In 1996, 35 people were shot dead and 21 were seriously injured by a lone gunman in the tourist village of Port Arthur, Tasmania (Australia).
The response by both State and Federal Governments was to introduce some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. Gun crime fell significantly and has stayed low ever since.
Yes, criminals still get guns, yes, the odd "archival" firearm turns up in a crime, but overall, Australia is a safer place to live now because guns are tightly restricted to police, military, sports shooting clubs and limited rural applications.
The snivel libertarians will say, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," but people with guns kill people more effectively than any other way and we're safer without them.
It's just the media being all "phnrr phnrr, hee, he's on a *dating* site, snicker, he must be weird. My current wife and I met online, did the long distance thing for 18 months, then I moved to her city and we got married 6 months later. She's as sane as you can get and fun with it. My ex and I met through friends (supposedly the "normal way") and she turned out to be an utter nutter. So what is the right way to meet people? The way that works, if he beats the rape rap, good luck to him, I can tell him online dating works.
Exactly, but that won't stop a planet full of petrol addicted monkeys from driving headlong to civilisation's peak oil fuelled destruction.
The drivers are addicted to petrol. Traffic engineers are addicted to petrol. Governments are addicted to petrol votes and petrol excise. Of course, while the frog boils slowly, no effort will be made to escape from the water pot.
The same numpties who rule that Australian Govt services and web sites shall only support Windows and MSIE, so when you have a Mac at home you HAVE to run a Bootcamp partition simply to run the most recent version of MSIE in order to register for certain government services.
It stems from agreements signed by John Howard and Bill Gates in the late 90s.
"The Atlantic ocean is such a dangerous place, Mr Columbus! There's the Sargasso Sea, storms that rage for weeks, even months and quite possibly sea monsters! You'd be mad to try to reach the East Indies by sailing that way, sir!"
So, because there are spammers, we must not try to improve the internet? Perhaps, people working on these sorts of projects might actually have some idea about how to make spamming via the service harder. Perhaps most people aren't actually as seriously affected by spam than the worst case scenario so are willing to make cool stuff anyway.
One man's spam is another's window on a bargain or something interesting to read.
The result of the first human not trying something because of the risks would have led to us still living in caves.
Lets remember a market where Apple were insignificant. We only have to go back to 1997. The evil empire then was Microsoft. They were going to own all the information and make us bow before their encyclopedic might. Recently Google was the "threat", and now Apple are going to eat our babies.
Now, far be it for me to be an apologist for capitalism, but companies rise, and companies fall. Academics publish papers on the threat to freedom posed by Bell, by Microsoft, by Google, by Apple and probably Facebook next. The threat is never one particular company, the threat is a lack of regulation born of ideology that big companies shouldn't have to be bound by any legal accountability.<br><br>
There is a social contract. We pass laws to ensure it's protected. Some countries pass too many, some pass too few. Currently the USA is south of the Goldilocks region.
Exactly why I don't friend up colleagues unless they're actually in my social circle and trusted. As much as I hate Facebook, because my kids use it and most of my friends use it, I have no choice but to be on it, too. That sid, it's a useful tool, and although I'd prefer to use another, more responsible service, I don't lose sleep over privacy. If there are those who would want to use my "information" against me, they can get that all sorts of way, they don't need Facebook, nor does it make it any easier for them. We make it easy for our personal info to be stolen, not the tool we chose. It's like blaming the hammer for your blackened thumbnail.
Regulation is as important for safety (and prevention of this kind of theft) as competition is important for encouraging better pricing and services. Only a complete wanker would believe you can completely deregulate reticulated infrastructures. It's not the socialists who are unrealistic loonie anachists, it's clearly the capaitalists.
Yes, exactly, arbitrary numerological worship based on an arbitrary interpretation of an arbitrary calendrical system, is hardly the sort of scientific rigor you'd expect from nerds and boffins on/. It's as crap as saying the world will end in 2012 based on the end of a calendar - a calendar calculated by hand which the priest probably couldn't be arsed working out beyond 2012, considering they were doing it with fingers and knotted string.
You create a Facebook account, add no data about yourself, turn off all notifications, then suspend it. Your name/email combo can't be used again by anybody but you. Use Facebook to not use Facebook.
Lock up a few kilos of Lithium in all the cars of the world, and Central/South America and Afghanistan will make the Middle East look like a cakewalk.
Meanwhile, there's a biofuel tech in Texas that uses farm waste to create a crude oil that can be pumped into existing refineries to produce all the normal range of fuels and plastics, yet burns cleaner than mineral based fuels in unmodified engines to produce a fraction of the CO2 emissions of the farm waste left to rot. Google Vetroleum and Sustainable Power. Using just 1/6th of the USA's farm waste, this tech could meet all US land transport demand. Using all the world's farm waste and you could run the space programme on it - run a mission to Alpha Centauri on it:-)
If electric cars are the future, civilisation is fucked.
There is no other, available now, backward compatible, sustainable, environmental, socially expedient technology out there, and Vetroleum needs to be backed by every government in the world - buying out the patents and making the technology public domain, if necessary.
Without oil there is no photo-voltaic solar, no modern agriculture (fertilisers and pesticides come almost exclusively from by-products of the petroleum industry), no mining. It took 50 years and 2 world wars to build the petroleum economy and infrastructure, and hydrogen is only in its infancy. Vetroleum bolts onto the existing oil industry with little change to any infrastructure. It makes farming more cost effective and CO2 neutral, too.
According to the German report, we have 15 years, according to the US one, we have as little as 5 years. Hydrogen is not going to be wide enough spread in California, let alone the rest of the world, in 5 years. Vetroleum could be rolled out in 5 years if we start now. It could also end all those oil wars in the Middle East.
Published first in May 1961? Isn't this 8 months too early for the 50th anniversary? I should know, I just turned 49 last Thursday and I was born in 1961.
fnur fnur. You know that it's not cycling which is dangerous, it's all the fat bastards in SUVs, passing out from carbo shock after eating a 26 inch pizza and a 40 gallon drum of coke while yelling into their cell phones at a call centre who won't help them who are dangerous.
Danger is an effect we have on others, not something that inherently stems from a normal, healthy activity done reasonably. I've been cycling in traffic for 35 years and mountain biking for 25. The only harm I've ever come to was off-road, jumping beyond my ability. Cycling in traffic has resulted in some scares from aggressive sociopaths who got licences to drive because there has never been a psychological requirement to getting one.
Dan Maes has done the oldest trick in the political book - vilify a minority who stand out. Many a politician got elected screaming, "lynch the nigger!" This is just the 21C equivalent.
Does nobody in authority understand the concept of field strength? It's OK to expect that some parents might not understand this, but surely people authorising the installation of WiFi networks might be able to make a simple connection between WiFi being tiny wattages and larger field strengths being necessary to harm tissue (ie leaky microwave oven.)
But we do. They fly into trees, they fly off the road and they fly into people and property.
There's actually a really good fatality proof technology that's been in cars since before Henry's T-Model. It's called braking. It uses controlled friction at the wheels to reduce a car's speed. The idea is the driver slows to a speed suitable for the conditions and, using their eyes, brakes to a stop in order to prevent collision. The user interface is a simple pedal, next to the accelerator pedal. It's actually as easy to use as the accelerator! Really!
Slashdot Mirror
"...true face of capitalism..." in a neat suit. You should see it get down and dirty ;-)
Yep, precisely. So much for convergence...
In 1996, 35 people were shot dead and 21 were seriously injured by a lone gunman in the tourist village of Port Arthur, Tasmania (Australia).
The response by both State and Federal Governments was to introduce some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. Gun crime fell significantly and has stayed low ever since.
Yes, criminals still get guns, yes, the odd "archival" firearm turns up in a crime, but overall, Australia is a safer place to live now because guns are tightly restricted to police, military, sports shooting clubs and limited rural applications.
The snivel libertarians will say, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," but people with guns kill people more effectively than any other way and we're safer without them.
It's just the media being all "phnrr phnrr, hee, he's on a *dating* site, snicker, he must be weird. My current wife and I met online, did the long distance thing for 18 months, then I moved to her city and we got married 6 months later. She's as sane as you can get and fun with it. My ex and I met through friends (supposedly the "normal way") and she turned out to be an utter nutter. So what is the right way to meet people? The way that works, if he beats the rape rap, good luck to him, I can tell him online dating works.
Exactly, but that won't stop a planet full of petrol addicted monkeys from driving headlong to civilisation's peak oil fuelled destruction.
The drivers are addicted to petrol. Traffic engineers are addicted to petrol. Governments are addicted to petrol votes and petrol excise. Of course, while the frog boils slowly, no effort will be made to escape from the water pot.
The same numpties who rule that Australian Govt services and web sites shall only support Windows and MSIE, so when you have a Mac at home you HAVE to run a Bootcamp partition simply to run the most recent version of MSIE in order to register for certain government services.
It stems from agreements signed by John Howard and Bill Gates in the late 90s.
"The Atlantic ocean is such a dangerous place, Mr Columbus! There's the Sargasso Sea, storms that rage for weeks, even months and quite possibly sea monsters! You'd be mad to try to reach the East Indies by sailing that way, sir!"
So, because there are spammers, we must not try to improve the internet? Perhaps, people working on these sorts of projects might actually have some idea about how to make spamming via the service harder. Perhaps most people aren't actually as seriously affected by spam than the worst case scenario so are willing to make cool stuff anyway.
One man's spam is another's window on a bargain or something interesting to read.
The result of the first human not trying something because of the risks would have led to us still living in caves.
Lets remember a market where Apple were insignificant. We only have to go back to 1997. The evil empire then was Microsoft. They were going to own all the information and make us bow before their encyclopedic might. Recently Google was the "threat", and now Apple are going to eat our babies.
Now, far be it for me to be an apologist for capitalism, but companies rise, and companies fall. Academics publish papers on the threat to freedom posed by Bell, by Microsoft, by Google, by Apple and probably Facebook next. The threat is never one particular company, the threat is a lack of regulation born of ideology that big companies shouldn't have to be bound by any legal accountability.<br><br>
There is a social contract. We pass laws to ensure it's protected. Some countries pass too many, some pass too few. Currently the USA is south of the Goldilocks region.
Your mum's cake is MINE! :-)
Exactly why I don't friend up colleagues unless they're actually in my social circle and trusted. As much as I hate Facebook, because my kids use it and most of my friends use it, I have no choice but to be on it, too. That sid, it's a useful tool, and although I'd prefer to use another, more responsible service, I don't lose sleep over privacy. If there are those who would want to use my "information" against me, they can get that all sorts of way, they don't need Facebook, nor does it make it any easier for them. We make it easy for our personal info to be stolen, not the tool we chose. It's like blaming the hammer for your blackened thumbnail.
It's debunkable by considering early carbon mic hearing aids, therapeutic heat packs, you name it.
> but I still prefer the configurability of my desktop Linux systems
You still have that, it's called Terminal and it's located in Applications/Utilies/
A rasher of bacon contains enough oil to fry an egg and a couple of rashers of bacon, and tastes better than a brazil nut :-)
Regulation is as important for safety (and prevention of this kind of theft) as competition is important for encouraging better pricing and services. Only a complete wanker would believe you can completely deregulate reticulated infrastructures. It's not the socialists who are unrealistic loonie anachists, it's clearly the capaitalists.
Yes, exactly, arbitrary numerological worship based on an arbitrary interpretation of an arbitrary calendrical system, is hardly the sort of scientific rigor you'd expect from nerds and boffins on /. It's as crap as saying the world will end in 2012 based on the end of a calendar - a calendar calculated by hand which the priest probably couldn't be arsed working out beyond 2012, considering they were doing it with fingers and knotted string.
You create a Facebook account, add no data about yourself, turn off all notifications, then suspend it. Your name/email combo can't be used again by anybody but you. Use Facebook to not use Facebook.
It's as simple as this.
:-)
Lock up a few kilos of Lithium in all the cars of the world, and Central/South America and Afghanistan will make the Middle East look like a cakewalk.
Meanwhile, there's a biofuel tech in Texas that uses farm waste to create a crude oil that can be pumped into existing refineries to produce all the normal range of fuels and plastics, yet burns cleaner than mineral based fuels in unmodified engines to produce a fraction of the CO2 emissions of the farm waste left to rot. Google Vetroleum and Sustainable Power. Using just 1/6th of the USA's farm waste, this tech could meet all US land transport demand. Using all the world's farm waste and you could run the space programme on it - run a mission to Alpha Centauri on it
If electric cars are the future, civilisation is fucked.
Yeh, Macroslop is more like an ugly stepsister getting her comeuppance at the end of the Cinderella story ;-)
"Vetroleum"
http://puregreencars.com/Green-Cars-News/Technology/john_rivera_claims_he_can_produce_limitless_fuel_from_farm_waste.html
There is no other, available now, backward compatible, sustainable, environmental, socially expedient technology out there, and Vetroleum needs to be backed by every government in the world - buying out the patents and making the technology public domain, if necessary.
Without oil there is no photo-voltaic solar, no modern agriculture (fertilisers and pesticides come almost exclusively from by-products of the petroleum industry), no mining. It took 50 years and 2 world wars to build the petroleum economy and infrastructure, and hydrogen is only in its infancy. Vetroleum bolts onto the existing oil industry with little change to any infrastructure. It makes farming more cost effective and CO2 neutral, too.
According to the German report, we have 15 years, according to the US one, we have as little as 5 years. Hydrogen is not going to be wide enough spread in California, let alone the rest of the world, in 5 years. Vetroleum could be rolled out in 5 years if we start now. It could also end all those oil wars in the Middle East.
Published first in May 1961? Isn't this 8 months too early for the 50th anniversary? I should know, I just turned 49 last Thursday and I was born in 1961.
Exactly my point :-)
fnur fnur. You know that it's not cycling which is dangerous, it's all the fat bastards in SUVs, passing out from carbo shock after eating a 26 inch pizza and a 40 gallon drum of coke while yelling into their cell phones at a call centre who won't help them who are dangerous.
Danger is an effect we have on others, not something that inherently stems from a normal, healthy activity done reasonably. I've been cycling in traffic for 35 years and mountain biking for 25. The only harm I've ever come to was off-road, jumping beyond my ability. Cycling in traffic has resulted in some scares from aggressive sociopaths who got licences to drive because there has never been a psychological requirement to getting one.
Dan Maes has done the oldest trick in the political book - vilify a minority who stand out. Many a politician got elected screaming, "lynch the nigger!" This is just the 21C equivalent.
Does nobody in authority understand the concept of field strength? It's OK to expect that some parents might not understand this, but surely people authorising the installation of WiFi networks might be able to make a simple connection between WiFi being tiny wattages and larger field strengths being necessary to harm tissue (ie leaky microwave oven.)
Bloody "WiFi sickness"? Bloody bollocks.
In 2015 we'll all have flying cars, jet packs and ray guns.
But we do. They fly into trees, they fly off the road and they fly into people and property.
There's actually a really good fatality proof technology that's been in cars since before Henry's T-Model. It's called braking. It uses controlled friction at the wheels to reduce a car's speed. The idea is the driver slows to a speed suitable for the conditions and, using their eyes, brakes to a stop in order to prevent collision. The user interface is a simple pedal, next to the accelerator pedal. It's actually as easy to use as the accelerator! Really!