I fail to see how this is anyone's problem but the content makers or distributers. Don't publish to a public area if you don't want the public to be able to get to it...pretty simple. Its not like the search engines are violating logins and whatnot to cache this stuff. Its out in the open.
Further, the analogy was about how they are demanding this way to opt out of search engines and how vital it is they have this...when it already exists and they only have problems because they aren't already using the existing one.
There have been a dozen stories and lawsuits over this crap already. Why the hell hasn't robots.txt come out in court yet? I have a hard time believing the lawyers defending against this are so incompetent that thery wouldn't someone with a clue on the stand to explain that the system is already there and the people aren't using it. In fact a smart lawyer would counter sue because the system IS already there and they failed to use it and instead wasted the courts time. Imagine (diddly do diddly do slashdot analogy time) you sue the auto manufacturer for not including a safety harness in their vehicles because you got injured while not wearing your already installed seat belt.
Or maybe there is something more to this than the typical slashdot "duh robots.txt" response...who knows...but I really would like a meaningful answer about if its something more...if not someone needs to make this shit stop! Maybe these places are using robots.txt and the search engines are ignoring it, or someone is using it wrong, or maybe we should get together and write a nice pretty page on robots.txt and submit it to all the news stations as a "new innovative" way to protect online content...maybe they will get it then...and then we can all laugh as all those sites fall off the net because no search engine can find em.
This is exactly what I mean. There is no need to kneejerk any of this. They have laid out all the evidence of their flakey ass claims. They kneejerk this evil terrorist boogeyman crap, and rely on the opponents to kneejerk privacy stuff to make all of the opposition look like paranoid loonies exposing the people to danger. When you can whip out a list of how the laws have been abused, how it is broken, how it can be abused (specifically, not paranoid claims) with interactions with other nonsense laws they have passed...its much easier to show the holes to the masses. The people who chant and scream get lots of attention, but most of it is people laughing at them.
You just hit the nail on the head. PATRIOT Act and (what I believe) is an intentional avoidance of defining "terrorist" or "terrorism" in any meaningful way. THAT is how you have to fight it publically, THAT is the awareness you have to spread. Show the letter of the law, show what exactly they voted for, and show how it interacts with the other garbage they have pulled. Reactionary paranoia stuff is hardly required, they have laid out the rope for us to hang them with, we just have to get the word out in a sane manner.
I love how this crap gets modded up so much. I think this is a horrible mess and it makes me sick that this crap was even proposed let alone getting support. HOWEVER! You need to RFTA yourself, or stop with your creative editing.
You left out "The Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act, opposed by several privacy groups, would also allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack."
So yes...bad freaking law...bad freaking stuff...but kneejerk creative editing only serves to further make the privacy folks that realize this is BAD juju for freedom look like paranoid lunatics. We all know that folks like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan are taken so seriously these days due to their overzealous overreactionary nonsense.
I believe you are close to right on this. I think it shouldn't be an ignore so much as blatantly disregard. If the system gets so flooded with patent lawsuits and countersuits and so on and so forth, eventually someone is going to have to fix it. The government wants their dollars, and if all the tech sector is deadlocked, slowed down, or otherwise crippled by this, the government will not be getting their dollar because foreign companies will just press forward and destroy what part of the tech market we have.
That being said I hold the patents on using well named variable names outside the context of source code to express an idea on the internet. Your use of "$IDEA" violates my patent. Further I own the patent for using "on the internet" to describe the innovative new patents dealing with the internet. My lawyer will be contacting you shortly.
I was hoping you were going to point out that Win* support is effectively disconinued by Microsoft anyways. I mean really with the Genuine Advantage stuff...the patches that need patches or they break. The patches that corrupt your data. The DRM patches that are released at the drop of a hat but major security things must wait a month. The fact that plenty of exploits and other vulnerabilities exist in the wild that MS just puts their head in the sand for.
For peer to peer discovery...a savvy admin would probably map network drives for the users rather than rely on them to browse the network looking for a share...unless of coarse you have never worked on a network of more than 10 computers or so...because that god aweful network browser thing is aweful to try and find anything if you have a significant number of clients on the network.
OR you could just point out that you can pick up a perfectly good copy of Win98SE at some bargain bin place for maybe $20, where WinXP is going to roll you for between $100-300.
Excellent point! So well stated...I suppose that would be why noone admits to being a Nobel Prize winning scientist, or any of the other numerous awards in various scientific fields such as physics, medicine, etc. I bet that is also why noone is interested in funding any further research and development after those folks won that get into space prize. No credability at all.
The biggest difference I have noticed is that some apps load faster, but don't generally run noticably faster. I went to gentoo because I bought a core duo laptop on the cheap, and figured that most of the time I won't actually be using its full capabilities, and a source based distro would compile quickly enough for me to actually enjoy working with it and just seeing a little more of the inner workings of the whole open source thing. Being able to apply patches on my own without relying on a new distro binary or worrying about breaking a dozen other binary packages is nice.
Remember this when it comes to those performance boosts. You are looking for a net gain. If it takes 30 minutes to compile Firefox to get a.5 second respond increase it takes a long while for the gain to outweigh the cost of the 30 minute compile, especially if you have to update to a new version before you hit that point.
If you want to do gentoo, do it because you want to tinker, or just check it out, but I wouldn't bother soley for the possibility of increased performance. I have also had a MUCH MUCH better time getting some of the odds n ends hardware working with gentoo, its a world easier to get modified, updated, bleeding edge, whatever drivers instead of waiting for that binary update.
How much did the X-Prize winners get after winning the prize? Not the prize money mind you, but the investors, the PR, etc etc. So its not just a stupid little trophy just like the Nobel Prize isn't just a stupid award. These things lend a great deal of credibility to your work and research and attracts other scientists, engineers, investors, etc.
I am certainly not an expert on the low levels of compiling and such as my greatest accomplishment in any compiled language I have touched since the days of BASIC and PASCAL is "Hello World", however, my understanding is that you CAN get some performance benefits out of code optimized for your processor since newer processors can do some things more efficiently rather than having the code rely on the backwards compatability. The biggest performance gain in Gentoo doesn't actually come from the processor optimized code, so much as the extensive use flag system and being able to not compile in all the garbage you don't need. When you start stripping support for lots of junk that the "works out of the box" distros need you notice differences. When you cut all the cruft out, fewer libraries are required, and the binaries themselves are smaller, thus ya can stuff more into memory and stuff em in faster:).
So this actually looks like one of the first articles on slashdot that actually covers a real patent. Not some stupid lame one-click, conjugation, whatever other simple and obvious nonsense. This format for these disks actually seems fairly patent worthy.
Just wait until there is enough problems they start throwing them out and buy one from some surplus dump or something. Think about it...free drinks at every place with a minibar, awesome if your work has you traveling frequently. (Yes, the key is free, the drinks cost you, but if they didn't give you the key you just blame it on the last guy there or the cleaning folks, hell they are probably illegals anyways):)
I would argue that Bush himself invoked Godwin's law at this point and others are just responding with Pot, Kettle, Black. Rovian speeches made by good ol Rummy and Shrub, the clowns they are, have been going on about Islamofascists and how Nazi like they are, and how we fought the Nazis being the same as the GWOT and so on. I try to avoid the Godwin's law thing but the fact is they really are following Goerings quote to the letter, among other Nazi like things. However, I will also point out, that realistically, its not specific to Nazis, its specific to facist movements and dictatorships. Communism had equally brutal spying programs, and Russian citizens being forced to show their ID to board a plane inside their own country was a great rallying cry against the eviles of communism here in the US. So why is it that cry is no longer heard...refer to the Goering quote about convince the people that they are under attack, and denounce the non supporters as traitors and exposing the country to great danger.
I might also mention the irony of a 'raghead' countering anti-bush comments. But that is just my entertaining observation for the day:)
I have been waiting for the ban on laptop AC adapters. I know if I am ever on a plane and some asshat threatens me with a box cutter I will go mideval on his ass. Laptop becomes Exploding Dell Shield and AC adapter becomes Transformer Cube Flail. Weighted brick on metal cord would give me a tad more range than a boxcutter.
We think that noone will play along. We really haven't had any real events to prove that, and I'm not entirely convinced that people won't continue to play along. I am in no way justifying these bans, and I think people are having a really really hard time with that. I think they are retarded and that life involves some risk and people need to quit their bitching, if they are so afraid then they can pony up the gas money and drive. The only way to eliminate all these "oh my god the boogeyman!" risks is to treat the plane like a prison bus.
We weren't told then because it wasn't nearly as profitable to keep the populace in a constant state of fear. The administration at the time didn't have the same goals or methods. We weren't told because the threat was terribly small, terribly difficult, terribly unlikely, and not profitable to keep us all trembling in our homes. We have known about this 'liquid explosive' threat since the 90s or so...and it has yet to happen even once...so why is it that suddenly liquids are the new fear buzz with TSA...
Rather than any more stupid bans or fear based policy we could do the math on the whole thing and realize how statistically stupid we are being. I am FAR more likely to die by getting hit by a drunk driver rather than any form of terrorist attack. Should we take all drunk drivers to guantanimo? Why do they take my ligher and give me matches when its easier to make an incidiary device with a book of matches? Why are they taking everyones fluids when so many chemists have all but totally debunked that paranoid fantasy. Why do we have to show ID to get on the plane when 20 years back or so Americans were outraged those evil communists made the poor oppressed people of Russia do the same. Its about time Americans wake up and pull their heads out of the sand...deal with the various threats and risks of day to day life proportionately. # of Americans killed on US soil in the last 7 years due to terrorists a little over 3400, # of Americans killed on US soil in the last 7 years due to alcohol related instances somewhere in the ballpark of 2 million. We are just being kept paranoid and stupid for a group of profiteer whores running the show. And no damnit...if they take away my beer to deal with that threat then by god we are going to have a fight!:)
And I get modded as a troll lol...seems some people really didn't like the guy. All hail maturity, compassion, and...oh wait this is slashdot isn't it? I love Apple, I hate MS, all DRM is useless, RIAA/MPAA is evil, Republicans are satanists, can I have my karma back now?
I didn't say I agree with the bans, and the flying naked thing was sort of sarcastic but you apparently missed that. So...next time you have such a dumb response ask yourself if the last set of attackers attacked 150 people simultaneously with a knife/box cutter. You have however demonstrated the big picture thinking that can only be achieved by those not in the situation...humans are expendable, if you have 150 vs 1 you can obviously win even if you end with 148 and 3 dead. I wonder if it would be so clear cut if you had to be the first 1 or 2 to try to stop the guy and were likely to become seriously injured or dead.
The point I was making is that "nail clippers are not a threat" is simply not true, that almost any every day item can be a deadly weapon, and the only viable solution would be to fly naked, which would be stupid overreaction, and that life inherrently involves some risk.
I agree with the most part, but I had a similar rant about fingernail clippers once and kinda changed my mind. I was talking to a buddy of mine's dad...who is a rather large guy with combat experience... I said something about how stupid the fingernail clipper ban was and he looked at me and just said "Would you want me to have a pair of finger nail clippers when I attack you?" I sat and thought about it and all the soft parts of my face suddenly became very sensitive... So while I think the ban is still pretty stupid, he really did put the every item is a potentially lethal weapon argument into nice perspective. The only real solution is to fly naked with no carry ons which is just the epitome of stupid overreaction, but still....every day items can be very lethal.
One of my favorite guys to read quotes from is Thomas Jefferson...he seemed to really get most of the problems from day one. Here is one of those gems (possibly slightly paraphrased as noone seems to write it exactly the same).
The beauty of the 2nd ammendment is that you do not need it until the government tries to take it away.
Again you seem to be under the impression that non lethal weapons aren't already in use. Tear gas - used frequently, Fire hoses - used, but less frequently that I have heard about, Rubber bullets - used frequently. The only thing that article says is that they are going to use the latest and greatest for trial runs here at home before we send it out to use on foreigners. Its like the doctor that demonstrates the needle prick device on his own finger first for a diabetic kid "See, its not that bad".
I would also GREATLY prefer to be hit with one of those audio or RF things that will irritate me in greater degrees until I decide I should leave than to get tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets. I would also like to point out how irrational the "oh noes its government control!" response to this is. Explain to me how you "control" an lethally armed public with non lethal weaponry? Sure you bet you can irritate them, and discourage them from doing things, but when push comes to shove the 2nd Ammendment is still there and you can bet people will start shooting, its happened in the past and it will happen again.
End result...this story is nothing new except a chance to be kneejerk reactionary about nonsense, non lethal weapons exist and are in use frequently. This story is about making newer and safer non lethal weapons, and that we will put them to use first at home before taking them abroad. Again, I would rather have the cops armed with the safest non lethals than what they have now. Or have you forgotten about the woman that got shot in the head with the rubber bullet? I read that story 3 days before it showed up on slashdot, it was written to be pretty controversial completely ignoring any rational argument.
Again...the knee jerks both ways. You are careful to neglect to mention the bonfires, stopped traffic, and the burning ROTC building. What happened there was a trajety, but that is what happens when you have 19yr old kids with guns told to try and prevent a riot and a bunch of 'peaceful' protestors burning things and throwing stuff and otherwise being a rather violent peace protest. People get nervous and then people get dead.
If you really think that this is just about allowing governments to use force without being held accountable...you really need to get out more. Knowing the government can use lethal force tends to...well...stop and prevent protests a little more effectively... Knowing that they will only use nonlethal force tends to have a far less of a chilling effect on peoples right to free speech. If you don't believe me, compare the number of protests in the US (where they already use nonlethal weapons, this is just about using newer non lethal weapons) to the number of protests in China.
Again finally, while I believe that the current state of affairs certainly has free speech suffering, the government replacing an older arsenal of non lethal weapons with a newer arsenal of non lethal is going to have a pretty minimal effect on this in either direction. And again...mob rule pretty frequently takes over and people start burning things, throwing things, flipping cars, and otherwise hurting eachother, themselves, or damaging property, and quite frankly I would rather see a bunch of people dispersed with a new nonlethal weapon than have to deal with the fact that I may have to hole up and pray the rioters don't come down my street, because I and many others won't hesistate to use lethal weapons to defend our families and I would rather have some kids sent home crying in pain than bleeding to death for getting caught up in some stupidity.
God forbid the military use non lethal weapons on the populace! I mean hell...without using lethal weapons we can't wind up with another Kent state incident!
Please Please PLEASE don't be stupid about this. Rubber bullets and tear gas and hoses are all non lethal weapons that have been in use for some time now. And while yes, there certainly is a chilling effect going on with our freedoms, please let us not forget that the various riots that we have had have caused incredible damage, injury, and losses of life. Not all crowds are peaceful protestors, in fact, many aren't, and there have been quite a few 'peaceful protestors' that weren't exactly as peaceful and pacifist as they claim...chucking rocks and other items is not exactly peaceful...How much time do you have to determine if that bottle of fluid coming towards you is a potentially lethal weapon, or just someones half empty soda?
Slashdot Mirror
I had a linux box once tell me 'the printer is on fire'.
I fail to see how this is anyone's problem but the content makers or distributers. Don't publish to a public area if you don't want the public to be able to get to it...pretty simple. Its not like the search engines are violating logins and whatnot to cache this stuff. Its out in the open.
Further, the analogy was about how they are demanding this way to opt out of search engines and how vital it is they have this...when it already exists and they only have problems because they aren't already using the existing one.
There have been a dozen stories and lawsuits over this crap already. Why the hell hasn't robots.txt come out in court yet? I have a hard time believing the lawyers defending against this are so incompetent that thery wouldn't someone with a clue on the stand to explain that the system is already there and the people aren't using it. In fact a smart lawyer would counter sue because the system IS already there and they failed to use it and instead wasted the courts time. Imagine (diddly do diddly do slashdot analogy time) you sue the auto manufacturer for not including a safety harness in their vehicles because you got injured while not wearing your already installed seat belt.
Or maybe there is something more to this than the typical slashdot "duh robots.txt" response...who knows...but I really would like a meaningful answer about if its something more...if not someone needs to make this shit stop! Maybe these places are using robots.txt and the search engines are ignoring it, or someone is using it wrong, or maybe we should get together and write a nice pretty page on robots.txt and submit it to all the news stations as a "new innovative" way to protect online content...maybe they will get it then...and then we can all laugh as all those sites fall off the net because no search engine can find em.
This is exactly what I mean. There is no need to kneejerk any of this. They have laid out all the evidence of their flakey ass claims. They kneejerk this evil terrorist boogeyman crap, and rely on the opponents to kneejerk privacy stuff to make all of the opposition look like paranoid loonies exposing the people to danger. When you can whip out a list of how the laws have been abused, how it is broken, how it can be abused (specifically, not paranoid claims) with interactions with other nonsense laws they have passed...its much easier to show the holes to the masses. The people who chant and scream get lots of attention, but most of it is people laughing at them.
You just hit the nail on the head. PATRIOT Act and (what I believe) is an intentional avoidance of defining "terrorist" or "terrorism" in any meaningful way. THAT is how you have to fight it publically, THAT is the awareness you have to spread. Show the letter of the law, show what exactly they voted for, and show how it interacts with the other garbage they have pulled. Reactionary paranoia stuff is hardly required, they have laid out the rope for us to hang them with, we just have to get the word out in a sane manner.
I love how this crap gets modded up so much. I think this is a horrible mess and it makes me sick that this crap was even proposed let alone getting support. HOWEVER! You need to RFTA yourself, or stop with your creative editing.
You left out "The Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act, opposed by several privacy groups, would also allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack."
So yes...bad freaking law...bad freaking stuff...but kneejerk creative editing only serves to further make the privacy folks that realize this is BAD juju for freedom look like paranoid lunatics. We all know that folks like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan are taken so seriously these days due to their overzealous overreactionary nonsense.
I believe you are close to right on this. I think it shouldn't be an ignore so much as blatantly disregard. If the system gets so flooded with patent lawsuits and countersuits and so on and so forth, eventually someone is going to have to fix it. The government wants their dollars, and if all the tech sector is deadlocked, slowed down, or otherwise crippled by this, the government will not be getting their dollar because foreign companies will just press forward and destroy what part of the tech market we have.
That being said I hold the patents on using well named variable names outside the context of source code to express an idea on the internet. Your use of "$IDEA" violates my patent. Further I own the patent for using "on the internet" to describe the innovative new patents dealing with the internet. My lawyer will be contacting you shortly.
I was hoping you were going to point out that Win* support is effectively disconinued by Microsoft anyways. I mean really with the Genuine Advantage stuff...the patches that need patches or they break. The patches that corrupt your data. The DRM patches that are released at the drop of a hat but major security things must wait a month. The fact that plenty of exploits and other vulnerabilities exist in the wild that MS just puts their head in the sand for.
For peer to peer discovery...a savvy admin would probably map network drives for the users rather than rely on them to browse the network looking for a share...unless of coarse you have never worked on a network of more than 10 computers or so...because that god aweful network browser thing is aweful to try and find anything if you have a significant number of clients on the network.
OR you could just point out that you can pick up a perfectly good copy of Win98SE at some bargain bin place for maybe $20, where WinXP is going to roll you for between $100-300.
Excellent point! So well stated...I suppose that would be why noone admits to being a Nobel Prize winning scientist, or any of the other numerous awards in various scientific fields such as physics, medicine, etc. I bet that is also why noone is interested in funding any further research and development after those folks won that get into space prize. No credability at all.
The biggest difference I have noticed is that some apps load faster, but don't generally run noticably faster. I went to gentoo because I bought a core duo laptop on the cheap, and figured that most of the time I won't actually be using its full capabilities, and a source based distro would compile quickly enough for me to actually enjoy working with it and just seeing a little more of the inner workings of the whole open source thing. Being able to apply patches on my own without relying on a new distro binary or worrying about breaking a dozen other binary packages is nice.
.5 second respond increase it takes a long while for the gain to outweigh the cost of the 30 minute compile, especially if you have to update to a new version before you hit that point.
Remember this when it comes to those performance boosts. You are looking for a net gain. If it takes 30 minutes to compile Firefox to get a
If you want to do gentoo, do it because you want to tinker, or just check it out, but I wouldn't bother soley for the possibility of increased performance. I have also had a MUCH MUCH better time getting some of the odds n ends hardware working with gentoo, its a world easier to get modified, updated, bleeding edge, whatever drivers instead of waiting for that binary update.
How much did the X-Prize winners get after winning the prize? Not the prize money mind you, but the investors, the PR, etc etc. So its not just a stupid little trophy just like the Nobel Prize isn't just a stupid award. These things lend a great deal of credibility to your work and research and attracts other scientists, engineers, investors, etc.
I am certainly not an expert on the low levels of compiling and such as my greatest accomplishment in any compiled language I have touched since the days of BASIC and PASCAL is "Hello World", however, my understanding is that you CAN get some performance benefits out of code optimized for your processor since newer processors can do some things more efficiently rather than having the code rely on the backwards compatability. The biggest performance gain in Gentoo doesn't actually come from the processor optimized code, so much as the extensive use flag system and being able to not compile in all the garbage you don't need. When you start stripping support for lots of junk that the "works out of the box" distros need you notice differences. When you cut all the cruft out, fewer libraries are required, and the binaries themselves are smaller, thus ya can stuff more into memory and stuff em in faster :).
So this actually looks like one of the first articles on slashdot that actually covers a real patent. Not some stupid lame one-click, conjugation, whatever other simple and obvious nonsense. This format for these disks actually seems fairly patent worthy.
Just wait until there is enough problems they start throwing them out and buy one from some surplus dump or something. Think about it...free drinks at every place with a minibar, awesome if your work has you traveling frequently. (Yes, the key is free, the drinks cost you, but if they didn't give you the key you just blame it on the last guy there or the cleaning folks, hell they are probably illegals anyways) :)
I would argue that Bush himself invoked Godwin's law at this point and others are just responding with Pot, Kettle, Black. Rovian speeches made by good ol Rummy and Shrub, the clowns they are, have been going on about Islamofascists and how Nazi like they are, and how we fought the Nazis being the same as the GWOT and so on. I try to avoid the Godwin's law thing but the fact is they really are following Goerings quote to the letter, among other Nazi like things. However, I will also point out, that realistically, its not specific to Nazis, its specific to facist movements and dictatorships. Communism had equally brutal spying programs, and Russian citizens being forced to show their ID to board a plane inside their own country was a great rallying cry against the eviles of communism here in the US. So why is it that cry is no longer heard...refer to the Goering quote about convince the people that they are under attack, and denounce the non supporters as traitors and exposing the country to great danger.
:)
I might also mention the irony of a 'raghead' countering anti-bush comments. But that is just my entertaining observation for the day
I have been waiting for the ban on laptop AC adapters. I know if I am ever on a plane and some asshat threatens me with a box cutter I will go mideval on his ass. Laptop becomes Exploding Dell Shield and AC adapter becomes Transformer Cube Flail. Weighted brick on metal cord would give me a tad more range than a boxcutter.
We think that noone will play along. We really haven't had any real events to prove that, and I'm not entirely convinced that people won't continue to play along. I am in no way justifying these bans, and I think people are having a really really hard time with that. I think they are retarded and that life involves some risk and people need to quit their bitching, if they are so afraid then they can pony up the gas money and drive. The only way to eliminate all these "oh my god the boogeyman!" risks is to treat the plane like a prison bus.
:)
We weren't told then because it wasn't nearly as profitable to keep the populace in a constant state of fear. The administration at the time didn't have the same goals or methods. We weren't told because the threat was terribly small, terribly difficult, terribly unlikely, and not profitable to keep us all trembling in our homes. We have known about this 'liquid explosive' threat since the 90s or so...and it has yet to happen even once...so why is it that suddenly liquids are the new fear buzz with TSA...
Rather than any more stupid bans or fear based policy we could do the math on the whole thing and realize how statistically stupid we are being. I am FAR more likely to die by getting hit by a drunk driver rather than any form of terrorist attack. Should we take all drunk drivers to guantanimo? Why do they take my ligher and give me matches when its easier to make an incidiary device with a book of matches? Why are they taking everyones fluids when so many chemists have all but totally debunked that paranoid fantasy. Why do we have to show ID to get on the plane when 20 years back or so Americans were outraged those evil communists made the poor oppressed people of Russia do the same. Its about time Americans wake up and pull their heads out of the sand...deal with the various threats and risks of day to day life proportionately. # of Americans killed on US soil in the last 7 years due to terrorists a little over 3400, # of Americans killed on US soil in the last 7 years due to alcohol related instances somewhere in the ballpark of 2 million. We are just being kept paranoid and stupid for a group of profiteer whores running the show. And no damnit...if they take away my beer to deal with that threat then by god we are going to have a fight!
And I get modded as a troll lol...seems some people really didn't like the guy. All hail maturity, compassion, and...oh wait this is slashdot isn't it? I love Apple, I hate MS, all DRM is useless, RIAA/MPAA is evil, Republicans are satanists, can I have my karma back now?
I didn't say I agree with the bans, and the flying naked thing was sort of sarcastic but you apparently missed that. So...next time you have such a dumb response ask yourself if the last set of attackers attacked 150 people simultaneously with a knife/box cutter. You have however demonstrated the big picture thinking that can only be achieved by those not in the situation...humans are expendable, if you have 150 vs 1 you can obviously win even if you end with 148 and 3 dead. I wonder if it would be so clear cut if you had to be the first 1 or 2 to try to stop the guy and were likely to become seriously injured or dead.
The point I was making is that "nail clippers are not a threat" is simply not true, that almost any every day item can be a deadly weapon, and the only viable solution would be to fly naked, which would be stupid overreaction, and that life inherrently involves some risk.
I agree with the most part, but I had a similar rant about fingernail clippers once and kinda changed my mind. I was talking to a buddy of mine's dad...who is a rather large guy with combat experience... I said something about how stupid the fingernail clipper ban was and he looked at me and just said "Would you want me to have a pair of finger nail clippers when I attack you?" I sat and thought about it and all the soft parts of my face suddenly became very sensitive... So while I think the ban is still pretty stupid, he really did put the every item is a potentially lethal weapon argument into nice perspective. The only real solution is to fly naked with no carry ons which is just the epitome of stupid overreaction, but still....every day items can be very lethal.
I can't believe this garbage was modded informative. To think my mod points expired today and I can't shoot this down myself...
One of my favorite guys to read quotes from is Thomas Jefferson...he seemed to really get most of the problems from day one. Here is one of those gems (possibly slightly paraphrased as noone seems to write it exactly the same).
The beauty of the 2nd ammendment is that you do not need it until the government tries to take it away.
Again you seem to be under the impression that non lethal weapons aren't already in use. Tear gas - used frequently, Fire hoses - used, but less frequently that I have heard about, Rubber bullets - used frequently. The only thing that article says is that they are going to use the latest and greatest for trial runs here at home before we send it out to use on foreigners. Its like the doctor that demonstrates the needle prick device on his own finger first for a diabetic kid "See, its not that bad".
I would also GREATLY prefer to be hit with one of those audio or RF things that will irritate me in greater degrees until I decide I should leave than to get tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets. I would also like to point out how irrational the "oh noes its government control!" response to this is. Explain to me how you "control" an lethally armed public with non lethal weaponry? Sure you bet you can irritate them, and discourage them from doing things, but when push comes to shove the 2nd Ammendment is still there and you can bet people will start shooting, its happened in the past and it will happen again.
End result...this story is nothing new except a chance to be kneejerk reactionary about nonsense, non lethal weapons exist and are in use frequently. This story is about making newer and safer non lethal weapons, and that we will put them to use first at home before taking them abroad. Again, I would rather have the cops armed with the safest non lethals than what they have now. Or have you forgotten about the woman that got shot in the head with the rubber bullet? I read that story 3 days before it showed up on slashdot, it was written to be pretty controversial completely ignoring any rational argument.
Again...the knee jerks both ways. You are careful to neglect to mention the bonfires, stopped traffic, and the burning ROTC building. What happened there was a trajety, but that is what happens when you have 19yr old kids with guns told to try and prevent a riot and a bunch of 'peaceful' protestors burning things and throwing stuff and otherwise being a rather violent peace protest. People get nervous and then people get dead.
If you really think that this is just about allowing governments to use force without being held accountable...you really need to get out more. Knowing the government can use lethal force tends to...well...stop and prevent protests a little more effectively... Knowing that they will only use nonlethal force tends to have a far less of a chilling effect on peoples right to free speech. If you don't believe me, compare the number of protests in the US (where they already use nonlethal weapons, this is just about using newer non lethal weapons) to the number of protests in China.
Again finally, while I believe that the current state of affairs certainly has free speech suffering, the government replacing an older arsenal of non lethal weapons with a newer arsenal of non lethal is going to have a pretty minimal effect on this in either direction. And again...mob rule pretty frequently takes over and people start burning things, throwing things, flipping cars, and otherwise hurting eachother, themselves, or damaging property, and quite frankly I would rather see a bunch of people dispersed with a new nonlethal weapon than have to deal with the fact that I may have to hole up and pray the rioters don't come down my street, because I and many others won't hesistate to use lethal weapons to defend our families and I would rather have some kids sent home crying in pain than bleeding to death for getting caught up in some stupidity.
God forbid the military use non lethal weapons on the populace! I mean hell...without using lethal weapons we can't wind up with another Kent state incident!
Please Please PLEASE don't be stupid about this. Rubber bullets and tear gas and hoses are all non lethal weapons that have been in use for some time now. And while yes, there certainly is a chilling effect going on with our freedoms, please let us not forget that the various riots that we have had have caused incredible damage, injury, and losses of life. Not all crowds are peaceful protestors, in fact, many aren't, and there have been quite a few 'peaceful protestors' that weren't exactly as peaceful and pacifist as they claim...chucking rocks and other items is not exactly peaceful...How much time do you have to determine if that bottle of fluid coming towards you is a potentially lethal weapon, or just someones half empty soda?