http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/kids-prefer-poor-quality-mp3

(and remember, kids are able to hear frequencies that you can't!)

But surely the biggest use of this technology is not for drinking water but for irrigation? Turning the desert into arable land...

They probably realized they're doing it in the wrong order.

You have to establish a police-state first and *then* you ban porn.

Symantec has probably been hacked by the Chinese too...

"I think this is in error. Perl is less maintainable than other languages, due to the myriad of "correct" was to implement solutions to various problems"

I know myriads of correct wa[y]s to implement solutions in any of the dozen languages I know. Are you saying you know only one?

(this complaint about Perl has never failed to puzzle me)

Ultimately what killed it, and what launched PHP's rocket, was the ease with which the latter could be embedded in HTML code.

It was possible to do that with Perl (Apache::Sandwich), but a bit of a hassle. PHP came standard enabled on most Linux distributions. All you had to do was create a .php file in the right place and you were in business.

If the Perl guys had made that as effortless as with PHP, then Perl would've been the winner right now.

Is your data encrypted or do you trust your friends with everything?

"I am speaking from an American born Chinese working in London"

Let me guess, you're a tapeworm? A brain parasite? A cybernetic implant?

I have nothing against Apple perse, but I have serious issues with the closed nature of their iOS devices and especially how I don't have the ability to control what gets transfered on or off the device. Everything has to go through iTunes or some cloud solution.

Android has no such restricting policies, that's why I'd like to see it 'win'.

I like to try drum kit apps ( I have kids ). But on my Android phone there's a perceivable (and intolerable) lag when you tap the drums with all the apps I tried. On iOS (1st gen iPad) they're all nearly instantaneous.

Ever try anything like that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Apple fan, I'd like Android to win, but not by closing my eyes for its faults.

Possibly. I never had a 'nexus', just the basic Samsung stuff. One problem that I noticed is when running 'drum kit' apps. I have tried some on my Android phone and several on my iPad (1st generation). On the iPad the drums react almost instantaneously. On the androids there's a noticable (and fatal) delay.

Did you ever try anything like that on you nexuses?

A Tree Is Known by Its Fruit

Matthew 12:33

"But the base commander will not be responsible for anything that happens outside the gates. "

Naah, that's the other base commander I was hinting at, some Obama guy currently if I'm not mistaken.

"That's what guns are - devilishly sentient pieces of metal. No way a sane man can resist their lure."

You're trying to ridicule me, I can tell ;)
But still you're on the right track.

It's just the sane part where you're wrong. A sane man can resist them, even most unsane men (thankfully cause there's a lot of those). But some unsane men can't and there's still quite a few of them about. That unstable kid in his bedroom holding his Glock and dreaming how he 'could show them all', that's the prototype of these killers. Not hardened criminals, but having feelings we probably all had some time in our lives, except a little strong and with the power in his hand to make them come true. That's the lure. They don't have to be permanently unsane, just temporarily is all that it takes.

"But even if those arms are also removed from the society, many remain that are just as accessible. Police carries guns; guards carry guns; military carries guns. There are many guns in circulation; if need be, a police officer can be ambushed, killed in a dark alley, and his firearm stolen."

They could, and they will. But in many cases they wouldn't. These are not hardened criminals and most of them wouldn't fit the terrorist label either; you wouldn't stop those. Don't forget my premisse that the possession of a gun creates that 'lure' (yeah, I know what you guys are thinking: a bit like 'The Ring'), that magical power to show the world who's really boss and punish all that laughed at him or even ignored him. If you don't have the gun, there's less chance of this in the first place and you are far less likely to go looking for one.

I know it's a bit of a revolutionary thought, I never read it anywhere, but I'm convinced there's something to it. Maybe not everything, but I'm sure it's part of the problem.

The conventional chain of events is this:
Dream of revenge -> get gun -> execute revenge

I suggest this is actually much more common:
Get gun -> dream of revenge > execute revenge

The PRIOR availability of a gun makes the step from dream to execution much more likely. It's a catalyst if you like (quite literally: the gun usually survives the massacre, like the catalyst in a chemical reaction),

I never read this anywhere before so I'm probably crazy, but then again, I may be right and all you lot are missing something essential. (possibly on purpose because you like to play with your guns so much that you prefer to suppres the thought that this obsession just killed 20 young kids - again).

Sounds a bit like a microcosm of the US society. Except that outside the base (where conflicts are just as natural) firearms are pretty much allowed.

I live in Europe and in my country it's very hard to get a gun (legally or illegaly). The only cases of shooting sprees that I know of have been people who already had guns for sports reasons. I'm an advocate of abolishing that loop hole. If anyone wants to shoot for sports, let them buy an airgun. Guns make killers.

In the US, of course, the situation is quite different. The current situation would be near impossible to roll back. Especially if the measures wouldn't be supported by a large majority of Americans.

It doesn't look like this majority is coming soon. One wonders what it would take...

Well, in the case of an army base that sounds like a bad idea. surely they're prime terrorist targets.