Well, I don't know about *CPU*, but I think they might have something in mind along the lines of what Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Sony is creating, the "Bluetooth" specification. The cutting edge in net development right now is in mobile communication, and the centre of that is in Scandinavia. Many Transmeta developers come from Scandinavia...
I have tried to make Slashdot post links to interesting articles about the advancement of mobile communications several times, but since it isn't made in the US, it seems they just don't get it.
The bluetooth homepage, and a recent article in respected magazine The Economist which talks a bit about Bluetooth. Ericsson just gave out a press release about the first real Bluetooth product, a pretty cool toy. Now you can pretend you are the agents in the Matrix...just move your hand to your ear and mutter something whenever you want to call. And this thing doesn't even have wires like they do in the movies! I am hoping that whatever Transmeta is doing wont be a direct competitor to Bluetooth, and that the two technologies can coexist. It feels great that my country is finally world leading in technology!:-)
******** Offtopic: I'm a bit pissed at how Slashdot treats non-American news. I asked them if they would consider adding topics for -Europe -Asia -World. They said that no, since non-Americans are in a minority, the news about that have to be extra interesting or the American readers will be bored. Ok, but a Slashdot poll showed that over 1/3 of the Slashdot readership is European, and they have added topics about real minority subjects like VA, LinuxCare, Compaq and Amiga without hesitation before. Note that there is also a "United States" topic, even though 99% of the location specific news posted is about that anyway. Whenever their is a legal question, the topic is "The department of Justice", and American institution. Whenever their is a constitutional issue (as when they mentioned net censorship in Australia) the topic is "We the People" with a picture of the American declaration of independence... Taken together, it gives me the feeling that the Slashdot leadership thinks that America is the standard by which all things are measured, and the American part of the audience is the only important one. Oh well, I'll stop bitching now. Have to go study.
I doubt it has to do with distributed objects or something like that. I believe they are working on something like Ericssons Bluetooth. Check out www.bluetooth.com to see what I mean. Remember that many of the people on Transmeta are Scandinavians. Mobile communication is extremely hot in Sweden right now. Intel has opened a new fab here. When Amazon needed people to design their next generation site, they advertised in Swedish computer magazines ONLY! My loyalties are torn....I want Ericsson to suceed with Bluetooth, but I am really looking forward to what Transmeta might have created. Perhaps they can coexist. Maybe Transmeta is doing more a CPU chip, while Ericsson does the Bluetooth radio communication parts.
Your "second coming of Christ" made me remember the brilliant scene in Monthy Python's Life of Brian. Our hero is trying to escape some roman guards by prentending to be one of the raving prophets who stand in the street. At first he tries to give his audience some real good advice, but they just don't get it. When the guards go away and he stops talking in the middle of the sentence, the people get intrigued. The more he denies knowing something, the more sure they are that he is the messiah.
BRIAN: Consider the lilies... ELSIE: Consider the lilies? BRIAN: Uh, well, the birds, then. EDDIE: What birds? BRIAN: Any birds. EDDIE: Why? BRIAN: Well, have they got jobs? ARTHUR: Who? BRIAN: The birds. EDDIE: Have the birds got jobs?! FRANK: What's the matter with him? ARTHUR: He says the birds are scrounging. BRIAN: Oh, uhh, no, the point is the birds. They do all right. Don't they? FRANK: Well, good luck to 'em. EDDIE: Yeah. They're very pretty. BRIAN: Okay, and you're much more important than they are, right? So, what are you worrying about? There you are. See? EDDIE: I'm worrying about what you have got against birds. BRIAN: I haven't got anything against the birds. Consider the lilies. ARTHUR: He's having a go at the flowers now. EDDIE: Oh, give the flowers a chance. BRIAN: Ohh. Look. There was this man, and he had two servants. ARTHUR: What were they called? BRIAN: What? ARTHUR: What were their names? BRIAN: I don't know. And he gave them some talents. EDDIE: You don't know?! BRIAN: Well, it doesn't matter! ARTHUR: He doesn't know what they were called! BRIAN: Oh, they were called 'Simon' and 'Adrian'. Now-- ARTHUR: Oh! You said you didn't know! BRIAN: It really doesn't matter. The point is there were these two servants-- ARTHUR: He's making it up as he goes along. BRIAN: No, I'm not!...And he gave them some ta-- Wait a minute. Were there three? ARTHUR: Ohh. EDDIE: Oh, he's terrible! ARTHUR: He's terrible. BRIAN: There were three. ARTHUR: Thpppt! BRIAN: They were-- they were st-- stewards, really. ELSIE: Aww, get off! BRIAN: Ooh! Eh, uh, b-- b-- now-- now hear this! Blessed are they...who convert their neighbour's ox, for they shall inhibit their girth,... [the guards start to walk away] MAN: Rubbish! BRIAN: ...and to them only shall be given-- to them only... shall... be... given... [the guards are gone] ELSIE: What? BRIAN: Hmm? ELSIE: Shall be given what? BRIAN: Oh, nothing. ELSIE: Hey! What were you going to say? BRIAN: Nothing. ARTHUR and FRANK: Yes, you were. ELSIE: Yes. You were going to say something. BRIAN: No, I wasn't. I'd finished. ELSIE: Oh, no you weren't. ARTHUR: Oh, come on. Tell us before you go. BRIAN: I wasn't going to say anything. I'd finished. ELSIE: No, you hadn't. BLIND MAN: What won't he tell? EDDIE: He won't say. BLIND MAN: Is it a secret? BRIAN: No. BLIND MAN: Is it? EDDIE: Must be. Otherwise, he'd tell us. ARTHUR: Oh, tell us the secret. BRIAN: Leave me alone. YOUTH: What is this secret? GIRL: Is it the secret of eternal life? EDDIE: He won't say! ARTHUR: Well, of course not. If I knew the secret of eternal life, I wouldn't say. BRIAN: Leave me alone. GIRL: Just tell me, please. ARTHUR: No. Tell us, Master. We were here first. BRIAN: Ah! GIRL: Just tell-- BRIAN: Go away! GIRL: Tell us, Master. GIRL: Tell-- Is that His gourd? YOUTH: We've got this here. GIRL: It is His gourd! We will carry it for you, Master! Master? YOUTH: He's gone! He's been taken up! GIRL: Ahhhh! FOLLOWERS: For He's been taken up! ARTHUR: No, there He is. Over there. FOLLOWERS: Oh, yeah. Master! Master!... [FOLLOWERS chase BRIAN]
Already available. Maybe it is region 2 coded though, but as you know it is dead easy to download a program that bypasses this.
You should also check out the great films by Pythonite Terry Gilliam... Brazil, 12 monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are my favourites, you should also check out the Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits.
There is a Swedish system called Don't Bother Burn developed by a company called Wkit online which protects DVD and CDs among other things from being copied...they just got a big distribution contract. I'm looking forward to seeing how good it will be.
>I really didn't want to post up a reply. I really, really didn't. But seeing how there is so much confusion over the Playstation 2, I felt forced to. Playstation 2 will be great, regardless of anyone's predictions.
How do you know?? At this point, it is still vapourware. You give lots of good reasons why Playstation 1 was a hit, but there are LOTS of things that can go wrong with PSX2. I mean, a lot of companies try to do ANYTHING to ensure the success of their products, but sometimes the product just isn't good enough.
Some serious pitfalls Sony have to avoid:
1) They fail to do the promised 128 bit.18 micron chip. All others have failed so far - Intel, AMD, 3Dfx, NVidia, Ericsson (Bluetooth)...
2) The PC or other consoles beat it before it comes out. When Playstaion 1 came out, it beat the PC hands down in graphics, no argument. 3Dfx released something called the Voodoo 1 around then, but it took quite a while for it to catch on...two or three years while Sony could consolidate their position. Now, the 3D cards race is going at insane speeds on the PC. The fourth generation of 3d cards will be out for the PC THIS year. Sony will not go into a virgin market, and even if they beat the others they can not count on being safe 2-4 years this time.
3) It will be too expensive. The NEO-GEO was great for its time, but no one wanted to pay the price (what was it...$100-200?) per game. Same thing here. They are doing the Emotion Engine which will not be cheap. DVD player. They will have to pay for using USB and Firewire. This time they will add a keyboard and other peripherals. Good quality comes with a price...gamers will not be happy if Sony choses low quality.
4) Marketing wise, it will "fall between two chairs", it won't have a clearly defined market. There have been machines before that have been undecided if they are gaming consoles, computers or "home entertainment centers". Philips CD-I, Commodore's CD-TV, and what was its name....3DO? They tried to do everything and consequently they did nothing really good. They all crashed and burned on the market so fast you hardly had time to blink.
5) Difficulty and cost of developing=fewer games. Sony sold the hardware for the PSX1 for a lot less than they actually cost, and made up for it by licensing the rights to make games. A brilliant move. But this time, the hardware cost will be a lot higher, and the developers fewer since developing games will be more difficult and expensive. Sure, Square is good, but can their games alone support all the gamers and Sony?
6) Sony has underestimated the time and difficulties of development. I have seen the attitude from some console makers that being in the console market is the hardest thing you can do with all the cutthroat competition and all. Computers is actually seen as being easier to develop. But "Will this work on my PSX2 if it has an Apple USB mouse, a no-name Firewire modem and no keyboard?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. This time they will have to do an entire operating system. Think not? Remember that they have promised that this will be a email and web client extraordinaire. They have talked about making Everquest available! If you are going to surf the net or play Everquest, you need a keyboard. You need a harddrive. You probably need a mouse. So its not just new hardware, they have to develop and test software as well, like a secure web browser, an email client, a chat program, something to show the nice picures you take with the included digital camera, probably an ICQ client, and so on and so on....
7) Game programmers will have same problem they have with PCs now - different hardware and software configurations. There goes the BIGGEST console advantage.
>Why would this be an issue? The advantage to having a set top unit like a video game system is that the programmer can program for one set of hardware specs
That is the thing with the PSX2. It will have USB and Firewire. Sony has mentioned that a harddrive would be a good peripheral to have, and I believe one is being developed. But not all will buy it. So the programmers will have to program one version where you can cache textures and save game to the HD, and one without. And then some people will have additional memory cards, and some not. Sony, welcome to the messy world of the PC...
As some others have already commented, the numbers are just there so clueless reporters can gush about them. And they have, in Wired, New York Times, The Economist... "The future of entertainment is here. It will be 100 000 times faster than a PC, come with a DVD player, a ADSL line, a HDTV and a built in washing machine! And it will only cost $100! The PC will be dead come winter."
I am sure the demos such as the famous dancing couple, or the dinosaur, or this new bathtub demo are gorgeous, but again...a demo is not a real game. A current PC can do some pretty impressive demos too if you dedicate it only to do graphics without bothering about stuff like AI. We have not seen what the NV10 and Voodoo 4 can do yet together with an Athlon. And they will be out THIS year.
This is the first time that you will be able to add stuff like (possibly) harddrives, modems, different gaming units to a Playstation via USB, Firewire and what have you. This time they will have to do a complete OS for their gaming console, and "Will this game work on my Playstation 2 if I have X connected through USB, Y through Firewire but no Z connected?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. Perhaps they underestimate the difficulties involved. As for their claim of the.18 micron 128 bit processor...is it finished yet? I would be really impressed if they managed, but considering all the other chip manufacturers having great difficulties getting.18 micron technology to work I am sceptical. Also, the Playstation 2 is going to load all these wonderful textures from a CD each time the scenery changes if I have understood correctly? Wow. It will be like the opening doors sequences in Resident Evil...times 10!
Here is an interesting article from Next-Generation Online. They have been covering the Playstation 2 from the start.
>Perhaps it was the comparison PlayStation 2's >demos drew to other games on the show floor -- >whereas all prior public appearances had been >the demos by themselves. Perhaps it was the >quality of the demos. Perhaps it was the dying >down of the initial post-announcement hype of >Sony's new machine. > >Whatever it was, PlayStation 2 was not the end >all be all at last week's E3. More than one show >attendee we spoke to mentioned that the demos, >which looked quite pretty, were not as exciting >as they had hoped. [...] >For a system being touted as superior to the PC, >or any PCs coming down the line soon, the >PlayStation 2's demos did not graphically >lambaste the gorgeous Black & White or >Freelancer for PC, nor did the demos' graphics >look significantly superior to those of many >Dreamcast titles, such as Shenmue and NBA 2000.
Read the article here. There are some more sceptical voices here. The articles are from March, but I think the criticism is still valid.
Yours was the first/. comment about the environment. I mean, the whole article was about the ecological threat of all this junk, and what do the Slashdot crowd do? Two hundred articles about how nostalgic they are about their old 386....Jeez.
Don't hurt the manufacturers!
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High Tech Junk
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>"We think (the directive) could restrict the trade in electronic products around the world and could potentially have a more adverse impact on American manufacturers."
Oh NO!! Not the American manufacturers! The poor poor innocent little things, don't hurt them!!!
I am sickened by how some people trample on the rights of American manufacturers. What would the world be like if American manufacturers would not be allowed to export landmines, electroshock batons and other torture devices to dictatorships everywhere? We, the rest of the world, who wish with all our soul that we can leave our fetid cesspools and breathe the fresh, fresh air of America feel ANGRY when we hear that the world conference on the environment had the audacity to suggest that American manufacturers play by the same rules as manufacturers in other countries and do their part to lower emissons. We feel shaken to our very souls by the tought that the interest of human rights, the environment or the very life on earth could ever be considered before the rights of the American manufacturers. With tears in our eyes we thank the Republican party for killing all the bills that in any way touch the sanctity of the American manufacturer. Imagine the fascists who wish to restrict the right of the American manufacturer to keep detailed personal records of customers and sell them to anyone, to secrety film and tap their employers (not to mention people in other countries with helps from the wonderful Echelon system). We must ever remember that the whole point of America, indeed the world, is the unhindered growth of American manufacturers, for the sake of the American manufacturers.
Yes! A big THANK YOU to president Clinton for pointing out that wishing less lead in the environment, in animals and ultimately in ourselves is an ILLEGAL TRADE BARRIER!
Slashdot makes it possible for news to be published quickly, which is good. I like Slashdot. But as other posters have pointed out, sometimes half-truths, rumours and outright lies can get published before being thoroughly checked, and the disinformation spreads so fast that those unfairly maligned have no chance of countering it.
Someone posted above that Slashdot provides information without filters (information wants to be free and all that tired stuff), this is plainly wrong. The Slashdot staff has a bias whether they know it or not. I have submitted many storied that I thought were interesting, both from a local and an international perspective but none have been posted. Instead I get to read about Furby autopsy pages. When I asked Rob Malda about the possibility of including "World, Europe, Africa, Asia" as topics, he said that since fewer of their readers are international, they don't worry as much about international stories! Generally, negative stories about the international community are posted "Australia net censorship", "France tries to become centre of time meridian" and positive ones submitted are ignored (Ericssons Bluetooth technology, new mobile phone technology, slave decendants Sao Tome liberate their stolen domain name, and so on). At least that is my opinion.
I like Slashdot, but I see it as a rumour mill and a discussion forum mostly, and one with a narrow choice of subjects (technology, Geek culture). When it comes to real news, I still rely on newspapers, and quality TV such as Swedish TV and the BBC to inform me.
>WRONG. Please stop quoting the Kellerman report. >The data contained in it was proved false years ago.
That is interesting. Could you show me any references?
>Please read (and try to comprehend) "More Guns, >Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun-Control >Laws (Studies in Law and Economics)" by John >Lott before quoting false statistics.
I searched on the net, but I couldn't find it. Lott seems like a kook though. "the worst thing people can expect from dioxin is a bad rash.", "stop worrying so much about the environment", "[A] nation's wealth [is maximized] if a crime is not deterred when the benefit to the criminal of a particular crime is greater than the total social cost of that crime." indeed. He sounds like a social darwinist. One gun related wievpoint I found about him was that if teachers would have been armed, the Jonesboro shooting would not have occured (and presumably neither the Littleton one). It's just nuts. In Littleton, two guards were armed and opened fire, but when the kids opened up with automatic weapons they had to hide and then ran and phoned the cops. And these were people who were trained. The absurdity of this view is pretty effectively debunked here http://www.salon.com/co mics/boll/1999/05/06/boll/index.html. I can only agree with this: "Lott has a long and well-documented track record of zealously advocating an extreme anti-consumer, anti-public safety ideology. His view that arming the populace with concealed handguns will reduce crime is just one more extreme view to be added to the list."
>>>Now that I hear about this enforced lack of >>>privacy, I couldn't be happier. >>That will be defeated. Believe me. >God but you are naive AND stupid! Don't think >for a moment that if it fails now, it won't be >back again and again untill it passes. And since >the public is disarmed, they WON'T BE ABLE TO >STOP IT.
You know there is a conflict between openness and privacy. You wan't openness when it comes to politicians (and we have the most extensive laws on that subject in the world in Sweden) and privacy when it comes to citizens, right? The EU passed directives that said that you couldn't post personal information about living persons on the net without those persons' agreement. Sweden was the only country that made that a law (PUL - the Personal Information Law). Most people consider this a too serious infringement into free speech and there were LOADS of protests. Most people (including me) ignored it completely and continued to post personal information on the net. A political youth organization turned themselves in, to show how absurd the law was. This were examples of peaceful civil disobedience, and guess what? The goverement have realised how absurd the law is, and are going to scrap it. No guns needed...just rational democratic discourse. And we were able to stop it.
>> The thing is, I didn't have a gun, and neither >>did the robbers. > >So you were targeted by incompetent and ill >equipped robbers. That proves nothing. Just wait >untill an armed criminal finds and kills you.
Again, few people are killed by armed criminals in Sweden. That is because we have very strict gun laws.
>> I managed to get out of the situation all >>three times without losing my money or getting >>hurt by using my wits. You see, brains is more >>important than guns. > >So you were LUCKY.
I was SMART.;-)
>But please remember, your luck only has to fail >you once.
Yeah, that's a fact of life isn't it? Sooner or later my luck will run out. An astroid will hit me, or I will trip and fall on a sharp stick, or my heart will give out of old age.
>Also note that these were ill equipped UNARMED >ASSAILANTS. Therefore, guns were not in the >situation and don't contribute to these data >points.
Actually, we don't know that. If I would have pulled a gun on them perhaps I would have found out the hard way. But the odds are good they didn't have a gun, see, in Europe we have these strics gun laws that save a lot of peoples lives each year...;-)
>>>Be seeing you. >>Neat! You are welcome. Oh yeah...now I remember.;-) >Are you THAT STUPID? Are you THAT HUMOURLESS?
>Eventually he probably will be seeing you (or someone very much like him).
Well, MolochHorridus turned out to be a pretty nice guy, even if we disagreed on the subject of gun control. So that is ok.
If you refer to his fictional gun toting criminal or goverment agent - the risk is actually pretty low. My brother is a cop, and he has not been fired at once yet.
>Just not for very long. Enjoy your dirt nap.
Dirt nap? I don't know exactly what that means, but I can guess it wasn't nice. Again, try reason instead of flames if you want to convince me.
>No, it proves you WRONG. And stupid. Please try >to think before responding. They did fear >educated people, but mostly they feared those >educated people might ARM THEMSELVES.
How do you know?
>> Oh, spell flames against someone writing in a >>foreign language. That's brave.;-)
>I beleive the statement was more about the irony >of mispellings in a statement about the >importance of education.
It was a spell flame, though perhaps the nicest one.
>What is it with you and false statistics? Here >are sopm other statistics for you: In 1997, 12 >times as many children (using your false >definition of children - 19 year olds are >adults) died of drowning than of firearms. So >what do we do about that? Ban water?
I believe 19 years old are children. And no, we don't ban water, that is a typical straw man argument I have heard before by the pro-gun crowd. We can't avoid all deaths. Water is a natural occurance that we can't do anything about (except educating children about the dangers), guns are man made death machines, that work very well.
>Ban water? Please stop repeating disproved Handgun Control Incorporated lies.
If you can prove to me they are lies, sure.
>>Oh, so you know they were all unarmed, do you? >>That's a lot of unarmed people.
>OF COURSE THEY WERE UNARMED YOU IDIOT. OTHERWISE >THEY WOULDN'T HAVE PASSIVELY BEEN MURDERED, NOW >WOULD THEY?
Lets see, they were unarmed because they were murdered, and they were murdered because they were unarmed. You are using circular reasoning.
>The Nazi's just took advantage of this, and >probably would have been stopped had the german >people been in any condition to prevent them >(i.e. armed).
The nazis were allowed in several gun fights when they were going to power. The four who were killed in the "beer putz" were declared martyrs and later almost saints by the nazi party. This didn't stop the nazis, it just helped them in their propaganda. The Germans people brought the Nazis to power. It didn't matter if they were armed or not. That brings me back to my original argument - education and democratic participation is important, not the number of guns.
>Get some FACTS moron! These people were all >killed BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT! BY THE UNITED >STATES GOVERNMENT.
I don't know who the Kent protestors were. Perhaps you can enlighten me. Wounded Knee was a hundred years ago, not relevant to this discussion. As for the Black Panthers - they had guns. That obviously didn't help them. They died anyway. If they hadn't been armed, perhaps it wouldn't have been a shootout, and they could have been fighting still today for their rights.
>The supposed defender of the free world
We know YOU think so. The rest of the world hasn't been fooled by that for a long time, belive me.
>Only two kinds of people support gun control. >Evil people and stupid people. Which are you?
False dichotomy. If you want to convince me, use reason instead instead of childish flames.
>Well, the flame was kind of a bait, since this >is the twilight of this particular thread. >Childish with purpose;-). Thankyou for >responding.
I still don't agree, but as you said, it is the twilight of the thread, this subtread was a slightly off topic aside to begin with, and also it seems Virtuel was the only poster who agreed with me, so lets move on to fresher pastures. Moo.
It is, isn't it? But it was actually one pro-gun AC who brought the subject up, not me.
>We are talking here about modern government and >civil rights. And about how some of us seem to >have more than others.
Yep. Five countries in the world are primitive enough to execute children. And yours is #1.
If I understand correctly, if you are a black man in the US, chances are that the police will enthusiastically violate your rights.
>Rights are funny things. A lot of people are against them.
Yeah! For instance, I am against your right to kill me. You see, some rights we have to give up if we are going to live together in a working society. We are debating which rights are important enough, right? So "Its too hard", "Let the government decide" "I don't want to think", "I don't want to be responsible" are clearly examples of straw man arguments.
>Most of the violent deaths in the twentieth century were unarmed civilians.
I would like to see some numbers, but either way civilian casualties of war is irrelevant to this discussion.
>Your death row inmate is unarmed by force of his state.
I'm against the death penalty as well, so we can start arguing about that too.;-)
>Some guy posted below how he was afraid of gun >rights because the ordinary people in the street >didn't look capable of handling them. What a >lack of faith in humanity this dude has. What >cowardice. Its depressing
Lack of faith in humanity? Look, it is YOU who think that unless you have the threat of weapons to back you up, people and goverments will immediately start to do the worst things possible to you. And yeah, I wouldn't want the average person on the street to be armed. If all were rational beings at all times, maybe, but there are crazy people out there, and normal people can go crazy when angry, drunk, high, depressed or what have you. And that's when you get statistics like "35,957 Americans killed with firearms, in homicides, suicides, and accidents in one year (1995), and 14 CHILDREN 19 years and under EACH DAY."
Speaking as a painted agent of mirth, I have all the cream pies I need. Now that I hear about this enforced lack of privacy, I will invent humiliating practical jokes involving fishes and itching powder. Chances are, I will one day come and go *pfrthththh* in your face!
>Speaking as an armed criminal, I am all for gun >control. I already have all the guns I could >ever need. I illegally bought and stole them >years ago. Additional gun control laws won't >bother me in the least, but will help to ensure >my safety while carrying out my 'business'. I >HATE armed victims.
I reiterate: Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense.
More guns means more death. Less guns means less death.
>One of the advantages of being a criminal is >that I did not have to get my guns 'legally', so >nobody (including your government) knows what >guns I have and where I have them so they will >never be able to take them away from me.
When you use them, you will be revealed. If you don't use them, no one is hurt. Also, the hardened premeditaded criminal who stockpiles guns is probably rarer than you think. Compare with the situation in Britain:
"One important effort to tighten domestic controls is the ban on handguns currently being implemented in the United Kingdom. In February 1997, a new UK law banned private possession of handguns of greater than.22 calibre. This law was spurred in large part by the massacre in Dunblane, Scotland, in March 1996, in which 16 children and one teacher were killed in just a few minutes by a lone gunman.
The February ban on handguns greater than.22 calibre reportedly affected some 80 percent of handguns in the United Kingdom, or an estimated 160,000 handguns. It included new procedures for storing.22 calibre handguns in gun clubs, and provided stricter standards for firearms ownership certification. Owners of prohibited weapons were required to hand them in by 1 October 1997. This program appears to have been largely successful -- as of a week before the hand-in date, approximately 120,000 of the 160,000 prohibited weapons had been turned in."
>Now that I hear about this enforced lack of privacy, I couldn't be happier.
That will be defeated. Believe me.
>And thanks to your expressed beliefs, I now know > which of you are for gun control too. Chances >are, you gun control supporters don't own guns >yourselves (especially you, Lars). You'll make >easy cash opportunities for me.
Quite right, I don't own a gun. Three times people have tried to rob me, once in Sweden and twice (the same night!) in Barcelona, Spain. The thing is, I didn't have a gun, and neither did the robbers. I managed to get out of the situation all three times without losing my money or getting hurt by using my wits. You see, brains is more important than guns.:-) I believe if either of us had had guns, and especially both of us had had guns, the chance that I would be sitting here this fine Sunday morning blabbing on the net would have been significantly less.
>Be seeing you.
Neat! You are welcome. Oh yeah...now I remember.;-)
>>A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool >>against oppression, and the UK beats you hands >>down there as well in all international tests. > >I'm pretty sure that Pol Pot has more than >proved that arguement is wrong. Please remember >that one of the first things they did was kill >all the EDUCATED people. And they killed them >with guns.
..meaning they were more frightened of educated people than of guns, and rightly so. There were guns in Cambodia. That didn't stop Pol Pot from getting into power, and easy access to guns made it possible for them to continue their reign of terror. So you see, it proves me right.
>Apparently a well educated citizenry doesn't know how to spell 'citizenry'.
Oh, spell flames against someone writing in a foreign language. That's brave.;-)
>Only a few people die in the US from firearms >each year. Very few of those casualties >are 'innocent'.
*In 1995, 14 children, ages 19 and under, were killed with guns every day in this country [USA]. *In 1996, 10,744 people were murdered with firearms in this country. *In 1996, there were only 176 justifiable handgun homicides by private citizens in the United States. http://www.handguncontrol.org/protecting/D4/d4fi refc.htm
Do you call this few? I call that a lot, and I think it is sick.
>Now compare that to the 13 MILLION unarmed jews >and others killed by the Nazi's. And the 20 >MILLION unarmed civilians killed by the Soviets. >And the 20 MILLION unarmed chinese killed in the >cultural revolution. And the 100 THOUSAND >unarmed Maya killed in Guatemala. And the 300 >THOUSAND unarmed christian political dissidents >killed in Uganda.
Oh, so you know they were all unarmed, do you? That's a lot of unarmed people.;-)
>And if you think it can't happen here, please >tell that to the Black Panthers. Or the >protestors at Kent State. Or the Native >Americans for that matter. Especially those that >died at Wounded Knee (both times).
What do these examples tell me except that appearently Americans believe that violence is a great way to solve problems? It isn't.
More guns just mean more paranoia and more risk that someone on either side will open fire.
>But since Canadians are unarmed, they will have NO RECOURSE when (not if) their government decides to revoke their "Charter of Rights and Freedoms".
Like a bunch of rednecks militias are going to make a whit of a difference if the US (or Canadian) government somehow would turn opressive against their people and get the military to support them. You are so deluded.
As I said in another post, the health of a country is not measured in the number of guns in the hands of trigger happy citizens, its how many participate in the democratic process and how educated the citizens are. And the US is beaten by just about every goddamn developed nation in the world in those areas.
>I would agree with your rant, except for one >thing: > >You're wrong.
I am??:-)
>The right to keep and bear arms is a symbol. It >means that the government has the right to take >your life, if you have done something to require >it, but they do not have the right to make you >lie down and take it like a good boy or girl.
"Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense. The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home. The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold." http://www.handguncontrol.org/firearm_facts.htm
To me, that sounds like a big prize to pay for a symbol.
>Banning guns does not prevent violent crime. It >expands it, because criminals know that all >law-abiding citizens are now unarmed.
I think that is bull, but both of us will have problems finding hard numbers to prove our points. Here are some statistics that I believe support my point: "In 1996, handguns were used to murder 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, 213 in Germany and 9,390 in the United States." Again, high prize to pay... But of course there are an enormous number of factors - economical cultural and others that influence crime statistics. For instance I might cite Japan to support my view (strict gun laws=less crime), and then you might counter by saying that the high and fairly equally distributed wealth in Japan combined with the homogenised and closly knit Japanese society makes crime unlikely in the first place. Or else you might take my own country, Sweden, as an example (lots of guns, more per capita than the US I've heard=less crime) and I would then say that 95% of those guns are hunting rifles, the owners must go through very strict background checks and hunting tests, and there are laws that they must be disassembled and locked up in safes apart from ammo when not in use.
If we had one country to observe over a long period of time (ten years maybe) which had changed its gun laws, and we then had the sociological and statistical education to calculate the influence that for instance economy and distribution of wealth could have on the results, then we might get somewhere (it would be a statistical selection of one though, which is never good). But we don't even have one example, so you will just have to accept that I am right, damnit. You must!;-)
>The criminals can still get guns of a sort - >they are not difficult to make, even without >buying one - and now, they don't have to worry >about the victim producing a shotgun and blowing >their head off.
If the victims didn't have guns, criminals would be less inclined to carry or use them as well since they didn't have to worry about having their heads blown off, ever consider that? It's a good circle!:-)
Besides, I believe manufacturing a good handgun is more difficult than you claim, especially if sales of ammo and gunpowder was limited as well. I would much prefer to face a criminal armed with some home made pipe gun than a state of the art semi-automatic military issue thingy.
>If you think differently, then it's quite >simple; don't keep guns. DO NOT tell me not to.
*tease* I forbid you to keep guns.
No, but seriously. I might have been a bit careless. When I said "ban guns" above, I did not mean the complete banning of guns. I meant banning the sale of stuff like assault rifles and armour piercing bullets, strict background checks at all times (including gun shows), and bans against carrying firearms in public. That's my view. But we live on different continents, and if someone is in the position to limit anyones rights, its you who can harm me, so the point is moot anyway.
>Here, we have the right to simply pull our >children from the school system and teach them >at home, or in smaller private schools. And if >you compare those homeschool and private school >children to your schools, we've got YOU beat, >not the other way around.
It's not a competition (though I realise I said some ill chosen words in the previous post). I believe that all people should have a decent education, both from a basic human rights perspective of the individual and for the good of the human race. Do you think it's OK if only the kids of a rich elite gets a good education in the US? What good does it do if 5% are very intellectual if the remaining 95% are ignorant and easy to manipulate? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also so that many of the people in elite schools are in fact foreigners? Many of whom later return to their original countries. Many stay of course, which is lucky for the US.
>Pity you don't have the right to force the same >concession, isn't it?
There are private schools here (Sweden) as well were you can put your kids if you wish to, but since our education is not an such a bad shape (yet...) most have been started by people who have other needs, for instance moslems.
>The reason we say it will happen here is that >the government is continually trying to force >more controls. Remove those freedoms. To the >detriment of us all.
>>A well armed militia is NOTHING against an army. >Perhaps you should read up on Lord Cornwallis and his problems in North America circa 1776-1781.
The military situation of 200 years ago has little relevance to modern warfare.
>>A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool >>against oppression, and the UK beats you hands >>down there as well in all international tests. >So what happened to you? Or doesn't the >wonderful British school system teach "America >kicks Geaorge III's Ass 101" along with >spelling?
I'm not British, I'm Swedish. I apologize for any spelling errors that might have offended you, but I am writing in a foreign language, see?;-)
I have studied history, but as I said before, and as another poster explained, the military situation in those days were quite different.
>In the UK, citizens do not have the right to keep and bear arms. Therefore they have no rights, no power, no authority, no voice, and no choice.
*rant* What absolute bullshit. What gives you "rights, voice and choice"? Carrying weapons or participating in the democratic process? More people vote in the UK than in the US, that is a better sign of a country's health than how easy it is to obtain tools to kill someone. A well armed militia is NOTHING against an army. A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool against oppression, and the UK beats you hands down there as well in all international tests.
And who are you to talk about rights? As long as your country continues to execute children in defiance of international human rights, you have NOTHING to say about how other countries run their business.
But if we get back to the issue of right to privacy, it the US which is successfully bullying the goverments of other countries to deny their citizens human rights, as the article shows again.
>And guess what? It WILL happen here.
Banning guns? I certainly hope so. A lot of innocent people lose their lives each year in the US because some gun nuts have a pathological need to play with their phallic symbols. *rant off*
BTW - here is a pretty amusing link from this weeks issue of the Economist: The gun commandments . "5. Thou shalt not kill, except when provoked. But if thou dost, remember that thy gun had nothing to do with it."
Cheers, Lars
Smirk...the special friendship between the nations
on
Interception in the UK
·
· Score: 1
I have nothing but contempt for the way the British goverment keeps brownnosing the US. "We have a special relationship between our nations" indeed.
Perhaps the goverment thinks it is a fair trade since they probably get trade secrets stolen from other countries by Eschelon, but I wonder why the British people allows American entities to take away their rights in ways these entities would never get away with at home.
If Britain keeps this up, why don't they just get it done with and quit the EU and become the 51st state of the USA?
>From what I know (and I could be wrong), the US >has a lot more high-bandwidth connections >available at reasonably low cost [...] >But I could be completely wrong.
No, you are pretty much correct. If you take Europe in general, the net is not used as much as in the US. There is a small area that is different - Scandinavia has far ahead of the US in most areas (I believe 60% or more use the net regularly in Sweden and Finland, 50% have mobile phones and so on) but there are so few of us. Net usage in England, Germany and the Benelux area is pretty similar to the US, but the major reson that downloading is used less is what another poster mentioned below - metered calls. Telephone monopolies have held Internet development back in Europe. Right now users in Sweden are going berserk against partially state owned Telia. Most people claim that they are holding back ASDL so they can milk the last drops of money out of yesterday's technology ISDN. Telia say that the ASDL technology is immature and so plagued by problems when they tested it it was essentially useless. But its changing. Telia was a complete state owned monopoly before, and they are supposed to open up more and more until they are almost completely private (Though there are problems in transition. They start fighting against other tele companies from an unfair advantage - a virtual monopoly. But now that they are partially privately owned you can't order them to for instance let other companies use their cables without paying.)
>On a related note: does cheapbytes ship to >Europe? (or similar companies?) If not, that >would be another factor.
There is a company called Informagix or something like that that sells a 6 CD package for maybe $10. It used to contain Red Hat, Debian, Slackware and several sites and books with documentation on CD. I haven't bought it in a while so I don't know. Maybe they have dumped Slackware and included SUSE instead by now.
Slashdot Mirror
I have tried to make Slashdot post links to interesting articles about the advancement of mobile communications several times, but since it isn't made in the US, it seems they just don't get it.
The bluetooth homepage, and a recent article in respected magazine The Economist which talks a bit about Bluetooth. Ericsson just gave out a press release about the first real Bluetooth product, a pretty cool toy. Now you can pretend you are the agents in the Matrix...just move your hand to your ear and mutter something whenever you want to call. And this thing doesn't even have wires like they do in the movies!
I am hoping that whatever Transmeta is doing wont be a direct competitor to Bluetooth, and that the two technologies can coexist. It feels great that my country is finally world leading in technology!
********
Offtopic: I'm a bit pissed at how Slashdot treats non-American news. I asked them if they would consider adding topics for -Europe -Asia -World. They said that no, since non-Americans are in a minority, the news about that have to be extra interesting or the American readers will be bored. Ok, but a Slashdot poll showed that over 1/3 of the Slashdot readership is European, and they have added topics about real minority subjects like VA, LinuxCare, Compaq and Amiga without hesitation before. Note that there is also a "United States" topic, even though 99% of the location specific news posted is about that anyway. Whenever their is a legal question, the topic is "The department of Justice", and American institution. Whenever their is a constitutional issue (as when they mentioned net censorship in Australia) the topic is "We the People" with a picture of the American declaration of independence...
Taken together, it gives me the feeling that the Slashdot leadership thinks that America is the standard by which all things are measured, and the American part of the audience is the only important one.
Oh well, I'll stop bitching now. Have to go study.
************************************************ ***
Check out
www.bluetooth.com
to see what I mean. Remember that many of the people on Transmeta are Scandinavians. Mobile communication is extremely hot in Sweden right now. Intel has opened a new fab here. When Amazon needed people to design their next generation site, they advertised in Swedish computer magazines ONLY!
My loyalties are torn....I want Ericsson to suceed with Bluetooth, but I am really looking forward to what Transmeta might have created. Perhaps they can coexist. Maybe Transmeta is doing more a CPU chip, while Ericsson does the Bluetooth radio communication parts.
************************************************ ***
Your "second coming of Christ" made me remember the brilliant scene in Monthy Python's Life of Brian. Our hero is trying to escape some roman guards by prentending to be one of the raving prophets who stand in the street. At first he tries to give his audience some real good advice, but they just don't get it. When the guards go away and he stops talking in the middle of the sentence, the people get intrigued. The more he denies knowing something, the more sure they are that he is the messiah.
m
...And he gave them some ta-- Wait a minute. Were there three?
**********************
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-16.ht
BRIAN:
Consider the lilies...
ELSIE:
Consider the lilies?
BRIAN:
Uh, well, the birds, then.
EDDIE:
What birds?
BRIAN:
Any birds.
EDDIE:
Why?
BRIAN:
Well, have they got jobs?
ARTHUR:
Who?
BRIAN:
The birds.
EDDIE:
Have the birds got jobs?!
FRANK:
What's the matter with him?
ARTHUR:
He says the birds are scrounging.
BRIAN:
Oh, uhh, no, the point is the birds. They do all right. Don't they?
FRANK:
Well, good luck to 'em.
EDDIE:
Yeah. They're very pretty.
BRIAN:
Okay, and you're much more important than they are, right? So, what are you worrying about? There you are. See?
EDDIE:
I'm worrying about what you have got against birds.
BRIAN:
I haven't got anything against the birds. Consider the lilies.
ARTHUR:
He's having a go at the flowers now.
EDDIE:
Oh, give the flowers a chance.
BRIAN:
Ohh. Look. There was this man, and he had two servants.
ARTHUR:
What were they called?
BRIAN:
What?
ARTHUR:
What were their names?
BRIAN:
I don't know. And he gave them some talents.
EDDIE:
You don't know?!
BRIAN:
Well, it doesn't matter!
ARTHUR:
He doesn't know what they were called!
BRIAN:
Oh, they were called 'Simon' and 'Adrian'. Now--
ARTHUR:
Oh! You said you didn't know!
BRIAN:
It really doesn't matter. The point is there were these two servants--
ARTHUR:
He's making it up as he goes along.
BRIAN:
No, I'm not!
ARTHUR:
Ohh.
EDDIE:
Oh, he's terrible!
ARTHUR:
He's terrible.
BRIAN:
There were three.
ARTHUR:
Thpppt!
BRIAN:
They were-- they were st-- stewards, really.
ELSIE:
Aww, get off!
BRIAN:
Ooh! Eh, uh, b-- b-- now-- now hear this! Blessed are they...who convert their neighbour's ox, for they shall inhibit their girth,...
[the guards start to walk away]
MAN:
Rubbish!
BRIAN:
...and to them only shall be given-- to them only... shall... be... given...
[the guards are gone]
ELSIE:
What?
BRIAN:
Hmm?
ELSIE:
Shall be given what?
BRIAN:
Oh, nothing.
ELSIE:
Hey! What were you going to say?
BRIAN:
Nothing.
ARTHUR and FRANK:
Yes, you were.
ELSIE:
Yes. You were going to say something.
BRIAN:
No, I wasn't. I'd finished.
ELSIE:
Oh, no you weren't.
ARTHUR:
Oh, come on. Tell us before you go.
BRIAN:
I wasn't going to say anything. I'd finished.
ELSIE:
No, you hadn't.
BLIND MAN:
What won't he tell?
EDDIE:
He won't say.
BLIND MAN:
Is it a secret?
BRIAN:
No.
BLIND MAN:
Is it?
EDDIE:
Must be. Otherwise, he'd tell us.
ARTHUR:
Oh, tell us the secret.
BRIAN:
Leave me alone.
YOUTH:
What is this secret?
GIRL:
Is it the secret of eternal life?
EDDIE:
He won't say!
ARTHUR:
Well, of course not. If I knew the secret of eternal life, I wouldn't say.
BRIAN:
Leave me alone.
GIRL:
Just tell me, please.
ARTHUR:
No. Tell us, Master. We were here first.
BRIAN:
Ah!
GIRL:
Just tell--
BRIAN:
Go away!
GIRL:
Tell us, Master.
GIRL:
Tell-- Is that His gourd?
YOUTH:
We've got this here.
GIRL:
It is His gourd! We will carry it for you, Master! Master?
YOUTH:
He's gone! He's been taken up!
GIRL:
Ahhhh!
FOLLOWERS:
For He's been taken up!
ARTHUR:
No, there He is. Over there.
FOLLOWERS:
Oh, yeah. Master! Master!...
[FOLLOWERS chase BRIAN]
Funny you should rise the issue of the Ryder Cup. The american audience
a) Harassed the European players. Police had to remove audience at several holes before the play could continue.
b) Rushed onto the field before the game was finished. It could still have been tied.
If you consider that a win, sure. It says more about American sportsmanship than European skill at golf...
Already available. Maybe it is region 2 coded though, but as you know it is dead easy to download a program that bypasses this.
You should also check out the great films by Pythonite Terry Gilliam...
Brazil, 12 monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are my favourites, you should also check out the Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits.
There is a Swedish system called Don't Bother Burn developed by a company called Wkit online which protects DVD and CDs among other things from being copied...they just got a big distribution contract. I'm looking forward to seeing how good it will be.
>I really didn't want to post up a reply. I really, really didn't. But seeing how there is so much confusion over the Playstation 2, I felt forced to. Playstation 2 will be great, regardless of anyone's predictions.
.18 micron chip. All others have failed so far - Intel, AMD, 3Dfx, NVidia, Ericsson (Bluetooth)...
How do you know?? At this point, it is still vapourware. You give lots of good reasons why Playstation 1 was a hit, but there are LOTS of things that can go wrong with PSX2. I mean, a lot of companies try to do ANYTHING to ensure the success of their products, but sometimes the product just isn't good enough.
Some serious pitfalls Sony have to avoid:
1) They fail to do the promised 128 bit
2) The PC or other consoles beat it before it comes out. When Playstaion 1 came out, it beat the PC hands down in graphics, no argument. 3Dfx released something called the Voodoo 1 around then, but it took quite a while for it to catch on...two or three years while Sony could consolidate their position. Now, the 3D cards race is going at insane speeds on the PC. The fourth generation of 3d cards will be out for the PC THIS year. Sony will not go into a virgin market, and even if they beat the others they can not count on being safe 2-4 years this time.
3) It will be too expensive. The NEO-GEO was great for its time, but no one wanted to pay the price (what was it...$100-200?) per game. Same thing here. They are doing the Emotion Engine which will not be cheap. DVD player. They will have to pay for using USB and Firewire. This time they will add a keyboard and other peripherals. Good quality comes with a price...gamers will not be happy if Sony choses low quality.
4) Marketing wise, it will "fall between two chairs", it won't have a clearly defined market. There have been machines before that have been undecided if they are gaming consoles, computers or "home entertainment centers". Philips CD-I, Commodore's CD-TV, and what was its name....3DO? They tried to do everything and consequently they did nothing really good. They all crashed and burned on the market so fast you hardly had time to blink.
5) Difficulty and cost of developing=fewer games. Sony sold the hardware for the PSX1 for a lot less than they actually cost, and made up for it by licensing the rights to make games. A brilliant move. But this time, the hardware cost will be a lot higher, and the developers fewer since developing games will be more difficult and expensive. Sure, Square is good, but can their games alone support all the gamers and Sony?
6) Sony has underestimated the time and difficulties of development. I have seen the attitude from some console makers that being in the console market is the hardest thing you can do with all the cutthroat competition and all. Computers is actually seen as being easier to develop. But "Will this work on my PSX2 if it has an Apple USB mouse, a no-name Firewire modem and no keyboard?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. This time they will have to do an entire operating system. Think not? Remember that they have promised that this will be a email and web client extraordinaire. They have talked about making Everquest available! If you are going to surf the net or play Everquest, you need a keyboard. You need a harddrive. You probably need a mouse. So its not just new hardware, they have to develop and test software as well, like a secure web browser, an email client, a chat program, something to show the nice picures you take with the included digital camera, probably an ICQ client, and so on and so on....
7) Game programmers will have same problem they have with PCs now - different hardware and software configurations. There goes the BIGGEST console advantage.
>Why would this be an issue? The advantage to having a set top unit like a video game system is that the programmer can program for one set of hardware specs
That is the thing with the PSX2. It will have USB and Firewire. Sony has mentioned that a harddrive would be a good peripheral to have, and I believe one is being developed. But not all will buy it. So the programmers will have to program one version where you can cache textures and save game to the HD, and one without. And then some people will have additional memory cards, and some not.
Sony, welcome to the messy world of the PC...
As some others have already commented, the numbers are just there so clueless reporters can gush about them. And they have, in Wired, New York Times, The Economist... "The future of entertainment is here. It will be 100 000 times faster than a PC, come with a DVD player, a ADSL line, a HDTV and a built in washing machine! And it will only cost $100! The PC will be dead come winter."
.18 micron 128 bit processor...is it finished yet? I would be really impressed if they managed, but considering all the other chip manufacturers having great difficulties getting .18 micron technology to work I am sceptical. Also, the Playstation 2 is going to load all these wonderful textures from a CD each time the scenery changes if I have understood correctly? Wow. It will be like the opening doors sequences in Resident Evil...times 10!
I am sure the demos such as the famous dancing couple, or the dinosaur, or this new bathtub demo are gorgeous, but again...a demo is not a real game. A current PC can do some pretty impressive demos too if you dedicate it only to do graphics without bothering about stuff like AI. We have not seen what the NV10 and Voodoo 4 can do yet together with an Athlon. And they will be out THIS year.
This is the first time that you will be able to add stuff like (possibly) harddrives, modems, different gaming units to a Playstation via USB, Firewire and what have you. This time they will have to do a complete OS for their gaming console, and "Will this game work on my Playstation 2 if I have X connected through USB, Y through Firewire but no Z connected?" is a question Sony have never had to answer before. Perhaps they underestimate the difficulties involved. As for their claim of the
Here is an interesting article from Next-Generation Online. They have been covering the Playstation 2 from the start.
>Perhaps it was the comparison PlayStation 2's
>demos drew to other games on the show floor --
>whereas all prior public appearances had been
>the demos by themselves. Perhaps it was the
>quality of the demos. Perhaps it was the dying
>down of the initial post-announcement hype of
>Sony's new machine.
>
>Whatever it was, PlayStation 2 was not the end
>all be all at last week's E3. More than one show
>attendee we spoke to mentioned that the demos,
>which looked quite pretty, were not as exciting
>as they had hoped.
[...]
>For a system being touted as superior to the PC,
>or any PCs coming down the line soon, the
>PlayStation 2's demos did not graphically
>lambaste the gorgeous Black & White or
>Freelancer for PC, nor did the demos' graphics
>look significantly superior to those of many
>Dreamcast titles, such as Shenmue and NBA 2000.
Read the article here.
There are some more sceptical voices here. The articles are from March, but I think the criticism is still valid.
Yours was the first /. comment about the environment. I mean, the whole article was about the ecological threat of all this junk, and what do the Slashdot crowd do? Two hundred articles about how nostalgic they are about their old 386....Jeez.
Oh NO!! Not the American manufacturers! The poor poor innocent little things, don't hurt them!!!
I am sickened by how some people trample on the rights of American manufacturers. What would the world be like if American manufacturers would not be allowed to export landmines, electroshock batons and other torture devices to dictatorships everywhere? We, the rest of the world, who wish with all our soul that we can leave our fetid cesspools and breathe the fresh, fresh air of America feel ANGRY when we hear that the world conference on the environment had the audacity to suggest that American manufacturers play by the same rules as manufacturers in other countries and do their part to lower emissons. We feel shaken to our very souls by the tought that the interest of human rights, the environment or the very life on earth could ever be considered before the rights of the American manufacturers. With tears in our eyes we thank the Republican party for killing all the bills that in any way touch the sanctity of the American manufacturer. Imagine the fascists who wish to restrict the right of the American manufacturer to keep detailed personal records of customers and sell them to anyone, to secrety film and tap their employers (not to mention people in other countries with helps from the wonderful Echelon system). We must ever remember that the whole point of America, indeed the world, is the unhindered growth of American manufacturers, for the sake of the American manufacturers.
Yes! A big THANK YOU to president Clinton for pointing out that wishing less lead in the environment, in animals and ultimately in ourselves is an ILLEGAL TRADE BARRIER!
Hallelulia!
Slashdot makes it possible for news to be published quickly, which is good. I like Slashdot. But as other posters have pointed out, sometimes half-truths, rumours and outright lies can get published before being thoroughly checked, and the disinformation spreads so fast that those unfairly maligned have no chance of countering it.
Someone posted above that Slashdot provides information without filters (information wants to be free and all that tired stuff), this is plainly wrong. The Slashdot staff has a bias whether they know it or not. I have submitted many storied that I thought were interesting, both from a local and an international perspective but none have been posted. Instead I get to read about Furby autopsy pages. When I asked Rob Malda about the possibility of including "World, Europe, Africa, Asia" as topics, he said that since fewer of their readers are international, they don't worry as much about international stories! Generally, negative stories about the international community are posted "Australia net censorship", "France tries to become centre of time meridian" and positive ones submitted are ignored (Ericssons Bluetooth technology, new mobile phone technology, slave decendants Sao Tome liberate their stolen domain name, and so on). At least that is my opinion.
I like Slashdot, but I see it as a rumour mill and a discussion forum mostly, and one with a narrow choice of subjects (technology, Geek culture). When it comes to real news, I still rely on newspapers, and quality TV such as Swedish TV and the BBC to inform me.
Cheers,
Lars
>WRONG. Please stop quoting the Kellerman report.
;-)
;-)
;-)
>The data contained in it was proved false years ago.
That is interesting. Could you show me any references?
>Please read (and try to comprehend) "More Guns,
>Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun-Control
>Laws (Studies in Law and Economics)" by John
>Lott before quoting false statistics.
I searched on the net, but I couldn't find it. Lott seems like a kook though. "the worst thing people can expect from dioxin is a bad rash.", "stop worrying so much about the environment", "[A] nation's wealth [is maximized] if a crime is not deterred when the benefit to the criminal of a particular crime is greater than the total social cost of that crime." indeed. He sounds like a social darwinist. One gun related wievpoint I found about him was that if teachers would have been armed, the Jonesboro shooting would not have occured (and presumably neither the Littleton one). It's just nuts. In Littleton, two guards were armed and opened fire, but when the kids opened up with automatic weapons they had to hide and then ran and phoned the cops. And these were people who were trained.
The absurdity of this view is pretty effectively debunked here http://www.salon.com/co mics/boll/1999/05/06/boll/index.html.
I can only agree with this: "Lott has a long and well-documented track record of zealously advocating an extreme anti-consumer, anti-public safety ideology. His view that arming the populace with concealed handguns will reduce crime is just one more extreme view to be added to the list."
>>>Now that I hear about this enforced lack of
>>>privacy, I couldn't be happier.
>>That will be defeated. Believe me.
>God but you are naive AND stupid! Don't think
>for a moment that if it fails now, it won't be
>back again and again untill it passes. And since
>the public is disarmed, they WON'T BE ABLE TO
>STOP IT.
You know there is a conflict between openness and privacy. You wan't openness when it comes to politicians (and we have the most extensive laws on that subject in the world in Sweden) and privacy when it comes to citizens, right? The EU passed directives that said that you couldn't post personal information about living persons on the net without those persons' agreement. Sweden was the only country that made that a law (PUL - the Personal Information Law). Most people consider this a too serious infringement into free speech and there were LOADS of protests. Most people (including me) ignored it completely and continued to post personal information on the net. A political youth organization turned themselves in, to show how absurd the law was. This were examples of peaceful civil disobedience, and guess what? The goverement have realised how absurd the law is, and are going to scrap it.
No guns needed...just rational democratic discourse. And we were able to stop it.
>> The thing is, I didn't have a gun, and neither
>>did the robbers.
>
>So you were targeted by incompetent and ill
>equipped robbers. That proves nothing. Just wait
>untill an armed criminal finds and kills you.
Again, few people are killed by armed criminals in Sweden. That is because we have very strict gun laws.
>> I managed to get out of the situation all
>>three times without losing my money or getting
>>hurt by using my wits. You see, brains is more
>>important than guns.
>
>So you were LUCKY.
I was SMART.
>But please remember, your luck only has to fail
>you once.
Yeah, that's a fact of life isn't it? Sooner or later my luck will run out. An astroid will hit me, or I will trip and fall on a sharp stick, or my heart will give out of old age.
>Also note that these were ill equipped UNARMED
>ASSAILANTS. Therefore, guns were not in the
>situation and don't contribute to these data
>points.
Actually, we don't know that. If I would have pulled a gun on them perhaps I would have found out the hard way. But the odds are good they didn't have a gun, see, in Europe we have these strics gun laws that save a lot of peoples lives each year...
>>>Be seeing you.
>>Neat! You are welcome. Oh yeah...now I remember.
>Are you THAT STUPID?
Are you THAT HUMOURLESS?
>Eventually he probably will be seeing you (or someone very much like him).
Well, MolochHorridus turned out to be a pretty nice guy, even if we disagreed on the subject of gun control. So that is ok.
If you refer to his fictional gun toting criminal or goverment agent - the risk is actually pretty low. My brother is a cop, and he has not been fired at once yet.
>Just not for very long. Enjoy your dirt nap.
Dirt nap? I don't know exactly what that means, but I can guess it wasn't nice. Again, try reason instead of flames if you want to convince me.
Cheers,
Lars
>No, it proves you WRONG. And stupid. Please try
;-)
>to think before responding. They did fear
>educated people, but mostly they feared those
>educated people might ARM THEMSELVES.
How do you know?
>> Oh, spell flames against someone writing in a
>>foreign language. That's brave.
>I beleive the statement was more about the irony
>of mispellings in a statement about the
>importance of education.
It was a spell flame, though perhaps the nicest one.
>What is it with you and false statistics? Here
>are sopm other statistics for you: In 1997, 12
>times as many children (using your false
>definition of children - 19 year olds are
>adults) died of drowning than of firearms. So
>what do we do about that? Ban water?
I believe 19 years old are children. And no, we don't ban water, that is a typical straw man argument I have heard before by the pro-gun crowd. We can't avoid all deaths. Water is a natural occurance that we can't do anything about (except educating children about the dangers), guns are man made death machines, that work very well.
>Ban water? Please stop repeating disproved Handgun Control Incorporated lies.
If you can prove to me they are lies, sure.
>>Oh, so you know they were all unarmed, do you?
>>That's a lot of unarmed people.
>OF COURSE THEY WERE UNARMED YOU IDIOT. OTHERWISE
>THEY WOULDN'T HAVE PASSIVELY BEEN MURDERED, NOW
>WOULD THEY?
Lets see, they were unarmed because they were murdered, and they were murdered because they were unarmed. You are using circular reasoning.
>The Nazi's just took advantage of this, and
>probably would have been stopped had the german
>people been in any condition to prevent them
>(i.e. armed).
The nazis were allowed in several gun fights when they were going to power. The four who were killed in the "beer putz" were declared martyrs and later almost saints by the nazi party. This didn't stop the nazis, it just helped them in their propaganda. The Germans people brought the Nazis to power. It didn't matter if they were armed or not. That brings me back to my original argument - education and democratic participation is important, not the number of guns.
>Get some FACTS moron! These people were all
>killed BY THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT! BY THE UNITED
>STATES GOVERNMENT.
I don't know who the Kent protestors were. Perhaps you can enlighten me. Wounded Knee was a hundred years ago, not relevant to this discussion. As for the Black Panthers - they had guns. That obviously didn't help them. They died anyway. If they hadn't been armed, perhaps it wouldn't have been a shootout, and they could have been fighting still today for their rights.
>The supposed defender of the free world
We know YOU think so. The rest of the world hasn't been fooled by that for a long time, belive me.
>Only two kinds of people support gun control.
>Evil people and stupid people. Which are you?
False dichotomy. If you want to convince me, use reason instead instead of childish flames.
Cheers,
Lars
>Well, the flame was kind of a bait, since this ;-). Thankyou for
:-)
>is the twilight of this particular thread.
>Childish with purpose
>responding.
I still don't agree, but as you said, it is the twilight of the thread, this subtread was a slightly off topic aside to begin with, and also it seems Virtuel was the only poster who agreed with me, so lets move on to fresher pastures. Moo.
Thanks for responding too.
Cheers,
Lars
>Yawn. This is way offtopic
;-)
It is, isn't it? But it was actually one pro-gun AC who brought the subject up, not me.
>We are talking here about modern government and
>civil rights. And about how some of us seem to
>have more than others.
Yep. Five countries in the world are primitive enough to execute children. And yours is #1.
If I understand correctly, if you are a black man in the US, chances are that the police will enthusiastically violate your rights.
>Rights are funny things. A lot of people are against them.
Yeah! For instance, I am against your right to kill me. You see, some rights we have to give up if we are going to live together in a working society. We are debating which rights are important enough, right? So "Its too hard", "Let the government decide" "I don't want to think", "I don't want to be responsible" are clearly examples of straw man arguments.
>Most of the violent deaths in the twentieth century were unarmed civilians.
I would like to see some numbers, but either way civilian casualties of war is irrelevant to this discussion.
>Your death row inmate is unarmed by force of his state.
I'm against the death penalty as well, so we can start arguing about that too.
>Some guy posted below how he was afraid of gun
>rights because the ordinary people in the street
>didn't look capable of handling them. What a
>lack of faith in humanity this dude has. What
>cowardice. Its depressing
Lack of faith in humanity? Look, it is YOU who think that unless you have the threat of weapons to back you up, people and goverments will immediately start to do the worst things possible to you.
And yeah, I wouldn't want the average person on the street to be armed. If all were rational beings at all times, maybe, but there are crazy people out there, and normal people can go crazy when angry, drunk, high, depressed or what have you. And that's when you get statistics like "35,957 Americans killed with firearms, in homicides, suicides, and accidents in one year (1995), and 14 CHILDREN 19 years and under EACH DAY."
Now THAT is depressing.
>Any way lets flame and call some names.
Let's not. I think it's childish.
Cheers,
Lars
Clowns have EVERYTHING to do with this.
:-)
Speaking as a painted agent of mirth, I have all the cream pies I need. Now that I hear about this enforced lack of privacy, I will invent humiliating practical jokes involving fishes and itching powder. Chances are, I will one day come and go *pfrthththh* in your face!
Be seeing you.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.
>Speaking as an armed criminal, I am all for gun
.22 calibre. This law was spurred in large part by the massacre in Dunblane, Scotland, in March 1996, in which 16 children and one teacher were killed in just a few minutes by a lone gunman.
.22 calibre reportedly affected some 80 percent of handguns in the United Kingdom, or an estimated 160,000 handguns. It included new procedures for storing .22 calibre handguns in gun clubs, and provided stricter standards for firearms ownership certification. Owners of prohibited weapons were required to hand them in by 1 October 1997. This program appears to have been largely successful -- as of a week before the hand-in date, approximately 120,000 of the 160,000 prohibited weapons had been turned in."
:-)
;-)
>control. I already have all the guns I could
>ever need. I illegally bought and stole them
>years ago. Additional gun control laws won't
>bother me in the least, but will help to ensure
>my safety while carrying out my 'business'. I
>HATE armed victims.
I reiterate: Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense.
More guns means more death. Less guns means less death.
>One of the advantages of being a criminal is
>that I did not have to get my guns 'legally', so
>nobody (including your government) knows what
>guns I have and where I have them so they will
>never be able to take them away from me.
When you use them, you will be revealed. If you don't use them, no one is hurt. Also, the hardened premeditaded criminal who stockpiles guns is probably rarer than you think. Compare with the situation in Britain:
"One important effort to tighten domestic controls is the ban on handguns currently being implemented in the United Kingdom. In February 1997, a new UK law banned private possession of handguns of greater than
The February ban on handguns greater than
>Now that I hear about this enforced lack of privacy, I couldn't be happier.
That will be defeated. Believe me.
>And thanks to your expressed beliefs, I now know
> which of you are for gun control too. Chances
>are, you gun control supporters don't own guns
>yourselves (especially you, Lars). You'll make
>easy cash opportunities for me.
Quite right, I don't own a gun. Three times people have tried to rob me, once in Sweden and twice (the same night!) in Barcelona, Spain. The thing is, I didn't have a gun, and neither did the robbers. I managed to get out of the situation all three times without losing my money or getting hurt by using my wits. You see, brains is more important than guns.
I believe if either of us had had guns, and especially both of us had had guns, the chance that I would be sitting here this fine Sunday morning blabbing on the net would have been significantly less.
>Be seeing you.
Neat! You are welcome. Oh yeah...now I remember.
Cheers,
Lars
>>A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool
;-)
i refc.htm
;-)
>>against oppression, and the UK beats you hands
>>down there as well in all international tests.
>
>I'm pretty sure that Pol Pot has more than
>proved that arguement is wrong. Please remember
>that one of the first things they did was kill
>all the EDUCATED people. And they killed them
>with guns.
..meaning they were more frightened of educated people than of guns, and rightly so. There were guns in Cambodia. That didn't stop Pol Pot from getting into power, and easy access to guns made it possible for them to continue their reign of terror. So you see, it proves me right.
>Apparently a well educated citizenry doesn't know how to spell 'citizenry'.
Oh, spell flames against someone writing in a foreign language. That's brave.
>Only a few people die in the US from firearms
>each year. Very few of those casualties
>are 'innocent'.
*In 1995, 14 children, ages 19 and under, were killed with guns every day in this country [USA].
*In 1996, 10,744 people were murdered with firearms in this country.
*In 1996, there were only 176 justifiable handgun homicides by private citizens in the United States.
http://www.handguncontrol.org/protecting/D4/d4f
Do you call this few? I call that a lot, and I think it is sick.
>Now compare that to the 13 MILLION unarmed jews
>and others killed by the Nazi's. And the 20
>MILLION unarmed civilians killed by the Soviets.
>And the 20 MILLION unarmed chinese killed in the
>cultural revolution. And the 100 THOUSAND
>unarmed Maya killed in Guatemala. And the 300
>THOUSAND unarmed christian political dissidents
>killed in Uganda.
Oh, so you know they were all unarmed, do you? That's a lot of unarmed people.
>And if you think it can't happen here, please
>tell that to the Black Panthers. Or the
>protestors at Kent State. Or the Native
>Americans for that matter. Especially those that
>died at Wounded Knee (both times).
What do these examples tell me except that appearently Americans believe that violence is a great way to solve problems? It isn't.
More guns just mean more paranoia and more risk that someone on either side will open fire.
>But since Canadians are unarmed, they will have NO RECOURSE when (not if) their government decides to revoke their "Charter of Rights and Freedoms".
Like a bunch of rednecks militias are going to make a whit of a difference if the US (or Canadian) government somehow would turn opressive against their people and get the military to support them. You are so deluded.
As I said in another post, the health of a country is not measured in the number of guns in the hands of trigger happy citizens, its how many participate in the democratic process and how educated the citizens are. And the US is beaten by just about every goddamn developed nation in the world in those areas.
>I would agree with your rant, except for one
:-)
;-)
:-)
:-)
>thing:
>
>You're wrong.
I am??
>The right to keep and bear arms is a symbol. It
>means that the government has the right to take
>your life, if you have done something to require
>it, but they do not have the right to make you
>lie down and take it like a good boy or girl.
"Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense. The presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home. The presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide fivefold."
http://www.handguncontrol.org/firearm_facts.htm
To me, that sounds like a big prize to pay for a symbol.
>Banning guns does not prevent violent crime. It
>expands it, because criminals know that all
>law-abiding citizens are now unarmed.
I think that is bull, but both of us will have problems finding hard numbers to prove our points.
Here are some statistics that I believe support my point:
"In 1996, handguns were used to murder 2 people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, 213 in Germany and 9,390 in the United States." Again, high prize to pay...
But of course there are an enormous number of factors - economical cultural and others that influence crime statistics. For instance I might cite Japan to support my view (strict gun laws=less crime), and then you might counter by saying that the high and fairly equally distributed wealth in Japan combined with the homogenised and closly knit Japanese society makes crime unlikely in the first place. Or else you might take my own country, Sweden, as an example (lots of guns, more per capita than the US I've heard=less crime) and I would then say that 95% of those guns are hunting rifles, the owners must go through very strict background checks and hunting tests, and there are laws that they must be disassembled and locked up in safes apart from ammo when not in use.
If we had one country to observe over a long period of time (ten years maybe) which had changed its gun laws, and we then had the sociological and statistical education to calculate the influence that for instance economy and distribution of wealth could have on the results, then we might get somewhere (it would be a statistical selection of one though, which is never good). But we don't even have one example, so you will just have to accept that I am right, damnit. You must!
>The criminals can still get guns of a sort -
>they are not difficult to make, even without
>buying one - and now, they don't have to worry
>about the victim producing a shotgun and blowing
>their head off.
If the victims didn't have guns, criminals would be less inclined to carry or use them as well since they didn't have to worry about having their heads blown off, ever consider that? It's a good circle!
Besides, I believe manufacturing a good handgun is more difficult than you claim, especially if sales of ammo and gunpowder was limited as well. I would much prefer to face a criminal armed with some home made pipe gun than a state of the art semi-automatic military issue thingy.
>If you think differently, then it's quite
>simple; don't keep guns. DO NOT tell me not to.
*tease* I forbid you to keep guns.
No, but seriously. I might have been a bit careless. When I said "ban guns" above, I did not mean the complete banning of guns. I meant banning the sale of stuff like assault rifles and armour piercing bullets, strict background checks at all times (including gun shows), and bans against carrying firearms in public. That's my view. But we live on different continents, and if someone is in the position to limit anyones rights, its you who can harm me, so the point is moot anyway.
>Here, we have the right to simply pull our
>children from the school system and teach them
>at home, or in smaller private schools. And if
>you compare those homeschool and private school
>children to your schools, we've got YOU beat,
>not the other way around.
It's not a competition (though I realise I said some ill chosen words in the previous post). I believe that all people should have a decent education, both from a basic human rights perspective of the individual and for the good of the human race. Do you think it's OK if only the kids of a rich elite gets a good education in the US? What good does it do if 5% are very intellectual if the remaining 95% are ignorant and easy to manipulate?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also so that many of the people in elite schools are in fact foreigners? Many of whom later return to their original countries. Many stay of course, which is lucky for the US.
>Pity you don't have the right to force the same
>concession, isn't it?
There are private schools here (Sweden) as well were you can put your kids if you wish to, but since our education is not an such a bad shape (yet...) most have been started by people who have other needs, for instance moslems.
>The reason we say it will happen here is that
>the government is continually trying to force
>more controls. Remove those freedoms. To the
>detriment of us all.
Then we agree. Only not on the details.
>>A well armed militia is NOTHING against an army.
;-)
>Perhaps you should read up on Lord Cornwallis and his problems in North America circa 1776-1781.
The military situation of 200 years ago has little relevance to modern warfare.
>>A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool
>>against oppression, and the UK beats you hands
>>down there as well in all international tests.
>So what happened to you? Or doesn't the
>wonderful British school system teach "America
>kicks Geaorge III's Ass 101" along with
>spelling?
I'm not British, I'm Swedish. I apologize for any spelling errors that might have offended you, but I am writing in a foreign language, see?
I have studied history, but as I said before, and as another poster explained, the military situation in those days were quite different.
>In the UK, citizens do not have the right to keep and bear arms. Therefore they have no rights, no power, no authority, no voice, and no choice.
*rant*
What absolute bullshit. What gives you "rights, voice and choice"? Carrying weapons or participating in the democratic process? More people vote in the UK than in the US, that is a better sign of a country's health than how easy it is to obtain tools to kill someone. A well armed militia is NOTHING against an army. A well EDUCATED citizinry is the best tool against oppression, and the UK beats you hands down there as well in all international tests.
And who are you to talk about rights? As long as your country continues to execute children in defiance of international human rights, you have NOTHING to say about how other countries run their business.
But if we get back to the issue of right to privacy, it the US which is successfully bullying the goverments of other countries to deny their citizens human rights, as the article shows again.
>And guess what? It WILL happen here.
Banning guns? I certainly hope so. A lot of innocent people lose their lives each year in the US because some gun nuts have a pathological need to play with their phallic symbols.
*rant off*
BTW - here is a pretty amusing link from this weeks issue of the Economist:
The gun commandments . "5. Thou shalt not kill, except when provoked. But if thou dost, remember that thy gun had nothing to do with it."
Cheers,
Lars
I have nothing but contempt for the way the British goverment keeps brownnosing the US. "We have a special relationship between our nations" indeed.
Perhaps the goverment thinks it is a fair trade since they probably get trade secrets stolen from other countries by Eschelon, but I wonder why the British people allows American entities to take away their rights in ways these entities would never get away with at home.
If Britain keeps this up, why don't they just get it done with and quit the EU and become the 51st state of the USA?
>From what I know (and I could be wrong), the US
>has a lot more high-bandwidth connections
>available at reasonably low cost [...]
>But I could be completely wrong.
No, you are pretty much correct. If you take Europe in general, the net is not used as much as in the US. There is a small area that is different - Scandinavia has far ahead of the US in most areas (I believe 60% or more use the net regularly in Sweden and Finland, 50% have mobile phones and so on) but there are so few of us. Net usage in England, Germany and the Benelux area is pretty similar to the US, but the major reson that downloading is used less is what another poster mentioned below - metered calls. Telephone monopolies have held Internet development back in Europe. Right now users in Sweden are going berserk against partially state owned Telia. Most people claim that they are holding back ASDL so they can milk the last drops of money out of yesterday's technology ISDN. Telia say that the ASDL technology is immature and so plagued by problems when they tested it it was essentially useless.
But its changing. Telia was a complete state owned monopoly before, and they are supposed to open up more and more until they are almost completely private (Though there are problems in transition. They start fighting against other tele companies from an unfair advantage - a virtual monopoly. But now that they are partially privately owned you can't order them to for instance let other companies use their cables without paying.)
>On a related note: does cheapbytes ship to
>Europe? (or similar companies?) If not, that
>would be another factor.
There is a company called Informagix or something like that that sells a 6 CD package for maybe $10. It used to contain Red Hat, Debian, Slackware and several sites and books with documentation on CD. I haven't bought it in a while so I don't know. Maybe they have dumped Slackware and included SUSE instead by now.