Actively working on it by failing to agree to a solution to your massive debt and deficit problems?
Meanwhile our budget deficit is on course to being dealt with within a few years.
With the Fed's latest move, it doesn't even sound like even your own financial oversight folks have any faith that your problems will be anything like on their way to being solved any time soon.
That's also why even China feels it has the moral authority to lecture you about your financial situation now. If you can't see that you're an empire on it's last legs in the face of a rising China and India, then, well, that sucks to be you as it'll make it all the more painful for you.
"Guns give an individual of any strength or gender at least an equal chance against criminals"
This fallacy assumes that the criminal doesn't get the jump on you, which, when they're the ones knowing they're going to commit the crime, means they have the initiative.
This is why, despite your theory, it doesn't work out this way in practice. It's also a problem that a criminal will commonly be more willing to shoot a person, than a non-criminal be willing to shoot someone, even if they are a criminal.
"Unless you are trained you will lose against a street thug in physical combat--and even if you are you will lose against two of them."
With guns, you'll lose against whoever raises their fire arm and shoots you before you even have a chance to reach for yours. I don't see how this is a better scenario.
"Forfeiting your right to a gun means you are trusting your life to the grace of criminals (who are practical enough to retain all their rights)."
Fighting for a right to have guns, means you are putting more guns into the hands of criminals than they could possibly obtain. It means more people capable of killing having the means to do so.
This is once again illustrated by America's high level of gun crime, and this is the fundamental point those of you arguing against me fail to address.
If guns help to protect you, and to make the world a safer place, why has America got orders of magnitude more murders, more gun homicide? and more gun massacres (particularly ones where the perp shoots himself at the end, and isn't in fact stopped by some heroic citizen shooting him)?
"It's only a matter of time. Wish I were wrong, don't think I am. Time will tell."
A matter of time for what? baton round usage and water cannon usage against rioters? probably, if the riots carry on. But if you're talking about opening fire on crowds? I'm struggling to see what kind of circumstance would bring British fire arms units up against a crowd, and where they would then open fire- that's just not how our firearms units are used and deployed. Meanwhile, you're already at least 40 years ahead of us on this either way:
"First of all, our retarded gun nuttery is your retarded gun nuttery, because we inherited it from you."
Yes, the difference is, we grew up.
"You have simply outlawed it, with the effect that only criminals have guns."
Only some criminals have access to very limited number of guns, and an equally limited amount of ammunition you mean? This is much better than all criminals having the ability to trivially access all kinds of firearms, and as much ammunition as they really want.
"So while gun suicide is on the rise, gun deaths are falling overall, suggesting that we have a handle on the problem."
Yes, falling slowly, but still well above that of just about every other developed nation. I'm not sure that that's having a handle on the problem. For what it's worth, it's falling in the UK too, from it's already low starting point.
"On the other hand, your culture is provably less free than ours."
But does it matter? This idea that greater freedom = greater good is false, clearly the freedom to murder whoever you wanted is unacceptable, and clearly some freedoms are not necessarily a good thing. The freedom for Westboro' to picket the funerals of greiving families is a freedom we in the UK do not want, so sure maybe we are less free, but fundamentally as long as the population is happier, healthier, and suffers lower murder rates and our political system is much healthier, in that we can bring politicians to account over things like the expenses scandal, and we can hold Murdoch's empire to account over things like phone hacking then who cares about some arbitrary measure of freedom? It's not as if the government is interfering in our lives to a particularly problematic degree, and when Labour tried to do just that, they suffered catastrophic electoral defeat, and, as it happens, things like libel laws are, as a result, being reformed.
"You're out of natural resources and useful allies."
Really? You mean apart from the whole of Europe? the fact we still have very strong ties to our old colonies in India and other parts of Asia? But you may want to be careful what you wish for- in contrast to America, we ARE your last useful ally.
As for natural resources, well, North Sea oil reserves are still greater than the reserves most other countries in the world have, so I think we don't need to worry about that for a while, not to mention our consumption is lower. Did you know the US uses more than 3 times the amount of oil a day as China does despite having 1/4th the population, whilst China, Europe and so forth have far greater green energy programmes than the US? I think you have much more to worry about when it comes to natural resources than us, because you're far more dependent.
"Without projecting imperialism as the USA is doing you have no future except as just another soon-to-be-homogenized member of the EU. That's a good thing for the world but not for your quality of life."
Are you sure about that? The EU is a larger economy than the US, has lower levels of crime, longer life expectancy, lower levels of infant mortality, higher average levels of education, lower levels of crime, higher levels of personal happiness. All in all, it sounds fucking fantastic for our quality of life. Even better, Britain is now one of the brightest economies in the Western hemisphere because we're one of the few that have b
"It wasn't just one store, but many, that were defended by their owners during the Rodney King Riots. He just happened to cite only one."
Right, but it doesn't matter, because the fundamental point is that the net damage was still far worse in LA, and the level of deaths was still higher.
People were defending their communities in the UK the last couple of nights too, the difference is that because the criminals didn't have guns, they didn't need them either. A simple intimidating prescence is enough to scare most rioters and looters off. Hence, it's not a sensible argument for lax gun control.
"furthermore, lets not insinuate that all 53 people died by gunshots, they most certainly did not, but I'm sure that little insinuation doesn't help in any case to enflame your argument right? actually the number is right around 36"
No let's not, which is why I didn't but let's not let reading comprehension get in the way of your ability to fail to make a point. Anyway, back to the point in hand, I'm glad you cleared up the fact that only 36 died by gun shots, this obviously helps demonstrate how useful guns were in preventing deaths. Oh wait, no, it doesn't- it proves that when you bring guns into the equation, people are likely to die to them. 36 people in fact, which is 36 people who died to gunshots in LA's riots than in the UK's riots, which er, nicely backs up my fundamental point that guns do not keep people safe but more likely do the opposite. So thanks for that.
It doesn't really matter what per-state gun laws are. The fact is that the availability of a much wider range of guns, and much greater amounts of amunition across the US have left you with nothing to show for it other than higher levels of gun crime, and general murder per head of population. Your right to carry a gun has not made you safer- and whatever minor points you want to argue and niggle over here and there, that's the raw truth. Hence, it's a fallacy to imply carrying guns helps make the US a safer place. Clearly it absolutely and unquestionably does not. It's a failed experiment.
Right, that's a very interesting little tale you've told.
So how do you square your little fairy tale against your drastically higher levels of gun crime, and drastically higher murder rates per head of population? Or do you prefer to keep things like "facts" out of your stories preferring to keep them purely fictional?
Oh and:
"We have the right to kill in self-defense. We use it. You don't. When a thug breaks into a home in the US, their death at the hands of a homeowner is usually met with approval as it should be."
Difference is, we don't need guns to defend our homes, because when the sort of criminals who resort to crimes like burglary don't have guns, why would we need them? Or what, do you also believe burglars in the US don't have guns, when they know home owners do?
"We already took lessons from you. Our cops kill our citizens all the time"
Here it happens once every year or so, in your country it happens every week. I'm not sure that's something you want to be bragging about.
"The difference is that in our country you can theoretically shoot back, which might make them a LITTLE less likely to open up on a crowd."
Yeah because of course our cops do that don't they, they open up on crowds. Oh wait no they don't, in fact they've not to this point even deployed baton rounds, or water cannons. In fact, we don't even own any water cannons in the UK. So much for firing upon crowds I guess. Perhaps you got a bit confused, maybe you're thinking of Syria? I know Americans aren't renowned for their geography skills but I think you'll find that's about a few thousand miles East of us. Oh, that's the same Syria where handguns are legal by the way, looks like it's working out really well for them.
"Of course, most people who carry guns don't go to riots. They're busy trying to stay OUT of trouble."
Well, except those who actually did, and actually shot people dead in the likes of the LA riots- yes, apart from those. As long as we exclude those you're right, just like if we say all Americans are of Chinese origin it's true, as long as you include those who aren't of course.
"Meanwhile, you still seem to have gun crime."
Yes, but apparently the concept of "scale" is a tough one for you to grasp. Really, it's not hard. Gun crime can never be completely and utterly irradicated, what matters is that gun crime per head of population, and overally murder rates and so forth are drastically lower in the UK than the US. Scale. Go learn about it.
"Further, your government is even more repressive than ours."
Yes, it's absolutely terrible. It's so repressive that I'm forced to not have to worry about paying for my healthcare and things like that. I just don't know how we make it day to day. Every day I wish and pray so hard we lived in the land of warrantless wiretapping, guantanamo bay, and extraordinary rendition.
"How's not being armed working out for you in your 1984-esque surveillance society?"
Quite well actually. Sensible healthcare, lower murder rates, much lower prison population per head of population, and a political system that gives more options than just right wing corporate puppets, or very right wing corporate puppets to name a few benefits.
Really, I'm not particularly one to pretend Britain is perfect, far from it, a lot needs to change. But that wasn't my point was it? my point was that in response to the person above- I'm fucking glad we don't have your retarded gun nuttery, because for all the benefits you think it gives you, all you've really got to show for it are a whole bunch of pretty fucking embrassing crime statistics. It's one problem I'd rather not see added to the problems we do have thanks.
But keep telling yourself your country is perfect, and you're so incredibly free, and that Britain is so much worse. Meanwhile the rest of the world will keep chuckling about how naive you are.
Because then criminals have even more guns, and non-criminals become criminals because it's much easier for them to use guns where they otherwise would not have, and because non-criminals through sheer stupidity manage to accidentally discharge their guns killing other innocent people.
If you're a heavily depressed person, why just kill yourself when it's trivial to buy a fire arm and go out with one hell of a bang, getting revenge and making a point in the process? Kinda like Derrick Bird did here in the UK, as a legal gun owner of the few types of firearms that are legal in our country. You really think someone in that state of mind, and with those financial problems making him cold hard broke would've been able to figure out how to get one on the black market and do what he did when many criminals even struggle to get hold of them?
I wouldn't say it's because of race, but I do think there's more too it than that. We have some equally poor Kosovan communities around here but they would never dream of this and are appalled by it. That's not to say it's racial, but I don't think it's merely because of poverty either.
I think there's a strong cultural element here too. Certainly there has been some evidence for this in the past- Somali populations in Bristol, and Nigerian populations in Birmingham most certainly brought with them some of the gang culture of their homelands when they immigrated into this country.
It's a tough problem to solve because culture does correlate so closely with race a lot of the time and so gets hijacked by the far right and turns into an attack on race, and so attempts to suggest cultural change for immigrants brings down cries of racism, and complaints about how we're trying to dilute their cultural identity. So what's the solution?
The worst part is that part of some cultural attitudes even seem to be at the root of the poverty. The Polish communities in the UK have no inherent advantage and in fact have had much less time to establish than many other groups (often they have as big, if not bigger language barrier), and yet they seem to be integrating very well- most have jobs, and their work ethic in general is excellent. I had a young Polish guy knock on my door the other day trying to sell paintings he'd done of the countryside around our area and I bought one because they were great. It's precisely that type of cultural attitude that matters- he may not be able to find a job, so what does he do? well, he makes one for himself. It may not pay much at all, but at least he's doing something- importantly, at least it means he's maintained a strong degree of self-respect, which is precisely what the rioters have lost.
I'm not sure what the solution is, you have to be careful not to conflate race and culture despite the close correlation, but if you recognise it as a cultural problem then you run the risk of being called racist by people who prefer to just try and cover over the problems,than discuss and deal with them. Even if you can debate it with people who accept it as a possible cultural problem, then you run into a further issue, and that's whether it's more important to allow people to maintain their cultural identity even if it runs counter to the values of the country that person, or group of people has immigrated into, or whether you avoid cultural conflict at the cost of forcing people to accept cultural change.
I think that's probably true. They've arrested 600+ already. Let's be honest, most of those arrests are probably because the police knew exactly who the people in CCTV images etc. were as soon as they saw them.
A lot of them will be caught in the coming weeks and months. Most don't realise many modern devices like iPhones, XBox's etc. have unique identifiers such that if they ever use them online they'll almost certainly be flagged up and the police will be round to their house in no time where they can do them for stolen goods.
The jail cell shortage is no big deal, a criminal record and community service to clean up the areas they fucked up and then some will be a good enough response to many of the lesser offenders who just grabbed stuff and ran - effectively shoplifters. Save the jail cells for those who broke in in the first place, smashed up police cars, and most importantly- the arsonists. There'll be plenty of room for them.
If you can't see the obvious problem in your post, then you're retarded.
America has some of the most lax gun laws in the world.
America still managed to suffer far worse riots than the UK has.
As an aside, how many people did the rioters themselves shoot in those riots with legitimately owned guns? No? don't want to answer that? According to Wikipedia 53 people died. Thus far only one person has died in the UK and he was shot by a rival gang with an illegal firearm.
Oh, but because one guy defended one shop, it's worth opening the tide of higher murder rates, and greater burden on health care that accidental and intentional gun wounds cause.
Yeah, I think we'll pass thanks. That's a hell of a price to pay for one guy to be able to defend one shop.
Oh, and for what it's worth you can have guns here. Just not things like automatic rifles and easily concealed pistols. You can have things like shotguns, and hunting rifles, but, well, even having them legal has led to questionable benefits:
Criminals will find weapons regardless, but much better that the chavs are busy with knives against which there is at least some ability to defend or run from or at worst passing round the odd, knackered old fire arm with limited ammunition than all armed up with well maintained fully automatic weapons, and as much ammunition as they'd ever want to buy.
No, you can keep your guns. With nearly 5 times our murder rate per head of population, most of which are a result of firearms incidents. As for Russia, well, their murder rate makes America's look good- at around 10 times our murder rate per head of population.
Perhaps you should take lessons from us instead? no? the NRA and tea party nut jobs wont let you? That's a shame.
Yes, except the sorts of scrotes involved in these riots are the sort of chav underclass who until now probably have never stepped outside their own estate.
Thus, the chance of any decent amount of them having a passport- something which is optional in the UK, is pretty much nil.
The Ping of Death had nothing to do with bandwidth flooding, it was a packet that would instantly just crash Windows as is quite clearly mentioned in the summary. It wouldn't matter if you were on a 14.4 modem, or a 1gbps pipe. It'd still crash vulnerable versions of Windows straight away.
It's only a loaded term if you have a belief that vigilantism is always inherently bad.
Personally, I'm not convinced it is, so to see them called vigilantes doesn't give me a bad impression those folks.
Sometimes vigilantes can be real heroes, sometimes they can be complete idiots. Take the case in hand and decide for yourself what kind of vigilantes they are, don't assume they're always inherently bad.
I know that's the popular view but I'm not convinced it's true.
They show all the sentiment of the far right- their sentiment and demands aligns directly with the BNP, but they hate homosexuals etc. to boot. The only difference is they pretend to hate the BNP because to support them isn't cool with the zeitgeist, but ultimately their policies align near perfectly.
The Daily Mail reports that immigrants are to blame for things that they are simply not- Hitler similarly said Jews were to blame for things they were not.
Really, the only reason The Daily Mail isn't more vividly expressing their far right beliefs is because they know they haven't quite managed to sway public sentiment that far yet. I'd bet money that if the BNP had public support to the level of say 20% - 30%, that The Daily Mail would be right behind them.
One thing's for sure- they wouldn't rally against them.
I don't think it's worth keeping up the charade The Daily Mail wants kept up, let's call a spade a spade- let's be realistic about what they really think, and what they'd really publish if they felt they could get away with it.
A final point is that whilst yes, I realise The Daily Mail doesn't advocate murder of minorities like the Nazis did, let's be clear here- you don't have to go to anything like this extreme to be far right.
The likes of The Telegraph and The Conservative Party are right wing, advocating things like fairly strict immigration caps, but little more. The Daily Mail, BNP, UKIP with their rampant xenophobia and cries for immigrants to be banned entirely/almost entirely blaming many of societies ills on them and even claiming they should be deported? Talk of racial profiling? That's far right.
Agreed. This year there's been no iPhone 5 yet, the iPad 2 was a lacklustre update and iOS5 merely adds a few features Android has had forever lack the taskbar.
All we've seen from Apple this year is patent trolling, so is that it now? Apple's innovation spree has hit a brick wall and it's got to be all about the patent trolling now?
It's pathetic.
Come on Apple, you were better than this, you sparked a smartphone revolution, and now that revolution has run ahead of you you want to kill it?
Well I wouldn't worry, the headline is sensationalist. Whilst many places have said technology was involved most media outlets have been quite measured in talking about it. The BBC ran an article today basically absolving it of blame saying that the likes of The Daily Mail misquoted Twitter users (quite gross misquotes too- blatant, horrendous level of misquoting).
The point has been made by most measured outlets that technology has actually better facilitated voluntary cleanup operations than the riots themselves. It's only the verging on far right wing fringe - the fringe that inherently must be irrational to have the hypocritical viewpoints it does - that support the "technology is bad" idea like The Daily Mail etc.
I don't think there's much popular support for blaming technology nowadays- a recent report said over 33% of adults have smart phones now in the UK, which inevitably means some of those are the older generation. I think even the older "get off my lawn" generation are beginning to realise the benefits of new technology to some extent, so the argument isn't even really popular amongst large swathes of even The Daily Mail's ignorant readerbase now
It's like when music was blamed for violence/drug use, then movies for violence, I think we're finally reaching the point where people are beginning to realise that, well, that ideology is fucking stupid when applied to technology in general too and the only thing to blame for violence, is people.
I'd argue the technology is to blame for x mentality is a lost battle already. I just wish it'd breathe it's last dying breath that little bit quicker, but it's almost there.
That way they can continue spending even more resources attacking non-sites which means less resources available for blowing up and shooting innocent civilians in their own towns and cities.
Because it takes centre stage, and with Microsoft making Windows 8 support ARM, means it's the environment of choice for developing Windows apps because it means they'll just work between x64 PCs, ARM tablets, and whatever else you stick Windows on.
The C# language itself is rapidly improving too, C#2 bought forward things like generics, and better delegate syntax. C#3 brought forward LINQ, and Lambda expressions amongst other things, and now C#4 brings us dynamic types again, amongst other things. The language is coming along in leaps and bounds, evolving far more effectively than Java is managing right now.
"Rather, it's amazing that.NET made it this far, while Microsoft itself (apart from its development division) hasn't used it for basically anything (that was released, anyway)"
You mean apart from Dynamics, Sharepoint, parts of Visual Studio, Office, SQL Server, and building Windows Phone 7 almost entirely around it? That's an odd definition of not used for "basically anything". With.NET being their strategy to avoid platform dependence on Windows 8, and being used to enable development on the 360, and being at the core of Windows Phone, whilst also heavily improving things like ASP.NET MVC you've got a really dire understanding of Microsoft's future with it.
To then jump from your complete understanding of Microsoft's roadmap, to suggesting the Windows group upper management hates it is an impressive feat of retardedness. So well done with that.
The facts your facing, aren't facts in the world the rest of us live in, only in your little world of ignorance.
"You're puzzled who might be behind the propoganda because, perhaps, its not propoganda."
Exactly. I'm suprised the GP is so puzzled trying to find the mystical actor behind rumours that can't quite possibly true, whilst missing the more realistic, and most sane explanation- that the rumour is in fact true.
I don't know why it's so difficult to grasp. When the iPhone was the most popular smartphone platform for a while it was also getting the most vulnerabilities and exploits against it, now Android is.
It's not really rocket science, attackers will go where there's most to be gained from the attack, and that's often the platform with the most users.
Arguing against this, and saying there most be some secret actor working covertly to spread a rumour, for some unspecified gain which even the GP himself can't even figure out is irrational. It's the same mindset that people use to convince themselves that evolution can't possibly be real because they don't like the sound of god not being part of the cause of the living things on our planet, and so just insist there's something else, they just can't explain who or what that something else is when pressed- all they've decided is that the science led explanation is wrong and that's all there is to it.
It's Occam's Razor, there doesn't need to be some fantasy actor behind it all with unknown subversive goals, it could simply just be the truth instead. Why go searching for a conspiracy theory when a far more explainable, perfectly feasible, but most importantly, much more simple explanation is sat right in front of you?
Re:Can the developers take over again, please?
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The Next Firefox UI
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That's a retarded comparison. Back in the DOS days people using computers were vastly smaller in number, and those doing it then, are the ones happy to use Linux now, the problem is they're a minority due to the rapid growth computing saw since the DOS days. Millions used it back then- great, the problem is, millions isn't many amongst the billions of computer users that exist nowadays. Those millions from the DOS days probably make up less than 5% of computer users.
If you think a terminal is an acceptable UI for the vast majority of users in the modern world you're living in cloud cuckoo land. Even if users are capable of figuring it out, why would they when they can just use Windows and not to have to?
"... and people here told me I was an idiot and didn't know what I was talking about and on and on and on. Good to know, at least, I'm not the only one."
Yes, the problem with your self-congratulation is that both you and the article are wrong.
"the application programming API for the migration to the next Windows OS which isn't Win32/64 compatible. Microsoft still doesn't have the balls to shift to a brand new OS the way Apple did."
Why would they want to kill their desktop business and fuck over 90% of the World's businesses as a result? that seems a little dumb. Legacy support and backwards compat. are a fundamental reason why Microsoft are successful.
But to answer your question this is kind of the point of.NET, the more Microsoft can move onto it the easier it is to make fundamental shifts. If you hadn't noticed they'd done it to an extent though, Windows Phone 7 - different architecture, different OS, supports.NET code. Windows 8 is going to support ARM, and, suprise suprise,.NET apps will run just fine on it.
"The number of times I just wanted to download an app and have it run, only to be foiled by an out of date version of the.NET framework... which was also freaking HUGE!"
Well, seeing as there's only been 4 (or 6 if you include 3.5 and 1.1) versions of the.NET framework I would imagine by number of times, you could only actually mean at most, 5.
As they were released in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010 respectively then I can only assume you ever really tried to run.NET apps about once a year at most.
But if I'm honest I'm not sure what your point is, because it's really nothing new, and it's much better with.NET than it is with Java which updates the JRE far far more frequently with smaller updates than a full release, but that still often introduce breaking changes.
Ignoring managed languages in general, it's not like we haven't seen the same in the past with MFC, and so forth also.
"It was basically in theory the same idea as java, except with even more restrictions, limits, and headaches."
Apart from on the restrictions front (I can't remember a time when.NET was more restrictive than Java- both allow for native code, but.NETs is better integrated) then this was certainly true in.NET's early days. It caught up with Java around.NET 2.0 in 2005, and overtook it in 3.5 in 2007. Nowadays it's much further ahead of Java with things like dynamic types, LINQ, lambda expressions.
"In short, it's like java, but a 10x bigger disaster."
In short, you're full of shit, because much of what you say just outright isn't true, or is at best grossly exagerated.
Slashdot Mirror
Might want to check the date on that. It happened 11 years ago, things have long since changed both legally, and in terms of public opinion.
Actively working on it by failing to agree to a solution to your massive debt and deficit problems?
Meanwhile our budget deficit is on course to being dealt with within a few years.
With the Fed's latest move, it doesn't even sound like even your own financial oversight folks have any faith that your problems will be anything like on their way to being solved any time soon.
That's also why even China feels it has the moral authority to lecture you about your financial situation now. If you can't see that you're an empire on it's last legs in the face of a rising China and India, then, well, that sucks to be you as it'll make it all the more painful for you.
"Guns give an individual of any strength or gender at least an equal chance against criminals"
This fallacy assumes that the criminal doesn't get the jump on you, which, when they're the ones knowing they're going to commit the crime, means they have the initiative.
This is why, despite your theory, it doesn't work out this way in practice. It's also a problem that a criminal will commonly be more willing to shoot a person, than a non-criminal be willing to shoot someone, even if they are a criminal.
"Unless you are trained you will lose against a street thug in physical combat--and even if you are you will lose against two of them."
With guns, you'll lose against whoever raises their fire arm and shoots you before you even have a chance to reach for yours. I don't see how this is a better scenario.
"Forfeiting your right to a gun means you are trusting your life to the grace of criminals (who are practical enough to retain all their rights)."
Fighting for a right to have guns, means you are putting more guns into the hands of criminals than they could possibly obtain. It means more people capable of killing having the means to do so.
This is once again illustrated by America's high level of gun crime, and this is the fundamental point those of you arguing against me fail to address.
If guns help to protect you, and to make the world a safer place, why has America got orders of magnitude more murders, more gun homicide? and more gun massacres (particularly ones where the perp shoots himself at the end, and isn't in fact stopped by some heroic citizen shooting him)?
"It's only a matter of time. Wish I were wrong, don't think I am. Time will tell."
A matter of time for what? baton round usage and water cannon usage against rioters? probably, if the riots carry on. But if you're talking about opening fire on crowds? I'm struggling to see what kind of circumstance would bring British fire arms units up against a crowd, and where they would then open fire- that's just not how our firearms units are used and deployed. Meanwhile, you're already at least 40 years ahead of us on this either way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
"First of all, our retarded gun nuttery is your retarded gun nuttery, because we inherited it from you."
Yes, the difference is, we grew up.
"You have simply outlawed it, with the effect that only criminals have guns."
Only some criminals have access to very limited number of guns, and an equally limited amount of ammunition you mean? This is much better than all criminals having the ability to trivially access all kinds of firearms, and as much ammunition as they really want.
"So while gun suicide is on the rise, gun deaths are falling overall, suggesting that we have a handle on the problem."
Yes, falling slowly, but still well above that of just about every other developed nation. I'm not sure that that's having a handle on the problem. For what it's worth, it's falling in the UK too, from it's already low starting point.
"On the other hand, your culture is provably less free than ours."
But does it matter? This idea that greater freedom = greater good is false, clearly the freedom to murder whoever you wanted is unacceptable, and clearly some freedoms are not necessarily a good thing. The freedom for Westboro' to picket the funerals of greiving families is a freedom we in the UK do not want, so sure maybe we are less free, but fundamentally as long as the population is happier, healthier, and suffers lower murder rates and our political system is much healthier, in that we can bring politicians to account over things like the expenses scandal, and we can hold Murdoch's empire to account over things like phone hacking then who cares about some arbitrary measure of freedom? It's not as if the government is interfering in our lives to a particularly problematic degree, and when Labour tried to do just that, they suffered catastrophic electoral defeat, and, as it happens, things like libel laws are, as a result, being reformed.
"You're out of natural resources and useful allies."
Really? You mean apart from the whole of Europe? the fact we still have very strong ties to our old colonies in India and other parts of Asia? But you may want to be careful what you wish for- in contrast to America, we ARE your last useful ally.
As for natural resources, well, North Sea oil reserves are still greater than the reserves most other countries in the world have, so I think we don't need to worry about that for a while, not to mention our consumption is lower. Did you know the US uses more than 3 times the amount of oil a day as China does despite having 1/4th the population, whilst China, Europe and so forth have far greater green energy programmes than the US? I think you have much more to worry about when it comes to natural resources than us, because you're far more dependent.
"Without projecting imperialism as the USA is doing you have no future except as just another soon-to-be-homogenized member of the EU. That's a good thing for the world but not for your quality of life."
Are you sure about that? The EU is a larger economy than the US, has lower levels of crime, longer life expectancy, lower levels of infant mortality, higher average levels of education, lower levels of crime, higher levels of personal happiness. All in all, it sounds fucking fantastic for our quality of life. Even better, Britain is now one of the brightest economies in the Western hemisphere because we're one of the few that have b
"It wasn't just one store, but many, that were defended by their owners during the Rodney King Riots. He just happened to cite only one."
Right, but it doesn't matter, because the fundamental point is that the net damage was still far worse in LA, and the level of deaths was still higher.
People were defending their communities in the UK the last couple of nights too, the difference is that because the criminals didn't have guns, they didn't need them either. A simple intimidating prescence is enough to scare most rioters and looters off. Hence, it's not a sensible argument for lax gun control.
"furthermore, lets not insinuate that all 53 people died by gunshots, they most certainly did not, but I'm sure that little insinuation doesn't help in any case to enflame your argument right? actually the number is right around 36"
No let's not, which is why I didn't but let's not let reading comprehension get in the way of your ability to fail to make a point. Anyway, back to the point in hand, I'm glad you cleared up the fact that only 36 died by gun shots, this obviously helps demonstrate how useful guns were in preventing deaths. Oh wait, no, it doesn't- it proves that when you bring guns into the equation, people are likely to die to them. 36 people in fact, which is 36 people who died to gunshots in LA's riots than in the UK's riots, which er, nicely backs up my fundamental point that guns do not keep people safe but more likely do the opposite. So thanks for that.
It doesn't really matter what per-state gun laws are. The fact is that the availability of a much wider range of guns, and much greater amounts of amunition across the US have left you with nothing to show for it other than higher levels of gun crime, and general murder per head of population. Your right to carry a gun has not made you safer- and whatever minor points you want to argue and niggle over here and there, that's the raw truth. Hence, it's a fallacy to imply carrying guns helps make the US a safer place. Clearly it absolutely and unquestionably does not. It's a failed experiment.
Right, that's a very interesting little tale you've told.
So how do you square your little fairy tale against your drastically higher levels of gun crime, and drastically higher murder rates per head of population? Or do you prefer to keep things like "facts" out of your stories preferring to keep them purely fictional?
Oh and:
"We have the right to kill in self-defense. We use it. You don't. When a thug breaks into a home in the US, their death at the hands of a homeowner is usually met with approval as it should be."
You mean a bit like this?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-14248097
Difference is, we don't need guns to defend our homes, because when the sort of criminals who resort to crimes like burglary don't have guns, why would we need them? Or what, do you also believe burglars in the US don't have guns, when they know home owners do?
"We already took lessons from you. Our cops kill our citizens all the time"
Here it happens once every year or so, in your country it happens every week. I'm not sure that's something you want to be bragging about.
"The difference is that in our country you can theoretically shoot back, which might make them a LITTLE less likely to open up on a crowd."
Yeah because of course our cops do that don't they, they open up on crowds. Oh wait no they don't, in fact they've not to this point even deployed baton rounds, or water cannons. In fact, we don't even own any water cannons in the UK. So much for firing upon crowds I guess. Perhaps you got a bit confused, maybe you're thinking of Syria? I know Americans aren't renowned for their geography skills but I think you'll find that's about a few thousand miles East of us. Oh, that's the same Syria where handguns are legal by the way, looks like it's working out really well for them.
"Of course, most people who carry guns don't go to riots. They're busy trying to stay OUT of trouble."
Well, except those who actually did, and actually shot people dead in the likes of the LA riots- yes, apart from those. As long as we exclude those you're right, just like if we say all Americans are of Chinese origin it's true, as long as you include those who aren't of course.
"Meanwhile, you still seem to have gun crime."
Yes, but apparently the concept of "scale" is a tough one for you to grasp. Really, it's not hard. Gun crime can never be completely and utterly irradicated, what matters is that gun crime per head of population, and overally murder rates and so forth are drastically lower in the UK than the US. Scale. Go learn about it.
"Further, your government is even more repressive than ours."
Yes, it's absolutely terrible. It's so repressive that I'm forced to not have to worry about paying for my healthcare and things like that. I just don't know how we make it day to day. Every day I wish and pray so hard we lived in the land of warrantless wiretapping, guantanamo bay, and extraordinary rendition.
"How's not being armed working out for you in your 1984-esque surveillance society?"
Quite well actually. Sensible healthcare, lower murder rates, much lower prison population per head of population, and a political system that gives more options than just right wing corporate puppets, or very right wing corporate puppets to name a few benefits.
Really, I'm not particularly one to pretend Britain is perfect, far from it, a lot needs to change. But that wasn't my point was it? my point was that in response to the person above- I'm fucking glad we don't have your retarded gun nuttery, because for all the benefits you think it gives you, all you've really got to show for it are a whole bunch of pretty fucking embrassing crime statistics. It's one problem I'd rather not see added to the problems we do have thanks.
But keep telling yourself your country is perfect, and you're so incredibly free, and that Britain is so much worse. Meanwhile the rest of the world will keep chuckling about how naive you are.
Because then criminals have even more guns, and non-criminals become criminals because it's much easier for them to use guns where they otherwise would not have, and because non-criminals through sheer stupidity manage to accidentally discharge their guns killing other innocent people.
If you're a heavily depressed person, why just kill yourself when it's trivial to buy a fire arm and go out with one hell of a bang, getting revenge and making a point in the process? Kinda like Derrick Bird did here in the UK, as a legal gun owner of the few types of firearms that are legal in our country. You really think someone in that state of mind, and with those financial problems making him cold hard broke would've been able to figure out how to get one on the black market and do what he did when many criminals even struggle to get hold of them?
I wouldn't say it's because of race, but I do think there's more too it than that. We have some equally poor Kosovan communities around here but they would never dream of this and are appalled by it. That's not to say it's racial, but I don't think it's merely because of poverty either.
I think there's a strong cultural element here too. Certainly there has been some evidence for this in the past- Somali populations in Bristol, and Nigerian populations in Birmingham most certainly brought with them some of the gang culture of their homelands when they immigrated into this country.
It's a tough problem to solve because culture does correlate so closely with race a lot of the time and so gets hijacked by the far right and turns into an attack on race, and so attempts to suggest cultural change for immigrants brings down cries of racism, and complaints about how we're trying to dilute their cultural identity. So what's the solution?
The worst part is that part of some cultural attitudes even seem to be at the root of the poverty. The Polish communities in the UK have no inherent advantage and in fact have had much less time to establish than many other groups (often they have as big, if not bigger language barrier), and yet they seem to be integrating very well- most have jobs, and their work ethic in general is excellent. I had a young Polish guy knock on my door the other day trying to sell paintings he'd done of the countryside around our area and I bought one because they were great. It's precisely that type of cultural attitude that matters- he may not be able to find a job, so what does he do? well, he makes one for himself. It may not pay much at all, but at least he's doing something- importantly, at least it means he's maintained a strong degree of self-respect, which is precisely what the rioters have lost.
I'm not sure what the solution is, you have to be careful not to conflate race and culture despite the close correlation, but if you recognise it as a cultural problem then you run the risk of being called racist by people who prefer to just try and cover over the problems,than discuss and deal with them. Even if you can debate it with people who accept it as a possible cultural problem, then you run into a further issue, and that's whether it's more important to allow people to maintain their cultural identity even if it runs counter to the values of the country that person, or group of people has immigrated into, or whether you avoid cultural conflict at the cost of forcing people to accept cultural change.
I think that's probably true. They've arrested 600+ already. Let's be honest, most of those arrests are probably because the police knew exactly who the people in CCTV images etc. were as soon as they saw them.
A lot of them will be caught in the coming weeks and months. Most don't realise many modern devices like iPhones, XBox's etc. have unique identifiers such that if they ever use them online they'll almost certainly be flagged up and the police will be round to their house in no time where they can do them for stolen goods.
The jail cell shortage is no big deal, a criminal record and community service to clean up the areas they fucked up and then some will be a good enough response to many of the lesser offenders who just grabbed stuff and ran - effectively shoplifters. Save the jail cells for those who broke in in the first place, smashed up police cars, and most importantly- the arsonists. There'll be plenty of room for them.
If you can't see the obvious problem in your post, then you're retarded.
America has some of the most lax gun laws in the world.
America still managed to suffer far worse riots than the UK has.
As an aside, how many people did the rioters themselves shoot in those riots with legitimately owned guns? No? don't want to answer that? According to Wikipedia 53 people died. Thus far only one person has died in the UK and he was shot by a rival gang with an illegal firearm.
Oh, but because one guy defended one shop, it's worth opening the tide of higher murder rates, and greater burden on health care that accidental and intentional gun wounds cause.
Yeah, I think we'll pass thanks. That's a hell of a price to pay for one guy to be able to defend one shop.
Oh, and for what it's worth you can have guns here. Just not things like automatic rifles and easily concealed pistols. You can have things like shotguns, and hunting rifles, but, well, even having them legal has led to questionable benefits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings
Criminals will find weapons regardless, but much better that the chavs are busy with knives against which there is at least some ability to defend or run from or at worst passing round the odd, knackered old fire arm with limited ammunition than all armed up with well maintained fully automatic weapons, and as much ammunition as they'd ever want to buy.
No, you can keep your guns. With nearly 5 times our murder rate per head of population, most of which are a result of firearms incidents. As for Russia, well, their murder rate makes America's look good- at around 10 times our murder rate per head of population.
Perhaps you should take lessons from us instead? no? the NRA and tea party nut jobs wont let you? That's a shame.
Yes, except the sorts of scrotes involved in these riots are the sort of chav underclass who until now probably have never stepped outside their own estate.
Thus, the chance of any decent amount of them having a passport- something which is optional in the UK, is pretty much nil.
The Ping of Death had nothing to do with bandwidth flooding, it was a packet that would instantly just crash Windows as is quite clearly mentioned in the summary. It wouldn't matter if you were on a 14.4 modem, or a 1gbps pipe. It'd still crash vulnerable versions of Windows straight away.
It's only a loaded term if you have a belief that vigilantism is always inherently bad.
Personally, I'm not convinced it is, so to see them called vigilantes doesn't give me a bad impression those folks.
Sometimes vigilantes can be real heroes, sometimes they can be complete idiots. Take the case in hand and decide for yourself what kind of vigilantes they are, don't assume they're always inherently bad.
I know that's the popular view but I'm not convinced it's true.
They show all the sentiment of the far right- their sentiment and demands aligns directly with the BNP, but they hate homosexuals etc. to boot. The only difference is they pretend to hate the BNP because to support them isn't cool with the zeitgeist, but ultimately their policies align near perfectly.
The Daily Mail reports that immigrants are to blame for things that they are simply not- Hitler similarly said Jews were to blame for things they were not.
Really, the only reason The Daily Mail isn't more vividly expressing their far right beliefs is because they know they haven't quite managed to sway public sentiment that far yet. I'd bet money that if the BNP had public support to the level of say 20% - 30%, that The Daily Mail would be right behind them.
One thing's for sure- they wouldn't rally against them.
I don't think it's worth keeping up the charade The Daily Mail wants kept up, let's call a spade a spade- let's be realistic about what they really think, and what they'd really publish if they felt they could get away with it.
A final point is that whilst yes, I realise The Daily Mail doesn't advocate murder of minorities like the Nazis did, let's be clear here- you don't have to go to anything like this extreme to be far right.
The likes of The Telegraph and The Conservative Party are right wing, advocating things like fairly strict immigration caps, but little more. The Daily Mail, BNP, UKIP with their rampant xenophobia and cries for immigrants to be banned entirely/almost entirely blaming many of societies ills on them and even claiming they should be deported? Talk of racial profiling? That's far right.
Agreed. This year there's been no iPhone 5 yet, the iPad 2 was a lacklustre update and iOS5 merely adds a few features Android has had forever lack the taskbar.
All we've seen from Apple this year is patent trolling, so is that it now? Apple's innovation spree has hit a brick wall and it's got to be all about the patent trolling now?
It's pathetic.
Come on Apple, you were better than this, you sparked a smartphone revolution, and now that revolution has run ahead of you you want to kill it?
Well I wouldn't worry, the headline is sensationalist. Whilst many places have said technology was involved most media outlets have been quite measured in talking about it. The BBC ran an article today basically absolving it of blame saying that the likes of The Daily Mail misquoted Twitter users (quite gross misquotes too- blatant, horrendous level of misquoting).
The point has been made by most measured outlets that technology has actually better facilitated voluntary cleanup operations than the riots themselves. It's only the verging on far right wing fringe - the fringe that inherently must be irrational to have the hypocritical viewpoints it does - that support the "technology is bad" idea like The Daily Mail etc.
I don't think there's much popular support for blaming technology nowadays- a recent report said over 33% of adults have smart phones now in the UK, which inevitably means some of those are the older generation. I think even the older "get off my lawn" generation are beginning to realise the benefits of new technology to some extent, so the argument isn't even really popular amongst large swathes of even The Daily Mail's ignorant readerbase now
It's like when music was blamed for violence/drug use, then movies for violence, I think we're finally reaching the point where people are beginning to realise that, well, that ideology is fucking stupid when applied to technology in general too and the only thing to blame for violence, is people.
I'd argue the technology is to blame for x mentality is a lost battle already. I just wish it'd breathe it's last dying breath that little bit quicker, but it's almost there.
Well, let's pretend we're very impressed by them.
That way they can continue spending even more resources attacking non-sites which means less resources available for blowing up and shooting innocent civilians in their own towns and cities.
""Stronger than ever" how?"
Because it takes centre stage, and with Microsoft making Windows 8 support ARM, means it's the environment of choice for developing Windows apps because it means they'll just work between x64 PCs, ARM tablets, and whatever else you stick Windows on.
The C# language itself is rapidly improving too, C#2 bought forward things like generics, and better delegate syntax. C#3 brought forward LINQ, and Lambda expressions amongst other things, and now C#4 brings us dynamic types again, amongst other things. The language is coming along in leaps and bounds, evolving far more effectively than Java is managing right now.
"Rather, it's amazing that .NET made it this far, while Microsoft itself (apart from its development division) hasn't used it for basically anything (that was released, anyway)"
You mean apart from Dynamics, Sharepoint, parts of Visual Studio, Office, SQL Server, and building Windows Phone 7 almost entirely around it? That's an odd definition of not used for "basically anything". With .NET being their strategy to avoid platform dependence on Windows 8, and being used to enable development on the 360, and being at the core of Windows Phone, whilst also heavily improving things like ASP.NET MVC you've got a really dire understanding of Microsoft's future with it.
To then jump from your complete understanding of Microsoft's roadmap, to suggesting the Windows group upper management hates it is an impressive feat of retardedness. So well done with that.
The facts your facing, aren't facts in the world the rest of us live in, only in your little world of ignorance.
That's what you get for being too smart for Slashdot.
Although nowadays that's becoming much less of an achievement.
"You're puzzled who might be behind the propoganda because, perhaps, its not propoganda."
Exactly. I'm suprised the GP is so puzzled trying to find the mystical actor behind rumours that can't quite possibly true, whilst missing the more realistic, and most sane explanation- that the rumour is in fact true.
I don't know why it's so difficult to grasp. When the iPhone was the most popular smartphone platform for a while it was also getting the most vulnerabilities and exploits against it, now Android is.
It's not really rocket science, attackers will go where there's most to be gained from the attack, and that's often the platform with the most users.
Arguing against this, and saying there most be some secret actor working covertly to spread a rumour, for some unspecified gain which even the GP himself can't even figure out is irrational. It's the same mindset that people use to convince themselves that evolution can't possibly be real because they don't like the sound of god not being part of the cause of the living things on our planet, and so just insist there's something else, they just can't explain who or what that something else is when pressed- all they've decided is that the science led explanation is wrong and that's all there is to it.
It's Occam's Razor, there doesn't need to be some fantasy actor behind it all with unknown subversive goals, it could simply just be the truth instead. Why go searching for a conspiracy theory when a far more explainable, perfectly feasible, but most importantly, much more simple explanation is sat right in front of you?
That's a retarded comparison. Back in the DOS days people using computers were vastly smaller in number, and those doing it then, are the ones happy to use Linux now, the problem is they're a minority due to the rapid growth computing saw since the DOS days. Millions used it back then- great, the problem is, millions isn't many amongst the billions of computer users that exist nowadays. Those millions from the DOS days probably make up less than 5% of computer users.
If you think a terminal is an acceptable UI for the vast majority of users in the modern world you're living in cloud cuckoo land. Even if users are capable of figuring it out, why would they when they can just use Windows and not to have to?
"... and people here told me I was an idiot and didn't know what I was talking about and on and on and on. Good to know, at least, I'm not the only one."
Yes, the problem with your self-congratulation is that both you and the article are wrong.
"the application programming API for the migration to the next Windows OS which isn't Win32/64 compatible. Microsoft still doesn't have the balls to shift to a brand new OS the way Apple did."
Why would they want to kill their desktop business and fuck over 90% of the World's businesses as a result? that seems a little dumb. Legacy support and backwards compat. are a fundamental reason why Microsoft are successful.
But to answer your question this is kind of the point of .NET, the more Microsoft can move onto it the easier it is to make fundamental shifts. If you hadn't noticed they'd done it to an extent though, Windows Phone 7 - different architecture, different OS, supports .NET code. Windows 8 is going to support ARM, and, suprise suprise, .NET apps will run just fine on it.
"The number of times I just wanted to download an app and have it run, only to be foiled by an out of date version of the .NET framework... which was also freaking HUGE!"
Well, seeing as there's only been 4 (or 6 if you include 3.5 and 1.1) versions of the .NET framework I would imagine by number of times, you could only actually mean at most, 5.
As they were released in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010 respectively then I can only assume you ever really tried to run .NET apps about once a year at most.
But if I'm honest I'm not sure what your point is, because it's really nothing new, and it's much better with .NET than it is with Java which updates the JRE far far more frequently with smaller updates than a full release, but that still often introduce breaking changes.
Ignoring managed languages in general, it's not like we haven't seen the same in the past with MFC, and so forth also.
"It was basically in theory the same idea as java, except with even more restrictions, limits, and headaches."
Apart from on the restrictions front (I can't remember a time when .NET was more restrictive than Java- both allow for native code, but .NETs is better integrated) then this was certainly true in .NET's early days. It caught up with Java around .NET 2.0 in 2005, and overtook it in 3.5 in 2007. Nowadays it's much further ahead of Java with things like dynamic types, LINQ, lambda expressions.
"In short, it's like java, but a 10x bigger disaster."
In short, you're full of shit, because much of what you say just outright isn't true, or is at best grossly exagerated.
But then, that's why you posted AC isn't it?