, chaos takes over and we cannot. The weather is complex enough to be chaotic. You can't determine the future state of the weather from the current state because of chaotic effects. Even if you understand the equations that govern it, any initial errors in the current state will cause the predictions to rapidly diverge from reality.
And hence it has free will like us, but not like the solar system or the automaton.
Don't click on links ending with notlong.com!
http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu6yRUAxI0VcBrCtXNyoA/SIG=11hqnhjsc/EXP=1208853009/**http%3A//slashblog.notlong.com/
Maybe they have a pack of say 10 kids all shining their laser pointers up the descent path of the aircraft. That way you just need to hold it steady, not track an arc.
No it doesn't. Your right to not be blinded can only trump someone's right to point a fucking laser pointer at your eyes.
What you are saying is equivalent to "nobody should be allowed to carry a knife because they *might* stab me with it". Pure idiocy. If we all lived in a nice libertarian utopia full of moderately intelligent people that would work well. They could be trusted to carry a weapon but not use it unless they were under mortal danger since they wouldn't want to harm anyone or go to prison. But we don't. In Australia and the UK there are packs of chavs that dazzle drivers with lasers as they pull up to stop signs to amuse their friends. Sometimes those drivers get out of the car. Then if they're lucky they beat the shit out of the chavs, and if they're unlucky the chavs beat the shit out of them. Basically the chavs want to pick a fight with people to kill time.
When you're dealing with people like that, it's unfortunately necessary to take away people's right to carry lasers that could actually cause eye damage. And come to think of it, pretty much any weapon. The problem is that the chav scum basically have nothing to do other than pick fights with random passers by. They have absolutely no ability to see that in the long run this will land them in prison. If you let them have low power lasers they will dazzle people to try to start some drama. If you give them high power lasers they will blind someone and if you let them have knives or guns they will kill someone. In both cases they will be very surprised that they get sent to prison for life for doing this since they are too stupid to see the inevitable progression from picking fights with strangers to killing or maiming someone to serious jail time. This makes them very unlike the moderately intelligent citizens of a hypothetical libertarian utopia and that is why libertarian rules are not applied to them.
In the UK if you want to carry a knife, expect the police to ask for a good reason if they search you and find it. Which if you're a chav they will do if you hang around causing trouble. If you don't provide one, you'll get done for carrying an offensive weapon. So carrying kitchen knives is out unless you're a chef on your way to work for example. Actually, if you're chav vermin, then expect to get done for carrying anything at all that could possibly harm someone, regardless of whether you're a chef or not.
"They" won't "ban" everything that is misused by drunken children. What they will do to some extent is license things where the risk of people carrying them outweighs the benefit.
Ultra high power laser pointers are a special category - they can blind someone permanently from a distance but there is no legitimate reason to carry one in your pocket. Thus carrying them without a license should be illegal and people that break the law should be punished. The rationale for that is the otherwise kids will shine them in people's eyes either deliberately or accidentally (maybe they were aiming at balloons) permanently blind them.
From what I've read, there are people that need these things for their jobs, and they will get a license to have one and training on how to use it.
In the UK there is similar legislation recommended
http://www.liv.ac.uk/radiation/pdf/laserpointers.pdf
The HPA considers the professional use of a Class 1 or Class 2 laser pointer as a training aid in the workplace to be justified, and regards these Classes of laser product as being generally adequate for such use. The use of Class 3R laser pointers up to 5 mW may be justified for some applications in the workplace where the user has received adequate training.
The HPA advises that the sale of laser products to the general public for use as laser pointers should be restricted to Class 1 or Class 2 devices which should be classified in accordance with the requirements of the current British Standard and should be sold with sufficient accompanying information to enable the user to operate the product in a safe manner. Toys should be Class 1 or of such low output that they do not need to be classified.
After seeking advice from NRPB (now the Radiation Protection Division of the HPA) the Department of Trade and Industry urged Trading Standards Authorities to use their existing powers under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 5 to remove laser pointers of a Class higher than Class 2 (as defined in the British Standard) from the general market. Such devices are too powerful for general use as laser pointers and present an unacceptable risk in the hands of the consumer because they may cause eye injury in normal reasonably foreseeable use.
Now lots of other things are potentially lethal but are mostly used legitimately. Cars for example. And at least in America guns are protected by the Second Amendment.
High power laser pointers seem to be popular with idiots who use them for tricks in an unsafe way - other posters have talked about kids zapping drivers at stop lights and TFA talks about people shining them at pilots in planes. I once went to a computer user group meeting at a pub where someone had a HeNe laser and was shining out at people on the street. Later on he actually said it would cause blindness if you looked into it. Unbelievable.
I think for that reason they should be controlled by a license. If you need one for your job, apply for a license. If not, expect a prison term if you carry one around in most countries.
Here's what a 5mW laser looks like to a pilot.
http://www.pangolin.com/faa/laser-aircraft-animation-and-explanation.htm
Spam script malfunctioning, is.
That site makes Time Cube look sane. Why is it all anti semitic websites are done by obvious raving lunatics?
;-)
Do you YHWH is maybe driving you mad to discredit your message
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/8784/1208579998710pd8.jpg
Wow! Scott Adams wrote something funny for the first time in ten years.
Ok, it's more that the comments to his blog are funny than the blog itself, but it's still a quantum leap forward in his sense of humour.
The fact that you're still angry about it now shows what a superb troll it is.
XXX-XX-XXXX
When you preview it's there, but after you post it's converted to Xs.
When I was working in London, I knew a French guy that went to an illegal club in Brixton. Someone phoned him on his new cameraphone, back when cameraphones were very rare, and there was a spate of muggings for cell phones. He talked for a while and noticed a big black guy was staring at him. He hung up. Big black guy walked over, looking menacing and said "Does dat phone have a trackuh?" French guy says "A what?". Black guy "A trackuh, so da po-lice can find it when it's stolen". French guy "Yes, it does have a tracker". Big black guy walks off.
Cost of a new laptop - $2000 tops
Writing a mocking letter to the guy that stole it in supermax sensory deprivation terrorist prison - priceless.
If you get a laptop with an HSDPA modem / GPS receiver you could easily write some code which reads from the GPS com port and sends the coordintes to a machine back home. You have a web page somewhere with the coordinates. If your laptop is stolen, call the police and explain.
Yeah because the only sort of threat possible against the US is one from a sovereign state. Non state actors can't possibly organise terrorist attacks.
Neither 9/11 or the 7/7 bombings in London nor the Madrid train bombings killed anyone. Since the governments of Muslim countries are not formally committed to attacking America, there is no threat whatsoever.
Actually I think the US would be a lot safer if it was a conventional war against a state, as you say the US would win that in a matter of hours.