More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws John R. Lott Jr. ISBN-10: 0226493644
The conclusion is abovious from the title, but I think it's difficult to challenge the objectivity of his methodology. In fact, he began the study with the opposite hypothesis.
I certainly won't dispute your assertion that the typical argument about firearms rights and crime is an exchange of self serving anecdotal evidence. However, the stats most frequently cited by those who seek to ban guns are grossly and deliberately misleading, and I don't see a parallel to any common arguments offered by the supporters of firearms rights.
1. Gun Control laws reduce the number of crimes committed using guns 2. A gun in the home is more likely to kill a resident of the home than a criminal
I know you've heard them, they're totally true, and totally worthless to any objective public policy debate.
#1 considers ONLY crimes involving firearms, not the overall rate of violent crime, thereby completely ignoring the deterrent effect of lawful firearms ownership.
#2 includes accidents, cases of self defense(e.g. justifiable homicide against an abusive spouse) and suicides. It also ignores the fact that the vast majority of incidents involving defensive use of firearms don't necessitate actual shooting
Back ON-topic, the debate about CCTV and crime indeed has superficial similarities, but I don't think enough underlying data is readily available to make conclusions, even if a person had a real desire to approach the issue objectively. However, I don't think that effect on crime is the fundamental or deciding issue in this debate. Assuming that the prolific use of cameras indeed does reduce the crime rate and increase the convinction rate, do we want to live in a society where our every move is recorded just so we can be "safe"? Maybe residents of London do, but I certainly don't.
"Yea, I would much rather become IBMs bitch than MS bitch... or not. Just ignore IBMs absurd pricing, . .."
They're providing a FREE office suite, which doesn't exactly have an "absurd" price, and although I haven't downloaded it yet, I'll be surprised if the terms of use necessitate you becoming their bitch.
If that's true, I think it would be really cool if they just tried to organize his notes and transcripts in some logical manner and then publish them "raw" so to speak. That way, the fans could draw their own conclusions as opposed to having to read a contrived and subjective narrative. At this point, I'm much more interested in knowing what he had envisioned for the ending than in reading the actual story.
Let's send a machine back in time(running Linux on a PowerPC architecture so they don't get any bad ideas) to assassinate Bill's mother before he was born, thereby erasing his entire existence. We can then observe the effects on the present and determine if the statement is true.
"Those of us that do camping in the wild have owned items that are better and FAR cheaper than this fellow designed and is trying to sell for a price that is insane." -- "The Best KZ campers, trailers and RV's in Michigan Cliffs [cliffstrailersales.com]"
What, like your water faucet? Driving your RV to a campground where you have easy connection to water/sewer/electricity doesn't actually qualify as "camping in the wild".
Glad you're saying that for the "last time", because it's completely ignorant!
Or, maybe I'm missing the connection between the levees in New Orleans and the trail of destruction that Katrina left along a hundred mile stretch of the gulf coast.
"Can someone please explain to me why there is so much hatred for Lotus Notes here on Slashdot?"
I suspect it's a matter of a few individuals with an intense hatred which gives a false impression of widespread dislike. I can easily understand how a poorly configured Notes environment could be nightmare scenario, but I'm surprised that a community of folks who use Linux (where the willingness and ability to fine tune the program are almost required) are hopelessly frustrated by a highly configurable e-mail/messaging/collaboration environment.
" . ..before you say "we have no choice of ISP here", that is your problem. Fix that and everything else will be fine. Sheesh."
I would think that statement was sarcasm were it not for the previous comments in your post. If we all had choices of ISPs and there wasn't a gargantuan barrier to entry into the carrier business, we wouldn't be having this discussion. You're the one living in a fantasy land if you think we should simply give up the fight for network neutrality and pretend that we have a reasonable chance of establishing something akin to a free market in the broadband business.
Even with a choice of ISPs, no company is going to have end-to-end connectivity to every content provider I want to access, and if one of their competitors, or one of their peer networks starts throttling traffic, they have every incentive to follow along. It makes no sense for an ISP to keep their network neutral when they have to peer with a "tiered" network. Nor does it make sense for them to remain neutral in an attempt to attract the end users of a competitor with a tiered network(your customer revolt scenario) when they have no customers to lose, and can increase their profits by setting up a bidding war between MSN, Google and Yahoo for preferential treatment.
"There are laws on the books that specifically restrict governmental agencies from collecting more information than is necessary and from sharing the collected information."
Do you have a link or reference regarding those laws?
"...quit cheapening my rights (against the government) by diluting them with fictional rights against private organizations and my own contracts, and let's agree that this isn't a free-speech issue."
The First Amendment is clearly in place to control the government and not private organizations, but claiming that this is not a "free speech" issue is ridiculous. This is clearly a case of unpopular ideas being suppressed.
I generally agree with the principle that private organizations have the right to conduct their businesses as they see fit. However, some organizations have business operations which facilitate the communication of ideas by their customers. Here's where I start to have some trouble. At what point does denial of a forum for unpopular speech become a First Amendment issue? Suppose "ForkIslam" is actually an organized political movement engaged in legal activities. First, Facebook denies them access. Then, the New York Times refuses to run one of their political advertisements. Next, their current ISP responds to public pressure and refuses to host forkislam.org. etc. etc.
In this context, hasn't the government created a framework of "laws" which are limiting this group's right to free speech by allowing others to arbitrarily filter out their legitimate political message?
Now, if the photon is traveling at the speed of light relative to the prisms, aren't the prisms traveling at the speed of light from the photon's frame of reference? Wouldn't length contraction make the prisms appear to be much closer together than they actually are?
The article is extremely short on details, but it sounds very similar to what IBM has done in the area of "statistical timing" over the last couple of years.
If you buy commodity PCs with OEM copies of Windows, and/or you have an installed Windows base that meets your needs, you probably don't have a compelling reason to switch. Microsoft has some good products that are easy to use and meet the requirements of most computer users. Some possible advantages of Linux are
Cost: If you put together your own machines and compare the retail cost of Windows and MS software to Linux and FOSS, Linux might look quite attractive.
Configurability: One thing I like about Linux is that it can be really fine tuned to the user's preferences. I can pretty much adapt my system to have the exact look and feel that I want. Some people like the Gnome/KDE look. I still prefer the old Motif/X-Windows environment, and with Linux, I can consistently create it.
Reliability: I've currently got 2 Linux boxes running, and they have been up for 61 days and 75 days respectively running everything from basic utilities to heavy duty CAD software. These boxes are 2+ years old and I don't remember either of them crashing and forcing me to reboot. In my experience, you just don't get that with Windows.
Security: You obviously need some special expertise for "real" security, but it's nice to know that with Linux, you're immune from the most common viruses, malware and trojans. Putting an unsecured Windows box on the Internet these days is like throwing a baby into the shark tank.
Principles: I think that a lot of the abject hatred you see for MS is due to their past, and probably current business practices. For instance, their "MS-only" policy which forced computer makers into an all-Microsoft or no-Microsoft decision is one of the most hideous abuses of market dominance in contemporary industry. That single act poisoned the computing and software world and curtailed innovation and competition for the indefinite future. Yet they never paid for this crime. Buying MS products, either retail or OEM is a tacit endorsement of their behavior.
Good for you. I'll bet you even FEEL better. Contemporary television content is crippling the intellectual capacity of our society. As you said, it's scary to see that people, even highly intelligent people, are so absorbed and brainwashed by the crap on TV. I have great respect for most of my co-workers, but I can barely manage to have lunch with them a few times a week due to the fact that the conversation is so heavily focused on television. Same thing when trying to meet new people, although it is usually the other person with a slack jaw and blank stare when I tell them I've never watched an episode of "Friends", "Seinfeld" or "Survivor". Still, I prefer living with a social handicap to exposing my mind to that garbage.
Yours is the classic "majority rules" position. The 2/3 of the population who believe sex is the most important part of the human experience (followed by sports, network TV, and alcohol in no particular order) can't possibly be wrong eh? Having the "ability to do without sex" isn't some secret power that bumps you up a notch on the "evolutionary" scale, but promiscuity == superiority only in some small circles. The same circles where TALKING about your promiscuity is also believed to indicate your superiority.
OK, I see the difference between "owning" the exclusive rights of distribution and control of a particular work(copyright) vs. actually "owning" the work.
"What's the confusion, here?"
I think it was the context. Your comment stating that someone has a right to "try" to make money off a particular idea, but that nobody else had to respect their business model seemed like a suggestion that the creator have no financial rights to their work whatsoever. That's obviously inconsistent with your suggestion that creators be protected against plagiarism as we NOW define it. I therefore thought you were arguing that taking someone else's work for commercial purposes should be OK, as long as the source was not misrepresented. We agree that such a system would be exploited by those with the means to mass produce and mass market the work(i.e. corporations), and it would be worse than it is now.
In "brief" response to your inquiry, patents and copyrights definitely last longer than I'd like. Fair use should be clearly defined and the interpretation broadened, there has to be a much stronger distinction between "invention" and "discovery", and the flaws in the process by which patents are reviewed and granted are too numerous to list.
"File format isn't what people are worried about when purchasing software, it's the software itself!"
That's not the debate here!
We're talking about the format being used to create and store publicly owned information. The government is funded by the citizens. The citizen should not have to pay an additional Microsoft tax in order to access government documents. The government SHOULD BE worried, even though they probably are not. Even if ODF is adopted as the standard, MS has the option of supporting it in their applications along with everyone else. The reverse isn't true if the government decides to institutionalize vendor lock-in.
"You can't own information. It is totally absurd." . . . "I still believe in giving credit where credit is due for ideas and ensuring that creators are not plagiarized."
Are you attempting to dissect the semantics of the argument by narrowing or broadening the scopes of "information" and "ownership"? What do YOU call it when someone has created a work, and there is a mechanism for "ensuring" that it is not plagiarized? Is there some sanitized synonym for "own" that we should be using?
"People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd. They have the right *try* and make money off of their ideas . .."
There is obviously no guarantee that a particular idea will be valuable. However, the people that come up with the idea should have a right to "try" to profit from the value of their idea WITHOUT a hundred other people and large corporations exploiting the idea at the same time!
I agree that the whole system of patents and copyrights has severe flaws, but the anarchists who think that brilliant ideas and creative works should be "free" and universally exploitable once they become public are an obstacle to the implementation of a better system. That line of reasoning is absurd, and if you bring it to its logical conclusion is even more unfair than the system we have now.
"If Christopher Columbus wants to sail off to into unknown stretches of the ocean, who cares? If Queen Isabella wants to piss her money away on useless boondoggles, let her."
" . ..think before you follow a candidate who support such an idea . . . a huge depression could result if he is elected and does such an insane system."
The President of the United States is not in a position to immediately implement a major overhaul of the tax system. Despite the fact that President Bush has taken several steps along the road, the President is not yet an all powerful dictator. OTOH, he WOULD have power over the Justice Dept. and be able to expose all of these illegal spying/wiretapping/surveillance/info gathering operations. As commander in chief, he would also be in a position to disengage the country from these insane militaristic crusades(which he has already advocated).
If a "consumption tax" is so repugnant to you that you could not in good conscience vote for a candidate who advocates it, then good for you. It sounds like you're arguing against it based on an implementation scenario, so you might consider the fact that it has a minuscule chance of being implemented in a 4 year term.
I can't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that Ron Paul would instantly veto a bill that proposed "Universal Internet Filtering".
" . ..one of the groups says . ..it's time to bring the troops home, so let's vote" and the other groups says "whoa! no voting on this subject!" then there very much is the lesser of two evils."
Bullshit! The Democrats are delighted with this impasse. They can pander to the anti-war crowd without having to take any real action. Meanwhile, the war goes on.
If they were committed to do something meaningful, they would cut off funding for the war. If the Repubs decided to obstruct a vote on that issue, the funding runs out. If the president refuses to sign the legislation, the funding runs out. That FORCES the Repubs and the President to end the war, or make some serious decisions about troop withdrawal.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're really interested, try this:
More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws
John R. Lott Jr.
ISBN-10: 0226493644
The conclusion is abovious from the title, but I think it's difficult to challenge the objectivity of his methodology. In fact, he began the study with the opposite hypothesis.
I certainly won't dispute your assertion that the typical argument about firearms rights and crime is an exchange of self serving anecdotal evidence. However, the stats most frequently cited by those who seek to ban guns are grossly and deliberately misleading, and I don't see a parallel to any common arguments offered by the supporters of firearms rights.
1. Gun Control laws reduce the number of crimes committed using guns
2. A gun in the home is more likely to kill a resident of the home than a criminal
I know you've heard them, they're totally true, and totally worthless to any objective public policy debate.
#1 considers ONLY crimes involving firearms, not the overall rate of violent crime, thereby completely ignoring the deterrent effect of lawful firearms ownership.
#2 includes accidents, cases of self defense(e.g. justifiable homicide against an abusive spouse) and suicides. It also ignores the fact that the vast majority of incidents involving defensive use of firearms don't necessitate actual shooting
Back ON-topic, the debate about CCTV and crime indeed has superficial similarities, but I don't think enough underlying data is readily available to make conclusions, even if a person had a real desire to approach the issue objectively. However, I don't think that effect on crime is the fundamental or deciding issue in this debate. Assuming that the prolific use of cameras indeed does reduce the crime rate and increase the convinction rate, do we want to live in a society where our every move is recorded just so we can be "safe"? Maybe residents of London do, but I certainly don't.
10000000? What are you talking about?
They already have 100110001001011010000000
"Yea, I would much rather become IBMs bitch than MS bitch... or not. Just ignore IBMs absurd pricing, . . ."
They're providing a FREE office suite, which doesn't exactly have an "absurd" price, and although I haven't downloaded it yet, I'll be surprised if the terms of use necessitate you becoming their bitch.
If that's true, I think it would be really cool if they just tried to organize his notes and transcripts in some logical manner and then publish them "raw" so to speak. That way, the fans could draw their own conclusions as opposed to having to read a contrived and subjective narrative. At this point, I'm much more interested in knowing what he had envisioned for the ending than in reading the actual story.
Let's send a machine back in time(running Linux on a PowerPC architecture so they don't get any bad ideas)
to assassinate Bill's mother before he was born, thereby erasing his entire existence. We can then observe the effects on the present and determine if the statement is true.
"Those of us that do camping in the wild have owned items that are better and FAR cheaper than this fellow designed and is trying to sell for a price that is insane."
--
"The Best KZ campers, trailers and RV's in Michigan Cliffs [cliffstrailersales.com]"
What, like your water faucet? Driving your RV to a campground where you have easy connection to water/sewer/electricity doesn't actually qualify as "camping in the wild".
Glad you're saying that for the "last time", because it's completely ignorant!
Or, maybe I'm missing the connection between the levees in New Orleans and the trail of destruction that Katrina left along a hundred mile stretch of the gulf coast.
"Can someone please explain to me why there is so much hatred for Lotus Notes here on Slashdot?"
I suspect it's a matter of a few individuals with an intense hatred which gives a false impression of widespread dislike. I can easily understand how a poorly configured Notes environment could be nightmare scenario, but I'm surprised that a community of folks who use Linux (where the willingness and ability to fine tune the program are almost required) are hopelessly frustrated by a highly configurable e-mail/messaging/collaboration environment.
" . . .before you say "we have no choice of ISP here", that is your problem. Fix that and everything else will be fine. Sheesh."
I would think that statement was sarcasm were it not for the previous comments in your post. If we all had choices of ISPs and there wasn't a gargantuan barrier to entry into the carrier business, we wouldn't be having this discussion. You're the one living in a fantasy land if you think we should simply give up the fight for network neutrality and pretend that we have a reasonable chance of establishing something akin to a free market in the broadband business.
Even with a choice of ISPs, no company is going to have end-to-end connectivity to every content provider I want to access, and if one of their competitors, or one of their peer networks starts throttling traffic, they have every incentive to follow along. It makes no sense for an ISP to keep their network neutral when they have to peer with a "tiered" network. Nor does it make sense for them to remain neutral in an attempt to attract the end users of a competitor with a tiered network(your customer revolt scenario) when they have no customers to lose, and can increase their profits by setting up a bidding war between MSN, Google and Yahoo for preferential treatment.
We'll see more holes appear in the belt as the universe expands.
"There are laws on the books that specifically restrict governmental agencies from collecting more information than is necessary and from sharing the collected information."
Do you have a link or reference regarding those laws?
" ...quit cheapening my rights (against the government) by diluting them with fictional rights against private organizations and my own contracts, and let's agree that this isn't a free-speech issue."
The First Amendment is clearly in place to control the government and not private organizations, but claiming that this is not a "free speech" issue is ridiculous. This is clearly a case of unpopular ideas being suppressed.
I generally agree with the principle that private organizations have the right to conduct their businesses as they see fit. However, some organizations have business operations which facilitate the communication of ideas by their customers. Here's where I start to have some trouble. At what point does denial of a forum for unpopular speech become a First Amendment issue? Suppose "ForkIslam" is actually an organized political movement engaged in legal activities. First, Facebook denies them access. Then, the New York Times refuses to run one of their political advertisements. Next, their current ISP responds to public pressure and refuses to host forkislam.org. etc. etc.
In this context, hasn't the government created a framework of "laws" which are limiting this group's right to free speech by allowing others to arbitrarily filter out their legitimate political message?
Now, if the photon is traveling at the speed of light relative to the prisms, aren't the prisms traveling at the speed of light from the photon's frame of reference? Wouldn't length contraction make the prisms appear to be much closer together than they actually are?
IANAP
"This isn't really that new. . . "
The article is extremely short on details, but it sounds very similar to what IBM has done in the area of "statistical timing" over the last couple of years.
http://www.physorg.com/news4385.html
If you buy commodity PCs with OEM copies of Windows, and/or you have an installed Windows base that meets your needs, you probably don't have a compelling reason to switch. Microsoft has some good products that are easy to use and meet the requirements of most computer users. Some possible advantages of Linux are
Cost:
If you put together your own machines and compare the retail cost of Windows and MS software to Linux and FOSS, Linux might look quite attractive.
Configurability:
One thing I like about Linux is that it can be really fine tuned to the user's preferences. I can pretty much adapt my system to have the exact look and feel that I want. Some people like the Gnome/KDE look. I still prefer the old Motif/X-Windows environment, and with Linux, I can consistently create it.
Reliability:
I've currently got 2 Linux boxes running, and they have been up for 61 days and 75 days respectively running everything from basic utilities to heavy duty CAD software. These boxes are 2+ years old and I don't remember either of them crashing and forcing me to reboot. In my experience, you just don't get that with Windows.
Security:
You obviously need some special expertise for "real" security, but it's nice to know that with Linux, you're immune from the most common viruses, malware and trojans. Putting an unsecured Windows box on the Internet these days is like throwing a baby into the shark tank.
Principles:
I think that a lot of the abject hatred you see for MS is due to their past, and probably current business practices. For instance, their "MS-only" policy which forced computer makers into an all-Microsoft or no-Microsoft decision is one of the most hideous abuses of market dominance in contemporary industry. That single act poisoned the computing and software world and curtailed innovation and competition for the indefinite future. Yet they never paid for this crime. Buying MS products, either retail or OEM is a tacit endorsement of their behavior.
Insightful++
Good for you. I'll bet you even FEEL better. Contemporary television content is crippling the intellectual capacity of our society. As you said, it's scary to see that people, even highly intelligent people, are so absorbed and brainwashed by the crap on TV. I have great respect for most of my co-workers, but I can barely manage to have lunch with them a few times a week due to the fact that the conversation is so heavily focused on television. Same thing when trying to meet new people, although it is usually the other person with a slack jaw and blank stare when I tell them I've never watched an episode of "Friends", "Seinfeld" or "Survivor". Still, I prefer living with a social handicap to exposing my mind to that garbage.
Yours is the classic "majority rules" position. The 2/3 of the population who believe sex is the most important part of the human experience (followed by sports, network TV, and alcohol in no particular order) can't possibly be wrong eh? Having the "ability to do without sex" isn't some secret power that bumps you up a notch on the "evolutionary" scale, but promiscuity == superiority only in some small circles. The same circles where TALKING about your promiscuity is also believed to indicate your superiority.
"It is the idea of ownership ...that I question."
OK, I see the difference between "owning" the exclusive rights of distribution and control of a particular work(copyright) vs. actually "owning" the work.
"What's the confusion, here?"
I think it was the context. Your comment stating that someone has a right to "try" to make money off a particular idea, but that nobody else had to respect their business model seemed like a suggestion that the creator have no financial rights to their work whatsoever. That's obviously inconsistent with your suggestion that creators be protected against plagiarism as we NOW define it. I therefore thought you were arguing that taking someone else's work for commercial purposes should be OK, as long as the source was not misrepresented. We agree that such a system would be exploited by those with the means to mass produce and mass market the work(i.e. corporations), and it would be worse than it is now.
In "brief" response to your inquiry, patents and copyrights definitely last longer than I'd like. Fair use should be clearly defined and the interpretation broadened, there has to be a much stronger distinction between "invention" and "discovery", and the flaws in the process by which patents are reviewed and granted are too numerous to list.
"File format isn't what people are worried about when purchasing software, it's the software itself!"
That's not the debate here!
We're talking about the format being used to create and store publicly owned information. The government is funded by the citizens. The citizen should not have to pay an additional Microsoft tax in order to access government documents. The government SHOULD BE worried, even though they probably are not. Even if ODF is adopted as the standard, MS has the option of supporting it in their applications along with everyone else. The reverse isn't true if the government decides to institutionalize vendor lock-in.
What the hell are you trying to say?
."
"You can't own information. It is totally absurd." . . . "I still believe in giving credit where credit is due for ideas and ensuring that creators are not plagiarized."
Are you attempting to dissect the semantics of the argument by narrowing or broadening the scopes of "information" and "ownership"? What do YOU call it when someone has created a work, and there is a mechanism for "ensuring" that it is not plagiarized? Is there some sanitized synonym for "own" that we should be using?
"People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd. They have the right *try* and make money off of their ideas . .
There is obviously no guarantee that a particular idea will be valuable. However, the people that come up with the idea should have a right to "try" to profit from the value of their idea WITHOUT a hundred other people and large corporations exploiting the idea at the same time!
I agree that the whole system of patents and copyrights has severe flaws, but the anarchists who think that brilliant ideas and creative works should be "free" and universally exploitable once they become public are an obstacle to the implementation of a better system. That line of reasoning is absurd, and if you bring it to its logical conclusion is even more unfair than the system we have now.
(One of your ancestors in the 1400s)
"If Christopher Columbus wants to sail off to into unknown stretches of the ocean, who cares? If Queen Isabella wants to piss her money away on useless boondoggles, let her."
"BTW, all this came from the M.S. nutrition teacher I had last semester."
I think you need to find an open source nutrition teacher instead.
" . . .think before you follow a candidate who support such an idea . . . a huge depression could result if he is elected and does such an insane system."
The President of the United States is not in a position to immediately implement a major overhaul of the tax system. Despite the fact that President Bush has taken several steps along the road, the President is not yet an all powerful dictator. OTOH, he WOULD have power over the Justice Dept. and be able to expose all of these illegal spying/wiretapping/surveillance/info gathering operations. As commander in chief, he would also be in a position to disengage the country from these insane militaristic crusades(which he has already advocated).
If a "consumption tax" is so repugnant to you that you could not in good conscience vote for a candidate who advocates it, then good for you. It sounds like you're arguing against it based on an implementation scenario, so you might consider the fact that it has a minuscule chance of being implemented in a 4 year term.
I can't know for sure, but I'd be willing to bet that Ron Paul would instantly veto a bill that proposed "Universal Internet Filtering".
" . . .one of the groups says . . .it's time to bring the troops home, so let's vote" and the other groups says "whoa! no voting on this subject!" then there very much is the lesser of two evils."
Bullshit! The Democrats are delighted with this impasse. They can pander to the anti-war crowd without having to take any real action. Meanwhile, the war goes on.
If they were committed to do something meaningful, they would cut off funding for the war. If the Repubs decided to obstruct a vote on that issue, the funding runs out. If the president refuses to sign the legislation, the funding runs out. That FORCES the Repubs and the President to end the war, or make some serious decisions about troop withdrawal.
"Petrol industry is capitOl intensive . . ."
LOL
They sure are.