The possibility that one out of twenty students could be legally packing, and he can't tell which one, is what will deter him/her.
I don't buy this line of reasoning. These sorts of attacks are undertaken by mentally unstable people who are in no condition to think rationally. They are often committing suicide anyway, so what do they care if anyone else is carrying a gun? It's possible that the one out of twenty students could have mitigated this tragedy by bringing it to a close much sooner, however it is just as likely that one out of twenty gun-carrying students will flip out and go on a shooting spree with their handy and legal gun. Just because you're licensed to carry a gun does not make you mentally stable forever.
That's a false choice. A police state will not prevent this kind of event. I want a free society where things like this are less likely to happen, which does not mean I want a police state either. The two things are entirely unrelated.
It's analagous to a car that Chevy will only let you drive around your own city, but then you figure out how to disable the kill switch and drive it wherever you want. Now Chevy has to create a slightly harder-to-find kill switch on its new cars to keep them in their respective cities, so you can drive your car wherever you want but as soon as you try to drive a new car then it will know what you did and refuse to start until you take it to the dealer for a new kill-switch install.
Crap, but then you could still drive your old car anywhere, and from what I've heard, as soon as you drive the new car then your old car is somehow disabled as well. Honestly, these car analogies are harder than they look.
Your analogy is correct, but supports a position opposite to yours: car companies advertise cars 'starting at $22,900', but because of recent legal action against them they are now putting '$25,500 as shown' on their commecials as well. Advertising is strictly regulated to protect the consumer against fraud like bait-and-switch. Companies can't lie (even through omission) in their advertising. They can't have a going out of business sale unless they are actually going out of business. They can't say their monitors are 17" if there is only 15" viewable. And they can't say that their software does X when it won't do X for all but the latest hardware without stating the hardware requirements in the ads. The bait here is the awesome tricks the OS is advertised to do; the switch is when the computer labelled 'Vista Compatible' cannot do those tricks without major upgrades. Though it's hard to say who is legally liable, Microsoft or the OEMs.
I thought the joke was that I got mod points today. I mean, what are the chances that I'd get mod points on Apil 1st? But then it turns out that having mod points on April 1st really isn't all that funny or even useful.
This is why when I surf the internet using IE I only visit sites that I personally have coded, and only after a VPN session into the server to ensure that my website has not been compromised.
Normal low-end laptops are already in that range on eBay. I got a 6 year old 12" 500MHz 512MB Vaio for under $100. I think the thing that people seem to be jazzed about are the ruggedness and manual power generation, both of which are still vapor at $200. Your OLPC money would be better spent on a used laptop and a manual generator.
Good post, I'd like to add a small point. While it's true that people are rejecting science by the millions, recent data points to an ever-increasing number of atheists as well. Something like 12% of the US population now. Up from 8% in the 90's. So what's really happening is that the US is becoming dramatically more polarized. I suspect this leads to more 'debate' instead of innovation.
Good points. To many of us here it appeared that we had no control over our government either until recently when the Democrats got off their cowardly asses and started pushing back. Things are changing for the better, because we are working to change them. You're also right about Iraq looking like Vietnam, because they're ideologically the same thing. In Iraq, I don't think anybody other than Bush's Neocon base believes that he's there to spread democracy, but rather to punish Saddam and control the oil and destabilize the middle east. Like Vietnam, the war was badly planned and poorly executed because the civilian leadership was following domestic priorities and calling it foreign policy.
I'm sorry Bush has been behaving criminally, but you being a jerk doesn't do anything to help those of us working to fix the problem. It's easy to bash America. It's a huge target. We're all fat and lazy, ignorant and arrogant, coked-out on cable. But you haven't been paying attention if you somehow missed the recent elections when we crippled Bush's administration by voting out the rubber-stamp republicans, you missed the recent (though long-overdue) investigations into the Bush administration's scandals, and you missed the recent legislation the democrats are trying to pass which will get the majority of US troops out of Iraq within the year. So don't try to pretend that Americans aren't standing up for our constitution or we wouldn't be working to repair Bush's scissor cuts in it. You probably don't see our democracy working because you don't want to.
Hey, representative of the world outside of the USA: shut the fuck up and sit back down. We're doing what we can to fix this mongrel president's mess, but it's going to take some time. Don't assume that Americans aren't fighting for our rights, or that all of us (or even a majority) back the Iraq occupation. And don't pretend like your country isn't being steered by intractable moneyed interests, either. I'd like a little more support and a little less scorn, because America is still a great country filled with lots of people who agree with you.
To all those mods who modded me flamebait: I'm an insensitive clod--I hadn't realized that you were sheeple. Yeesh, used to be that making fun of fundies guaranteed the +5's.
Yes, when that culture, along with its religion, has been dead for centuries and all that's left are scarce or undecipherable relics such as this calendar system. Are you seriously implying that the OP practices an authentic Mayan religion? It's either that, or you're lumping superstition about nice round numbers in with religion.
Also, the term I used was 'fundie.' Though I meant it in a Christian sense as that's the dominant religion of my culture, that could mean a fundamentalist of any religion.
Anyone familiar with the Mayan Calendar? December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Calendar) Coincidence?"
Great. It wasn't enough that the fundies were predicting apocalypse, now there's a secular apocalypse to look forward to. And here I thought we were done with Y2K. Sheeple sure loves them some end times.
Let me summarize: "I met a really important person once. Mildly interesting anecdote. Now I'm a really important person. Insert slight relevance to topic to legitimize post."
Culture sees it as a minor violation regardless of its legal status. If not, how do you explain how culture sees marijuana usage as a minor violation yet the legal penalties are extremely stiff? Making statements about something as vague as 'culture' is pretty meaningless without a better definition of what you mean by 'culture'. Do you mean the laws that supposedly govern what that culture should be like, or do you mean what actual people generally think? Both are a part of culture yet what people generally think and what the laws tell them to think are not always the same thing.
My recent decision to purchase a MacBook recently was driven mainly by the fact that a comparable Dell ultraportable was more expensive and had fewer features. Here's the MacBook ($1,674), and here's the Dell with roughly equivalent specs (XPS M1210 - $1.743). The Gateway (NX100X) version didn't even have some of the options like a 120GB drive, and their crappy dvd drive was external, and that one was $1,783.99.
In case those links don't work for everyone, it's the black MacBook with an extra gig of RAM, and the Dell is their cheapest 12.1" with added optical drive, RAM, bluetooth, 2GHz dual core, and 120GB hard drive. Anyone can spec these machines and see that the PC equivalent is about $100 MORE than the Mac. So why does everyone have this knee-jerk 'expensive hardware' reaction? Sure I could get a cheaper laptop in a different class with different specs, but let's compare apples to apples here. Pun intended.
Here I am, replying to my own post after rtfa. Did anyone else click on the 'take a tour' link of the software and notice under the list of people who would find this software useful: Contractors, Interior designers, Law enforcement, Do-it-yourselfers and Single Moms. WTF? Why would single moms need to know distances in photographs any more than married moms?
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The possibility that one out of twenty students could be legally packing, and he can't tell which one, is what will deter him/her.
I don't buy this line of reasoning. These sorts of attacks are undertaken by mentally unstable people who are in no condition to think rationally. They are often committing suicide anyway, so what do they care if anyone else is carrying a gun? It's possible that the one out of twenty students could have mitigated this tragedy by bringing it to a close much sooner, however it is just as likely that one out of twenty gun-carrying students will flip out and go on a shooting spree with their handy and legal gun. Just because you're licensed to carry a gun does not make you mentally stable forever.
That's a false choice. A police state will not prevent this kind of event. I want a free society where things like this are less likely to happen, which does not mean I want a police state either. The two things are entirely unrelated.
Yeah, but I can't get it to compile...
It's analagous to a car that Chevy will only let you drive around your own city, but then you figure out how to disable the kill switch and drive it wherever you want. Now Chevy has to create a slightly harder-to-find kill switch on its new cars to keep them in their respective cities, so you can drive your car wherever you want but as soon as you try to drive a new car then it will know what you did and refuse to start until you take it to the dealer for a new kill-switch install.
Crap, but then you could still drive your old car anywhere, and from what I've heard, as soon as you drive the new car then your old car is somehow disabled as well. Honestly, these car analogies are harder than they look.
Your analogy is correct, but supports a position opposite to yours: car companies advertise cars 'starting at $22,900', but because of recent legal action against them they are now putting '$25,500 as shown' on their commecials as well. Advertising is strictly regulated to protect the consumer against fraud like bait-and-switch. Companies can't lie (even through omission) in their advertising. They can't have a going out of business sale unless they are actually going out of business. They can't say their monitors are 17" if there is only 15" viewable. And they can't say that their software does X when it won't do X for all but the latest hardware without stating the hardware requirements in the ads. The bait here is the awesome tricks the OS is advertised to do; the switch is when the computer labelled 'Vista Compatible' cannot do those tricks without major upgrades. Though it's hard to say who is legally liable, Microsoft or the OEMs.
I thought the joke was that I got mod points today. I mean, what are the chances that I'd get mod points on Apil 1st? But then it turns out that having mod points on April 1st really isn't all that funny or even useful.
This is why when I surf the internet using IE I only visit sites that I personally have coded, and only after a VPN session into the server to ensure that my website has not been compromised.
Normal low-end laptops are already in that range on eBay. I got a 6 year old 12" 500MHz 512MB Vaio for under $100. I think the thing that people seem to be jazzed about are the ruggedness and manual power generation, both of which are still vapor at $200. Your OLPC money would be better spent on a used laptop and a manual generator.
+5 funny. Unless you were being serious, in which case -1 sad.
According to your logic those executives are getting paid exactly what the market will bear.
Good post, I'd like to add a small point. While it's true that people are rejecting science by the millions, recent data points to an ever-increasing number of atheists as well. Something like 12% of the US population now. Up from 8% in the 90's. So what's really happening is that the US is becoming dramatically more polarized. I suspect this leads to more 'debate' instead of innovation.
Good points. To many of us here it appeared that we had no control over our government either until recently when the Democrats got off their cowardly asses and started pushing back. Things are changing for the better, because we are working to change them. You're also right about Iraq looking like Vietnam, because they're ideologically the same thing. In Iraq, I don't think anybody other than Bush's Neocon base believes that he's there to spread democracy, but rather to punish Saddam and control the oil and destabilize the middle east. Like Vietnam, the war was badly planned and poorly executed because the civilian leadership was following domestic priorities and calling it foreign policy.
I'm sorry Bush has been behaving criminally, but you being a jerk doesn't do anything to help those of us working to fix the problem. It's easy to bash America. It's a huge target. We're all fat and lazy, ignorant and arrogant, coked-out on cable. But you haven't been paying attention if you somehow missed the recent elections when we crippled Bush's administration by voting out the rubber-stamp republicans, you missed the recent (though long-overdue) investigations into the Bush administration's scandals, and you missed the recent legislation the democrats are trying to pass which will get the majority of US troops out of Iraq within the year. So don't try to pretend that Americans aren't standing up for our constitution or we wouldn't be working to repair Bush's scissor cuts in it. You probably don't see our democracy working because you don't want to.
Hey, representative of the world outside of the USA: shut the fuck up and sit back down. We're doing what we can to fix this mongrel president's mess, but it's going to take some time. Don't assume that Americans aren't fighting for our rights, or that all of us (or even a majority) back the Iraq occupation. And don't pretend like your country isn't being steered by intractable moneyed interests, either. I'd like a little more support and a little less scorn, because America is still a great country filled with lots of people who agree with you.
To all those mods who modded me flamebait: I'm an insensitive clod--I hadn't realized that you were sheeple. Yeesh, used to be that making fun of fundies guaranteed the +5's.
Yes, when that culture, along with its religion, has been dead for centuries and all that's left are scarce or undecipherable relics such as this calendar system. Are you seriously implying that the OP practices an authentic Mayan religion? It's either that, or you're lumping superstition about nice round numbers in with religion.
Also, the term I used was 'fundie.' Though I meant it in a Christian sense as that's the dominant religion of my culture, that could mean a fundamentalist of any religion.
Come on, you're just being mean to actual pagans. Anyone living today who believes in Mayan prophecies is just delusional.
I fully expect any Snoop Computer System to include a diamond-encrusted pimp cup and lots of topless girls smoking bubonic chronic.
I'm just some 24-year-old from Kentucky, you insensitive clod!
Let me summarize: "I met a really important person once. Mildly interesting anecdote. Now I'm a really important person. Insert slight relevance to topic to legitimize post."
Culture sees it as a minor violation regardless of its legal status. If not, how do you explain how culture sees marijuana usage as a minor violation yet the legal penalties are extremely stiff? Making statements about something as vague as 'culture' is pretty meaningless without a better definition of what you mean by 'culture'. Do you mean the laws that supposedly govern what that culture should be like, or do you mean what actual people generally think? Both are a part of culture yet what people generally think and what the laws tell them to think are not always the same thing.
My recent decision to purchase a MacBook recently was driven mainly by the fact that a comparable Dell ultraportable was more expensive and had fewer features. Here's the MacBook ($1,674), and here's the Dell with roughly equivalent specs (XPS M1210 - $1.743). The Gateway (NX100X) version didn't even have some of the options like a 120GB drive, and their crappy dvd drive was external, and that one was $1,783.99.
In case those links don't work for everyone, it's the black MacBook with an extra gig of RAM, and the Dell is their cheapest 12.1" with added optical drive, RAM, bluetooth, 2GHz dual core, and 120GB hard drive. Anyone can spec these machines and see that the PC equivalent is about $100 MORE than the Mac. So why does everyone have this knee-jerk 'expensive hardware' reaction? Sure I could get a cheaper laptop in a different class with different specs, but let's compare apples to apples here. Pun intended.
At that price point, I'd guess about 99.44%.
I'm guessing you wash with Ivory soap.
Here I am, replying to my own post after rtfa. Did anyone else click on the 'take a tour' link of the software and notice under the list of people who would find this software useful: Contractors, Interior designers, Law enforcement, Do-it-yourselfers and Single Moms. WTF? Why would single moms need to know distances in photographs any more than married moms?