"To reduce collisions at grade crossings, railroads are installing four quadrant gate systems on high speed rail corridors, commuter lines, light rail systems and in areas with high concentrations of foolish drivers."
At least once people stop driving their own cars, we can return to more sane two quadrant crossing gates.
It might reduce the problem. But we don't know how much, and it will widen the portal for further bans of other allegedly dangerous materials (e.g. video games mentioned above, though gay-friendly children's books are a big target, as are contraceptives)
And I'm pretty sure your standards for enjoyment are not up to par with the standards that gun enthusiasts have. Many of the other commenters think that enthusiasts should be content with computer simulations, or rented guns or slingshots. It's avoiding the issue that you're still invoking your will on their liberties.
Controlling one thing will be used as a stepping stone for introducing more control, you're right. I don't have a good answer for that other than contacting your government representative regularly to let them know how you'd like to be represented. An imperfect answer, I'd like to find better.
So, yeah, I appreciate your concern, and I agree that there are a lot of stupid people who do not respect the risk that comes with owning a gun. And I agree that the NRA has become something of a bag of dicks that does not represent the gun community well at all. But in the long game, gun control is not the answer, especially so as the age of 3D printing approaches and custom gun parts can be prototyped locally, rather than by a major manufacturer.
I will still hold up Australia as an example that gun control *can* help. It may not be *the* answer, but that doesn't mean it can't be part of the answer. Nutjob control would also help, but unfortunately governments willing to invest in good societal platforms for mental health issues, equality and education are few and far between.
And I relentlessly distrust anyone pushing for more gun control in this convesation to not, once their agenda is furthered, wipe their hands of the Charleston massacre deciding okay we did something. That's what O'Reilly is trying to do by accusing video games. That's what Obama is trying to do by pushing gun control.
The Charleston Massacre is not another rampage killing to be swept under the rug like so many others. And blaming guns here is being used to do exactly that.
I agree that any simple answer is wrong, or at least insufficient. All I can suggest is to be the change you want to see in the world, but the depressing aspect is that's probably what motivated this guy to action.
The United States has the right to bear arms for some very serious reasons. It's up to those who govern us to create a society in which we aren't motivated to exercise and defend that right.
And what if those reasons are not what you think they are? What if they are to provide the government with access to a militia force specifically to put down uprisings?
The Second Amendment's "obvious purpose," the Supreme Court declared in United States v. Miller, was "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of ... [militia] forces." [307 U.S. 174, 178 (1939).]
p654:
It is difficult, nonetheless, to find support in the Constitution for the notion that the Second Amendment is a license for the people to resist and triumph over government at any level by means of force and violence. To the contrary, the Constitution is replete with provisions intended to quell uprisings. For example, Congress is empowered to call out the militia-the very force envisioned to resist usurpations of power-to suppress insurrections and rebellions. Significantly, treason is the only crime the Framers believed important enough for the Constitution to condemn explicitly. In defining the crime, for example, the Constitution expressly lists "levying war" against the United States as a manifestation of the offense. Thus, the theory that the Second Amendment contemplates armed confrontations against the government is seriously undermined.
p662:
Advocates who insist that the Second Amendment is still a viable check on tyranny often suggest that lightly-armed civilians could defeat modern armies by mounting a guerrilla war, selectively pointing to various twentieth century conflicts as evidence of the same. In reality, however, no insurgents armed only with the sort of personal weapons contemplated by the Second Amendment have prevailed, in a military sense, over any authentically modern army.
Most of the rest is talking about the very limited likelihood of success of an civilian armed revolution, particularly compared to the remarkable success that nonviolent resistance has had recently. Interesting read though.
Re: Re: Re: otherwise you might have to blame guns
Banning guns will not solve this problem.
Obviously no simple answer is going to solve a complex problem, but what if it reduced the problem?
Also, to hearken back to a recent thread, what if "banning guns" doesn't actually stop you from enjoying responsible gun use in many reasonable ways?
Neither of these are hypotheticals, in case you're wondering.
Also, how many gun deaths per capita do you think is too many? Care to apply that quantity regarding bathtubs? Swimming pools? Stepladders? SCUBA gear? Surfboards? Because I think you won't.
I think you underestimate how much time and energy goes into preventing each of those categories of deaths. Perhaps time and money would have much better long-term benefits from being spent on improving mental health conditions and support in the community (all communities) than in controlling guns (actually, no perhaps, it's undeniably true), but that's not enough reason (for me) not to control guns as well, especially when the consequences of properly implemented gun control are so slight.
Vote with your wallets, and boycott WB games if you're a PC user. Point to this debacle as to why we don't want shitty ports. Because Arkham Origins shipped in a similar state.
Not terrible advice, but what avenue for a fan that wants a PC port, just not a shitty one?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So we're back to the feudal era...
The exchange is a zero-sum-game. What one party gain another loose. Because of this, the exchange is a zero-sum-game for the economy also.
Yes and no. This is true on the face of it, but the exchange enables an information market that allows lenders to determine the worth of a company and so its borrowing/repaying potential. When the share price of a company goes up money is neither created nor destroyed... BUT the company can leverage its raised share price to borrow funds at a premium interest rate, and use that money to expand their business - creating new jobs and growing the economy.
It's obviously not a perfect system, but it's arguably better than no system at all. This is not to say that I think a stockbroker is a high value job, just that I think that the stock market itself has value.
The whining isn't about their info, the whining is about ALM publishing stories that suggest that Denton is hurting, which has a very real chance of impacting Denton's revenue.
The tapdancing... I don't know. "Your figures are laughable and your methodology smells like your momma's moustache! But we're still not sharing our figures." They may well be right, but from the outside it's hard to know. It's hard to fight FUD without data, but if the FUD is being thrown around in an attempt to get at data that you don't want to share... is it better to confront it imprecisely and be called out like this, or ignore it and hope that isn't seen as tacit agreement?
I get paid well because of what I can do ... it's not liberal or conservative, it's the value delivered. A great waitress can only add so much value to society, other professions add more to the bottom line, hence they get paid more.
There's a fundamental problem with this, in that it is extremely difficult to measure value, and that accurately measuring value is of little use in deriving worth. I would argue that a good waitress adds much more value to society than a good stockbroker... though not the economy.
Trash collectors and street sweepers are absolutely invaluable to society and also useful to the economy, yet they are valued (and paid) quite lowly. Perhaps these people are highly replaceable and so don't share the value of their position - someone MUST do the job, but it doesn't matter who.
Teachers are possibly a better example - harder to replace than individual street sweepers... but I'd suggest that our society and economy would fail more absolutely if we lost all teachers, than if we lost all stockbrokers or lawyers. Perhaps the modern economy would fail faster if we lost all stockbrokers, but I suspect that society would cope quite well.
How much value do good app developers add to society, or the economy?
Okay, so GCHQ is reverse engineering the Kapersky product... and then what? Are they just trying to figure out how the product works to try to get around it? So are countless security researchers (citation: I didn't count them).
If they're performing a sleight of hand to replace the official strong version of Kapersky's AV with their own modified/weakened version, then that's terrible, but how would they do that? That seems like it would involve spoofing the Kapersky website across the UK... which would still be defeated by a VPN.
I'm not sure how to read this story other than as an endorsement for the official version of Kapersky's software...
I love the last intercept in the list. If you follow the link, the synopsis is titled US Intercepts of France Complaining About US Intercepts of France...
Besides who wouldn't like to live in a Shadowrun world? Dragons, trolls, cyber implants... ok maybe the "wastelands" of Europe might have something against the idea It's very cool to read about and play games set in a Shadowrun world, but one thing that I notice from my experience doing that ... is that the Shadowrun world is a pretty terrible place for most of its inhabitants. An exciting place, but a terrible one.
A world with megacorps and private armies, but without the magic, cybertech and metahumans... that's like trying to be one of the normal people in the Shadowrun world.
Re: One day, someone will program a robot to murder someone else.
Obviously the programmer has some culpability, but it would be nice if the people who designed the requirements for the algorithm shared the blame.
Hard to say what to do if it's a bug by omission rather than a bad algorithm though - which programmer/analyst specifically is responsible for not correctly identifying this particular corner case?
Cannot is a simple imperative. I'm suggesting that we the people must get a grip on these very issues of our identity and rights in a digital world, and seize ownership of the information that makes up our invidual selves in the information economy.
Very emotive language. I don't disagree with you, but through which mechanism, and at what cost? What does ownership look like, what rights does it come with (and which of those are transferable)... and how can you even *own* information? What are the consequences of someone else having access to the information? Having the same information independent of you?
Level heads must prevail (there's an imperative for you), or the situation is only ever made worse.
This claim then, with the word 'private' included, is about both where and in what context an image is taken, even more so than it's about what the image depicts. In most cases just being taken in a completely private setting should give the subjects of an image absolute rights about its use.
So now the copyright status of a photo is based on where the photo is taken? What if a photo is taken in a forest, with nobody else around? The house of the photographer, rather than the subject? A public toilet?
What should be the copyright status of compromising photos taken of a partner by a private investigator, for the purposes of divorce proceedings? Would that preclude the photos being shown in a courtroom, if the subject of the photo refuses to license their use?
Even aside from all of this, you've so far neglected to comment on any of the harm that such a change to copyright would cause, no matter the discriminating factor. There's no point drafting laws to patch one hole over here, if you're just pulling the material and creating new holes over there.
The ownership of such images and other obviously private records cannot be in question.
Or else what? I suspect that you're using a novel definition of "cannot" here.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with the premise that revenge porn is wrong, amongst other confidence betrayals. I just think that your proposed solution is neither a good idea, nor even a solution.
To suggest that actual traces and live memories of ourselves we leave behind in the physical world carry the same weight as the infinitely propagating absolute records of the digital realm is absurd.
I completely agree, the actual traces and live memories obviously carry much more weight than digital records of the same. You can't create an actual trace from a digital record (yet).
Not to mention the privacy issues of an actor obtaining any of the above listed samples from a subjects personal space.
Personal space? You mean the seat of the bus I took to work this morning? Or the door that I just pushed open to enter a store? Or heck, even the paper cup I just threw in the bin?
I have no objections to suggestions of how to address problems from being bandied about, but it would be helpful if you could examine at least some of the unintended ramifications, as well as the ones you expressly intend.
Signatures are an interesting biometric, but it's interesting to consider why/how/if they work. Those terminals don't verify your password, they simply record it - just as if you were signing a receipt. The purpose of the recorded signature is as a counter to if you were to dispute the transaction.
I remember having to sign out of a hospital after a surgery on my right shoulder. I'm right handed, but the nerve block on my right arm hadn't worn off yet, so I had to sign with my left hand. It obviously looked nothing like my normal signature, yet it was completely acceptable. So what was the point? I might as well have asked the staff member to sign on my behalf, and yet that immediately suggests ways that it can be abused. So why do we accept signatures at all, considering that very few signatures are performed live?
On the post: Breaking: Self-Driving Cars Avoid Accident, Do Exactly What They Were Programmed To Do
Re: Programming makes bad decision for driver!
Question asked and answered, sigh: https://www.azatrax.com/controller.html
"To reduce collisions at grade crossings, railroads are installing four quadrant gate systems on high speed rail corridors, commuter lines, light rail systems and in areas with high concentrations of foolish drivers."
At least once people stop driving their own cars, we can return to more sane two quadrant crossing gates.
On the post: UK Politician Theresa May Tries To Out-Orwell Orwell With Insanely Authoritarian Speech
Seriously, have you read much UK history? :-)
On the post: Took Longer Than I Expected: Bill O'Reilly Yanks Video Games Into Charleston Massacre For No Reason At All
Re: But at what cost, Mr. Troy? BUT AT WHAT COST?
Controlling one thing will be used as a stepping stone for introducing more control, you're right. I don't have a good answer for that other than contacting your government representative regularly to let them know how you'd like to be represented. An imperfect answer, I'd like to find better.
3D-printed guns will only get better, but right now they seem to be more of a risk to their wielder than anyone else, unless the maker has a degree of expertise, see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-26/3d-printing-fact-file/6429816
I will still hold up Australia as an example that gun control *can* help. It may not be *the* answer, but that doesn't mean it can't be part of the answer. Nutjob control would also help, but unfortunately governments willing to invest in good societal platforms for mental health issues, equality and education are few and far between.
In terms of any arguments that gun control doesn't work, I'll just handball to John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOKWcH1zBl2kfnCwyyZWk5MW28lgaNa7L
I agree that any simple answer is wrong, or at least insufficient. All I can suggest is to be the change you want to see in the world, but the depressing aspect is that's probably what motivated this guy to action.
On the post: Took Longer Than I Expected: Bill O'Reilly Yanks Video Games Into Charleston Massacre For No Reason At All
Re: Banning guns
And what if those reasons are not what you think they are? What if they are to provide the government with access to a militia force specifically to put down uprisings?
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5203&context=faculty_schol arship
p649:
p654:
p662:
Most of the rest is talking about the very limited likelihood of success of an civilian armed revolution, particularly compared to the remarkable success that nonviolent resistance has had recently. Interesting read though.
On the post: Took Longer Than I Expected: Bill O'Reilly Yanks Video Games Into Charleston Massacre For No Reason At All
Re: Re: Re: otherwise you might have to blame guns
Obviously no simple answer is going to solve a complex problem, but what if it reduced the problem?
Also, to hearken back to a recent thread, what if "banning guns" doesn't actually stop you from enjoying responsible gun use in many reasonable ways?
Neither of these are hypotheticals, in case you're wondering.
Also, how many gun deaths per capita do you think is too many? Care to apply that quantity regarding bathtubs? Swimming pools? Stepladders? SCUBA gear? Surfboards? Because I think you won't.
I think you underestimate how much time and energy goes into preventing each of those categories of deaths. Perhaps time and money would have much better long-term benefits from being spent on improving mental health conditions and support in the community (all communities) than in controlling guns (actually, no perhaps, it's undeniably true), but that's not enough reason (for me) not to control guns as well, especially when the consequences of properly implemented gun control are so slight.
On the post: Arkham Knight PC Game Arrives Just In Time To Demonstrate Why Steam Needed Refunds
Re: Re: Re:
Not terrible advice, but what avenue for a fan that wants a PC port, just not a shitty one?
On the post: YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So we're back to the feudal era...
Yes and no. This is true on the face of it, but the exchange enables an information market that allows lenders to determine the worth of a company and so its borrowing/repaying potential. When the share price of a company goes up money is neither created nor destroyed... BUT the company can leverage its raised share price to borrow funds at a premium interest rate, and use that money to expand their business - creating new jobs and growing the economy.
It's obviously not a perfect system, but it's arguably better than no system at all. This is not to say that I think a stockbroker is a high value job, just that I think that the stock market itself has value.
On the post: Legal Giant Dentons Demonstrates Exactly How Not To Respond To Critical Media Coverage
Re: Re:
The tapdancing... I don't know. "Your figures are laughable and your methodology smells like your momma's moustache! But we're still not sharing our figures." They may well be right, but from the outside it's hard to know. It's hard to fight FUD without data, but if the FUD is being thrown around in an attempt to get at data that you don't want to share... is it better to confront it imprecisely and be called out like this, or ignore it and hope that isn't seen as tacit agreement?
On the post: YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms
Re: Re: For want of a soldier
liberal or conservative, it's the value delivered. A great waitress can only add so much value to society, other professions add more to the bottom line, hence they get paid more.
There's a fundamental problem with this, in that it is extremely difficult to measure value, and that accurately measuring value is of little use in deriving worth. I would argue that a good waitress adds much more value to society than a good stockbroker... though not the economy.
Trash collectors and street sweepers are absolutely invaluable to society and also useful to the economy, yet they are valued (and paid) quite lowly. Perhaps these people are highly replaceable and so don't share the value of their position - someone MUST do the job, but it doesn't matter who.
Teachers are possibly a better example - harder to replace than individual street sweepers... but I'd suggest that our society and economy would fail more absolutely if we lost all teachers, than if we lost all stockbrokers or lawyers. Perhaps the modern economy would fail faster if we lost all stockbrokers, but I suspect that society would cope quite well.
How much value do good app developers add to society, or the economy?
On the post: GCHQ Asked Court To Let It Infringe On Anti-Virus Copyrights... For National Security
I don't get it
If they're performing a sleight of hand to replace the official strong version of Kapersky's AV with their own modified/weakened version, then that's terrible, but how would they do that? That seems like it would involve spoofing the Kapersky website across the UK... which would still be defeated by a VPN.
I'm not sure how to read this story other than as an endorsement for the official version of Kapersky's software...
On the post: Wikileaks Reveals NSA Spying On French Presidents
Re: Spying
On the post: Wikileaks Reveals NSA Spying On French Presidents
It's In[ter]ception!
On the post: Will Corporate Sovereignty Disputes Lead To Wars One Day?
Re: Re: ShadowRun anyone?
It's very cool to read about and play games set in a Shadowrun world, but one thing that I notice from my experience doing that ... is that the Shadowrun world is a pretty terrible place for most of its inhabitants. An exciting place, but a terrible one.
A world with megacorps and private armies, but without the magic, cybertech and metahumans... that's like trying to be one of the normal people in the Shadowrun world.
On the post: YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms
Re: One day, someone will program a robot to murder someone else.
Hard to say what to do if it's a bug by omission rather than a bad algorithm though - which programmer/analyst specifically is responsible for not correctly identifying this particular corner case?
On the post: YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms
Re: Sounds like nissan.com all over again
The golden rule!
On the post: YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms
Re: Assumptions
On the post: Google Says It Will Remove Revenge Porn Results From Search... Raising Some Questions
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Very emotive language. I don't disagree with you, but through which mechanism, and at what cost? What does ownership look like, what rights does it come with (and which of those are transferable)... and how can you even *own* information? What are the consequences of someone else having access to the information? Having the same information independent of you?
Level heads must prevail (there's an imperative for you), or the situation is only ever made worse.
On the post: Google Says It Will Remove Revenge Porn Results From Search... Raising Some Questions
Re: Re: Re:
So now the copyright status of a photo is based on where the photo is taken? What if a photo is taken in a forest, with nobody else around? The house of the photographer, rather than the subject? A public toilet?
What should be the copyright status of compromising photos taken of a partner by a private investigator, for the purposes of divorce proceedings? Would that preclude the photos being shown in a courtroom, if the subject of the photo refuses to license their use?
Even aside from all of this, you've so far neglected to comment on any of the harm that such a change to copyright would cause, no matter the discriminating factor. There's no point drafting laws to patch one hole over here, if you're just pulling the material and creating new holes over there.
The ownership of such images and other obviously private records cannot be in question.
Or else what? I suspect that you're using a novel definition of "cannot" here.
Look, I'm not disagreeing with the premise that revenge porn is wrong, amongst other confidence betrayals. I just think that your proposed solution is neither a good idea, nor even a solution.
To suggest that actual traces and live memories of ourselves we leave behind in the physical world carry the same weight as the infinitely propagating absolute records of the digital realm is absurd.
I completely agree, the actual traces and live memories obviously carry much more weight than digital records of the same. You can't create an actual trace from a digital record (yet).
Not to mention the privacy issues of an actor obtaining any of the above listed samples from a subjects personal space.
Personal space? You mean the seat of the bus I took to work this morning? Or the door that I just pushed open to enter a store? Or heck, even the paper cup I just threw in the bin?
I have no objections to suggestions of how to address problems from being bandied about, but it would be helpful if you could examine at least some of the unintended ramifications, as well as the ones you expressly intend.
On the post: Google Says It Will Remove Revenge Porn Results From Search... Raising Some Questions
Re: Re: Re:
An even better example. What you are proposing sounds like this becoming the default, rather than the exception:
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/photographer-publishes-open-letter-to-taylor-swift-after -apple-music-decision-2015-6
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Biometrics
I remember having to sign out of a hospital after a surgery on my right shoulder. I'm right handed, but the nerve block on my right arm hadn't worn off yet, so I had to sign with my left hand. It obviously looked nothing like my normal signature, yet it was completely acceptable. So what was the point? I might as well have asked the staff member to sign on my behalf, and yet that immediately suggests ways that it can be abused. So why do we accept signatures at all, considering that very few signatures are performed live?
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