For App Store revenue I would expect that revenue would be their intake rather than including the portion that goes to developers. If this is an incorrect understanding of their data, then my analysis would be off, but such information does not appear to be easily available. The problem I've seen with looking for numbers outside of apple, is that in many cases people will group multiple lines of business related to hardware sales (sometimes included iPhone software for example in iPhone revenue). Also, again, what you are linking are pure revenue numbers, not profit numbers.
After digging some more however, it may appear that they are listing revenue of total sales on the store rather than just the portion that is due them, though it is hard to tell for sure. From http://gigaom.com/2010/01/12/the-apple-app-store-economy/ the 2010 numbers were about 3 billion a year or 750 million in revenue per quarter from just iPhone apps. From http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/ it appears that they sell about two billion songs a year or 500 million a quarter. Throw in some videos and it does start looking like perhaps you are correct that the revenue reporting is done as a store rather than a service provider. (Apple takes the money and then pays the vendor instead of taking payment on behalf of the vendor and taking their cut out of it as revenue, which is what I was expecting for a setup like that.) As a comparison, Visa doesn't list revenue equal to all the transactions that occur on their network, but rather the fee they collect for processing the transactions, which was the reason I believed this to be the case without digging further in to it.
That all said, while it significantly weakens one argument towards my initial claim that they would never give up the lock in, they still do not have a corporate history of breaking from lock in. Also, 10% revenue which would still map fairly close to 10% profit (looking just at the iPod and iPad and associated media side of things since Desktop sales wouldn't really be impacted as they aren't currently locked to iTunes) is still not something to scoff at giving up. It makes it more possible that a business motivator would come up to unlock, but still seems like it would be a significant cost. Honestly, their better bet at that point might be to open up iTunes music and video to Android which I think would be a more likely move for Apple if it started going that way.
After reviewing the numbers myself, I couldn't find cost figures, but just on revenue, Apple brought in almost 1.7 billion in revenue from the iTunes sales (including iOS apps) in the fourth quarter of 2011. This compares to almost 11 billion and almost 7 billion for revenue related to iPhone and iPad respectively. Note, this is revenue and NOT profit. Without cost figures I can only make approximations, but there should be almost no overhead in terms of running the iTunes store, so I would guestimate 1.65 billion in profits from iTunes sales. Even combined, the iPhone and iPad are under 18 billion so they would need to be making 10% profit on every device sold just to have it be equal parts hardware and media. To have it be substantially a hardware company rather than a media company selling their own players, it would really need to be more like 30 or 40% profit per device sold.
Huh? I didn't even make a statement against Apple, just pointed out the fact that their goal has always and will always be to control their tech to their advantage. Certainly they will try to tailor it to consumer interests to get people to buy in. My point was simply that as a corporate philosophy they don't open up even when someone tries to make them do so at the barrel of a gun.
You should perhaps use an Android device before you attack it. I've been using Android since version 2.0. I have around 260 apps that I use on 3 different devices. I have had devices at every version since 2.0 up through 4.0. In total, I have about 15 apps that don't run on my phones simply because they require tablet resolutions and a total of about 2 apps from my smartphones that haven't worked on every later version flawlessly. Yes, there are some crapily designed apps on the market that won't work on some hardware and more so some that have requirements set low so that some users get a less than ideal experience on lower powered hardware, but the supposed compatibility ills is a complete and total myth and anyone who has spent any time working with Android would know this.
In fairness, as a productivity platform, Android really isn't much better, though ICS does introduce the first really usable task switching since Windows Mobile 6.5.
I would consider Apple being forced to open up to Android apps a win but it will NEVER happen even if it put the iPhone and iPad in its grave. The reason is quite simple. Apple is no longer a tech company, they are a media company and a distribution company. iTunes is where their money is. When you buy an iPad or an iPhone, they are simply convincing you to buy their portal to your money. They don't care about the future of technology, simply making sure they can get a cut of every app, game, book, newspaper, magazine, movie or song ever sold. That's how you make a bloody freaking fortune, you control media. That is Apple's wet dream. They will never give it up.
For my numbers, [link]http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/13/1/15.full[/link]. This is a published article in a scientific paper (from Harvard none the less) that concluded that as of 2004, the number of guns in the US continued to be approximately one for every adult. By your own numbers, there is only a passenger vehicle for 9/10 Americans.
As to your response to my first point, according to the ATF, most illegally obtained guns come from three sources, corrupt licensed dealers, straw sales (clean person buys gun for illegal user, or second hand sales, where background checks are not required. Theft I'm sure accounts for some, but the majority do not appear to be. Also, while smuggling currently isn't a problem, it would become one if the other options were banned. Look how well drugs (which are effectively recreational) have been stopped. How much more profitable and necessary for drug business would gun running be if the supply was cut off?
For the fallacy, you don't understand basic reasoning and logic and are trying to isolate one part of an argument from the rest of the thread. Previous posts had talked about good sides, and the counter was to point out the bad sides. The counter to that argument (ie, that guns cause more harm than good) is to point out that other things cause more harm (and previously established similar good). Thus, the social validity of the stance is established relative to other social norms. If you would like to additionally challenge the social good done by gun ownership, be my guest and we can debate that (and I see you did in your next post), but please don't accuse someone of making an invalid argument, when it is a fully valid counter to a particular point brought up in the course of the entire discussion. For brevity, most posters do not restate the entire argument thus far. To counter your example of people dying of hunger, there is no substantial good to people dying of hunger, so the negative outweighs the positive. The ratio of social good to social bad is what we are looking for and that is what the argument stands on. You just choose to ignore the prior arguments as to the good and focus on the attempt to establish a baseline of how much hard is done relative to other things as a freestanding argument when it isn't. (I will agree with you that IF someone was only stating that it wasn't as bad as cars without establishing the social benefit elsewhere, then yes, it would be an invalid argument.)
As for your statement using Europe as an example of a "working" democracy, no I am not that oblivious, my question to you would be, are you? As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. No system can avoid corruption indefinitely. Europe is still fairly young as democratic government and has had the government shaken up enough that issues don't show up as much yet, but the fact is government throughout history has always attempted to get as big as possible and exert as much control as possible on its citizens. The founding fathers of the US realized that this is true and thus made it a constitutional right to bear arms so that there would be an ultimate check and balance against the abuse of government. For society to work properly, individual people must fear the power of government, but the government must fear the power of the people collectively. The moment that that equation tips you start down the path towards either anarchy when people don't fear the government or corrupt fascism when the government doesn't fear the people. In some cases you start down the path toward both simultaneously (the starts seen in the criminal side of the drug war and the political corruption in the US). There are several other factors, such as our large military and major corporations that have sped the process along, but people in general will try to get away with whatever they think they can if it serves their interests. I don't think we are at the point that armed revolt is necessary (or even anywhere near it), but the situation serves to demo
If weapons exist, those who could better commit crime with them will get their hands on them. I'm not sure what you were getting at about the weapons stolen from a house being robbed.
As for the math for # of guns to # of cars, I think you will actually find it isn't anywhere near greater. You forget that many if not most gun owners have multiple guns. Guns are much cheaper and as such, it would not surprise me if there are more guns than cars in existence, at least in the US. As of 2004 there was a gun in the US for every grown adult. I don't think the same can be said for cars.
Also, as for your argument that it is simply a fallacy, it is not. What is being compared is not the good or bad nature of the deaths or the severity of the deaths, but rather the legal reason that would be given for taking away a constitutional right in the US. The fact is that guns are far less of a social hazard than many other useful devices and the OP listed several examples of devices which can be used to help or to cause harm that are considered acceptable levels of harm to their usefulness.
In combination with the other arguments that point out the fact that an armed populace is critical to a successful democracy, the point is made that a) guns do serve a positive social purpose on par or greater than that of driving and b) guns have less of a negative social impact than driving. Therefore, if driving is legal, then guns should be too as they offer more positives and fewer negatives, even per capita.
You are missing the point of making it illegal for them to posses. If someone is a violent criminal and they can legally posses, they can't be punished again until they commit another violent crime. If, however, it is illegal for them to have the gun because of their record, then if they are found to have a gun, it can be assumed that it is for no good purpose and they can be sent back to prison since they are clearly not reformed. It won't stop every case, but it does make society safer.
As to the idea to have ban length be variable and have it be at a judges discretion, I was actually thinking about that as an option when responding to you earlier and would agree that that could be a good option as well. There could also be the equivalent of a parole hearing to allow the ban to be lifted then if conditions changed. (For example lets say ex-violent felon is helping out with the city mission and needs to be able to bring the money to the bank at the end of the day.)
The battle field network applications would be killer. Military intelligence always said information could kill, but this would just bring it to a whole new level.
On the pragmatic issue, just because we can't make it so they can't get a gun illegally doesn't mean we should make it so that they can get one legally. If someone does sell them a gun, it's a crime and we can go after that person too. It also means that if we catch them with a gun before they have a chance to do something, they are committing a crime and can be sent back to jail before they have a chance to harm someone. It won't stop every case of abuse, but it could stop some.
As far as removing someone's right being equivalent to another form of perpetual punishment, to an extent it is, but it is to a lesser degree than removing their right to freedom in general. I look at it this way. On the one side, you have the rights of the violent offender to consider, who has served their time and can't be proven to still be a risk, but on the other hand you have the rights of innocent individuals to life. Making violent crime a little more difficult as a safety precaution seems like a reasonable step since breaking laws means giving up rights. I mean, we incarcerate some prisoners for life for certain actions and even execute people in some states for extreme circumstances. Losing the right to bear arms (or at least hand guns) seems like it is at least as constitutional a penalty for a crime as putting someone in prison for life is.
Thanks for the hard numbers. It made a good read. I actually didn't realize that air was only actually a factor of 4 off from water. I thought they were further apart than that, but I'm also running off my memory of my AP courses from over a decade ago. Any current would certainly radically alter that distribution though and the conductivity as you mentioned. I didn't doubt that it would be possible for water to an enclosed outlet to have a bigger impact than in air, but there are a lot of factors that could impact the rate of dispersion in either. My point was just that it makes it so that it isn't necessarily a sure thing that air will dissipate faster.
The thermoclines is an interesting thought too, though as another poster mentioned, if that is the case, you simply take water from the cooler (normally lower) thermocline and pump it back in to the warmer one, thus mitigating a lot of the effects. The depths of thermoclines tend to vary with seasons anyway, so the the impact would still be minimal provided it doesn't get move too far out of the normal range. I'm actually a scuba diver so I'm well aware of underwater currents and thermoclines from actually swimming in and through them.:) They are quite awesome when you can reach out a foot and feel the water change by more than 10 degrees in some cases.
Yes, agreed that it should be evaluated as part of the project, it doesn't hurt to be cautious, but I wouldn't expect it to cause any issues if it was well designed. That said, part of ensuring the best design would be to choose outlets in such places as to minimize impact anyway.
Well, that is where the question of who shouldn't have guns could be up for debate too. Really it should probably only be a restriction for violent criminals. Even to go beyond drugs, what about a white collar executive that is caught money laundering or embezzling. There is really no reason they shouldn't be able to get a gun since they are non-violent. Similarly, I could see even a misdemeanor assault being a good reason to have at-least a temporary ban on gun ownership, even if only a year or two, or maybe five years on a second violent misdemeanor, but leave the first one as a warning or possibly an unavoidable situation.
I think the idea behind not trusting someone with a gun is if they have violent tendencies. Someone who gets in a heated argument and tends to be violent that has a gun may use it where as someone who gets in a heated argument and tends to be violent but doesn't have a gun only breaks some noses and maybe cuts someone up a bit. There is also the question of whether we have the right to imprison someone for something they may or may not do. If someone did an armed robbery once, they might do it again. We can't hold them forever because they might rob a bank, but making it so they can't legally be armed seems like a prudent step.
I guess the core of the problem is that we don't release people because we are reasonably sure that they are sufficiently rehabilitated, but rather because we can't reasonably assume that they are not. If we only released people when we believed they were rehabilitated, then I would agree with you, but I think to do that would be a violation of their rights and would be unjust punishment as it would involve effectively treating them as continuously guilty until proven innocent.
I get the feeling you may have radically misunderstood my post. I do not believe I am necessarily opposed to much of what you suggested. My car example was a little bit of a stretch so there are admittedly some faults, but what I was trying to get at is the fact that removing guns from those who should have them would actually have an active, negative influence as it would empower those who shouldn't have guns and have them illegally as those who are well meaning would be less able to defend themselves. I made this an equivalent of removing existing protections in the traffic system to make it easier for those who would do harm (those doing hit and runs) to do so.
I am firmly in support of gun control to the extent of making sure that those who should not have guns don't (ie, criminals). I am firmly opposed to the idea that guns are an evil that should be removed from society. I agree that enforcing the policies we already have would solve the majority of issues and if anything I think current restrictions are too sever in some places. (It is a major pain in the ass to get carry a pistol around the country for example, or even just to get concealed carry in NY state where I live, even though I am an upstanding citizen with training in how to properly use firearms.)
I think you are reading your own views in to errandum's post. I read it as a continuation of the thought process that guns are evil and that the fact that more people die due to car accident's doesn't make up for the deaths from guns. I was simply expressing the fact that many of those deaths would not be impacted by removing guns in general which was the prevailing direction of the thread. I don't think you would find anyone opposed to taking guns away from criminals and those who are irresponsible with them, but my point is that you will never and can never remove guns from the criminal population. There will always be ways to get them, even if it involves stealing from legal sources. You try to do the best you can to prevent it and limit the damage, but it doesn't make a good reason to step on the rights of honest citizens as that will only make the problem worse.
A good point, though actually airsoft is a better analog or simply air rifles in general. Air rifles are good enough for competition shooting at short range while still not being nearly as accurate as a real rifle for long distance competition.
Are you sure about that? Air moves, but it also heats up far more readily. It takes a tremendous amount more energy to raise the same volume of water by the same amount. If there are any kinds of currents at all, then the heat should also dissipate more quickly. My understanding is that water only really effectively gets heated if the entire local volume of water can be heated or there is a substantial temperature difference in the water coming in than the water going out. (Which would still fall off exponentially as the hot water diffuses.) The only difference is the coefficient of heat for water is so much higher and therefore more energy has to diffuse for each degree raised (but it also takes far more energy to raise it a degree.)
If it was just their name, then maybe, but when the name and observed behavior seem to show intent, it is no longer discriminatory. Choosing a name like the pirates bay that displays intent and then acting in a way that confirms that intent does not make it discriminatory, it makes it criminal. If I made a group called the "Rich Guy Assassination League" and started a Craig's List like site where a huge number of the listings "just happened to be" hit contracts for rich guys, I'd justifiably be in hot legal water too.
Hard argument to make as softer doesn't matter (momentum is just a factor of weight and speed) and would likely make it impossible to fire and slower or lighter would make it considerably less accurate.
You completely missed the point. The point is that we could eliminate cars and have a far larger reduction in deaths. The point is that death can not be avoided and the cost and benefit to society must be weighed. How many of those deaths were caused by illegally obtained firearms? How many were self-inflicted and would have likely simply occurred by other means had a gun not been available? How many lives have been saved or serious injuries avoided because someone was able to defend themselves? How much of a deterrent to abuse by government is a well armed populace? If you could go back and prevent the gun from ever being created, I might be able to agree with you that the world would have been better off without them ever existing, but there is no way to remove guns from those who shouldn't have them, so there is no good reason to take them from those who should. It would only make the situation worse, rather than better.
To look at the car example, it would be like saying that we are going to take cars away from everybody except those who do hit and runs. We'll let them keep their cars and give them more targets when people start walking in the road since nobody else has cars, so they don't expect to be hit. Oh, and we'll also remove all stoplights and speed limits. See how well it works out for society.
Because nothing bad can possibly happen when bad guys (be they illegally obtained by street criminals or corrupt governments) have guns and innocent people don't.
Actually, bullets have higher latency, though I am now wondering what the bandwidth of a bullet would be if you made it with microSD cards. Perhaps we can have a new wireless internet spec based on the cell carriers shooting their customers. Doesn't seem to far off from the current model.
While yes, TextSecure is similar in nature to PGP, it isn't the tech, so much as the interface, that makes it a great app. While I can agree with some of your objections to what Web 2.0 heralds as new and I believe there are legitimate questions about the wisdom of the direction we are going with technology, I think your rant may be misplaced here. TextSecure is a local Android SMS client that smoothly integrates key exchange and secure messaging with SMS so that the user doesn't have to concern themselves as much with the "complicated" details. You simply choose a contact, request a key exchange, verify a code it gives you via some other channel to make sure there is no man in the middle and the keys are then stored with the contact for future verified, secure communication without having to do anything more than send text messages like you normally would (though through the TextSecure app).
What we should take from "Web 2.0" is the attention to what kinds of interfaces and interactions users gravitate towards and this is where TextSecure seems to shine the most. What we might be wiser not to take from Web 2.0 is some of the more questionable technical "innovation" that seems to be moving backward in capability to what we had in the past in the name of supporting the new UI. Examples from my perspective at least are the pushes towards things like Metro and trying to do entire desktop replacement application development in HTML5. Sure the idea of a pure touch friendly UI sounds good to marketing, but the fact is there is a lot that can't be effectively done with it. You might cover the needs of half the population even, but you are greatly limiting the development of the fringe of technology which has always been what pushes us forward.
Recently there seems to be this idea that the goal should be to get everyone, from the biggest technophiles to granny in a nursing home should embrace new tech, but too often the way that seems to be accomplished is the lazy approach of making a limited product that doesn't really push the envelope or encourage further growth. For the longest time tech has started in the hands of those who understand how to push it forward and then propagated down to the masses after going through a lot of refinement and filtering to find the best stuff. Now things just get thrown out to mass market and that filtering and direction is lost. Effectively control of the direction of technology is getting handed to marketing instead of technologists. That's a great way to make money, but a horrible way to move technological progression forward.
Similarly, HTML5 being used for desktop apps is a nice goal to try to have apps that can be used anywhere and not require install, but the fact is that the tools really aren't there to do it efficiently yet and it's really a wasteful process when you consider the extra development effort required for many projects combined with the extra energy required to run the necessarily inefficient code (just the lack of a good ability to push notification from server to client is a huge issue, let alone the security concerns and the performance of java script in general). On the other hand you do save having to produce hardware for the home, but that hardware and more is just having to go in data centers instead (though it is more fully utilized in a data center.)
That's a tricky question. Just because someone acts like a child doesn't make them one. It's hard for me to tell how he should be sentenced if found guilty without knowing more about his motivations (which will hopefully come out clearly in trial). If he seems to have genuinely believe in what he was doing and simply took irresponsible shortcuts and jumped to far without trying other options, then I would want to see him more leniently sentenced as I don't think someone's life should be thrown away for pursuing what they thought was the right thing, even if they were foolish and incorrect.
If I even got a hint of a whiff that it was his ego leading him to do it though, I would want fairly firm sentencing. The real question would be did he jump the gun from talking to superior straight to massively over leaking as an ego boost or because he was simply a foolish and irresponsible idiot. I'd have no problem seeing him go away for life if it was for an ego boost, but if he was genuinely just an idiot, I have a hard time seeing it as fair to sentence him for more than 10 to 20. Luckily it isn't my call to have to try and make. I think it would be a difficult one, both to determine what is just and to deal with the political firestorm sure to ensue whichever way the decision is made.
That isn't my definition of world peace at all. My definition of world peace is the same as yours, but I am a realist. We live in an imperfect world and there are going to be abuses. As long as those abuses are addressed and dealt with in a way that would seem fair if brought to light, then I see know reason why it should be someone's duty to spread the information. If it is not addressed, then I do believe it would be the moral responsibility of someone discovering such action to seek to have it remediated through the proper channels and only as a last resort publicly expose it, and only with the greatest care to ensure no harm could possibly come to innocent bystanders.
It would seem that some instances of unpunished abuse may have been reported in the leak, but we have no way of knowing what actions may have been taken after the fact that were not leaked. Also, in this case, a number of conditions don't appear to have been met. Outside of talking to his immediate supervisors, I am not aware of any other avenues being pursued, which is hugely jumping the gun to go to a leak. The information leaked was not targeted, and much of it did nothing to support the issue he was trying to point out. It was not responsibly selected to highlight the issues and instead was a deluge of information that only served to destabilize relations rather than bring any injustice to light. I am not talking about the information that would have composed a valid leak had all other options been exhausted to expose corruption and abuse, but rather the information that had no strongly justifiable relation to the offenses. Whistleblower status would not protect for this kind of carelessness with a leak.
I agree that people need to be able to scrutinize the government, I would agree that classification is probably overused, I would agree that responsible whistleblowers are a vital part of a smooth running democracy. All I don't agree on is that Manning, if guilty, was a responsible whistleblower, that many of the documents leaked in question that were unrelated were improperly classified or that certain leaked information was beneficial to the people of the US or the world. (I would in fact argue that some of it did no good and considerable destabilizing harm (the private opinions of middle easy governments towards Iran as expressed to the US))
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I just went straight to Apple. http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q411datasum.pdf
For App Store revenue I would expect that revenue would be their intake rather than including the portion that goes to developers. If this is an incorrect understanding of their data, then my analysis would be off, but such information does not appear to be easily available. The problem I've seen with looking for numbers outside of apple, is that in many cases people will group multiple lines of business related to hardware sales (sometimes included iPhone software for example in iPhone revenue). Also, again, what you are linking are pure revenue numbers, not profit numbers.
After digging some more however, it may appear that they are listing revenue of total sales on the store rather than just the portion that is due them, though it is hard to tell for sure. From http://gigaom.com/2010/01/12/the-apple-app-store-economy/ the 2010 numbers were about 3 billion a year or 750 million in revenue per quarter from just iPhone apps. From http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/ it appears that they sell about two billion songs a year or 500 million a quarter. Throw in some videos and it does start looking like perhaps you are correct that the revenue reporting is done as a store rather than a service provider. (Apple takes the money and then pays the vendor instead of taking payment on behalf of the vendor and taking their cut out of it as revenue, which is what I was expecting for a setup like that.) As a comparison, Visa doesn't list revenue equal to all the transactions that occur on their network, but rather the fee they collect for processing the transactions, which was the reason I believed this to be the case without digging further in to it.
That all said, while it significantly weakens one argument towards my initial claim that they would never give up the lock in, they still do not have a corporate history of breaking from lock in. Also, 10% revenue which would still map fairly close to 10% profit (looking just at the iPod and iPad and associated media side of things since Desktop sales wouldn't really be impacted as they aren't currently locked to iTunes) is still not something to scoff at giving up. It makes it more possible that a business motivator would come up to unlock, but still seems like it would be a significant cost. Honestly, their better bet at that point might be to open up iTunes music and video to Android which I think would be a more likely move for Apple if it started going that way.
After reviewing the numbers myself, I couldn't find cost figures, but just on revenue, Apple brought in almost 1.7 billion in revenue from the iTunes sales (including iOS apps) in the fourth quarter of 2011. This compares to almost 11 billion and almost 7 billion for revenue related to iPhone and iPad respectively. Note, this is revenue and NOT profit. Without cost figures I can only make approximations, but there should be almost no overhead in terms of running the iTunes store, so I would guestimate 1.65 billion in profits from iTunes sales. Even combined, the iPhone and iPad are under 18 billion so they would need to be making 10% profit on every device sold just to have it be equal parts hardware and media. To have it be substantially a hardware company rather than a media company selling their own players, it would really need to be more like 30 or 40% profit per device sold.
Huh? I didn't even make a statement against Apple, just pointed out the fact that their goal has always and will always be to control their tech to their advantage. Certainly they will try to tailor it to consumer interests to get people to buy in. My point was simply that as a corporate philosophy they don't open up even when someone tries to make them do so at the barrel of a gun.
You should perhaps use an Android device before you attack it. I've been using Android since version 2.0. I have around 260 apps that I use on 3 different devices. I have had devices at every version since 2.0 up through 4.0. In total, I have about 15 apps that don't run on my phones simply because they require tablet resolutions and a total of about 2 apps from my smartphones that haven't worked on every later version flawlessly. Yes, there are some crapily designed apps on the market that won't work on some hardware and more so some that have requirements set low so that some users get a less than ideal experience on lower powered hardware, but the supposed compatibility ills is a complete and total myth and anyone who has spent any time working with Android would know this.
In fairness, as a productivity platform, Android really isn't much better, though ICS does introduce the first really usable task switching since Windows Mobile 6.5.
I would consider Apple being forced to open up to Android apps a win but it will NEVER happen even if it put the iPhone and iPad in its grave. The reason is quite simple. Apple is no longer a tech company, they are a media company and a distribution company. iTunes is where their money is. When you buy an iPad or an iPhone, they are simply convincing you to buy their portal to your money. They don't care about the future of technology, simply making sure they can get a cut of every app, game, book, newspaper, magazine, movie or song ever sold. That's how you make a bloody freaking fortune, you control media. That is Apple's wet dream. They will never give it up.
For my numbers, [link]http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/13/1/15.full[/link]. This is a published article in a scientific paper (from Harvard none the less) that concluded that as of 2004, the number of guns in the US continued to be approximately one for every adult. By your own numbers, there is only a passenger vehicle for 9/10 Americans.
As to your response to my first point, according to the ATF, most illegally obtained guns come from three sources, corrupt licensed dealers, straw sales (clean person buys gun for illegal user, or second hand sales, where background checks are not required. Theft I'm sure accounts for some, but the majority do not appear to be. Also, while smuggling currently isn't a problem, it would become one if the other options were banned. Look how well drugs (which are effectively recreational) have been stopped. How much more profitable and necessary for drug business would gun running be if the supply was cut off?
For the fallacy, you don't understand basic reasoning and logic and are trying to isolate one part of an argument from the rest of the thread. Previous posts had talked about good sides, and the counter was to point out the bad sides. The counter to that argument (ie, that guns cause more harm than good) is to point out that other things cause more harm (and previously established similar good). Thus, the social validity of the stance is established relative to other social norms. If you would like to additionally challenge the social good done by gun ownership, be my guest and we can debate that (and I see you did in your next post), but please don't accuse someone of making an invalid argument, when it is a fully valid counter to a particular point brought up in the course of the entire discussion. For brevity, most posters do not restate the entire argument thus far. To counter your example of people dying of hunger, there is no substantial good to people dying of hunger, so the negative outweighs the positive. The ratio of social good to social bad is what we are looking for and that is what the argument stands on. You just choose to ignore the prior arguments as to the good and focus on the attempt to establish a baseline of how much hard is done relative to other things as a freestanding argument when it isn't. (I will agree with you that IF someone was only stating that it wasn't as bad as cars without establishing the social benefit elsewhere, then yes, it would be an invalid argument.)
As for your statement using Europe as an example of a "working" democracy, no I am not that oblivious, my question to you would be, are you? As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. No system can avoid corruption indefinitely. Europe is still fairly young as democratic government and has had the government shaken up enough that issues don't show up as much yet, but the fact is government throughout history has always attempted to get as big as possible and exert as much control as possible on its citizens. The founding fathers of the US realized that this is true and thus made it a constitutional right to bear arms so that there would be an ultimate check and balance against the abuse of government. For society to work properly, individual people must fear the power of government, but the government must fear the power of the people collectively. The moment that that equation tips you start down the path towards either anarchy when people don't fear the government or corrupt fascism when the government doesn't fear the people. In some cases you start down the path toward both simultaneously (the starts seen in the criminal side of the drug war and the political corruption in the US). There are several other factors, such as our large military and major corporations that have sped the process along, but people in general will try to get away with whatever they think they can if it serves their interests. I don't think we are at the point that armed revolt is necessary (or even anywhere near it), but the situation serves to demo
If weapons exist, those who could better commit crime with them will get their hands on them. I'm not sure what you were getting at about the weapons stolen from a house being robbed.
As for the math for # of guns to # of cars, I think you will actually find it isn't anywhere near greater. You forget that many if not most gun owners have multiple guns. Guns are much cheaper and as such, it would not surprise me if there are more guns than cars in existence, at least in the US. As of 2004 there was a gun in the US for every grown adult. I don't think the same can be said for cars.
Also, as for your argument that it is simply a fallacy, it is not. What is being compared is not the good or bad nature of the deaths or the severity of the deaths, but rather the legal reason that would be given for taking away a constitutional right in the US. The fact is that guns are far less of a social hazard than many other useful devices and the OP listed several examples of devices which can be used to help or to cause harm that are considered acceptable levels of harm to their usefulness.
In combination with the other arguments that point out the fact that an armed populace is critical to a successful democracy, the point is made that a) guns do serve a positive social purpose on par or greater than that of driving and b) guns have less of a negative social impact than driving. Therefore, if driving is legal, then guns should be too as they offer more positives and fewer negatives, even per capita.
You are missing the point of making it illegal for them to posses. If someone is a violent criminal and they can legally posses, they can't be punished again until they commit another violent crime. If, however, it is illegal for them to have the gun because of their record, then if they are found to have a gun, it can be assumed that it is for no good purpose and they can be sent back to prison since they are clearly not reformed. It won't stop every case, but it does make society safer.
As to the idea to have ban length be variable and have it be at a judges discretion, I was actually thinking about that as an option when responding to you earlier and would agree that that could be a good option as well. There could also be the equivalent of a parole hearing to allow the ban to be lifted then if conditions changed. (For example lets say ex-violent felon is helping out with the city mission and needs to be able to bring the money to the bank at the end of the day.)
The battle field network applications would be killer. Military intelligence always said information could kill, but this would just bring it to a whole new level.
On the pragmatic issue, just because we can't make it so they can't get a gun illegally doesn't mean we should make it so that they can get one legally. If someone does sell them a gun, it's a crime and we can go after that person too. It also means that if we catch them with a gun before they have a chance to do something, they are committing a crime and can be sent back to jail before they have a chance to harm someone. It won't stop every case of abuse, but it could stop some.
As far as removing someone's right being equivalent to another form of perpetual punishment, to an extent it is, but it is to a lesser degree than removing their right to freedom in general. I look at it this way. On the one side, you have the rights of the violent offender to consider, who has served their time and can't be proven to still be a risk, but on the other hand you have the rights of innocent individuals to life. Making violent crime a little more difficult as a safety precaution seems like a reasonable step since breaking laws means giving up rights. I mean, we incarcerate some prisoners for life for certain actions and even execute people in some states for extreme circumstances. Losing the right to bear arms (or at least hand guns) seems like it is at least as constitutional a penalty for a crime as putting someone in prison for life is.
Thanks for the hard numbers. It made a good read. I actually didn't realize that air was only actually a factor of 4 off from water. I thought they were further apart than that, but I'm also running off my memory of my AP courses from over a decade ago. Any current would certainly radically alter that distribution though and the conductivity as you mentioned. I didn't doubt that it would be possible for water to an enclosed outlet to have a bigger impact than in air, but there are a lot of factors that could impact the rate of dispersion in either. My point was just that it makes it so that it isn't necessarily a sure thing that air will dissipate faster.
The thermoclines is an interesting thought too, though as another poster mentioned, if that is the case, you simply take water from the cooler (normally lower) thermocline and pump it back in to the warmer one, thus mitigating a lot of the effects. The depths of thermoclines tend to vary with seasons anyway, so the the impact would still be minimal provided it doesn't get move too far out of the normal range. I'm actually a scuba diver so I'm well aware of underwater currents and thermoclines from actually swimming in and through them. :) They are quite awesome when you can reach out a foot and feel the water change by more than 10 degrees in some cases.
Yes, agreed that it should be evaluated as part of the project, it doesn't hurt to be cautious, but I wouldn't expect it to cause any issues if it was well designed. That said, part of ensuring the best design would be to choose outlets in such places as to minimize impact anyway.
Well, that is where the question of who shouldn't have guns could be up for debate too. Really it should probably only be a restriction for violent criminals. Even to go beyond drugs, what about a white collar executive that is caught money laundering or embezzling. There is really no reason they shouldn't be able to get a gun since they are non-violent. Similarly, I could see even a misdemeanor assault being a good reason to have at-least a temporary ban on gun ownership, even if only a year or two, or maybe five years on a second violent misdemeanor, but leave the first one as a warning or possibly an unavoidable situation.
I think the idea behind not trusting someone with a gun is if they have violent tendencies. Someone who gets in a heated argument and tends to be violent that has a gun may use it where as someone who gets in a heated argument and tends to be violent but doesn't have a gun only breaks some noses and maybe cuts someone up a bit. There is also the question of whether we have the right to imprison someone for something they may or may not do. If someone did an armed robbery once, they might do it again. We can't hold them forever because they might rob a bank, but making it so they can't legally be armed seems like a prudent step.
I guess the core of the problem is that we don't release people because we are reasonably sure that they are sufficiently rehabilitated, but rather because we can't reasonably assume that they are not. If we only released people when we believed they were rehabilitated, then I would agree with you, but I think to do that would be a violation of their rights and would be unjust punishment as it would involve effectively treating them as continuously guilty until proven innocent.
I get the feeling you may have radically misunderstood my post. I do not believe I am necessarily opposed to much of what you suggested. My car example was a little bit of a stretch so there are admittedly some faults, but what I was trying to get at is the fact that removing guns from those who should have them would actually have an active, negative influence as it would empower those who shouldn't have guns and have them illegally as those who are well meaning would be less able to defend themselves. I made this an equivalent of removing existing protections in the traffic system to make it easier for those who would do harm (those doing hit and runs) to do so.
I am firmly in support of gun control to the extent of making sure that those who should not have guns don't (ie, criminals). I am firmly opposed to the idea that guns are an evil that should be removed from society. I agree that enforcing the policies we already have would solve the majority of issues and if anything I think current restrictions are too sever in some places. (It is a major pain in the ass to get carry a pistol around the country for example, or even just to get concealed carry in NY state where I live, even though I am an upstanding citizen with training in how to properly use firearms.)
I think you are reading your own views in to errandum's post. I read it as a continuation of the thought process that guns are evil and that the fact that more people die due to car accident's doesn't make up for the deaths from guns. I was simply expressing the fact that many of those deaths would not be impacted by removing guns in general which was the prevailing direction of the thread. I don't think you would find anyone opposed to taking guns away from criminals and those who are irresponsible with them, but my point is that you will never and can never remove guns from the criminal population. There will always be ways to get them, even if it involves stealing from legal sources. You try to do the best you can to prevent it and limit the damage, but it doesn't make a good reason to step on the rights of honest citizens as that will only make the problem worse.
A good point, though actually airsoft is a better analog or simply air rifles in general. Air rifles are good enough for competition shooting at short range while still not being nearly as accurate as a real rifle for long distance competition.
Are you sure about that? Air moves, but it also heats up far more readily. It takes a tremendous amount more energy to raise the same volume of water by the same amount. If there are any kinds of currents at all, then the heat should also dissipate more quickly. My understanding is that water only really effectively gets heated if the entire local volume of water can be heated or there is a substantial temperature difference in the water coming in than the water going out. (Which would still fall off exponentially as the hot water diffuses.) The only difference is the coefficient of heat for water is so much higher and therefore more energy has to diffuse for each degree raised (but it also takes far more energy to raise it a degree.)
If it was just their name, then maybe, but when the name and observed behavior seem to show intent, it is no longer discriminatory. Choosing a name like the pirates bay that displays intent and then acting in a way that confirms that intent does not make it discriminatory, it makes it criminal. If I made a group called the "Rich Guy Assassination League" and started a Craig's List like site where a huge number of the listings "just happened to be" hit contracts for rich guys, I'd justifiably be in hot legal water too.
Hard argument to make as softer doesn't matter (momentum is just a factor of weight and speed) and would likely make it impossible to fire and slower or lighter would make it considerably less accurate.
You completely missed the point. The point is that we could eliminate cars and have a far larger reduction in deaths. The point is that death can not be avoided and the cost and benefit to society must be weighed. How many of those deaths were caused by illegally obtained firearms? How many were self-inflicted and would have likely simply occurred by other means had a gun not been available? How many lives have been saved or serious injuries avoided because someone was able to defend themselves? How much of a deterrent to abuse by government is a well armed populace? If you could go back and prevent the gun from ever being created, I might be able to agree with you that the world would have been better off without them ever existing, but there is no way to remove guns from those who shouldn't have them, so there is no good reason to take them from those who should. It would only make the situation worse, rather than better.
To look at the car example, it would be like saying that we are going to take cars away from everybody except those who do hit and runs. We'll let them keep their cars and give them more targets when people start walking in the road since nobody else has cars, so they don't expect to be hit. Oh, and we'll also remove all stoplights and speed limits. See how well it works out for society.
Because nothing bad can possibly happen when bad guys (be they illegally obtained by street criminals or corrupt governments) have guns and innocent people don't.
Actually, bullets have higher latency, though I am now wondering what the bandwidth of a bullet would be if you made it with microSD cards. Perhaps we can have a new wireless internet spec based on the cell carriers shooting their customers. Doesn't seem to far off from the current model.
While yes, TextSecure is similar in nature to PGP, it isn't the tech, so much as the interface, that makes it a great app. While I can agree with some of your objections to what Web 2.0 heralds as new and I believe there are legitimate questions about the wisdom of the direction we are going with technology, I think your rant may be misplaced here. TextSecure is a local Android SMS client that smoothly integrates key exchange and secure messaging with SMS so that the user doesn't have to concern themselves as much with the "complicated" details. You simply choose a contact, request a key exchange, verify a code it gives you via some other channel to make sure there is no man in the middle and the keys are then stored with the contact for future verified, secure communication without having to do anything more than send text messages like you normally would (though through the TextSecure app).
What we should take from "Web 2.0" is the attention to what kinds of interfaces and interactions users gravitate towards and this is where TextSecure seems to shine the most. What we might be wiser not to take from Web 2.0 is some of the more questionable technical "innovation" that seems to be moving backward in capability to what we had in the past in the name of supporting the new UI. Examples from my perspective at least are the pushes towards things like Metro and trying to do entire desktop replacement application development in HTML5. Sure the idea of a pure touch friendly UI sounds good to marketing, but the fact is there is a lot that can't be effectively done with it. You might cover the needs of half the population even, but you are greatly limiting the development of the fringe of technology which has always been what pushes us forward.
Recently there seems to be this idea that the goal should be to get everyone, from the biggest technophiles to granny in a nursing home should embrace new tech, but too often the way that seems to be accomplished is the lazy approach of making a limited product that doesn't really push the envelope or encourage further growth. For the longest time tech has started in the hands of those who understand how to push it forward and then propagated down to the masses after going through a lot of refinement and filtering to find the best stuff. Now things just get thrown out to mass market and that filtering and direction is lost. Effectively control of the direction of technology is getting handed to marketing instead of technologists. That's a great way to make money, but a horrible way to move technological progression forward.
Similarly, HTML5 being used for desktop apps is a nice goal to try to have apps that can be used anywhere and not require install, but the fact is that the tools really aren't there to do it efficiently yet and it's really a wasteful process when you consider the extra development effort required for many projects combined with the extra energy required to run the necessarily inefficient code (just the lack of a good ability to push notification from server to client is a huge issue, let alone the security concerns and the performance of java script in general). On the other hand you do save having to produce hardware for the home, but that hardware and more is just having to go in data centers instead (though it is more fully utilized in a data center.)
That's a tricky question. Just because someone acts like a child doesn't make them one. It's hard for me to tell how he should be sentenced if found guilty without knowing more about his motivations (which will hopefully come out clearly in trial). If he seems to have genuinely believe in what he was doing and simply took irresponsible shortcuts and jumped to far without trying other options, then I would want to see him more leniently sentenced as I don't think someone's life should be thrown away for pursuing what they thought was the right thing, even if they were foolish and incorrect.
If I even got a hint of a whiff that it was his ego leading him to do it though, I would want fairly firm sentencing. The real question would be did he jump the gun from talking to superior straight to massively over leaking as an ego boost or because he was simply a foolish and irresponsible idiot. I'd have no problem seeing him go away for life if it was for an ego boost, but if he was genuinely just an idiot, I have a hard time seeing it as fair to sentence him for more than 10 to 20. Luckily it isn't my call to have to try and make. I think it would be a difficult one, both to determine what is just and to deal with the political firestorm sure to ensue whichever way the decision is made.
That isn't my definition of world peace at all. My definition of world peace is the same as yours, but I am a realist. We live in an imperfect world and there are going to be abuses. As long as those abuses are addressed and dealt with in a way that would seem fair if brought to light, then I see know reason why it should be someone's duty to spread the information. If it is not addressed, then I do believe it would be the moral responsibility of someone discovering such action to seek to have it remediated through the proper channels and only as a last resort publicly expose it, and only with the greatest care to ensure no harm could possibly come to innocent bystanders.
It would seem that some instances of unpunished abuse may have been reported in the leak, but we have no way of knowing what actions may have been taken after the fact that were not leaked. Also, in this case, a number of conditions don't appear to have been met. Outside of talking to his immediate supervisors, I am not aware of any other avenues being pursued, which is hugely jumping the gun to go to a leak. The information leaked was not targeted, and much of it did nothing to support the issue he was trying to point out. It was not responsibly selected to highlight the issues and instead was a deluge of information that only served to destabilize relations rather than bring any injustice to light. I am not talking about the information that would have composed a valid leak had all other options been exhausted to expose corruption and abuse, but rather the information that had no strongly justifiable relation to the offenses. Whistleblower status would not protect for this kind of carelessness with a leak.
I agree that people need to be able to scrutinize the government, I would agree that classification is probably overused, I would agree that responsible whistleblowers are a vital part of a smooth running democracy. All I don't agree on is that Manning, if guilty, was a responsible whistleblower, that many of the documents leaked in question that were unrelated were improperly classified or that certain leaked information was beneficial to the people of the US or the world. (I would in fact argue that some of it did no good and considerable destabilizing harm (the private opinions of middle easy governments towards Iran as expressed to the US))