It was junk, but the coating has changed and it is now just fine (aside from the fact that it stinks). The feed problems were mostly due to the laquer coating, you definitely didn't want it to sit in a hot barrel very long and you couldn't run many rounds in between cleanings.
The new stuff has a polymer based coating. I have left it in a hot 223 chamber several times and it ran just fine.
Accuracy still isn't great but it is no worse than the other bottom shelf stuff.
You'd need what is referred to as a "Class 3 Tax Stamp". The process is as rigorous as the standard background check when you buy any firearm in the US but it takes a lot longer (6 weeks last I did it). You also have to have the application signed the the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in your area. And pay $200 to the BATF. If you ever sell the item the buyer has to pay the tax again.
This is the same process as one goes through to buy a suppressor, or a rifle with a barrel less than 16".
As far as being watched, no. Well, no more closely than anyone else.
I am not sure about the issue M4s as we Marines were issued M16s, but the civilian M4geries are stil very accurate rifles. I have one with a 10.5" barrel that will shoot MOA at 200 yards. As for the velocity loss, the Army's Operator's Manual states that the M4's muzzle velocity is 130 fps less than the M16. Not much.
The Army looked at the HK 416 but the G36 lineage of guns has never caught on in the US. That isn't to say that it isn't well executed, we didn't buy too many Steyr Scouts either and that is a spectacular rifle. Regardless, you are absolutely right that HK is well out in front of Colt and their US competitors when it comes to designing small arms.
And while ammunition prices have skyrocketed recently, mostly because the US military has purchased the entire output of most of the major manufacturers 5.56, it isn't hard to come by. Ammoman has been able to keep a steady supply of Wolf, usually has various Lake City products, SS109, etc etc.
Also, most US brick and mortar shops (Wal-Marts even) will have larger stocks of 5.56x45 than 7.62x54R.
More recently a lot of troops are being issued M4s. Its shorter gas system appears to be less reliable, in large part because combustion gases have to much less distance to travel before being dumped into the receiver.
Much of the work to replace the weapon revolves around a minor change to the receiver. Making the combustion gases drive a piston that unlocks the bolt. Sealing the gases out of the relatively delicate internal goings on helps a lot, especially on full auto and burst fire weapons.
The other end of why people think the platform is unreliable is because the M4's rail foreend allows a person to defile an otherwise light and quick handling rifle by clamping lasers and lights and night vision and cameras and scopes and pinball machines to it. Now, instead of a properly balanced 8 lb rifle you have an 8 lb rifle with 30 lbs of gear hanging off the end of it.
The better comparison would have been the AK74. Almost identical mechanically to the AK47 but in a closer caliber.
Most of the serious consideration the US armed forces have given to replacing the M16 and its variants have been along the lines of what is essentially the same rifle but with a gas piston driven recoil system (HK 416), instead of dumping combustion gas directly into the receiver. That indicates the general design of the thing can still compete with stuff rolling off of drawing boards today.
The G36 may look cool, but it has definite drawbacks, not the least of which is a relatively unproven polymer receiver. It isn't common but sustained fire, particularly with a suppressor attached, can damage it. The zero of the weapon will shift, or it can melt enough to render the thing useless. That and no one trusts polymer magazines in a rifle yet.
Yeah, I liked that too. And "the chemical industry" must not have taken this too seriously. I bet Dow spends that in a day taking people out to lunch.
I also liked the fact that the Washington Toxics Coalition spokesperson used the phrase "freaking out" in communicating an official statement. I bet they are, like, totally against all the, like, bad-for-you:( stuff and stuff.
Almost certainly the 2 handgun this is speculative information and the police will end up finding some long guns he discarded. Killing or wounding more than 50 people with 2 handguns would be an extraordinary feat, and the ammo management he would have to practice to keep from being rushed is outside the realm of possibility.
But who knows, maybe his victims just sat there and waited for help.
Jack Thompson will blame video games, Jerry Falwell will blame gay marriage, Rosie O'Donnel will say it is the proliferation of guns, Rush Limbaugh will tell us that this is the inevitable result of a a Democrat majority. This is how these people get their faces on TV.
I don't even think it is seen as grotesque by most people any more.
Should a cop be able to own a device capable of supplying his firearm with more rounds between reloads than the same device owned by a regular citizen. Is that in the public interest?
After reading the first sentence I thought someone was making a good point, but the signature line negates it.
Keep cracking DRM schemes and all you'll get are more laws aimed at stopping you, more vigorous enforcement, and more DRM integrated into your hardware.
Stop buying DRM'd content in the first place and maybe you'll get somewhere.
I think they base that primarily on the fact that the rotor is protected. Many helicopters can take hits in non-critical areas but a rotor strike is almost always catastrophic.
It has probably been mentioned and I just skipped it, but just the process of securing a Windows reinstall can take days, unless you have the time to babysit the whole thing.
I have reinstalled XP a few times, from an SP1 disc. Visit Windows Update. It can't Update until I install some ActiveX stuff so I can use the latest version of the site. That done, it recommends maybe 50 or 60 updates. Reboot. Go back to the site, spend a half hour downloading SP2 and another 2 installing it. Reboot. Go back to the site. More updates, maybe only a dozen this time. Reboot. IE7. Reboot. Patch for IE7. Possibly a couple of driver updates. Reboot.
And if you leave to go to the store without accepting the EULA for the patch....more wasted time. And this whole process is just to secure the machine, no app install of setup or tweaking.
Vista seems slightly better in this regard as it can download updates during the install process, but it still isn't up to the level that most Linux distros are.
I don't even know what the OSX install process looks like, or if there even is one. And I own more Macs than anything else.
That isn't always the point. A thought that occurred to me the last time I attended a Tufte lecture was that, in a lot of cases, the point is to obscure the facts and the data and mislead the audience into making the choice the presenter wants.
This is true of nearly all sales pitch presentations. Tufte worked on both Shuttle disasters, so he mentions them a lot, and in some of the presentations he criticizes the entire point behind them was to deflect blame. Lockheed Martin didn't want their wing design to be the reason why the shuttle burned up. Whomever it was who built the rocket motors for the Challenger didn't want their motors to be the reason why launches had to be aborted.
Sometimes the entire point of a presentation is to confuse you and obfuscate the facts. It might be true that if a person is reading verbatim from their own slides and has a laser beam background and fly in from the left bullet points accompanied by monkey shrieks...they might be doing it to distract you.
That is Tufte's main gripe with Powerpoint, that so much content is created in it. He advocates creating charts and tables and such in actual statistics software, making it presentable with a graphics package like Illustrator, and using PP just to display what you've created.
What topic do you present, if I may ask? When I give photography presentations the bulk of my slides are photos, interspersed with some summary text here and there when the subject is of a technical nature.
Tufte is correct about a lot of things related to data presentation, but I think he lets Powerpoint become the focal point for a lot of his complaints that would be better directed elsewhere.
He doesn't like Microsoft style graphs. While you can create a graph from inside Powerpoint, you are actually doing in in MS Graph (or some similar name). He doesn't like 'chartoonery', but that isn't Powerpoints problem either. Gaudy slide backgrounds and car crash noises probably fit though.
What he is actually unhappy about is more that many people trade in visual tricks for good quality data and analysis. You can hide the fact that you entirely missed the causal variable in your analysis of rocket motor O-ring failure if you enthrall the audience with little rocket motor shaped pictures on your graphs. A more accurate title for the essay you quote might have been "The Cognitive Style of Computer Software", because there are a whole lot of bits and pieces of programs that go into making all these stupid presentations. Tufte will even admit that Powerpoint is just fine for feeding slides to your projector, just don't actually create content in it.
A) No one at Sony is going to jail for the rootkit thing. To answer the original question, yes, there is one set of rules for Sony and the like, and a set for the guy who is the subject of the article. There are several other sets as well.
2) Even if A were not true the change you propose would not come about. Sony would just lobby for specific rules to protect the same behavior in the future.
I missed that the Sony Mavica was on the list. I remember fielding dozens of questions from my friends and family about why their floppied weren't readable and whether I could rescue their photos...the good ol days.
Complaining about these kinds of lists is fun. I'd swap out the Rebel with the 1D. The Rebel was an ok vehicle to get DSLRs into the hands of regular folks, but the 1D was the first pro quality DSLR that could be used in the field and offered even a sliver of the features on pro film SLRs. In terms of the engineering that was done it was a huge accomplishment.
Someday someone might even build a DSLR that is as good as a film body.
I know I won't be happy until I can pick music filled MP3 players off of trees growing in public parks. And even then only if the tree seeds from which these music player trees sprouted weren't produced by the Monsanto Corporation, or planted by illegal immigrants, or prison chain gangs, or anyone in a hat or in any way asociated with any kind of nudity whatsoever.
It often happens that great artists are 'ahead of their time'. I think this often keeps them from being particularly successful in a business sense as not many people are willing to pay them while they are alive. Edward Stiechen had a decent career teaching and such, but no one paid $3 million for any of his photographs until after he died.
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It was junk, but the coating has changed and it is now just fine (aside from the fact that it stinks). The feed problems were mostly due to the laquer coating, you definitely didn't want it to sit in a hot barrel very long and you couldn't run many rounds in between cleanings.
The new stuff has a polymer based coating. I have left it in a hot 223 chamber several times and it ran just fine.
Accuracy still isn't great but it is no worse than the other bottom shelf stuff.
I like when they made us take the bayonet lugs off.
Come on dude, without manufactured hysteria what other kind would we have? It gives people on AR15.com shit to get all fired up about.
You'd need what is referred to as a "Class 3 Tax Stamp". The process is as rigorous as the standard background check when you buy any firearm in the US but it takes a lot longer (6 weeks last I did it). You also have to have the application signed the the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in your area. And pay $200 to the BATF. If you ever sell the item the buyer has to pay the tax again.
This is the same process as one goes through to buy a suppressor, or a rifle with a barrel less than 16".
As far as being watched, no. Well, no more closely than anyone else.
I am not sure about the issue M4s as we Marines were issued M16s, but the civilian M4geries are stil very accurate rifles. I have one with a 10.5" barrel that will shoot MOA at 200 yards. As for the velocity loss, the Army's Operator's Manual states that the M4's muzzle velocity is 130 fps less than the M16. Not much.
The Army looked at the HK 416 but the G36 lineage of guns has never caught on in the US. That isn't to say that it isn't well executed, we didn't buy too many Steyr Scouts either and that is a spectacular rifle. Regardless, you are absolutely right that HK is well out in front of Colt and their US competitors when it comes to designing small arms.
Thats AR-15.
And while ammunition prices have skyrocketed recently, mostly because the US military has purchased the entire output of most of the major manufacturers 5.56, it isn't hard to come by. Ammoman has been able to keep a steady supply of Wolf, usually has various Lake City products, SS109, etc etc.
Also, most US brick and mortar shops (Wal-Marts even) will have larger stocks of 5.56x45 than 7.62x54R.
More recently a lot of troops are being issued M4s. Its shorter gas system appears to be less reliable, in large part because combustion gases have to much less distance to travel before being dumped into the receiver.
Much of the work to replace the weapon revolves around a minor change to the receiver. Making the combustion gases drive a piston that unlocks the bolt. Sealing the gases out of the relatively delicate internal goings on helps a lot, especially on full auto and burst fire weapons.
The other end of why people think the platform is unreliable is because the M4's rail foreend allows a person to defile an otherwise light and quick handling rifle by clamping lasers and lights and night vision and cameras and scopes and pinball machines to it. Now, instead of a properly balanced 8 lb rifle you have an 8 lb rifle with 30 lbs of gear hanging off the end of it.
The better comparison would have been the AK74. Almost identical mechanically to the AK47 but in a closer caliber.
Most of the serious consideration the US armed forces have given to replacing the M16 and its variants have been along the lines of what is essentially the same rifle but with a gas piston driven recoil system (HK 416), instead of dumping combustion gas directly into the receiver. That indicates the general design of the thing can still compete with stuff rolling off of drawing boards today.
The G36 may look cool, but it has definite drawbacks, not the least of which is a relatively unproven polymer receiver. It isn't common but sustained fire, particularly with a suppressor attached, can damage it. The zero of the weapon will shift, or it can melt enough to render the thing useless. That and no one trusts polymer magazines in a rifle yet.
I also liked the fact that the Washington Toxics Coalition spokesperson used the phrase "freaking out" in communicating an official statement. I bet they are, like, totally against all the, like, bad-for-you
Almost certainly the 2 handgun this is speculative information and the police will end up finding some long guns he discarded. Killing or wounding more than 50 people with 2 handguns would be an extraordinary feat, and the ammo management he would have to practice to keep from being rushed is outside the realm of possibility.
But who knows, maybe his victims just sat there and waited for help.
Jack Thompson will blame video games, Jerry Falwell will blame gay marriage, Rosie O'Donnel will say it is the proliferation of guns, Rush Limbaugh will tell us that this is the inevitable result of a a Democrat majority. This is how these people get their faces on TV.
I don't even think it is seen as grotesque by most people any more.
l33tn355. If iTunes had a verbose startup screen no one here would be complaining.
Don't fight it. It is unstoppable.
How about ammunition feeding devices? For guns.
Should a cop be able to own a device capable of supplying his firearm with more rounds between reloads than the same device owned by a regular citizen. Is that in the public interest?
After reading the first sentence I thought someone was making a good point, but the signature line negates it.
Keep cracking DRM schemes and all you'll get are more laws aimed at stopping you, more vigorous enforcement, and more DRM integrated into your hardware.
Stop buying DRM'd content in the first place and maybe you'll get somewhere.
I think they base that primarily on the fact that the rotor is protected. Many helicopters can take hits in non-critical areas but a rotor strike is almost always catastrophic.
It has probably been mentioned and I just skipped it, but just the process of securing a Windows reinstall can take days, unless you have the time to babysit the whole thing.
I have reinstalled XP a few times, from an SP1 disc. Visit Windows Update. It can't Update until I install some ActiveX stuff so I can use the latest version of the site. That done, it recommends maybe 50 or 60 updates. Reboot. Go back to the site, spend a half hour downloading SP2 and another 2 installing it. Reboot. Go back to the site. More updates, maybe only a dozen this time. Reboot. IE7. Reboot. Patch for IE7. Possibly a couple of driver updates. Reboot.
And if you leave to go to the store without accepting the EULA for the patch....more wasted time. And this whole process is just to secure the machine, no app install of setup or tweaking.
Vista seems slightly better in this regard as it can download updates during the install process, but it still isn't up to the level that most Linux distros are.
I don't even know what the OSX install process looks like, or if there even is one. And I own more Macs than anything else.
That isn't always the point. A thought that occurred to me the last time I attended a Tufte lecture was that, in a lot of cases, the point is to obscure the facts and the data and mislead the audience into making the choice the presenter wants.
This is true of nearly all sales pitch presentations. Tufte worked on both Shuttle disasters, so he mentions them a lot, and in some of the presentations he criticizes the entire point behind them was to deflect blame. Lockheed Martin didn't want their wing design to be the reason why the shuttle burned up. Whomever it was who built the rocket motors for the Challenger didn't want their motors to be the reason why launches had to be aborted.
Sometimes the entire point of a presentation is to confuse you and obfuscate the facts. It might be true that if a person is reading verbatim from their own slides and has a laser beam background and fly in from the left bullet points accompanied by monkey shrieks...they might be doing it to distract you.
That is Tufte's main gripe with Powerpoint, that so much content is created in it. He advocates creating charts and tables and such in actual statistics software, making it presentable with a graphics package like Illustrator, and using PP just to display what you've created.
What topic do you present, if I may ask? When I give photography presentations the bulk of my slides are photos, interspersed with some summary text here and there when the subject is of a technical nature.
8) Powerpoint is a slide presentation program. Do not use it to create content.
Tufte is correct about a lot of things related to data presentation, but I think he lets Powerpoint become the focal point for a lot of his complaints that would be better directed elsewhere.
He doesn't like Microsoft style graphs. While you can create a graph from inside Powerpoint, you are actually doing in in MS Graph (or some similar name). He doesn't like 'chartoonery', but that isn't Powerpoints problem either. Gaudy slide backgrounds and car crash noises probably fit though.
What he is actually unhappy about is more that many people trade in visual tricks for good quality data and analysis. You can hide the fact that you entirely missed the causal variable in your analysis of rocket motor O-ring failure if you enthrall the audience with little rocket motor shaped pictures on your graphs. A more accurate title for the essay you quote might have been "The Cognitive Style of Computer Software", because there are a whole lot of bits and pieces of programs that go into making all these stupid presentations. Tufte will even admit that Powerpoint is just fine for feeding slides to your projector, just don't actually create content in it.
Edward Tufte would like to have a word with you.
And not a Microsoft Word, an actual Word.
A) No one at Sony is going to jail for the rootkit thing. To answer the original question, yes, there is one set of rules for Sony and the like, and a set for the guy who is the subject of the article. There are several other sets as well.
2) Even if A were not true the change you propose would not come about. Sony would just lobby for specific rules to protect the same behavior in the future.
I missed that the Sony Mavica was on the list. I remember fielding dozens of questions from my friends and family about why their floppied weren't readable and whether I could rescue their photos...the good ol days.
Complaining about these kinds of lists is fun. I'd swap out the Rebel with the 1D. The Rebel was an ok vehicle to get DSLRs into the hands of regular folks, but the 1D was the first pro quality DSLR that could be used in the field and offered even a sliver of the features on pro film SLRs. In terms of the engineering that was done it was a huge accomplishment.
Someday someone might even build a DSLR that is as good as a film body.
I know I won't be happy until I can pick music filled MP3 players off of trees growing in public parks. And even then only if the tree seeds from which these music player trees sprouted weren't produced by the Monsanto Corporation, or planted by illegal immigrants, or prison chain gangs, or anyone in a hat or in any way asociated with any kind of nudity whatsoever.
It often happens that great artists are 'ahead of their time'. I think this often keeps them from being particularly successful in a business sense as not many people are willing to pay them while they are alive. Edward Stiechen had a decent career teaching and such, but no one paid $3 million for any of his photographs until after he died.