Hydro electric power used to be one of the darlings of the energy sector. It was clean, it was safe, it was renewable. The only draw back was the local environmental effects of the dam, changing the river flow, creating a lake; but those were deemed acceptable.
Now the environmental damage caused by building a dam is an all but insurmountable hurdle.
Not to mention labour costs and standards increases that price such megaprojects out of reach.
That's exactly what I was thinking. I agree with more emphasis on lab, and less emphasis on lecture... but dumping lectures, jumping straight to the lab and expecting students learn about X before they show up is just idiotic.
They only hold blobs of bits that you can ask them to retrieve and resend to you. Everything is done local on your device (cellphone, laptop, PC, etc.).
Given that it's a web application, you potentially download new application code each time you use it.
It would be pretty trivial for them to sneak in an update that doesn't do what you expect it to do, and even to serve just targeted individuals malicious code.
So... If the site were ever compromised, or under NSA gag etc, they could inject code, and collect master passwords without you ever knowing.
Of course, these are risks with any web app; but other web apps aren't the master repository for my security credentials, including credentials to corporate property like their domain registrars, vpn credentials, etc; not to mention a one stop identity theft shop.
Of course, that begs the question why not save $20 a year and just do the same thing with a USB key or some sort of storage that you can easily duplicate/synchronize to all your devices? Flag as Inappropriate
Indeed. I personally advocate separating the responsibility for the hosting from the encryption. Encryption should be strictly client side; not 'client side downloaded from the server everytime you need it". Because then you really don't know what you are running each time you visit.
So, something like password gorilla or password safe or keepass running against spideroak, or owncloud... or even dropbox. Because then really doesn't matter if the cloud storage provider gets hacked through and through.
Now its possible password safe etc gets hacked and a malicious download made available, but the updates aren't that regular, it's open source, and I choose when to update, and whether to update. An attack like that would be far less far-reaching or effective. It is far easier for the code to be inspected and vetted, and to establish that I am actually running the code that was inspected, etc than anything in a web app.
No security is perfect, and everyone needs to make their own balance of convenience to security. I feel lastpass is way over on the side of convenience, with the compromises to security inherent in that.
I do something very similar except my prefix is a calculation,
I used to do that. Then sites started having breaches, and that would require me to change the password I used, and the calculation method doesn't cope with that well.
And other sites with goofy rules about password expiration/rotation, or stupid lenth requirements (forcing me to use shorter passwords than i want, or omit punctionation etc...)
It started to be much too difficult to keep in my head all the exceptions to the "rule".
, but he's hands down a better choice than Hillary
Stop deluding yourself. More of the same was "bad". Trump is "worse".
Im guessing that your objection to Trump is more partisan than it is about policy.
Nope. I can't object to his policy because he doesn't have any. I have no objection to him based on partisan grounds... i don't even think he IS a republican. My objection to Trump is that he is incompetent, petty, easily distracted, easily triggered, extremely narcissist, incapable of humility or honesty, incapable of performing his duties, unethical, and corrupt.
I would take McCain over Trump. I would take Romney over Trump. They'd each be far better presidents.
I would take Pence over Trump. I would even take Palin over Trump. And I think both are horrible candidates both with policy and competency issues... but at least they are trying to serve the country in good faith. I may disagree with them vehemently and think they are idiots, but I believe them to be sincere in their desire to better America.
Trump... has no plan, he has no place in the presidency, he's just ad-libbing it while telling himself he's doing a great job, mostly by telling us he's doing a great job -- and not just a great job, but really the best job ever... of any president... except maybe lincoln... maybe. WTFBBQ -- this orange ass-clown is no Lincoln. Even Nixon and Ford are towering giants over him. We'll see if history judges him better than James Buchanan; I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump take the spot of infamy at the bottom of the list.
"Public Persuasion" -- well he did get himself elected so there's that, but lacked the popular vote, and he was running against the highly unlikable, arrogant, Hillary, that even her own party was extremely divided about. And that was his peak.
"Crisis Leadership" -- I'd rate him "counter productive".
"Economic Management" -- is he even participating in the budget in a meaningful way. does tax cuts for himself count?
"Moral authority" -- not from pathological pussy-grabbing liar
"International Relations" - few world leaders want anything to do with him. Nobody is going to go out on a limb for Trump.
"Administrative Skills" -- BWAHAHAHAHAHA; the whitehouse is a revolving door circus and he's the biggest clown there; twitter is official policy now and half the time runs counter to the press secretary.
"Relations with Congress" -- his own party routinely criticises him; he routinely undermines his own party.
"Vision - setting an agenda" -- the ridiculous wall & muslim ban; his only agenda is pandering (badly) for re-election.
"Pursued Equal Justice for All" -- muslim ban, enough said; transgender out of the military, a homophobic VP pick; and he got an official endorsement by the white supremecists... need i go on?
"Performance within Context of Times" -- im not 100% sure what this means, but I'm pretty sure having his staff pepper lots of pictures his own name into reports in the hopes that he might actually read them counts against him here.
I object to Trump because he is not fit to be president, I would object to him running a business I hold shares in, let alone put him at the helm of the United States of America.
Sure... but the default has to be set to something. 53/47 may not be terribly convincing, but in the absence of better data, it doesn't make sense to go against the vote.
OSX is on the left.
Windows is on the right. A lot more people use windows than OSX. Also by default gnome, kde, lxde, xfce, and fluxbox are on the right.
I just don't see an argument for putting them on the left by default. Most people are going to expect them on the right, so I'd be leaning to putting them on the right by default just from all that.
If anything im surprised the poll was as even as it was; I'd expect a wide rigorous poll to come down much more definitively on the right -- it was probably dominated by people already using ubuntu. And putting them on the left ("stay the same") still didn't win.
If your argument is "study it more" sure... I won't disagree, they don't have strong rigorous evidence to back up their decision. But I'm also not sure that getting it is really the best use of their time and resources.
I think I saw it bundled with Acrobat Reader very recently. I just checked now, and it was pushing some intel password management thing... so maybe im mistaken. Maybe Java? Or maybe acrobat rotates the bundles... I admit i don't pay that much attention to it.
leaving digital restrictions management for streaming video as the only significant non-free component of Google Chrome.
I simply don't trust Google/Chrome not to violate my privacy. That's worse than the DRM components.
Turns out, fucking with the technicians (breaking https, because *mozilla* feels i dont need to access my devices until they have a mozilla-approved certificate) was the wrong approach.
Pretty much all the browsers make you jump thorugh hoops now for self-signed certs.
There probably should be a button when the destination is on the same subnet : 'I'm trying to connect to a local device on my LAN, and I know it has a self-signed certificate"
The non-tech-crowd is gone for good anyway ("Hey Chrome is just there on my PC, why would i install that Firefoggs?")...
Hey Edge is just there on my PC, why would i install Chrome?
Once whatever is there is good enough, people stop looking for alternatives. These days Chrome is coasting on a bit of momentum and heavily pushing itself by bundling itself with adobe, nagging to install itself when ever you visit google etc.
One of the things that people forget when they complain that the iPhone isn't always on the bleeding edge is the supply chain issues.
They don't sell 200 million of the iphone 7 plus 256GB though; nor even 200 million iphone 7 plus.
The iphone 7 plus is just 40% of all iphone 7 sales. iphone *7* sales, not iphone sales which also include 6S, 6S Plus, and SE. The SE by itself is around 25% of all iphone sales. So the iphone 7 plus is just 40% of iphone 7 which is likely less than half all iphone sales; so we're down to 30-40 million units a year. That's a lot, but Samsung flagship phones all achieved those kinds of numbers.
If they want to get some bleeding edge tech on their phones, they can just restrict it to their top line SKUs, or introduce an even higher end sku where supply chain issues would be an issue. (But simply bundling anything supply chain constrained with their largest storage skus would more than do it. They make up just a fraction of the total unit sell through; and would bring the numbers down comfortably into the low millions.
Actually no, what makes you think the star trek system can't also be trivially hacked* to listen all the time?
* I wrote 'hacked' but I'm willing to bet "hey computer, quietly record everything going on everywhere on decks 1 - 15 and deliver it to my console" would also work; so more of a 'built in functionality' rather than a 'hack'.
re: clean water vibrator rinsing basic need "Nice try"
re: electricity vibrator charging basic need "Nice try"
I mean sure, nobody is going to dispute the internet has a lot of uses that are irrelevant to democracy, to economic development, etc. Some of those uses are even destructive or criminal. So what? clean water can even be used to drown puppies...I'm not sure that supports any serious argument against it being a public benefit that the government should be involved with providing.
It's not a fundamental need (despite what city folk think would happen to their lives if they were without net access for more than an hour).
I disagree. The internet should be considered a basic need.
It enables communication and participation in civil and political discourse, and facilitates the spread of ideas. And in a society where some have it and some don't the have-nots are missing out on a principle means of participating in government.
It is also fast becoming the principle means of consuming government services, and accessing government documents. Making inquiries, filing documents, etc.
Further, it facilitates economic development, by providing an avenue for commerce -- from connecting people with jobs, to being able to source goods and services.
Finally, it betters social welfare though the availability of information -- from being able to use it to figure out if that spider that just bit you was a brown recluse or a wolf spider. From being able to read up on troubleshooting your furnace, or a tear down guide for your laptop, to how to grow tomatoes, or gut a fish, research a solar installation. etc...
Government should absolutely be treating internet access like a public utility, and striving to make it available to everyone.
In an emergency, you may not be able to be in a "proper" stance.
Sure, you might need to fire a pistol one handed, offhanded, with your primary hand hand and one foot cuffed to a bedframe, because your home got invaded by armed theives while you were in the middle setting up some light BDSM with girlfriend.. could happen to anyone.
And because you are such an American hero type, you've been practicing that kind of shot too... so you might even hit what you are shooting at.
And there shouldn't be a law mandating seatbelts because you know of a guy who was safely thrown from his convertible into a bush when the car rolled off a cliff, caught fire and exploded as it tumbled down, and then it reached the rushing river at the bottom and sank to the bottom, right? Why he'd have been mangled, burned, and drowned if he'd been wearing a seatbelt.:)
The fact that you can come up with scenarios where a smart gun is bad, doesn't mean that its a bad idea. Like seatbelts, its a question of likelihoods and a balance of risks.
I don't think smartguns are where they would need to be yet. But I also don't think its undesirable or impossible to get them there.
What value does a "smart gun" add that can't be had with a safety and/or trigger lock?
*Anybody* can easily turn off the safety. *Nobody* can use a gun with a trigger lock on it. See the problem?
You're saying the optimal proximity range would be about six inches, which means the gun in purse could still be fired by (ex. by a toddler rooting around in there).
Why would that be within 6 inches of the enabler?
The simple safety is enough to prevent that situation.
err... no.
Six inches would also mean that you couldn't fire it with your other hand, should that be necessary, so I'd disagree with that proximity setting. Making it large enough to fire from either hand means 3 to 6 feet, which means the gun next to your bed could be fired by anyone walking in while you're sleeping.
Ok... now I'm curious what your handgun stance looks like?
Worse, if you need a watch/ring/bracelet, you're unlikely to be wearing it while you sleep. And where do you keep it when you take it off?... probably right next to the weapon.
I'm unlikely to be shooting while i sleep too. And I'm not sure why i'd put the 'keys' right next to the weapon, when im not using it. Sure some people would, but those people have a sticky on their monitor with the password too -- i don't think that's a flaw of passwords.
Moreover, I don't sleep with a gun by my pillow in fear of midnight attackers. That is simply not something I live in fear of happening, and it is simply NOT a use case that defines my requirements at all.
Smart guns are also said to prevent stolen weapons from being used, but this article debunks that.
not really. nobody thought it would be impossible to defeat the protection. And the deterrents to theft remain... few people are going to want to buy a gun that is obviously 'hacked'; no legit buyer will touch it; and even criminals won't want the attention it might bring, or the fear that the hack job isn't reliable.
plus the first person I'd be worried about my stolen gun getting used on, is me, in the act of them stealing it... so unless they plan to hack the gun on the spot, it could save my life.
Smart guns may have a place in some special situations, but certainly not across the entire market.
I agree reliability is paramount. I concede it is another system that could fail. But I think in a lot of environements we could get the reliability up to the point that the rare failure to fire when it should would be more than offset by the benefit of it not firing when it shouldn't.
For police, for security, for home owners, etc.
Now I realize the police are dead set against it, and I respect that and understand why. But *if and when* the benefits outweigh the risks it will be rational for them to switch.
If the odds of being killed with your own gun by a criminal during an arrest/confrontation are 1 in 20,000 with a regular gun, and 1 in 200,000 to 1 with a smart gun; that suggests smart guns are worth looking at.
Now suppose the odds of a regular well maintained handgun failing to fire with good ammunition is say 0.5% (due to ammunition issues, mechanical issues, etc).
If the odds of the smart gun failing to fire due to electronic issues was 1 in 100,000; then it too would be dominated by the same issues as non-smart guns. so 0.500001%.
If we could get smart guns to that point, it seems to be a no-brainer... no? If not why not?
The CBS news story presented a document from the 1970s that was supposedly from an IBM Selectric typewriter when in fact it was from an Apple Macintosh using Microsoft Word default settings and a Palatino font
Sure presenting it as the original typed document; would be fairly obvious as forgery. But that doesn't necessarily mean the original doesn't exist somewhere else; and we're looking at a reprint/copy from OCR made 20 years ago on a mac that got then got 'discovered'.
Now, I'm not saying that is the case with George Bush's military service, or even that it is probable or possible in that particular case.
I'm just saying "haha document was printed from word, not on an IBM selectric, case closed" isn't really valid.
I found, for example when cleaning out my office a short story I'd written when I was a kid; typed into a TRS-80 using Telewriter 64, and originally printed on an epson dot matix. But the copy i found in my office, was a reprint I'd made 10 years later on an Apple LaserWriter at one of my first jobs; testing OCR software. The epson source document didn't turn up.
What would font analysis etc "prove" about the time of the original story ? Nothing. It just proves when that copy was made.
"The fact that it's all expensive doesn't mean there still isn't one that's better than the others for his particular needs."
Like what? Which suggestion in this ask-slashdot did you think was the best? Seriously, which one met his needs?
"Besides, what you actually gave him was 'treat your employers like children, and tell them they can't have what they want.'
I didn't say treat the employer like children. I said my children figured out how to supply themselves entertainment when mobile data was too expensive for them, without asking slashdot for help. At worst was suggesting the submitter was using ask slashdot for solutions children could figure out.
I did LATER suggest that if the band fired him for reporting reality doesn't meet their wishes that such an act would make them entitled toddlers... IF they fired him for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hydro electric power used to be one of the darlings of the energy sector. It was clean, it was safe, it was renewable. The only draw back was the local environmental effects of the dam, changing the river flow, creating a lake; but those were deemed acceptable.
Now the environmental damage caused by building a dam is an all but insurmountable hurdle.
Not to mention labour costs and standards increases that price such megaprojects out of reach.
Oh... you probably wanted some cites right?
https://www.marketplace.org/20...
http://wizbangblog.com/2012/07...
http://thehill.com/regulation/...
That's exactly what I was thinking. I agree with more emphasis on lab, and less emphasis on lecture... but dumping lectures, jumping straight to the lab and expecting students learn about X before they show up is just idiotic.
They only hold blobs of bits that you can ask them to retrieve and resend to you. Everything is done local on your device (cellphone, laptop, PC, etc.).
Given that it's a web application, you potentially download new application code each time you use it.
It would be pretty trivial for them to sneak in an update that doesn't do what you expect it to do, and even to serve just targeted individuals malicious code.
So ... If the site were ever compromised, or under NSA gag etc, they could inject code, and collect master passwords without you ever knowing.
Of course, these are risks with any web app; but other web apps aren't the master repository for my security credentials, including credentials to corporate property like their domain registrars, vpn credentials, etc; not to mention a one stop identity theft shop.
Of course, that begs the question why not save $20 a year and just do the same thing with a USB key or some sort of storage that you can easily duplicate/synchronize to all your devices?
Flag as Inappropriate
Indeed. I personally advocate separating the responsibility for the hosting from the encryption. Encryption should be strictly client side; not 'client side downloaded from the server everytime you need it". Because then you really don't know what you are running each time you visit.
So, something like password gorilla or password safe or keepass running against spideroak, or owncloud... or even dropbox. Because then really doesn't matter if the cloud storage provider gets hacked through and through.
Now its possible password safe etc gets hacked and a malicious download made available, but the updates aren't that regular, it's open source, and I choose when to update, and whether to update. An attack like that would be far less far-reaching or effective. It is far easier for the code to be inspected and vetted, and to establish that I am actually running the code that was inspected, etc than anything in a web app.
No security is perfect, and everyone needs to make their own balance of convenience to security. I feel lastpass is way over on the side of convenience, with the compromises to security inherent in that.
I do something very similar except my prefix is a calculation,
I used to do that. Then sites started having breaches, and that would require me to change the password I used, and the calculation method doesn't cope with that well.
And other sites with goofy rules about password expiration/rotation, or stupid lenth requirements (forcing me to use shorter passwords than i want, or omit punctionation etc...)
It started to be much too difficult to keep in my head all the exceptions to the "rule".
That's probably how the vote was so close too a bunch of dyslexics all clicked left when they meant right. :p
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=xfce...
, but he's hands down a better choice than Hillary
Stop deluding yourself. More of the same was "bad". Trump is "worse".
Im guessing that your objection to Trump is more partisan than it is about policy.
Nope. I can't object to his policy because he doesn't have any. I have no objection to him based on partisan grounds... i don't even think he IS a republican. My objection to Trump is that he is incompetent, petty, easily distracted, easily triggered, extremely narcissist, incapable of humility or honesty, incapable of performing his duties, unethical, and corrupt.
I would take McCain over Trump. I would take Romney over Trump. They'd each be far better presidents.
I would take Pence over Trump. I would even take Palin over Trump. And I think both are horrible candidates both with policy and competency issues... but at least they are trying to serve the country in good faith. I may disagree with them vehemently and think they are idiots, but I believe them to be sincere in their desire to better America.
Trump... has no plan, he has no place in the presidency, he's just ad-libbing it while telling himself he's doing a great job, mostly by telling us he's doing a great job -- and not just a great job, but really the best job ever... of any president... except maybe lincoln... maybe. WTFBBQ -- this orange ass-clown is no Lincoln. Even Nixon and Ford are towering giants over him. We'll see if history judges him better than James Buchanan; I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump take the spot of infamy at the bottom of the list.
https://www.c-span.org/preside...
Look at the criteria --
"Public Persuasion" -- well he did get himself elected so there's that, but lacked the popular vote, and he was running against the highly unlikable, arrogant, Hillary, that even her own party was extremely divided about. And that was his peak.
"Crisis Leadership" -- I'd rate him "counter productive".
"Economic Management" -- is he even participating in the budget in a meaningful way. does tax cuts for himself count?
"Moral authority" -- not from pathological pussy-grabbing liar
"International Relations" - few world leaders want anything to do with him. Nobody is going to go out on a limb for Trump.
"Administrative Skills" -- BWAHAHAHAHAHA; the whitehouse is a revolving door circus and he's the biggest clown there; twitter is official policy now and half the time runs counter to the press secretary.
"Relations with Congress" -- his own party routinely criticises him; he routinely undermines his own party.
"Vision - setting an agenda" -- the ridiculous wall & muslim ban; his only agenda is pandering (badly) for re-election.
"Pursued Equal Justice for All" -- muslim ban, enough said; transgender out of the military, a homophobic VP pick; and he got an official endorsement by the white supremecists... need i go on?
"Performance within Context of Times" -- im not 100% sure what this means, but I'm pretty sure having his staff pepper lots of pictures his own name into reports in the hopes that he might actually read them counts against him here.
I object to Trump because he is not fit to be president, I would object to him running a business I hold shares in, let alone put him at the helm of the United States of America.
Sure... but the default has to be set to something. 53/47 may not be terribly convincing, but in the absence of better data, it doesn't make sense to go against the vote.
OSX is on the left.
Windows is on the right. A lot more people use windows than OSX.
Also by default gnome, kde, lxde, xfce, and fluxbox are on the right.
I just don't see an argument for putting them on the left by default. Most people are going to expect them on the right, so I'd be leaning to putting them on the right by default just from all that.
If anything im surprised the poll was as even as it was; I'd expect a wide rigorous poll to come down much more definitively on the right -- it was probably dominated by people already using ubuntu. And putting them on the left ("stay the same") still didn't win.
If your argument is "study it more" sure... I won't disagree, they don't have strong rigorous evidence to back up their decision. But I'm also not sure that getting it is really the best use of their time and resources.
Because setting defaults that the least number of users will want or need to change is just common sense.
I have better things to do than to spend hours changing all the defaults. The more defaults that are right for the most users the better.
One of which still needs to be the default.
Adobe what?
I think I saw it bundled with Acrobat Reader very recently. I just checked now, and it was pushing some intel password management thing... so maybe im mistaken. Maybe Java? Or maybe acrobat rotates the bundles... I admit i don't pay that much attention to it.
leaving digital restrictions management for streaming video as the only significant non-free component of Google Chrome.
I simply don't trust Google/Chrome not to violate my privacy. That's worse than the DRM components.
It is configurable.
It still needs a default.
Turns out, fucking with the technicians (breaking https, because *mozilla* feels i dont need to access my devices until they have a mozilla-approved certificate) was the wrong approach.
Pretty much all the browsers make you jump thorugh hoops now for self-signed certs.
There probably should be a button when the destination is on the same subnet : 'I'm trying to connect to a local device on my LAN, and I know it has a self-signed certificate"
The non-tech-crowd is gone for good anyway ("Hey Chrome is just there on my PC, why would i install that Firefoggs?")...
Hey Edge is just there on my PC, why would i install Chrome?
Once whatever is there is good enough, people stop looking for alternatives. These days Chrome is coasting on a bit of momentum and heavily pushing itself by bundling itself with adobe, nagging to install itself when ever you visit google etc.
So what? We will deal with the problems when the happen like we always do.
Raising the issues is the first step of dealing with them.
Why would you argue to shut down that discussion?
One of the things that people forget when they complain that the iPhone isn't always on the bleeding edge is the supply chain issues.
They don't sell 200 million of the iphone 7 plus 256GB though; nor even 200 million iphone 7 plus.
The iphone 7 plus is just 40% of all iphone 7 sales. iphone *7* sales, not iphone sales which also include 6S, 6S Plus, and SE. The SE by itself is around 25% of all iphone sales. So the iphone 7 plus is just 40% of iphone 7 which is likely less than half all iphone sales; so we're down to 30-40 million units a year. That's a lot, but Samsung flagship phones all achieved those kinds of numbers.
If they want to get some bleeding edge tech on their phones, they can just restrict it to their top line SKUs, or introduce an even higher end sku where supply chain issues would be an issue. (But simply bundling anything supply chain constrained with their largest storage skus would more than do it. They make up just a fraction of the total unit sell through; and would bring the numbers down comfortably into the low millions.
Actually no, what makes you think the star trek system can't also be trivially hacked* to listen all the time?
* I wrote 'hacked' but I'm willing to bet "hey computer, quietly record everything going on everywhere on decks 1 - 15 and deliver it to my console" would also work; so more of a 'built in functionality' rather than a 'hack'.
>free porn
>basic need
Nice try.
re: clean water
vibrator rinsing
basic need
"Nice try"
re: electricity
vibrator charging
basic need
"Nice try"
I mean sure, nobody is going to dispute the internet has a lot of uses that are irrelevant to democracy, to economic development, etc. Some of those uses are even destructive or criminal. So what? clean water can even be used to drown puppies...I'm not sure that supports any serious argument against it being a public benefit that the government should be involved with providing.
It's not a fundamental need (despite what city folk think would happen to their lives if they were without net access for more than an hour).
I disagree. The internet should be considered a basic need.
It enables communication and participation in civil and political discourse, and facilitates the spread of ideas. And in a society where some have it and some don't the have-nots are missing out on a principle means of participating in government.
It is also fast becoming the principle means of consuming government services, and accessing government documents. Making inquiries, filing documents, etc.
Further, it facilitates economic development, by providing an avenue for commerce -- from connecting people with jobs, to being able to source goods and services.
Finally, it betters social welfare though the availability of information -- from being able to use it to figure out if that spider that just bit you was a brown recluse or a wolf spider. From being able to read up on troubleshooting your furnace, or a tear down guide for your laptop, to how to grow tomatoes, or gut a fish, research a solar installation. etc...
Government should absolutely be treating internet access like a public utility, and striving to make it available to everyone.
The answer is no. Smart cities will not violate our privacy.
Yeah, i'd say that too, if the city was watching. You don't want to piss it off.
"When in the last 10 years has a "Smart" Anything been a good idea?"
They aren't cloud-connected or internet enabled, you are trying to tar them with a brush that doesn't apply here.
In an emergency, you may not be able to be in a "proper" stance.
Sure, you might need to fire a pistol one handed, offhanded, with your primary hand hand and one foot cuffed to a bedframe, because your home got invaded by armed theives while you were in the middle setting up some light BDSM with girlfriend.. could happen to anyone.
And because you are such an American hero type, you've been practicing that kind of shot too... so you might even hit what you are shooting at.
And there shouldn't be a law mandating seatbelts because you know of a guy who was safely thrown from his convertible into a bush when the car rolled off a cliff, caught fire and exploded as it tumbled down, and then it reached the rushing river at the bottom and sank to the bottom, right? Why he'd have been mangled, burned, and drowned if he'd been wearing a seatbelt. :)
The fact that you can come up with scenarios where a smart gun is bad, doesn't mean that its a bad idea. Like seatbelts, its a question of likelihoods and a balance of risks.
I don't think smartguns are where they would need to be yet. But I also don't think its undesirable or impossible to get them there.
What value does a "smart gun" add that can't be had with a safety and/or trigger lock?
*Anybody* can easily turn off the safety.
*Nobody* can use a gun with a trigger lock on it.
See the problem?
You're saying the optimal proximity range would be about six inches, which means the gun in purse could still be fired by (ex. by a toddler rooting around in there).
Why would that be within 6 inches of the enabler?
The simple safety is enough to prevent that situation.
err... no.
Six inches would also mean that you couldn't fire it with your other hand, should that be necessary, so I'd disagree with that proximity setting. Making it large enough to fire from either hand means 3 to 6 feet, which means the gun next to your bed could be fired by anyone walking in while you're sleeping.
Ok... now I'm curious what your handgun stance looks like?
https://www.pewpewtactical.com...
Because it really shouldn't matter what hand you use when you are in anything resembling a proper stance...
https://assets.shootingillustr...
Worse, if you need a watch/ring/bracelet, you're unlikely to be wearing it while you sleep. And where do you keep it when you take it off? ... probably right next to the weapon.
I'm unlikely to be shooting while i sleep too. And I'm not sure why i'd put the 'keys' right next to the weapon, when im not using it. Sure some people would, but those people have a sticky on their monitor with the password too -- i don't think that's a flaw of passwords.
Moreover, I don't sleep with a gun by my pillow in fear of midnight attackers. That is simply not something I live in fear of happening, and it is simply NOT a use case that defines my requirements at all.
Smart guns are also said to prevent stolen weapons from being used, but this article debunks that.
not really. nobody thought it would be impossible to defeat the protection. And the deterrents to theft remain ... few people are going to want to buy a gun that is obviously 'hacked'; no legit buyer will touch it; and even criminals won't want the attention it might bring, or the fear that the hack job isn't reliable.
plus the first person I'd be worried about my stolen gun getting used on, is me, in the act of them stealing it... so unless they plan to hack the gun on the spot, it could save my life.
Smart guns may have a place in some special situations, but certainly not across the entire market.
I agree reliability is paramount. I concede it is another system that could fail. But I think in a lot of environements we could get the reliability up to the point that the rare failure to fire when it should would be more than offset by the benefit of it not firing when it shouldn't.
For police, for security, for home owners, etc.
Now I realize the police are dead set against it, and I respect that and understand why. But *if and when* the benefits outweigh the risks it will be rational for them to switch.
If the odds of being killed with your own gun by a criminal during an arrest/confrontation are 1 in 20,000 with a regular gun, and 1 in 200,000 to 1 with a smart gun; that suggests smart guns are worth looking at.
Now suppose the odds of a regular well maintained handgun failing to fire with good ammunition is say 0.5% (due to ammunition issues, mechanical issues, etc).
If the odds of the smart gun failing to fire due to electronic issues was 1 in 100,000; then it too would be dominated by the same issues as non-smart guns. so 0.500001%.
If we could get smart guns to that point, it seems to be a no-brainer... no? If not why not?
The CBS news story presented a document from the 1970s that was supposedly from an IBM Selectric typewriter when in fact it was from an Apple Macintosh using Microsoft Word default settings and a Palatino font
Sure presenting it as the original typed document; would be fairly obvious as forgery. But that doesn't necessarily mean the original doesn't exist somewhere else; and we're looking at a reprint/copy from OCR made 20 years ago on a mac that got then got 'discovered'.
Now, I'm not saying that is the case with George Bush's military service, or even that it is probable or possible in that particular case.
I'm just saying "haha document was printed from word, not on an IBM selectric, case closed" isn't really valid.
I found, for example when cleaning out my office a short story I'd written when I was a kid; typed into a TRS-80 using Telewriter 64, and originally printed on an epson dot matix. But the copy i found in my office, was a reprint I'd made 10 years later on an Apple LaserWriter at one of my first jobs; testing OCR software. The epson source document didn't turn up.
What would font analysis etc "prove" about the time of the original story ? Nothing. It just proves when that copy was made.
!g is shorter than !google.
!b is bing if you ever need it.
I also use !gi (google images) and !gm (google maps) regularly.
"The fact that it's all expensive doesn't mean there still isn't one that's better than the others for his particular needs."
Like what? Which suggestion in this ask-slashdot did you think was the best? Seriously, which one met his needs?
"Besides, what you actually gave him was 'treat your employers like children, and tell them they can't have what they want.'
I didn't say treat the employer like children. I said my children figured out how to supply themselves entertainment when mobile data was too expensive for them, without asking slashdot for help. At worst was suggesting the submitter was using ask slashdot for solutions children could figure out.
I did LATER suggest that if the band fired him for reporting reality doesn't meet their wishes that such an act would make them entitled toddlers... IF they fired him for it.