Would that stand for Democratic People's Republic of Kalifornia?
I find it amusing that there are people from California that want to emphasize that California is NOT a state, it's a republic. This distinction is somehow important, I guess because California has a relatively unique concept in law that any citizen can bring a law to a ballot and have it become law by a vote. I'm not sure if this is what defines a republic, but it is certainly democratic. The state has certainly been run by people that call themselves (big 'D') Democrats for a while now.
Also amusing is how Californians take pride in that the state... sorry, republic, has the 7th largest economy in the world. This is nothing to be proud of since it was the 5th largest economy until Democrats and those public ballot initiatives shrunk the economic output. Just like the other DPRK I expect California to collapse within 5 or 10 years. That which cannot continue will not, and neither have an economy that can continue indefinitely.
Indeed, new data appears every day. The debate would be over tomorrow though if people accepted the economics of anything related to CAGW.
The reason we burn coal, oil, and natural gas is because they are cheap. We can say they are abundant, reliable, and energy dense but that's just another way of calling them cheap. Solar power is expensive because it's unreliable, diffuse, and not necessarily abundant where it's needed. People tend to want energy when it's cold and/or dark where they are, and this tends to happen with then sun isn't shining. Storing, moving, and converting energy adds costs which only adds to the expense of already expensive solar power.
How do we solve this problem? Look to energy sources that have a history of being cheaper than coal, oil, and natural gas. Those are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Wind and hydro suffer from many of the same problems as solar, such as not always being available where and when it's needed, which can add to the cost. Nuclear doesn't have this problem, it can be placed most anywhere we need it. We've even put this energy source to work on ships at sea.
I guess we could say the debate is in fact over, use more nuclear power. We do that then we have cheap and clean power and we'll just have to find something else for congresscritters to prop up as a bogeyman to get us to vote them back into office again and again.
It makes little difference if Trump personally supports the Paris agreement or not, since it was an aspirational target, the states, companies and people still support it. The people who implement it, still implement it.
You mean we don't need the government to save the planet? I completely agree. People don't need the government to mandate anything to save the planet. People can do this on their own, assuming the government is not preventing this in any way.
The problem with government is that it picks winners and losers. One example are these stupid CFL lightbulbs. There's a government subsidy on them, maybe it's gone now, but they suck. I don't know anyone that buys them any more. People will get LED lighting now, or use one of those new "efficient" incandescent bulbs. Maybe the mandate sped up the adoption of LED because people wanted something better. Maybe it slowed it down because money that was dumped in CFL was not invested in bringing LEDs to market.
Another problem with government is that it is slow. The CFL subsidy is also an example of this, it became obsolete almost as soon as it became law. If someone developed cold fusion tomorrow then it'd be tied up in all kinds of outdated regulations before it could come to market. At a minimum it'd have to compete with already subsidized wind and solar. Subsidies rarely help anything, it can just as easily hurt.
Trump did the right thing on getting out of this agreement. It did nothing that we could not do on our own without it. I believe that we'd be better off if the government had a lighter hand on the environment. Sure, keep the air and water clean, but there is a thing as taking it too far. The EPA did a lot of good things in the past, but it became an agency without much to do very quickly. Instead of shrinking to fit the much smaller role it needed to fulfill, it grew and created new "problems" to solve. The US Department of Energy was created 40 years ago with the mandate to provide energy independence for the USA. They failed. I suspect that they will always fail because the people within the department will always have the suspicion that if they actually solve the problem then their jobs are at risk. Just like the DEA will never ever "win" the "war on some drugs". US DHS will never "win" the "war on terror". Has the Department of Education ever actually educated anyone? If people learned anything from them then it can't be anything good.
Okay, so you're implying that the way to control this to have hotels or other gun-free zones search all bags before entry.
Nothing is a true gun free zone unless all bags are searched and every person is patted down. If all it took to create a gun free zone is a sign then we could replace the entirety of the TSA with a million cardboard signs.
Putting up a "gun free zone" sign just advertises "soft target" to everyone. If people want a true gun free zone then they need to enforce it, and that means people with metal detectors and their own guns. This bullshit of putting up signs to keep the good people with guns out but letting the bad people with guns walk right in is just getting people killed.
To be as clear as I can, no, the hotel should not be searching bags and running people through metal detectors. They are going to have to understand that people will want to arm themselves for self protection, and that a few crazy people with guns will ALWAYS be a problem. People may be perfectly sane and responsible when they buy their firearms, pass all checks for criminal behavior, and then become criminals later. Trying to bubble wrap the world using people with guns and metal detectors just means that the people with the guns and metal detectors will someday become the criminals we were trying to keep out.
If there is some rule, law, regulation, or policy that could have stopped this recent Las Vegas mass murder then I'd like to hear it. This man had no prior criminal history, at least nothing serious enough to prevent him from legally purchasing a firearm. It sounds like he was a bit of an oddball, perhaps rude and abusive at times, but that's not a crime. He was very intelligent, at least smart enough to live off his gambling habit it seems. He was a pilot, which is why he thought to shoot at the fuel tanks at the airport nearby in the hopes to create more mayhem. He had improvised explosives in his car, or at least the components to build a bomb. If he didn't shoot up the place then he could have blown it up, or flown an airplane into the crowd, or any of a number of things. Some people just want to burn the world down and go down with it. He planned this for months and evidence suggests he had alternate sites picked out for his death and destruction should something mess with his plans. He planned very carefully and followed the law up until the very end, pass another law and people like him will also follow the law up until they don't and it's too late to do anything about it.
It's a cover up, I'm sure of that. This is to cover up the discovery of an ancient powerful alien device. This device is called a "door to the heavens", it's a transportation device that uses "Rosen-Einstein bridges" through space-time to allow people to travel astronomical distances seemingly instantly. One was found buried among ancient Egyptian artifacts and the other more recently found buried in the Antarctic ice. I have little doubt the power of this device is melting the ice. Perhaps this device has also attracted some unwanted attention from alien species? If that's the case then they have much more to cover up.
Designed to fit workers from five feet to six feet four inches tall
As someone that is six feet five inches tall I'm not terribly surprised at this. About 99% of the populations is between five feet and six feet four inches tall. I've gotten used to things in the world not being designed for people as tall as I am, but it still sucks. You'd think that just one inch is not such a big deal but consider the height of a typical door. Most household doors are six feet eight inches before things like flooring and such are added, now add the thickness of the sole of a typical work boot, and headgear like a helmet, hearing protection, or just a baseball cap. Now someone that's just an inch taller than 99% of the population has to be very careful walking through doors or that little metal button on the top of a baseball cap gets slammed into their skull. Those door return mechanisms on many fire doors are another hazard to life and eyesight for the 1%.
Here's an interesting thing I found out, being short is considered a "disability" but being tall is not. A person under five feet tall (male or female*) is considered "disabled" under laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and as a "disabled person" they can demand "reasonable accommodations" for their height. There is no upper limit to height that I can see being considered automatically a disability, therefore businesses are not required to make any "reasonable accommodations". Is that "fair"? Life's not fair.
* If one is not either male or female then that's just weird, and not a disability under any law I could see.
If it's non-powered, how does it add lift? Counterweights? Riiiiiiight.
Magnets.
Seriously, is this that hard to imagine? Put in some springs or something elastic. People have been using simple devices to assist in motion for a long time. There are lifting belts that take some strain off of backs. Dancing shoes of various sorts let people stand on tiptoes or whatever. Just shoes generally, from basketball shoes with little air pockets in the soles to those crazy spring loaded contraptions that people use to jump over cars. None of these things are powered but they add some kind of support, leverage, or energy storage.
Can you name a school district that does not allow law enforcement to be armed on campus?
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, perhaps every school district within Pennsylvania. These schools have sworn officers on the school grounds but they are barred from being armed with anything more than pepper spray, or perhaps, maybe, some other non-lethal device. Armed officers are not allowed on the grounds unless there's been a bomb threat, shooting, or other emergency declared. Do I need to go on or does a state of 12 million people as an example satisfy your request? Just poking around the web tells me this is pretty common.
Are you proposing that people with mental illnesses need to either be incarcerated or given guns?
Of course! Oh, wait. That's actually not at all what I proposed. I propose that if the government declares a person unfit to defend themselves then the government is now responsible for their protection. This can mean imprisonment, residence in a mental health facility, or some other option that seems fitting. A government that denies the right of self defense and does not provide protection is, IMHO, borderline cruel and unusual punishment.
Furthermore, you can continue to defend yourself without a gun unless you have some sort of physical disability that prevents it.
So, suppose some woman, a schoolteacher, gets convicted of statutory rape for sleeping with one of her students. Certainly not a person of the best moral character but still a human being. She goes to prison for her crime and is now released. Let's say she finds work in a factory, works there for years, decades even, without any other criminal behavior. Now this middle aged woman is expected to defend herself from getting raped, mugged, or otherwise molested, while walking home from the factory in a bad part of town with what? Her "physical disability" is being a woman over 50. She's still a convicted felon, but does she get to own a gun? Every felon gets old and weak at some point. Is there an age limit for being a convicted felon and getting their right of self defense back?
You do know that parents and school officials sometimes are the perpetrators of attacks on students and school officials, right?
You do know those people are quite rare, right? However, when one of them becomes a problem there is no one in that school able to stop this person from causing harm to everyone in that school. When seconds count the police are minutes away. This ban on armed people in schools creates the very problem they are supposed to prevent. If you want to keep armed bad people from the schools then you need armed good people inside before they get there.
Israel has armed staff in all of their schools, they have to because of the threats they get. The criminals learned to say VERY far away from schools now. The last school shooting I heard of was in a seminary library, the STUDENTS shot the attacker. Colleges should allow students to be armed, at that age they are adults and they should be expected to defend themselves.
It's possible, you're right. It's also possible that it would make matters worse.
I'm sure it's possible. It's difficult to figure out how. As the people in Israel how well unarmed schools worked out for them. If there is a "softer" target than a building full of children and no one with a gun for at least a quarter mile around then I'd like to know what that is.
We reinforced the cockpit door and changed security standards so that hijacking a plane provides zero benefit to the hijacker.
We also armed the pilots. With a gun. While the law is still technically in force Obama ended funding.
What nation deals with armed thugs and do not arm their police?
It would be completely unreasonable to let someone out of prison only to prevent them from ever having any chance at gainful employment.
Is it reasonable to let someone out of prison and prevent them from being able to defend themselves from criminals? I don't think so.
My father has been a lifetime member of the NRA for almost 60 years and I'll guarantee you that he would never be okay with an ex-felon owning a gun. I think it would be difficult to find a reasonable person who believed otherwise.
Then perhaps the question was not posed properly. Again, how reasonable is it to release a person from prison and deny them the right to defend their property, family, or their own life? Whether that be from animals or snakes, including the ones that walk on two legs?
There is no way you'll have 0% gun crime in ANY location without completely removing all guns from any population that could possibly enter that location.
Why the focus on "gun crime"? Should we not be concerned about *ALL* crime? How does preventing school officials and parents from carrying a firearm on schools stop an animal in human skin from shooting down a school door and killing everyone inside? I'm pretty sure that an armed parent or teacher inside would be at least a deterrent to someone attempting this. Quite likely save a lot of children too.
This is what is seriously fucked up. We'll let those guys carrying cash to fill ATMs have guns but the police officers that protect the lives of our children are rarely armed. We can print another dollar bill just like one that was destroyed or stolen , we can't just print another child if one was taken from their parents. That says a lot about where our values lie as a nation. We'll defend our cash with lethal force but the people tasked with defending the next generation will be left to defend them with their bare hands. Maybe they can toss chairs and staplers at someone shooting at them.
We don't compare ourselves with Brazil because the socioeconomic standards of this country are entirely different than Brazil. People typically resort to crime when they feel like they have no other choice in life.
Is it possible that the people of Brazil, or Mexico, or Russia, are in such an economic hole because they don't have the means to defend themselves from even petty crime? If a thug can strong-arm most anyone without threat of being shot don't you think that this might have an effect on society? Perhaps crime is such a problem because strong men with little prospects for an honest job can just take what they want. Some of these nations are so fearful of armed men that they don't even arm their own police. How effective can police be if faced with a mob? It's not like these laws against owning guns have much effect against these gangs for long, they get their guns. Now you have roaming armed thugs and no one armed to stop them. The police can't stand up to them. The people are expected to run to the police to defend them. What if the police are paid off by these roaming mobs to stay out of their way? This is just a downward spiral.
There's a number of nations getting wise to this. They run the risk of being run out on a rail if they don't allow people to defend themselves. It's kind of hard for an elected official to be safe if both the lawless thugs and the honest citizen want them strung up. Russia has lifted firearm restrictions. Looks like Mexico will too. In the USA we see schools allowing parents to patrol the schools while armed. Maybe we are getting our heads on straight. Let's defend our children with the same lethality and vigor that we protect our money with.
The guy violated prohibitions of having weapons in the room, at a minimum he was guilty of trespassing on the hotel property. He was barred from carrying those rifles into the hotel, but did it anyway.
Right, the problem is the lax gun laws in the USA, Nevada, and Las Vegas. Tell me, so I can give these suggestions to my senators, what laws would have prevented this mass murder? Please be specific on the wording, I want to be clear when I write my letter to my senators. Tell me how these laws would be enforced, again be specific. How much would it cost to enforce these laws? I know you might not have that answer but it would be nice to have an idea.
Of course the problem is the gun laws. Just like whenever someone runs over a crowd of people in a truck the problem is the laws on driving. After we solve our gun law problems we should work on our driving laws. Background checks maybe? People should be compelled to submit to a blood alcohol test at any time, that's a good idea. Tests for other mind altering substances too. OH! Licenses! People should need a license to drive! People should have to take a class. Is one day enough? Maybe a whole week. Maybe just make them take a test and let the person figure out how to learn the material. Let's register every car too. Wait, we do all this already. Yet we still have people get run over by trucks. How would doing this for firearms be any different?
Sometimes there is just no solution to the problem. Passing insane laws to stop insane people from doing insane things is itself insanity.
It's trivial to ram some iron bars into the ground, effectively nullifying the ability of a truck to run into a group of people. Now please let me hear your suggestion how to easily do the same about a gun.
You want a trivial solution to a complex problem? There are none. One place to start on solving the problem is to identify it. The problem is not the guns, I'm quite sure of that. If you want my suggestions then we start with getting rid of the distractions of gun control.
I believe we should return to the gun laws prior to 1934 where people could order Thompson sub-machine gun from a mail order catalog. People were getting revolvers and rifles through the mail up until 1968 as I recall. There were no background checks then, no gun registries. Many firearms up until the 1950s didn't even have serial numbers on them to register.
When was gun crime a problem? What were the reasons to create these laws in the first place? What lead up to the 1934 National Firearms Act? Would that be the prohibition of alcohol? What about the Gun Control Act of 1968? Wasn't that about the time of the "hippies" with their pot smoking, LSD, and heroin? Then there were more laws in the early 1990s, was that about the time of a "crack epidemic"? Interesting isn't it? Maybe it's nothing but the parallels are there. The more the government cracks down on drugs the crime to protect this illicit trade increases.
Maybe, perhaps, the cure to the drug problem is worse than the disease. We should legalize all the drugs. Legalize all the guns. If you want my answer then there it is. If you don't like it then offer your own solution. I'm tired of the government getting bigger and bigger all the time. Maybe more government, more laws, more control, is not always the solution. Maybe the solution is less government, fewer laws, and maybe the solution is more freedom.
Your one and only source for mass shooting statistics was Every Town? That group states openly that their goal is to ban all the guns. You could not have found a more biased source if you tried. How about coming back with some neutral sources? Or even some sources biased on the other end to balance that out?
Le's go with that for a bit though. 54% were domestic violence cases, and 63% happened in private homes. Does this mean people cannot even keep a firearm in their own home? That's going to go over like a turd in a punch bowl when we see that 1/3rd of Americans own a gun. I find that statistic interesting. Why use the word "American" since 24% of the US population is under 18 and are legally barred from owning a gun. The percentage of Americans under 21, the age at which a person may legally purchase a handgun under federal law, or legally carry a concealed firearm in most states, is 27%. That means of "American adults" the gun ownership is closer to 50% than 30%. When using the metric "gun owning household" we find it's 44%, which is probably a better metric to use as children are not really counted.
Then there's the claim that 34% of these murderers were prohibited from possessing a firearm. Here's a question, why were these people not in prison? I mean, if these people cannot be trusted with a firearm then why would we release them from prison? Are they barred from other dangerous items as well? People get stabbed, run over by trucks, beaten with baseball bats, and so on and so on. Why focus just on the firearms? Lock them up if they are still a threat. If they aren't a threat then they should not be barred, but that's perhaps a discussion for another time.
The Every Town admits that "only" 10% of mass shooting deaths happen in "gun free zones". Is this supposed to make me feel better? Is that not still an epic fail of the "gun free zone" to protect the people within it? That number should not be 10%, or 5%, or 1%, it should be 0% or it's a failure.
You also mention "mass shootings" as a metric, why is it important that people are shot? Don't having people get run over by a truck count? Why compare the USA to Europe? Why not Mexico? Why not anywhere else in the world? Why compare the entire USA when the laws on gun ownership vary widely from state to state? Murder rates vary widely from state to state as well. The "murderous" USA is still far safer than so many places in the world. Is this safety from owning guns? Maybe we should pick nations of similar area and population, like Brazil.
I didn't say there won't be any attacks, I said that there are no reports of this style of attack being successful against anyone, therefore this threat is merely theoretical. If this moves out of theory into practice then we might have something "interesting". Since this has remained theoretical for 20 years then my expectations of such a thing happening anytime soon are quite low.
Maybe someone could find these hacks useful for something that doesn't involve breaking into another computer. I have some ideas on uses but we've already carried this on long enough. Non-nefarious uses of this would be "interesting" too. Maybe people should be working on that instead of how it can be used to steal data or cause vandalism.
Solar doesn't rank in the top 5? Let's keep going then. 6 - Solar, PV 144.3 7 - Wind, offshore 221.5 8 - Solar, Thermal 261.5
Let's also take a deeper look at CO2 output, ranking the lowest tonnes of CO2 per GWh 1 - Wind 26 2 - Hydro 26 3 - Nuclear 28 4 - Biomass 45 5 - Solar PV 85
Again, this is from the sources I provided. Solar is not looking great, it costs nearly twice the competition and has a carbon footprint that is triple. Solar only provides power through about 1/3 or 1/4 of the day. Biomass and geothermal don't care much what time of day it is. With solar being so unreliable it means we'd need some kind of back up energy, most likely natural gas, or storage so the lights don't go out. What does that do to the cost and carbon footprint? I've seen those numbers elsewhere and they are not good.
If you got better numbers yourself then please share. I'm sure many people are interested in sharing in your solar powered success.
The "old" skin lacks the proteins to bind to the lower layers of skin, the "new" skin has those proteins. I assume this means any old skin that comes off is more likely to be recovered with new. The new skin should simply heal over the rest of the body.
That's my theory. Certainly not the opinion of a trained physician, I don't even play one on TV.
Yet another mass killing, yet another nutter allowed to have a weapon and zero guts in the Republican party to tackle the gun-funded NRA lobby.
These nutters were "allowed" to have a weapon? Can you show me a mass murder where the killer was not barred from possessing the weapon (by state or federal law) due to being in a "gun free zone", prior conviction of drug use/possession, mental health issues, prior conviction of a felony or violent misdemeanor, being in the nation illegally, or having been dishonorably discharged from the military?
Can you show me one of these murderers that was a member of the NRA?
BTW, the person that stopped the murderer in Sutherland Springs was an NRA firearms instructor. The killer in that shooting did pass a background check, only because his mental health history, violent crimes, and discharge from the Air Force were not reported to the FBI. Are these the same guys we want to trust with the keys to our electronic data?
Are these the same people we want to trust with stopping the next "nutter" with mass murder on their mind? No thanks. I have greater trust in those that cling to their bibles and their guns.
So why don't we see those same mass shootings in other countries with stronger gun control.
Would you rather they were hit by a truck or stabbed with a knife than shot with a rifle? Mass murders still happen even with gun control. They'll just run people over with a truck, stab with a blade, pack a pressure cooker with an improvised explosive, etc., etc.
Mass murders do happen in Europe. In fact you are much more likely to be killed by a machine gun in Europe than the USA. There's been only 3 known murders with a machine gun in the USA since they've been put under strict legal controls in 1934.
I've pondered why this is. I suspect that this is for two reasons. First, if the possession of a single shot derringer or a fully automatic AK-47 gets you the same amount of time in prison then the criminals have very easy math to do, get the most lethal weapon they can lay their hands on. Second, when it comes to firearm complexity the second least complex is the fully automatic. The least complex is the single shot firearm. Next is the machine gun. Then comes repeaters, those with pump-, bolt-, or lever-action. The second to most complex is the semi-automatic, which are the most popular kind of firearm in the USA. The most complex are the select fire assault rifles that most every professional army in the world uses. An assault rifle is a well defined item, unlike the "assault weapon" term which just means "what we want to ban today".
The ease with which you can obtain an AR-15 likely influences the rate of occurrence of mass shootings.
Most mass shootings happen with handguns. I can see why you might think rifles are more often used, the last handful of mass shootings were done by people with rifles, and the rifle shootings seem to get more press coverage. By far most murders are done with handguns, then it's probably blunt and bladed weapons, then hands and feet, then rifles and shotguns.
You want to know what I noticed about these recent mass shootings? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Most of them were in gun free zones. Most of the people doing the shooting were barred from possessing a firearm, this could be because of age (have to be 18 to own a gun, older in some states), previous conviction (felony or some violent misdemeanors), prior drug use/possession (even in states where it's been legalized, federal law still prohibits firearm possession), mental health history (this can be permanent or temporary), illegal alien (as it should be, this is an armed invasion IMHO), or as mentioned before being in a "gun free zone" at the time. Most of the people were atheists or non-Christian. None of them were NRA members.
Schools, churches, hotels, and even entire cities are often "gun free zones". Or they are on paper, until an animal in human skin carries a firearm into these areas with murder on their mind. These "gun free zones" have a nasty habit of attracting murderers.
The only mass murder I can think of that is both recent and NOT in a "gun free zone" was the 2011 shooting in Tuscon where US Representative Gabby Giffords was injured. In that case the murderer was barred from possessing a firearm because of a prior illegal drug possession conviction. He also violated Arizona law by "carrying a lethal weapon with intent to injure" or something like that, although I suspect no one bothered to press those charges since he had killed 6 people at that point.
Go ahead though, blame American gun laws for these mass murders. History shows you are wrong. People tend to be far safer when they have the ability to shoot back at their attacker. If you can show me a mass murder that was not in a "gun free zone", excepting the one example I gave, then I'd like to know. I don't care if the case is one of being shot, stabbed, blown up, or run over, since I'm not so narrow minded to blame this on the guns. I do see evidence that the "gun free zone" is far from making people safer. Try to change my mind on that.
You think that local police forces don't try? I remember going to a political rally of sorts where they were talking about how the city wanted all businesses and multi-unit housing to hand over copies of keys to the police and fire departments. For your safety of course.
All kinds of questions were raised. Would the city be required to make attempts to call the property owner before entering? Would there be a log of these entries? Would this be public record? What of lost or stolen keys, would the city pay for locks being rekeyed? What happens in the case of a burglary? What responsibility would the police have if there is damaged property, missing items, or other losses? Can they prove someone in the city government was not responsible? What kind of prevention for abuse of this kind of access by city employees would be in place? What punishment for this abuse would there be?
This was happening in a neighboring town so it didn't affect me directly, only as an example that might spread. As far as I know this didn't get far. Of course many of those questions on having the keys to our homes and businesses also apply to having the keys to our data.
Oh, and why not have keys to single unit homes? Probably because the city council members all lived in single unit homes.
It's not making a mountain out of a mole hill, it's noting an interesting attack vector that the ubiquity and multi-function nature of USB makes possible.
You are about 15 years too late. This is not interesting now. USB came out over 20 years ago, and has been quite common since the early days of Windows XP and Mac OS X 15 years ago. If this was any real effective attack vector then maybe someone would have done more than just some interesting demonstrations with a $30 embedded computer. Sure, lots of things are possible if someone throws enough time and effort behind it. If this has somehow escaped into the wild then maybe it can be "interesting".
Very similar attacks have been possible for an even longer period of time using other ports with similar ubiquity then as USB has now. USB may have made the complexity or ease of these attacks greater but, again, THAT WAS T_W_E_N_T_Y Y_E_A_R_S AGO!!!
I learned long ago that laptop power supplies are the weakest link. Get a spare power supply immediately and/or a laptop with USB-C charging. Having a lost or damaged power supply means the laptop becomes an expensive brick in minutes or hours. Don't let that happen. I've had that happen and it sucks. The bonus is being able to keep one charger at a desk at home and another in the bag the laptop is carried in. There's no forgetting the charger at home because it never leaves the bag at home. If one gets home and finds the charger was left at school/work/wherever then the laptop still works and the other supply can usually be found the next day.
I don't have a laptop with USB-C charging yet but from what I've read it's almost hard to find a USB-C charger that doesn't "just work". The usual caveats apply, buy a quality charger and with sufficient output for the load. If the the laptop comes with a USB-C 45W charger then getting any USB-C charger that is specified for 45 or more wattage should work. If you don't get a spare right away then at least you know one can be found at most any big box store or ordered online from most anywhere. Even a smaller charger than what comes with it should still allow it to limp along or charge up overnight. Some people have successfully used cell phone chargers to charge up their laptops... S L O W L Y.
I'm also a fan of ThunderBolt. If this is a laptop that will be used for a while then go with ThunderBolt as it grants a much faster interface for drives and such than USB. The newer ThunderBolt 3 uses the same USB-C connector as new phones and USB 3 and gives backward compatibility with USB. There's ThunderBolt adapters and docks for most anything. The laptop will most certainly also have USB ports (type A and/or C) and some video output so it's not like you'll be tied to ThunderBolt, it just gives options.
If this is a gaming laptop then ThunderBolt is the only way I know of to add an external GPU.
That said, I also use MacOS and Windows. I haven't had much difficulty in moving between the two. My laptops have been Apples with some virtual machine software and a Windows virtual machine. I can switch between the two operating systems with just a key combination. If the extra software cost and/or effort doesn't bother you then I suggest that as an option.
Itâ(TM)s a tired myth that there is a conflict between environmental protection and economic growth, Partin said.
If we want environmental protection without killing the economy then we need to take a list of what's "green" and what's cheap and see where they overlap, then use those.
Looks to me like the winners are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Of course future developments will shift these numbers around so let's not stop the analysis there but now, today, those are our best three choices.
Look, still wind, hydro, and nuclear at the top. To those that think solar has any part to play in this I say look again at the costs, it's easily double or triple what we pay now for natural gas. Natural gas is so cheap now that it will be impossible to do away with it but even then it's got half the CO2 output per MWh compared to coal. If we have to choose between coal, natural gas, or our energy costs doubling then I choose natural gas. Wind, hydro, and nuclear are already cheaper than coal so that choice is obvious.
So, there's our solution, wind, hydro, nuclear, and some more natural gas until we can make the others cheaper. Anything else means more CO2 and/or much higher costs.
Right, that would be nice to have a standardized port that allowed for two-way communications on a cell phone. We had something close years ago, called "on the go" as I recall. I could get one of these "universal serial cables" with identical connectors on both ends. Not terribly expensive either, $5 or $10, maybe $15 if you wanted it longer or gold plated or something. The ports on the phones doubled for charging and data, and if I connected two phones together with these ports using this "on the go" cable then I could transfer data between the two.
The transfer was a bit slow, would be nice if we had something faster. Charging wasn't that great either since it was limited to something like 5 or 10 watts, getting 15, 20, or even 40+ watts would be nice. Those stupid little connectors were also hard to get right side up, maybe they could make them reversible, like an unpolarized AC plug and outlet. Don't make them too big of course, keep them about the same size.
I have a new smart phone. It's already got something close. The charge port is reversible, or is it "flippable"? Whatever. The power brick I got is rated for something like 12 or 15 watts, which is nice, but I think I can get a "quick charge" one with more capacity. It sure would be nice if there was a cable that existed to plug this into another phone to move data. I mean it's so close that all I'd think it would take is some software and one of those "on the go" cables again.
Maybe there's a reason we lost this capability we had before. I can't imagine what that is.
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but they have been subducted back into the mantle.
Would that be "basalt to basalt, crust to crust"?
Would that stand for Democratic People's Republic of Kalifornia?
I find it amusing that there are people from California that want to emphasize that California is NOT a state, it's a republic. This distinction is somehow important, I guess because California has a relatively unique concept in law that any citizen can bring a law to a ballot and have it become law by a vote. I'm not sure if this is what defines a republic, but it is certainly democratic. The state has certainly been run by people that call themselves (big 'D') Democrats for a while now.
Also amusing is how Californians take pride in that the state... sorry, republic, has the 7th largest economy in the world. This is nothing to be proud of since it was the 5th largest economy until Democrats and those public ballot initiatives shrunk the economic output. Just like the other DPRK I expect California to collapse within 5 or 10 years. That which cannot continue will not, and neither have an economy that can continue indefinitely.
Indeed, new data appears every day. The debate would be over tomorrow though if people accepted the economics of anything related to CAGW.
The reason we burn coal, oil, and natural gas is because they are cheap. We can say they are abundant, reliable, and energy dense but that's just another way of calling them cheap. Solar power is expensive because it's unreliable, diffuse, and not necessarily abundant where it's needed. People tend to want energy when it's cold and/or dark where they are, and this tends to happen with then sun isn't shining. Storing, moving, and converting energy adds costs which only adds to the expense of already expensive solar power.
How do we solve this problem? Look to energy sources that have a history of being cheaper than coal, oil, and natural gas. Those are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Wind and hydro suffer from many of the same problems as solar, such as not always being available where and when it's needed, which can add to the cost. Nuclear doesn't have this problem, it can be placed most anywhere we need it. We've even put this energy source to work on ships at sea.
I guess we could say the debate is in fact over, use more nuclear power. We do that then we have cheap and clean power and we'll just have to find something else for congresscritters to prop up as a bogeyman to get us to vote them back into office again and again.
It makes little difference if Trump personally supports the Paris agreement or not, since it was an aspirational target, the states, companies and people still support it. The people who implement it, still implement it.
You mean we don't need the government to save the planet? I completely agree. People don't need the government to mandate anything to save the planet. People can do this on their own, assuming the government is not preventing this in any way.
The problem with government is that it picks winners and losers. One example are these stupid CFL lightbulbs. There's a government subsidy on them, maybe it's gone now, but they suck. I don't know anyone that buys them any more. People will get LED lighting now, or use one of those new "efficient" incandescent bulbs. Maybe the mandate sped up the adoption of LED because people wanted something better. Maybe it slowed it down because money that was dumped in CFL was not invested in bringing LEDs to market.
Another problem with government is that it is slow. The CFL subsidy is also an example of this, it became obsolete almost as soon as it became law. If someone developed cold fusion tomorrow then it'd be tied up in all kinds of outdated regulations before it could come to market. At a minimum it'd have to compete with already subsidized wind and solar. Subsidies rarely help anything, it can just as easily hurt.
Trump did the right thing on getting out of this agreement. It did nothing that we could not do on our own without it. I believe that we'd be better off if the government had a lighter hand on the environment. Sure, keep the air and water clean, but there is a thing as taking it too far. The EPA did a lot of good things in the past, but it became an agency without much to do very quickly. Instead of shrinking to fit the much smaller role it needed to fulfill, it grew and created new "problems" to solve. The US Department of Energy was created 40 years ago with the mandate to provide energy independence for the USA. They failed. I suspect that they will always fail because the people within the department will always have the suspicion that if they actually solve the problem then their jobs are at risk. Just like the DEA will never ever "win" the "war on some drugs". US DHS will never "win" the "war on terror". Has the Department of Education ever actually educated anyone? If people learned anything from them then it can't be anything good.
Okay, so you're implying that the way to control this to have hotels or other gun-free zones search all bags before entry.
Nothing is a true gun free zone unless all bags are searched and every person is patted down. If all it took to create a gun free zone is a sign then we could replace the entirety of the TSA with a million cardboard signs.
Putting up a "gun free zone" sign just advertises "soft target" to everyone. If people want a true gun free zone then they need to enforce it, and that means people with metal detectors and their own guns. This bullshit of putting up signs to keep the good people with guns out but letting the bad people with guns walk right in is just getting people killed.
To be as clear as I can, no, the hotel should not be searching bags and running people through metal detectors. They are going to have to understand that people will want to arm themselves for self protection, and that a few crazy people with guns will ALWAYS be a problem. People may be perfectly sane and responsible when they buy their firearms, pass all checks for criminal behavior, and then become criminals later. Trying to bubble wrap the world using people with guns and metal detectors just means that the people with the guns and metal detectors will someday become the criminals we were trying to keep out.
If there is some rule, law, regulation, or policy that could have stopped this recent Las Vegas mass murder then I'd like to hear it. This man had no prior criminal history, at least nothing serious enough to prevent him from legally purchasing a firearm. It sounds like he was a bit of an oddball, perhaps rude and abusive at times, but that's not a crime. He was very intelligent, at least smart enough to live off his gambling habit it seems. He was a pilot, which is why he thought to shoot at the fuel tanks at the airport nearby in the hopes to create more mayhem. He had improvised explosives in his car, or at least the components to build a bomb. If he didn't shoot up the place then he could have blown it up, or flown an airplane into the crowd, or any of a number of things. Some people just want to burn the world down and go down with it. He planned this for months and evidence suggests he had alternate sites picked out for his death and destruction should something mess with his plans. He planned very carefully and followed the law up until the very end, pass another law and people like him will also follow the law up until they don't and it's too late to do anything about it.
It's a cover up, I'm sure of that. This is to cover up the discovery of an ancient powerful alien device. This device is called a "door to the heavens", it's a transportation device that uses "Rosen-Einstein bridges" through space-time to allow people to travel astronomical distances seemingly instantly. One was found buried among ancient Egyptian artifacts and the other more recently found buried in the Antarctic ice. I have little doubt the power of this device is melting the ice. Perhaps this device has also attracted some unwanted attention from alien species? If that's the case then they have much more to cover up.
Designed to fit workers from five feet to six feet four inches tall
As someone that is six feet five inches tall I'm not terribly surprised at this. About 99% of the populations is between five feet and six feet four inches tall. I've gotten used to things in the world not being designed for people as tall as I am, but it still sucks. You'd think that just one inch is not such a big deal but consider the height of a typical door. Most household doors are six feet eight inches before things like flooring and such are added, now add the thickness of the sole of a typical work boot, and headgear like a helmet, hearing protection, or just a baseball cap. Now someone that's just an inch taller than 99% of the population has to be very careful walking through doors or that little metal button on the top of a baseball cap gets slammed into their skull. Those door return mechanisms on many fire doors are another hazard to life and eyesight for the 1%.
Here's an interesting thing I found out, being short is considered a "disability" but being tall is not. A person under five feet tall (male or female*) is considered "disabled" under laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and as a "disabled person" they can demand "reasonable accommodations" for their height. There is no upper limit to height that I can see being considered automatically a disability, therefore businesses are not required to make any "reasonable accommodations". Is that "fair"? Life's not fair.
* If one is not either male or female then that's just weird, and not a disability under any law I could see.
If it's non-powered, how does it add lift? Counterweights? Riiiiiiight.
Magnets.
Seriously, is this that hard to imagine? Put in some springs or something elastic. People have been using simple devices to assist in motion for a long time. There are lifting belts that take some strain off of backs. Dancing shoes of various sorts let people stand on tiptoes or whatever. Just shoes generally, from basketball shoes with little air pockets in the soles to those crazy spring loaded contraptions that people use to jump over cars. None of these things are powered but they add some kind of support, leverage, or energy storage.
Can you name a school district that does not allow law enforcement to be armed on campus?
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, perhaps every school district within Pennsylvania. These schools have sworn officers on the school grounds but they are barred from being armed with anything more than pepper spray, or perhaps, maybe, some other non-lethal device. Armed officers are not allowed on the grounds unless there's been a bomb threat, shooting, or other emergency declared. Do I need to go on or does a state of 12 million people as an example satisfy your request? Just poking around the web tells me this is pretty common.
Are you proposing that people with mental illnesses need to either be incarcerated or given guns?
Of course! Oh, wait. That's actually not at all what I proposed. I propose that if the government declares a person unfit to defend themselves then the government is now responsible for their protection. This can mean imprisonment, residence in a mental health facility, or some other option that seems fitting. A government that denies the right of self defense and does not provide protection is, IMHO, borderline cruel and unusual punishment.
Furthermore, you can continue to defend yourself without a gun unless you have some sort of physical disability that prevents it.
So, suppose some woman, a schoolteacher, gets convicted of statutory rape for sleeping with one of her students. Certainly not a person of the best moral character but still a human being. She goes to prison for her crime and is now released. Let's say she finds work in a factory, works there for years, decades even, without any other criminal behavior. Now this middle aged woman is expected to defend herself from getting raped, mugged, or otherwise molested, while walking home from the factory in a bad part of town with what? Her "physical disability" is being a woman over 50. She's still a convicted felon, but does she get to own a gun? Every felon gets old and weak at some point. Is there an age limit for being a convicted felon and getting their right of self defense back?
You do know that parents and school officials sometimes are the perpetrators of attacks on students and school officials, right?
You do know those people are quite rare, right? However, when one of them becomes a problem there is no one in that school able to stop this person from causing harm to everyone in that school. When seconds count the police are minutes away. This ban on armed people in schools creates the very problem they are supposed to prevent. If you want to keep armed bad people from the schools then you need armed good people inside before they get there.
Israel has armed staff in all of their schools, they have to because of the threats they get. The criminals learned to say VERY far away from schools now. The last school shooting I heard of was in a seminary library, the STUDENTS shot the attacker. Colleges should allow students to be armed, at that age they are adults and they should be expected to defend themselves.
It's possible, you're right. It's also possible that it would make matters worse.
I'm sure it's possible. It's difficult to figure out how. As the people in Israel how well unarmed schools worked out for them. If there is a "softer" target than a building full of children and no one with a gun for at least a quarter mile around then I'd like to know what that is.
We reinforced the cockpit door and changed security standards so that hijacking a plane provides zero benefit to the hijacker.
We also armed the pilots. With a gun. While the law is still technically in force Obama ended funding.
What nation deals with armed thugs and do not arm their police?
Lots of them.
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It would be completely unreasonable to let someone out of prison only to prevent them from ever having any chance at gainful employment.
Is it reasonable to let someone out of prison and prevent them from being able to defend themselves from criminals? I don't think so.
My father has been a lifetime member of the NRA for almost 60 years and I'll guarantee you that he would never be okay with an ex-felon owning a gun. I think it would be difficult to find a reasonable person who believed otherwise.
Then perhaps the question was not posed properly. Again, how reasonable is it to release a person from prison and deny them the right to defend their property, family, or their own life? Whether that be from animals or snakes, including the ones that walk on two legs?
There is no way you'll have 0% gun crime in ANY location without completely removing all guns from any population that could possibly enter that location.
Why the focus on "gun crime"? Should we not be concerned about *ALL* crime? How does preventing school officials and parents from carrying a firearm on schools stop an animal in human skin from shooting down a school door and killing everyone inside? I'm pretty sure that an armed parent or teacher inside would be at least a deterrent to someone attempting this. Quite likely save a lot of children too.
This is what is seriously fucked up. We'll let those guys carrying cash to fill ATMs have guns but the police officers that protect the lives of our children are rarely armed. We can print another dollar bill just like one that was destroyed or stolen , we can't just print another child if one was taken from their parents. That says a lot about where our values lie as a nation. We'll defend our cash with lethal force but the people tasked with defending the next generation will be left to defend them with their bare hands. Maybe they can toss chairs and staplers at someone shooting at them.
We don't compare ourselves with Brazil because the socioeconomic standards of this country are entirely different than Brazil. People typically resort to crime when they feel like they have no other choice in life.
Is it possible that the people of Brazil, or Mexico, or Russia, are in such an economic hole because they don't have the means to defend themselves from even petty crime? If a thug can strong-arm most anyone without threat of being shot don't you think that this might have an effect on society? Perhaps crime is such a problem because strong men with little prospects for an honest job can just take what they want. Some of these nations are so fearful of armed men that they don't even arm their own police. How effective can police be if faced with a mob? It's not like these laws against owning guns have much effect against these gangs for long, they get their guns. Now you have roaming armed thugs and no one armed to stop them. The police can't stand up to them. The people are expected to run to the police to defend them. What if the police are paid off by these roaming mobs to stay out of their way? This is just a downward spiral.
There's a number of nations getting wise to this. They run the risk of being run out on a rail if they don't allow people to defend themselves. It's kind of hard for an elected official to be safe if both the lawless thugs and the honest citizen want them strung up. Russia has lifted firearm restrictions. Looks like Mexico will too. In the USA we see schools allowing parents to patrol the schools while armed. Maybe we are getting our heads on straight. Let's defend our children with the same lethality and vigor that we protect our money with.
The guy violated prohibitions of having weapons in the room, at a minimum he was guilty of trespassing on the hotel property. He was barred from carrying those rifles into the hotel, but did it anyway.
Right, the problem is the lax gun laws in the USA, Nevada, and Las Vegas. Tell me, so I can give these suggestions to my senators, what laws would have prevented this mass murder? Please be specific on the wording, I want to be clear when I write my letter to my senators. Tell me how these laws would be enforced, again be specific. How much would it cost to enforce these laws? I know you might not have that answer but it would be nice to have an idea.
Of course the problem is the gun laws. Just like whenever someone runs over a crowd of people in a truck the problem is the laws on driving. After we solve our gun law problems we should work on our driving laws. Background checks maybe? People should be compelled to submit to a blood alcohol test at any time, that's a good idea. Tests for other mind altering substances too. OH! Licenses! People should need a license to drive! People should have to take a class. Is one day enough? Maybe a whole week. Maybe just make them take a test and let the person figure out how to learn the material. Let's register every car too. Wait, we do all this already. Yet we still have people get run over by trucks. How would doing this for firearms be any different?
Sometimes there is just no solution to the problem. Passing insane laws to stop insane people from doing insane things is itself insanity.
It's trivial to ram some iron bars into the ground, effectively nullifying the ability of a truck to run into a group of people. Now please let me hear your suggestion how to easily do the same about a gun.
You want a trivial solution to a complex problem? There are none. One place to start on solving the problem is to identify it. The problem is not the guns, I'm quite sure of that. If you want my suggestions then we start with getting rid of the distractions of gun control.
I believe we should return to the gun laws prior to 1934 where people could order Thompson sub-machine gun from a mail order catalog. People were getting revolvers and rifles through the mail up until 1968 as I recall. There were no background checks then, no gun registries. Many firearms up until the 1950s didn't even have serial numbers on them to register.
When was gun crime a problem? What were the reasons to create these laws in the first place? What lead up to the 1934 National Firearms Act? Would that be the prohibition of alcohol? What about the Gun Control Act of 1968? Wasn't that about the time of the "hippies" with their pot smoking, LSD, and heroin? Then there were more laws in the early 1990s, was that about the time of a "crack epidemic"? Interesting isn't it? Maybe it's nothing but the parallels are there. The more the government cracks down on drugs the crime to protect this illicit trade increases.
Maybe, perhaps, the cure to the drug problem is worse than the disease. We should legalize all the drugs. Legalize all the guns. If you want my answer then there it is. If you don't like it then offer your own solution. I'm tired of the government getting bigger and bigger all the time. Maybe more government, more laws, more control, is not always the solution. Maybe the solution is less government, fewer laws, and maybe the solution is more freedom.
Your one and only source for mass shooting statistics was Every Town? That group states openly that their goal is to ban all the guns. You could not have found a more biased source if you tried. How about coming back with some neutral sources? Or even some sources biased on the other end to balance that out?
Le's go with that for a bit though. 54% were domestic violence cases, and 63% happened in private homes. Does this mean people cannot even keep a firearm in their own home? That's going to go over like a turd in a punch bowl when we see that 1/3rd of Americans own a gun. I find that statistic interesting. Why use the word "American" since 24% of the US population is under 18 and are legally barred from owning a gun. The percentage of Americans under 21, the age at which a person may legally purchase a handgun under federal law, or legally carry a concealed firearm in most states, is 27%. That means of "American adults" the gun ownership is closer to 50% than 30%. When using the metric "gun owning household" we find it's 44%, which is probably a better metric to use as children are not really counted.
Then there's the claim that 34% of these murderers were prohibited from possessing a firearm. Here's a question, why were these people not in prison? I mean, if these people cannot be trusted with a firearm then why would we release them from prison? Are they barred from other dangerous items as well? People get stabbed, run over by trucks, beaten with baseball bats, and so on and so on. Why focus just on the firearms? Lock them up if they are still a threat. If they aren't a threat then they should not be barred, but that's perhaps a discussion for another time.
The Every Town admits that "only" 10% of mass shooting deaths happen in "gun free zones". Is this supposed to make me feel better? Is that not still an epic fail of the "gun free zone" to protect the people within it? That number should not be 10%, or 5%, or 1%, it should be 0% or it's a failure.
You also mention "mass shootings" as a metric, why is it important that people are shot? Don't having people get run over by a truck count? Why compare the USA to Europe? Why not Mexico? Why not anywhere else in the world? Why compare the entire USA when the laws on gun ownership vary widely from state to state? Murder rates vary widely from state to state as well. The "murderous" USA is still far safer than so many places in the world. Is this safety from owning guns? Maybe we should pick nations of similar area and population, like Brazil.
I didn't say there won't be any attacks, I said that there are no reports of this style of attack being successful against anyone, therefore this threat is merely theoretical. If this moves out of theory into practice then we might have something "interesting". Since this has remained theoretical for 20 years then my expectations of such a thing happening anytime soon are quite low.
Maybe someone could find these hacks useful for something that doesn't involve breaking into another computer. I have some ideas on uses but we've already carried this on long enough. Non-nefarious uses of this would be "interesting" too. Maybe people should be working on that instead of how it can be used to steal data or cause vandalism.
That's nice. I'm glad you are happy with your solar energy system.
If you think what I've provided is "irrelevant drivel" then perhaps you could provide some relevant drivel? I'd like to see your sources, I gave mine.
I stopped at listing the top three energy sources, somewhat arbitrarily. Would you like to see how solar ranks with maybe the top five? Let's do that.
Let's start with costs in $/MWh, ignoring the fossil fuel sourced energy.
1 - Wind 86.6
2 - Geothermal 89.6
3 - Hydro 90.3
4 - Nuclear 108.4
5 - Biomass 111.0
Solar doesn't rank in the top 5? Let's keep going then.
6 - Solar, PV 144.3
7 - Wind, offshore 221.5
8 - Solar, Thermal 261.5
Let's also take a deeper look at CO2 output, ranking the lowest tonnes of CO2 per GWh
1 - Wind 26
2 - Hydro 26
3 - Nuclear 28
4 - Biomass 45
5 - Solar PV 85
Again, this is from the sources I provided. Solar is not looking great, it costs nearly twice the competition and has a carbon footprint that is triple. Solar only provides power through about 1/3 or 1/4 of the day. Biomass and geothermal don't care much what time of day it is. With solar being so unreliable it means we'd need some kind of back up energy, most likely natural gas, or storage so the lights don't go out. What does that do to the cost and carbon footprint? I've seen those numbers elsewhere and they are not good.
If you got better numbers yourself then please share. I'm sure many people are interested in sharing in your solar powered success.
The "old" skin lacks the proteins to bind to the lower layers of skin, the "new" skin has those proteins. I assume this means any old skin that comes off is more likely to be recovered with new. The new skin should simply heal over the rest of the body.
That's my theory. Certainly not the opinion of a trained physician, I don't even play one on TV.
Yet another mass killing, yet another nutter allowed to have a weapon and zero guts in the Republican party to tackle the gun-funded NRA lobby.
These nutters were "allowed" to have a weapon? Can you show me a mass murder where the killer was not barred from possessing the weapon (by state or federal law) due to being in a "gun free zone", prior conviction of drug use/possession, mental health issues, prior conviction of a felony or violent misdemeanor, being in the nation illegally, or having been dishonorably discharged from the military?
Can you show me one of these murderers that was a member of the NRA?
BTW, the person that stopped the murderer in Sutherland Springs was an NRA firearms instructor. The killer in that shooting did pass a background check, only because his mental health history, violent crimes, and discharge from the Air Force were not reported to the FBI. Are these the same guys we want to trust with the keys to our electronic data?
Are these the same people we want to trust with stopping the next "nutter" with mass murder on their mind? No thanks. I have greater trust in those that cling to their bibles and their guns.
So why don't we see those same mass shootings in other countries with stronger gun control.
Would you rather they were hit by a truck or stabbed with a knife than shot with a rifle? Mass murders still happen even with gun control. They'll just run people over with a truck, stab with a blade, pack a pressure cooker with an improvised explosive, etc., etc.
Mass murders do happen in Europe. In fact you are much more likely to be killed by a machine gun in Europe than the USA. There's been only 3 known murders with a machine gun in the USA since they've been put under strict legal controls in 1934.
I've pondered why this is. I suspect that this is for two reasons. First, if the possession of a single shot derringer or a fully automatic AK-47 gets you the same amount of time in prison then the criminals have very easy math to do, get the most lethal weapon they can lay their hands on. Second, when it comes to firearm complexity the second least complex is the fully automatic. The least complex is the single shot firearm. Next is the machine gun. Then comes repeaters, those with pump-, bolt-, or lever-action. The second to most complex is the semi-automatic, which are the most popular kind of firearm in the USA. The most complex are the select fire assault rifles that most every professional army in the world uses. An assault rifle is a well defined item, unlike the "assault weapon" term which just means "what we want to ban today".
The ease with which you can obtain an AR-15 likely influences the rate of occurrence of mass shootings.
Most mass shootings happen with handguns. I can see why you might think rifles are more often used, the last handful of mass shootings were done by people with rifles, and the rifle shootings seem to get more press coverage. By far most murders are done with handguns, then it's probably blunt and bladed weapons, then hands and feet, then rifles and shotguns.
You want to know what I noticed about these recent mass shootings? Well, I'll tell you anyway. Most of them were in gun free zones. Most of the people doing the shooting were barred from possessing a firearm, this could be because of age (have to be 18 to own a gun, older in some states), previous conviction (felony or some violent misdemeanors), prior drug use/possession (even in states where it's been legalized, federal law still prohibits firearm possession), mental health history (this can be permanent or temporary), illegal alien (as it should be, this is an armed invasion IMHO), or as mentioned before being in a "gun free zone" at the time. Most of the people were atheists or non-Christian. None of them were NRA members.
Schools, churches, hotels, and even entire cities are often "gun free zones". Or they are on paper, until an animal in human skin carries a firearm into these areas with murder on their mind. These "gun free zones" have a nasty habit of attracting murderers.
The only mass murder I can think of that is both recent and NOT in a "gun free zone" was the 2011 shooting in Tuscon where US Representative Gabby Giffords was injured. In that case the murderer was barred from possessing a firearm because of a prior illegal drug possession conviction. He also violated Arizona law by "carrying a lethal weapon with intent to injure" or something like that, although I suspect no one bothered to press those charges since he had killed 6 people at that point.
Go ahead though, blame American gun laws for these mass murders. History shows you are wrong. People tend to be far safer when they have the ability to shoot back at their attacker. If you can show me a mass murder that was not in a "gun free zone", excepting the one example I gave, then I'd like to know. I don't care if the case is one of being shot, stabbed, blown up, or run over, since I'm not so narrow minded to blame this on the guns. I do see evidence that the "gun free zone" is far from making people safer. Try to change my mind on that.
You think that local police forces don't try? I remember going to a political rally of sorts where they were talking about how the city wanted all businesses and multi-unit housing to hand over copies of keys to the police and fire departments. For your safety of course.
All kinds of questions were raised. Would the city be required to make attempts to call the property owner before entering? Would there be a log of these entries? Would this be public record? What of lost or stolen keys, would the city pay for locks being rekeyed? What happens in the case of a burglary? What responsibility would the police have if there is damaged property, missing items, or other losses? Can they prove someone in the city government was not responsible? What kind of prevention for abuse of this kind of access by city employees would be in place? What punishment for this abuse would there be?
This was happening in a neighboring town so it didn't affect me directly, only as an example that might spread. As far as I know this didn't get far. Of course many of those questions on having the keys to our homes and businesses also apply to having the keys to our data.
Oh, and why not have keys to single unit homes? Probably because the city council members all lived in single unit homes.
It's not making a mountain out of a mole hill, it's noting an interesting attack vector that the ubiquity and multi-function nature of USB makes possible.
You are about 15 years too late. This is not interesting now. USB came out over 20 years ago, and has been quite common since the early days of Windows XP and Mac OS X 15 years ago. If this was any real effective attack vector then maybe someone would have done more than just some interesting demonstrations with a $30 embedded computer. Sure, lots of things are possible if someone throws enough time and effort behind it. If this has somehow escaped into the wild then maybe it can be "interesting".
Very similar attacks have been possible for an even longer period of time using other ports with similar ubiquity then as USB has now. USB may have made the complexity or ease of these attacks greater but, again, THAT WAS T_W_E_N_T_Y Y_E_A_R_S AGO!!!
I learned long ago that laptop power supplies are the weakest link. Get a spare power supply immediately and/or a laptop with USB-C charging. Having a lost or damaged power supply means the laptop becomes an expensive brick in minutes or hours. Don't let that happen. I've had that happen and it sucks. The bonus is being able to keep one charger at a desk at home and another in the bag the laptop is carried in. There's no forgetting the charger at home because it never leaves the bag at home. If one gets home and finds the charger was left at school/work/wherever then the laptop still works and the other supply can usually be found the next day.
I don't have a laptop with USB-C charging yet but from what I've read it's almost hard to find a USB-C charger that doesn't "just work". The usual caveats apply, buy a quality charger and with sufficient output for the load. If the the laptop comes with a USB-C 45W charger then getting any USB-C charger that is specified for 45 or more wattage should work. If you don't get a spare right away then at least you know one can be found at most any big box store or ordered online from most anywhere. Even a smaller charger than what comes with it should still allow it to limp along or charge up overnight. Some people have successfully used cell phone chargers to charge up their laptops... S L O W L Y.
I'm also a fan of ThunderBolt. If this is a laptop that will be used for a while then go with ThunderBolt as it grants a much faster interface for drives and such than USB. The newer ThunderBolt 3 uses the same USB-C connector as new phones and USB 3 and gives backward compatibility with USB. There's ThunderBolt adapters and docks for most anything. The laptop will most certainly also have USB ports (type A and/or C) and some video output so it's not like you'll be tied to ThunderBolt, it just gives options.
If this is a gaming laptop then ThunderBolt is the only way I know of to add an external GPU.
That said, I also use MacOS and Windows. I haven't had much difficulty in moving between the two. My laptops have been Apples with some virtual machine software and a Windows virtual machine. I can switch between the two operating systems with just a key combination. If the extra software cost and/or effort doesn't bother you then I suggest that as an option.
From TFA:
Itâ(TM)s a tired myth that there is a conflict between environmental protection and economic growth, Partin said.
If we want environmental protection without killing the economy then we need to take a list of what's "green" and what's cheap and see where they overlap, then use those.
What's low on CO2 output? Look here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/u...
(Page 7 has a nice chart BTW)
What's cheap? Look here:
https://www.instituteforenergy...
(Charts and graphs near the bottom of the page.)
Looks to me like the winners are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Of course future developments will shift these numbers around so let's not stop the analysis there but now, today, those are our best three choices.
This is not hard people.
Oh, I almost forgot. I'm sure people will bring up issues of safety so let's have a look:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
Look, still wind, hydro, and nuclear at the top. To those that think solar has any part to play in this I say look again at the costs, it's easily double or triple what we pay now for natural gas. Natural gas is so cheap now that it will be impossible to do away with it but even then it's got half the CO2 output per MWh compared to coal. If we have to choose between coal, natural gas, or our energy costs doubling then I choose natural gas. Wind, hydro, and nuclear are already cheaper than coal so that choice is obvious.
So, there's our solution, wind, hydro, nuclear, and some more natural gas until we can make the others cheaper. Anything else means more CO2 and/or much higher costs.
Right, that would be nice to have a standardized port that allowed for two-way communications on a cell phone. We had something close years ago, called "on the go" as I recall. I could get one of these "universal serial cables" with identical connectors on both ends. Not terribly expensive either, $5 or $10, maybe $15 if you wanted it longer or gold plated or something. The ports on the phones doubled for charging and data, and if I connected two phones together with these ports using this "on the go" cable then I could transfer data between the two.
The transfer was a bit slow, would be nice if we had something faster. Charging wasn't that great either since it was limited to something like 5 or 10 watts, getting 15, 20, or even 40+ watts would be nice. Those stupid little connectors were also hard to get right side up, maybe they could make them reversible, like an unpolarized AC plug and outlet. Don't make them too big of course, keep them about the same size.
I have a new smart phone. It's already got something close. The charge port is reversible, or is it "flippable"? Whatever. The power brick I got is rated for something like 12 or 15 watts, which is nice, but I think I can get a "quick charge" one with more capacity. It sure would be nice if there was a cable that existed to plug this into another phone to move data. I mean it's so close that all I'd think it would take is some software and one of those "on the go" cables again.
Maybe there's a reason we lost this capability we had before. I can't imagine what that is.
I thought that was just a joke on the Penny Arcade web comic. You mean that's a real thing?