Homicides at the hand of armed gangstars commited against law abidding non gun owners would go up

This is a fallacy.

Hand grenades are banned in the USA - They are highly restricted. However, hand-grenade homocides are not up as a result of hand grenades being banned.

If guns are out of circulation, then many fewer people have them, including criminals.

I imagine even the Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy faded away if you took it 'out of range.'

I got the sense that in Adams's vision of "The Guide" all the data was locally cached.

How do you think the rest of the world got so far ahead of these remote african locations?

By exploiting the hell out of regions like Africa for 500 years, then casting them aside when we're done and moving on to the next one.

Those services are funded by tax payer money

Those services are partially funded by tax payer money

There, I fixed that for you.

Strict gun laws in the UK didn't prevent that one guy from going on a rampage for half a day and killing and injuring a whole bunch of people, including police.

Of course there will always be edge cases, but the facts speak for themselves -

USA Gun Deaths per 100,000 (2011): 10.3
UK Gun Deaths per 100,000 (2011): 0.25

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Seriously, the patrolmen don't have guns? What if someone shoots at them?

Due to strict gun control in the UK, very few criminals have guns, so police officers almost never have the risk of confronting an armed perpetrator. The criminals in the UK who *do* have guns are not petty thieves who are robbing pharmacies for narcotics.

Even better for Al Queda as they don't have to be close to the damn airport to not only kill lots of people but shut it down for a day or two.

Don't be ridiculous. Grannies carrying tubes of toothpaste through airport security (along with their husbands' penknives on their key rings) are a MUCH bigger threat to which billions of dollars of security largesse must be directed.

Planes are faster, cheaper, and safer for passenger traffic at that distance.

As fossil fuels become more and more expensive, the price of air travel is going to go up. Way up.

Makes sense to being looking at other options today, assuming they'd roll out in 50 - 75 years.

I'm perfectly OK with the tradeoff though of having the car drive on sunny days and then have a manual operation mode when a blizzard crops up.

How DARE you be OK with this. This is Slashdot, where the edge use-case wins, EVERY time. Now take your ID and go home.

> This report is documented accurate.

Oh, it's DOCUMENTED accurate. That changes everything. Forgive me for doubting you.

I really think 'it depends.' I'm Gen-X and have an Omega Seamaster on my wrist. I've worn it nearly every day for nearly a decade (don't wear it when I'm travelling to some destinations - Then it's my Timex.) I like wearing a nice analog watch, but then I iron my shirts and don't wear runners outside of the gym either. I think there will always be a market for people like me, the question is whether that market will die off as my generation dies off...

Here, jokes are most likely to be enjoyed, encountered, and/or modded up to +5 Funny if they are repetitive, predictable, expected, tiresome memes.

In Soviet Russia, joke tell you!

I guess you mean morons such as Harvard linguist Steven Pinker.

Well, Anonymous Coward, I don't know the gentleman in question, but if he says "I could care less" to indicate that in fact he *couldn't* care less about a topic, then yes, Mr. Pinker is a moron.

"I could care less" is the most common phrase indicating sarcasm in English.

Only amongst morons.

Unlike the post above, I do think it will happen in my lifetime though.

"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot."