So your little "ZOMG THE US HAS DA MOST GUN MURDRS!" statistic is a wee bit misleading. I doubt that murder victims really give a shit what tool was used to kill them (unless it's a rusty spoon or a potato peeler).
Your stats are also misleading because you're mixing suicides and homicides together, and calling them "gun deaths", which is fucking retarded.
US statistics have nothing to do with Australia, so I skipped everything after the first two sentences. In the case of the Australian ban under discussion, it was instituted entirely by blind, irrational panic, caused by a sudden spike in gang violence and a lone maniac. Read:
The best thing we ever did in.au was get rid of most semi automatic guns.
Yep, legislation induced by blind, irrational panic is always a good thing. I mean, sure, you're restricting the rights of all citizens for no reason whatsoever, but it just feels so good, doesn't it?
Have you noticed how, since the advent of the Internet as a massive information medium, there are suddenly all classes of strange, unexplained stuff out there?
No. What I've noticed is that since the advent of the internet more and more people are getting access to really cool discoveries that would otherwise have been relegated to scientific journals, and accessed only by scientists in the related field(s).
I'm sorry... but either 21st century scientists are really lame, or we humans know *shit* about the universe and the laws that rule it. Wonder which one it is...
We know more than we've ever known before. The thing is, every time we find a real answer to something we end up creating twenty new questions. That's the way human progress has always worked, and that's why science is so friggin' awesome. The more we figure out, the more new things there are to figure out!
You are saving the $10,000-$100,000/year pilot salary and risking the $50-$150 million plane. Even from a corporate sociopath perspective, this is a really dumb idea.
If it increases the risk of a crash by 0.001% per year, it's the smart thing to do. You're tossing around raw figures as if they mean something, but without a proper risk assessment they're meaningless.
You don't really deserve a response, but two points:
1. Your pedophilia will never be accepted, any more than we would turn a blind eye if you happened to be a murderer.
2. You really need to figure out which aspect of which nation you're complaining about, instead of lumping the entire world in together and comparing them en masse to Cuba. One second you're complaining about laws in Italy, the next you're bitching about the personal opinions of politicians in the US. You clearly have no actual point to make, which was your problem right from the start.
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, the room gets brighter
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, a person halfway around the world dies. Fools and lunatics insist on "finding" a connection - rational people do not.
Although my memory's fairly terrible
Apparently so. Allow me to refresh your memory: Swastikas and perfectly legal in all but one nation, Porn is completely legal in all first-world nations, the Terrorism Act of 2006 has nothing to do with the US, and assange - despite being an asshat whom I'd personally love to see in a pine box - is alive and well and not facing any sort of sanctions over his wiki-leak related actions.
Also, the sun rises in the east, water flows down-hill, and fire needs oxygen to burn. Hope that helps. Let me know if there's anything else you're confused about.
The free market isn't some magical pixie that just does whatever you want. If the government got fucked over by Northrop Grumman, it's either because they didn't bother to look into what they were buying, or they failed to hold NG accountable when it failed to deliver on the promised contract. The free-market is about choice and competition - neither of which is worth a damn if the customers are too lazy or too stupid to verify that they're actually getting what they want for the best price available.
Eh. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Figured this way I'd either find out I'd misread what he was trying to say, or give him plenty of rope to hang himself.
"Isn't it great that the greatest threats governments have now is their citizens"
Present World Govt. Inc. is attempting to prevent the sort of thing that touched off WWI (lone unknown nutjob tosses a grenade into a carriage) by datamining all personal communications.
Nonsense. Describing the start of WW1 in that fashion is akin to saying that the moon landing happened because Neil stepped off a ladder. It's overly simplistic, dismissive of all the other factors that lead up to that event, and gives the false impression that any time a guy steps off a ladder he could "touch off" a new moon landing.
Also, you used the paranoid "New World Order" terminology, so unless you can reassure me that you're not a conspiracy nut, I think we're done here.
Muhammad Attah and compadres hung out in the same mosque together, managed to implement a plan to train a few guys to fly passenger jets, and pulled it off killing ca. 5k civilians, and another few hundred k in ensuing wars.
And none of them were US citizens, and all of them received funding and training in a foreign nation from a massive terrorist organizations which had backing from several foreign governments.
I mean, uh, yeah, no, those guys were just a couple average American Joes. You better tell the local cops to lock up Nurse Mable before she goes all Rambo on you.
They're more afraid of individual wingnuts now than they were of the Soviets.
Either you've never studied any cold-war era history, or you have a really bad memory.
What about some guy who lost his Afghan/Iraqi/Pakistan friend when US soldiers shot them?
What about him? If every company in the world was worried about showing respect for "some guy", nobody would sell ANYTHING. These gestures are made towards large organizations, not towards individuals.
With that said, I think they're being jackasses. I know I'm looking forward to playing the game, and I've lost several friends in Afghanistan. I'm a much bigger fan of freedom than of "respect".
So, given the option of being flashed by a hairy 300lb member of the East German Womens Olympic Shot-put Team, or not being flashed at all... you'd go with the former?
I call myself "human", which puts me several steps above the bigoted trolls who can't seem to see past their own mindless hatred of anyone who doesn't think exactly the way they do. I don't much care what you call yourself - your attitude tells me much more than any label ever could.
I think saying "all atheism is alike" is like saying "all Christianity is alike."
Not even close.
Atheism is an answer to a single question - "Do you believe that God exists?".
If you answer "yes", you're not an atheist. If you answer "no", you are an atheist. Therefore all atheism IS the same, since it include no other questions, no answers, no beliefs or tenets of any kind. You could argue that not all atheists are the same, and you'd be correct, but the difference between them would have nothing to do with atheism.
I see. I suppose that makes you a pot-smoking prius-driving sandal-wearing dirty unshaven godless commie UFO-worshiper with a Himalayan Salt Lamp and a tiedyed hemp shirt.
Or maybe you're just a brainwashed idiot with a penchant for rabid political rhetoric who is reading way too much into a single sentence. If you honestly think you can read his ideological leanings from that one sentence, you really do need to lay off the booze.
No, the laws of physics are the laws of physics. Sticking an extra word on them doesn't change anything. You may as well go around saying "god is my couch". It's ridiculous.
god is a metaphor, that some people
A metaphor for WHAT, exactly?
the whole hullabaloo over the existence of god is really silly, as soon as you realize that everyone has a different way of describing the same thing
Really? So when the Taliban tells us that God doesn't want women showing their faces in public, they're talking about the same thing as when Stephen Hawking talks about the Big Bang?
NTFS-3G has had read/write support, yes - Mac's haven't. If you're running OSX 10.5 or earlier, you don't even have the option. On later versions you can force it to mount in r/w mode, but by default it's read-only. And I don't have a later version anyway.
Isn't it great that the greatest threats governments have now is their citizens
Maybe in happy rainbow unicorn land. In the real world, governments worry about external factors. If you think Obama is shaking in his boots at the prospect of having the White House invaded by a bunch of slashdot nerds, you've been sniffing too much computer duster.
Well, let's see. On the one hand, I've got Lamas telling me that Buddhism isn't atheistic. On the other hand, I've got some guy on slashdot who doesn't seem to understand that pantheists can't be atheists trying to tell me that Buddhism IS atheistic.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's bad form to reply to my own comment, but I had to add a P.S. here: when it comes to murder-per-capita, the US comes in at #24:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
So your little "ZOMG THE US HAS DA MOST GUN MURDRS!" statistic is a wee bit misleading. I doubt that murder victims really give a shit what tool was used to kill them (unless it's a rusty spoon or a potato peeler).
Your stats are also misleading because you're mixing suicides and homicides together, and calling them "gun deaths", which is fucking retarded.
tl;dr
US statistics have nothing to do with Australia, so I skipped everything after the first two sentences. In the case of the Australian ban under discussion, it was instituted entirely by blind, irrational panic, caused by a sudden spike in gang violence and a lone maniac. Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#1984_-_1996_multiple_killings
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#The_Port_Arthur_massacre_and_its_consequences
The best thing we ever did in .au was get rid of most semi automatic guns.
Yep, legislation induced by blind, irrational panic is always a good thing. I mean, sure, you're restricting the rights of all citizens for no reason whatsoever, but it just feels so good, doesn't it?
Have you noticed how, since the advent of the Internet as a massive information medium, there are suddenly all classes of strange, unexplained stuff out there?
No. What I've noticed is that since the advent of the internet more and more people are getting access to really cool discoveries that would otherwise have been relegated to scientific journals, and accessed only by scientists in the related field(s).
I'm sorry... but either 21st century scientists are really lame, or we humans know *shit* about the universe and the laws that rule it. Wonder which one it is...
We know more than we've ever known before. The thing is, every time we find a real answer to something we end up creating twenty new questions. That's the way human progress has always worked, and that's why science is so friggin' awesome. The more we figure out, the more new things there are to figure out!
You are saving the $10,000-$100,000/year pilot salary and risking the $50-$150 million plane. Even from a corporate sociopath perspective, this is a really dumb idea.
If it increases the risk of a crash by 0.001% per year, it's the smart thing to do. You're tossing around raw figures as if they mean something, but without a proper risk assessment they're meaningless.
You don't really deserve a response, but two points:
1. Your pedophilia will never be accepted, any more than we would turn a blind eye if you happened to be a murderer.
2. You really need to figure out which aspect of which nation you're complaining about, instead of lumping the entire world in together and comparing them en masse to Cuba. One second you're complaining about laws in Italy, the next you're bitching about the personal opinions of politicians in the US. You clearly have no actual point to make, which was your problem right from the start.
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, the room gets brighter
Sometimes when you flick a switch near a door, a person halfway around the world dies. Fools and lunatics insist on "finding" a connection - rational people do not.
Although my memory's fairly terrible
Apparently so. Allow me to refresh your memory: Swastikas and perfectly legal in all but one nation, Porn is completely legal in all first-world nations, the Terrorism Act of 2006 has nothing to do with the US, and assange - despite being an asshat whom I'd personally love to see in a pine box - is alive and well and not facing any sort of sanctions over his wiki-leak related actions.
Also, the sun rises in the east, water flows down-hill, and fire needs oxygen to burn. Hope that helps. Let me know if there's anything else you're confused about.
Ohh, that looks fun! Let me try:
Swastikas
Bunnies.
Porn.
Rainbows!
Terrorism Act 2006.
Lollipops,
Assange.
Richard Simmons!
Wheee!
Just one question: other than the sheer fun of it, why are throwing around random words?
The free market isn't some magical pixie that just does whatever you want. If the government got fucked over by Northrop Grumman, it's either because they didn't bother to look into what they were buying, or they failed to hold NG accountable when it failed to deliver on the promised contract. The free-market is about choice and competition - neither of which is worth a damn if the customers are too lazy or too stupid to verify that they're actually getting what they want for the best price available.
Eh. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Figured this way I'd either find out I'd misread what he was trying to say, or give him plenty of rope to hang himself.
Irrelevant kneejerk "USA!" defence.
*sigh*
From the original comment:
"Isn't it great that the greatest threats governments have now is their citizens"
Present World Govt. Inc. is attempting to prevent the sort of thing that touched off WWI (lone unknown nutjob tosses a grenade into a carriage) by datamining all personal communications.
Nonsense. Describing the start of WW1 in that fashion is akin to saying that the moon landing happened because Neil stepped off a ladder. It's overly simplistic, dismissive of all the other factors that lead up to that event, and gives the false impression that any time a guy steps off a ladder he could "touch off" a new moon landing.
Also, you used the paranoid "New World Order" terminology, so unless you can reassure me that you're not a conspiracy nut, I think we're done here.
Muhammad Attah and compadres hung out in the same mosque together, managed to implement a plan to train a few guys to fly passenger jets, and pulled it off killing ca. 5k civilians, and another few hundred k in ensuing wars.
And none of them were US citizens, and all of them received funding and training in a foreign nation from a massive terrorist organizations which had backing from several foreign governments.
I mean, uh, yeah, no, those guys were just a couple average American Joes. You better tell the local cops to lock up Nurse Mable before she goes all Rambo on you.
They're more afraid of individual wingnuts now than they were of the Soviets.
Either you've never studied any cold-war era history, or you have a really bad memory.
What about some guy who lost his Afghan/Iraqi/Pakistan friend when US soldiers shot them?
What about him? If every company in the world was worried about showing respect for "some guy", nobody would sell ANYTHING. These gestures are made towards large organizations, not towards individuals.
With that said, I think they're being jackasses. I know I'm looking forward to playing the game, and I've lost several friends in Afghanistan. I'm a much bigger fan of freedom than of "respect".
So, given the option of being flashed by a hairy 300lb member of the East German Womens Olympic Shot-put Team, or not being flashed at all ... you'd go with the former?
To each his own, I guess ....
I call myself "human", which puts me several steps above the bigoted trolls who can't seem to see past their own mindless hatred of anyone who doesn't think exactly the way they do. I don't much care what you call yourself - your attitude tells me much more than any label ever could.
I think saying "all atheism is alike" is like saying "all Christianity is alike."
Not even close.
Atheism is an answer to a single question - "Do you believe that God exists?".
If you answer "yes", you're not an atheist. If you answer "no", you are an atheist. Therefore all atheism IS the same, since it include no other questions, no answers, no beliefs or tenets of any kind. You could argue that not all atheists are the same, and you'd be correct, but the difference between them would have nothing to do with atheism.
I see. I suppose that makes you a pot-smoking prius-driving sandal-wearing dirty unshaven godless commie UFO-worshiper with a Himalayan Salt Lamp and a tiedyed hemp shirt.
Or maybe you're just a brainwashed idiot with a penchant for rabid political rhetoric who is reading way too much into a single sentence. If you honestly think you can read his ideological leanings from that one sentence, you really do need to lay off the booze.
god IS the laws of physics
No, the laws of physics are the laws of physics. Sticking an extra word on them doesn't change anything. You may as well go around saying "god is my couch". It's ridiculous.
god is a metaphor, that some people
A metaphor for WHAT, exactly?
the whole hullabaloo over the existence of god is really silly, as soon as you realize that everyone has a different way of describing the same thing
Really? So when the Taliban tells us that God doesn't want women showing their faces in public, they're talking about the same thing as when Stephen Hawking talks about the Big Bang?
Wanna run that one by me one more time?
The what now?
Where exactly is the false dichotomy?
NTFS-3G has had read/write support, yes - Mac's haven't. If you're running OSX 10.5 or earlier, you don't even have the option. On later versions you can force it to mount in r/w mode, but by default it's read-only. And I don't have a later version anyway.
Isn't it great that the greatest threats governments have now is their citizens
Maybe in happy rainbow unicorn land. In the real world, governments worry about external factors. If you think Obama is shaking in his boots at the prospect of having the White House invaded by a bunch of slashdot nerds, you've been sniffing too much computer duster.
He's a teabagger because he doesn't like the UN?
Doc, I think you need to stop dipping into the medicinal brandy.
In fact, US agencies already have backdoors made for their in major services and ISP's.
[citation needed]
Well, let's see. On the one hand, I've got Lamas telling me that Buddhism isn't atheistic. On the other hand, I've got some guy on slashdot who doesn't seem to understand that pantheists can't be atheists trying to tell me that Buddhism IS atheistic.
Who to believe, who to believe ....
You may have noticed that the word "pantheism" contains the word "theism". I know it's hard to spot, but trust me, it's there.