If you join a Gun Club you can get your Walther PPK (I always wanted a USP when I was younger).
Check again sir, there are minimum length limits on all category H firearms. Yes I am a member of a gun club etc.
there are plenty of other ones that are more easily acquired, of course. The minimum cost of entry is typically rather steep for a decent firearm, doable but expensive.
I chose the ppk as an example of how silly the little details of our laws can be
I personally feel safer knowing that nobody is walking around with a walther ppk under their jacket.
but you don't know that, all you know is nobody is legally walking around with a ppk under their jacket, the people you want to stop are the people who don't care about the rules. (and only security guards and police can get permits to carry it on them, I think, so it would be illegal even if you could get the firearm legally)
funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s).
or rather, the more stable people who want firearms know that anyone who speaks up about it is automatically regarded as at best a bit out there, at worst psychopath by people, as you clearly demonstrate.
I already know nothing I say will ever be taken into consideration by an anti-firearm person, because I will have already been written off as one, no matter how good the arguments are.
as for the 'sport' of it - i've always thought it a stretch at best to call it that - how much of a sweat do you work up pulling a trigger?
None to perhaps a little, but how much sweat do you work up playing chess? should it also be disregarded completely as a sport also?
If you think shooting is so easy, assuming your australian, try competing against one of our olympic athletes in their class of shooting, if you can beat them you will moot my argument that it is not a sport. Just because you don't break a sweat doesn't mean it can't take tremendous amounts of skill to do extremely well.
... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you.
thats pretty much why the _vast_ majority of australians dont want guns in our society - there simply isnt a need, and the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a.22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.
come on now, that's just fear mongering, we all know that the 'bad guys' don't follow the laws anyway, all you are doing is taking it away from people who obey the law, and, if you think it lessens the availability of said firearms to people who want them, I sincerely disagree, it is not terribly hard to acquire an illegal firearm, but most people have the morals to not do so.
The only reason I don't own the ppk I mentioned I'd like is for moral reasons, letting the government make everyone who likes shooting be a criminal is fine with them, don't let them have their way.
Perhaps your wondering why I still argue even though I know my opinion will be discounted by the anti-firearm people, it is simply because by completely giving in and not objecting clearly and concisely why for the reasons they bring up, the people who want to take our freedom to enjoy a sport away win.
That is all from me, I look forward to your reply, it has been rather long so if I was unclear on anything please ask:)
some of us were too young to have any say in it at the time (1990) and while even more strict and limiting laws have been applied since then, the general public's view of firearms is only what they see in cop shows and action movies
It's those views that really harm shooting as a sport, and I know people who want all firearms in the country banned except for police.
Their view is nobody needs them, nobody needs to go rock climbing either, but should we ban it because some people like to be idiots and hurt themselves every few years? I have no qualms about requiring licenses for people who own firearms, hell even the whole requiring a safe over x kg or permanently bolted to a building foundation, but some of the limits are just too much.
as an example, I've always wanted a walther ppk, something just reeks of class about it, anyway I have no chance in hell of ever owning or using one in Australia, because it's 'too small'
granted, my other favourite firearm is justified in the limiting of civilians having access to, the aug steyr, it's a semi/fully automatic assault rifle, however being in the military solved that problem. I'll never own one, but using and practising with them all the time is nice.
Former prime minister John Howards irrational fear of firearms was clearly evident on one of the few times he went to speak to concerned firearm owners, he wore a bulletproof vest...
that pretty-much sums it up I guess. But the biggest problem is the general public's lack of knowledge of firearms, and lack of experience, that which people don't know they fear.
that would be rather pointless, because the homebrew community already have methods to allow people to boot from usb sticks using modified standard ps2 memory cards.
amazingly enough, running a text editor to write source code can still be done extremely quickly even on a 386!, granted you'll have a hard time making/viewing high colour depth and resolution textures and the like, but even a p200 can do that somewhat more effectively,
it doesn't take a supercomputer to write programs that run on a supercomputer, your compile times will be longer than if you did, but still irrelevant
that being said, 8 years old equates to about a p3 700 or so, back in the day before devkitpro and the like became popular, I baked my own binutils/gcc etc toolchain on a p3 450, granted it took... a while but in the end I could write software for the dreamcast, so I was content.
Stop believing the myth that software has to be slower if it's going to be better.
I completely agree with your point that not caring about the efficiency of programming is bad practice etc.
However, the has to be slower to be better argument fails to take into account the set goal which is 'better'
say, for instance, I play nethack, in fact it's the only thing I use a specific pc for, now also say I wanted the pc to boot as fast as possible, if I were to replace init with nethack, and have it be the sole thing loaded after the kernel boots,
is this setup 'better' for the intended use? hell yes, would someone wanting more regular useage disagree, of course, but it is impossibe to add features without adding overhead
We should be able to have modern operating systems that look and feel like Vista but be as fast as Windows 3.1.
every extra computation you add for that transparent window here and texture map there degrades performance, people WANT the functionality though, they are choosing functionality and in some cases shiny over speed(unless forced upgrade of course). If they weren't they'd still be using wordperfect on 3.1 since it would go blazingly
lastly, feature creep, feature creep is mainly a problem for you when features are added that you personally don't use, in which case, why not simply use the older version? I know in the windows world you will eventually wind up with vista patch x breaks blah, but in the linux world at least you can just keep the source version you like, and just fix compiler errors periodically when new things break it.
sorry if my rant is somewhat incoherent, mainly in the end, 2am in the morning fell asleep while writing this, lost trait of thought.
This one. needs an avr and some random commonly found parts, some soldering required, but nowhere near as expensive to make your own as to get a pre-made snes cart dumper/programmer.
I don't think many people care, at least here in Australia.:\
people do, but primarily only a/v editors and those who already know the advantages of firewire, which limits it to geeks and a/v geeks, which is safe to say is somewhat a minority of people.
I know there is no security without physical security
indeed, and I for one, enjoy having zero cpu usage in high bandwidth transfers
hardware i/o controllers may enable dma dumping of ram, but it wasn't exactly put in hardware for no reason you know, it is a superior solution in so far as getting the job done with minimal external resources
and on the other side of the scale, nintendo online, is completely asshat free, but only because they make it so nobody you don't know can send you messages. double edged sword with friend codes, horrible solution, but at least I don't have ten years olds saying N00B F4G!!1
Just look at 99% of OSS websites, done by coders who have no idea how to present their software to anyone but other coders
perhaps that is for good reason, they may have written the program to scratch their particular itch, and just put it out into the wild so others may benefit, to them who really cares if some noob can use it or not, for technical people finding it and using would still be easier than writing it themselves.
a friend of mine does large boat electrics and control systems, the interface they have to the engines and statistics monitors/dead man alarms etc is in fact a touch screen core 2 duo, while I'm fairly sure the ones he chose were more cost effective, there are lots of things like these about.
it only really lacks in the video card, more than enough power for any kind of video or audio you could want
I can do all of the above and do so, what I think you will find is the same kind of tinkerers who always have to know how everything works not only become computer geeks, but tend to DIY a lot more, up to the point it becomes non feasable.
If you get your jollys from spending time fighting to get Linux to do what Windows does out of the box, good for you.
or rather, linux users don't like fighting windows to do things that linux can do out of the box, from a straight up install most people using windows install nero, vlc etc to do things linux does straight up. Getting windows to be able to do similar functionality as linux is not a trivial task if you use linux heavily.
Actually I do still have a point which remains: that pro-life doesn't mean anti-choice as claimed, women still have choice even if they don't have access to abortion.
of course they have a choice, but hey a coathanger is messy and it's much safer to have a proper abortion than have the woman try to purposefully lose the fetus.
people will do it regardless of whether it's legal or not, but if it's legal it will be safer
your forgetting nintendo is primarily a gaming company, do any of the things your complaining about effect your day to day playing of a game, no, then it's a secondary concern for them.
as for shovelware games, first party has always been where the quality is on nintendo consoles, because the console is so popular it is suffering what the ps2 did, many crap third party developers with a few gems.
consider the case of Capcom's Resident Evil 4. It was ported from GameCube to PS2 to Wii, with enhancements each time.
not sure what ps2 version you played, but it was really cut down graphically to run smoothly on the ps2, the wii version had similar graphics to the gamecube with updated controls and extras
Apparently, there are no plans to use something like ODE [ode.org] to give BZflag actual physics. It has options for momentum and basic friction, but they're nigh-always off; Everyone is happy to just drive their inertialess tanks around and jump in parabolic arcs, because that's how the game works.
well it IS how the game works, if you give the ultra fast quake 3 the physics system and settings of serious sam, it changes the game, sure a small minority may like the change, but the point is it is no longer quake3
same with bzflag, it is a fun completely non-realistic tank game, and that's the way the majority of players like it, why should the minority mess up the game for the majority?
If the majority want the changes then indeed fork it and you'll get the new playerbase and developers etc etc. But essentially, your complaining that you can't screw up a perfectly functioning game for the people who maintain it just because you want the game to go in direction x.
take another oss thing, example wesnoth, the turn based strategy, and you want it to go in real-time because that would be cooler for multiplayer, if those drastic changes were introduced, you would have destroyed the game for all the players that liked the game the way it was,
I believe the best reason for projects to fork is differing design goals, if someone just wants an efficient toaster, and you want to design a kiln for smelting things, while they both generate heat, you may wish to split the project
Slashdot Mirror
If you join a Gun Club you can get your Walther PPK (I always wanted a USP when I was younger).
Check again sir, there are minimum length limits on all category H firearms. Yes I am a member of a gun club etc.
there are plenty of other ones that are more easily acquired, of course. The minimum cost of entry is typically rather steep for a decent firearm, doable but expensive.
I chose the ppk as an example of how silly the little details of our laws can be
I personally feel safer knowing that nobody is walking around with a walther ppk under their jacket.
but you don't know that, all you know is nobody is legally walking around with a ppk under their jacket, the people you want to stop are the people who don't care about the rules. (and only security guards and police can get permits to carry it on them, I think, so it would be illegal even if you could get the firearm legally)
funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s).
or rather, the more stable people who want firearms know that anyone who speaks up about it is automatically regarded as at best a bit out there, at worst psychopath by people, as you clearly demonstrate.
I already know nothing I say will ever be taken into consideration by an anti-firearm person, because I will have already been written off as one, no matter how good the arguments are.
as for the 'sport' of it - i've always thought it a stretch at best to call it that - how much of a sweat do you work up pulling a trigger?
None to perhaps a little, but how much sweat do you work up playing chess? should it also be disregarded completely as a sport also?
If you think shooting is so easy, assuming your australian, try competing against one of our olympic athletes in their class of shooting, if you can beat them you will moot my argument that it is not a sport. Just because you don't break a sweat doesn't mean it can't take tremendous amounts of skill to do extremely well.
... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you. thats pretty much why the _vast_ majority of australians dont want guns in our society - there simply isnt a need, and the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a .22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.
come on now, that's just fear mongering, we all know that the 'bad guys' don't follow the laws anyway, all you are doing is taking it away from people who obey the law, and, if you think it lessens the availability of said firearms to people who want them, I sincerely disagree, it is not terribly hard to acquire an illegal firearm, but most people have the morals to not do so.
The only reason I don't own the ppk I mentioned I'd like is for moral reasons, letting the government make everyone who likes shooting be a criminal is fine with them, don't let them have their way.
Perhaps your wondering why I still argue even though I know my opinion will be discounted by the anti-firearm people, it is simply because by completely giving in and not objecting clearly and concisely why for the reasons they bring up, the people who want to take our freedom to enjoy a sport away win.
That is all from me, I look forward to your reply, it has been rather long so if I was unclear on anything please ask :)
You didn't say anything when they took your guns.
some of us were too young to have any say in it at the time (1990) and while even more strict and limiting laws have been applied since then, the general public's view of firearms is only what they see in cop shows and action movies
It's those views that really harm shooting as a sport, and I know people who want all firearms in the country banned except for police.
Their view is nobody needs them, nobody needs to go rock climbing either, but should we ban it because some people like to be idiots and hurt themselves every few years? I have no qualms about requiring licenses for people who own firearms, hell even the whole requiring a safe over x kg or permanently bolted to a building foundation, but some of the limits are just too much.
as an example, I've always wanted a walther ppk, something just reeks of class about it, anyway I have no chance in hell of ever owning or using one in Australia, because it's 'too small'
granted, my other favourite firearm is justified in the limiting of civilians having access to, the aug steyr, it's a semi/fully automatic assault rifle, however being in the military solved that problem. I'll never own one, but using and practising with them all the time is nice.
Former prime minister John Howards irrational fear of firearms was clearly evident on one of the few times he went to speak to concerned firearm owners, he wore a bulletproof vest...
that pretty-much sums it up I guess. But the biggest problem is the general public's lack of knowledge of firearms, and lack of experience, that which people don't know they fear.
he is referring to e-books, obviously
that would be rather pointless, because the homebrew community already have methods to allow people to boot from usb sticks using modified standard ps2 memory cards.
amazingly enough, running a text editor to write source code can still be done extremely quickly even on a 386!, granted you'll have a hard time making/viewing high colour depth and resolution textures and the like, but even a p200 can do that somewhat more effectively,
it doesn't take a supercomputer to write programs that run on a supercomputer, your compile times will be longer than if you did, but still irrelevant
that being said, 8 years old equates to about a p3 700 or so, back in the day before devkitpro and the like became popular, I baked my own binutils/gcc etc toolchain on a p3 450, granted it took... a while but in the end I could write software for the dreamcast, so I was content.
Stop believing the myth that software has to be slower if it's going to be better.
I completely agree with your point that not caring about the efficiency of programming is bad practice etc.
However, the has to be slower to be better argument fails to take into account the set goal which is 'better'
say, for instance, I play nethack, in fact it's the only thing I use a specific pc for, now also say I wanted the pc to boot as fast as possible, if I were to replace init with nethack, and have it be the sole thing loaded after the kernel boots,
is this setup 'better' for the intended use? hell yes, would someone wanting more regular useage disagree, of course, but it is impossibe to add features without adding overhead
We should be able to have modern operating systems that look and feel like Vista but be as fast as Windows 3.1.
every extra computation you add for that transparent window here and texture map there degrades performance, people WANT the functionality though, they are choosing functionality and in some cases shiny over speed(unless forced upgrade of course). If they weren't they'd still be using wordperfect on 3.1 since it would go blazingly
lastly, feature creep, feature creep is mainly a problem for you when features are added that you personally don't use, in which case, why not simply use the older version? I know in the windows world you will eventually wind up with vista patch x breaks blah, but in the linux world at least you can just keep the source version you like, and just fix compiler errors periodically when new things break it.
sorry if my rant is somewhat incoherent, mainly in the end, 2am in the morning fell asleep while writing this, lost trait of thought.
does your dvd player stream files over the network? if not then there's a neat use of homebrew right there.
This one. needs an avr and some random commonly found parts, some soldering required, but nowhere near as expensive to make your own as to get a pre-made snes cart dumper/programmer.
I don't think many people care, at least here in Australia. :\
people do, but primarily only a/v editors and those who already know the advantages of firewire, which limits it to geeks and a/v geeks, which is safe to say is somewhat a minority of people.
I know there is no security without physical security
indeed, and I for one, enjoy having zero cpu usage in high bandwidth transfers
hardware i/o controllers may enable dma dumping of ram, but it wasn't exactly put in hardware for no reason you know, it is a superior solution in so far as getting the job done with minimal external resources
and on the other side of the scale, nintendo online, is completely asshat free, but only because they make it so nobody you don't know can send you messages. double edged sword with friend codes, horrible solution, but at least I don't have ten years olds saying N00B F4G!!1
and the boston tea party wasn't an act of terrorism? even some of the founding fathers thought it was morally wrong and should have been paid back.
Just look at 99% of OSS websites, done by coders who have no idea how to present their software to anyone but other coders
perhaps that is for good reason, they may have written the program to scratch their particular itch, and just put it out into the wild so others may benefit, to them who really cares if some noob can use it or not, for technical people finding it and using would still be easier than writing it themselves.
a friend of mine does large boat electrics and control systems, the interface they have to the engines and statistics monitors/dead man alarms etc is in fact a touch screen core 2 duo, while I'm fairly sure the ones he chose were more cost effective, there are lots of things like these about.
it only really lacks in the video card, more than enough power for any kind of video or audio you could want
I can do all of the above and do so, what I think you will find is the same kind of tinkerers who always have to know how everything works not only become computer geeks, but tend to DIY a lot more, up to the point it becomes non feasable.
If you get your jollys from spending time fighting to get Linux to do what Windows does out of the box, good for you.
or rather, linux users don't like fighting windows to do things that linux can do out of the box, from a straight up install most people using windows install nero, vlc etc to do things linux does straight up. Getting windows to be able to do similar functionality as linux is not a trivial task if you use linux heavily.
Actually I do still have a point which remains: that pro-life doesn't mean anti-choice as claimed, women still have choice even if they don't have access to abortion.
of course they have a choice, but hey a coathanger is messy and it's much safer to have a proper abortion than have the woman try to purposefully lose the fetus.
people will do it regardless of whether it's legal or not, but if it's legal it will be safer
your forgetting nintendo is primarily a gaming company, do any of the things your complaining about effect your day to day playing of a game, no, then it's a secondary concern for them.
as for shovelware games, first party has always been where the quality is on nintendo consoles, because the console is so popular it is suffering what the ps2 did, many crap third party developers with a few gems.
consider the case of Capcom's Resident Evil 4. It was ported from GameCube to PS2 to Wii, with enhancements each time.
not sure what ps2 version you played, but it was really cut down graphically to run smoothly on the ps2, the wii version had similar graphics to the gamecube with updated controls and extras
there was a barcode scanner for the snes too, barcode battler senki used it.
like pieces of fine machinery, a little respect for them will go a long way
Apparently, there are no plans to use something like ODE [ode.org] to give BZflag actual physics. It has options for momentum and basic friction, but they're nigh-always off; Everyone is happy to just drive their inertialess tanks around and jump in parabolic arcs, because that's how the game works.
well it IS how the game works, if you give the ultra fast quake 3 the physics system and settings of serious sam, it changes the game, sure a small minority may like the change, but the point is it is no longer quake3
same with bzflag, it is a fun completely non-realistic tank game, and that's the way the majority of players like it, why should the minority mess up the game for the majority?
If the majority want the changes then indeed fork it and you'll get the new playerbase and developers etc etc. But essentially, your complaining that you can't screw up a perfectly functioning game for the people who maintain it just because you want the game to go in direction x.
take another oss thing, example wesnoth, the turn based strategy, and you want it to go in real-time because that would be cooler for multiplayer, if those drastic changes were introduced, you would have destroyed the game for all the players that liked the game the way it was,
I believe the best reason for projects to fork is differing design goals, if someone just wants an efficient toaster, and you want to design a kiln for smelting things, while they both generate heat, you may wish to split the project
more references needed, but still nice post