And if we are making generalizations a lot of the second amendment people love to use their rights to intimidate people exercising their first amendment rights.

The only thing a lot of your so-called second amendment people choose to intimidate on a regular basis are criminals and thugs, such as their representatives in Congress--and sometimes, other miscellaneous miscreants.

My sources do not include anyone from Detroit, at least that I know of; perhaps the boys in blue from Detroit are better behaved than the cops I've met.

I will say this however: my current job often places me adjacent to current and former police officers from around the country. My sources are the anecdotes (and I acknowledge them to be just that) and self-admissions I've heard over last few years from numerous people. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard something like "If I did the shit I used to do in the old days, I'd be thrown in jail.", often as other officers cackle on in agreement.

I'm not being anti-cop or police-antagonistic, just relaying my experience. So, take that for what you will.

Violence by Police departments has escalated drastically in the same time as criminal violence has gone down

I disagree. The violence was always there. What has changed more than anything is the visibility of the violence. Everyone packs a cell phone with a camera, everyone is connected to the net and social media, which in turn filters into the mainstream news. If a cop uses or abuses their power these days, it's covered six ways from Sunday, and twice even then. Just a few years ago, the only evidence of police malfeasance would be eye witness reports, and some beat-up individual.

Back in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and to a lesser degree the 90's, big city police regularly used violence with relative impunity, which would result in dismissal and criminal charges today. My source? Conversation with former policemen. I will agree the types of force any given police department might use has escalated. Where someone might have been clubbed silly back in the old days, in this day, they get tazered and riddled with bullets instead.

As for MRAPs, many departments have had armored vehicles for decades. Tanks with the main gun taken off--and frankly, MRAP armor doesn't compare to that. I support SWAT having access to these kinds of things. They come in handy in exigent circumstances. Like when that nutball was shooting at firemen. Or when someone gets held hostage. Like firearms, they are morally inert; tools that are only as good or evil as the user who bares them.

Yeah. You say that until the advertisers figure they can turn elements of their ads up to 1k-10k Lux, in your 50 Lux living-room, the same way they compress their audio so any conversation BECOMES A VIRTUAL YELLING MATCH. Yeah. Goodbye retinas.

Again, the problem is the same companies making the biometric and electronic safeties are lobbying governments around the world for the mandatory adoption of that technology for all new civilian owned guns, often also arguing for retrofitting of older guns, with the addition of an electronic bore-lock.

Do you deny that Anchutz and Armatix are not out there doing both? Since when does a seperate, immoral activity not indict all of the activities of that firm? Nazi doctors made scientific advancements using real, live, unwilling participants in their experiments. We don't like to use their data, even if it's relevant to modern research, because it's ethically tainted.

Here's the computer analogy: you have to wear a watch with a unique code to log in to a computer, and to access sites that are arbitrarily deemed to be 'unsafe' to some segment of the population. The new technology is both made by Intel, and actively lobbied for mandatory adoption.

Remember Processor ID? Clipper Chip? Boot loaders that won't start unsigned operating systems? The bottom line: if the something like this were happening in the computer world, nerds the world over would likewise act as if their hair was on fire. Also, social problems arenâ(TM)t amenable to technological solutions.

Nobody is forcing them to buy one....Nobody is preventing them from buying a different make or model.

Actually, that's exactly what's at issue here, and that's exactly why gun owners are pissed. You have companies that are lobbying the varying state (and Federal, and international) legislatures, with the idea that all guns should have this technology, in the name of safety, crime, muh chillunz, or whatever they think will sell it. Same thing with the companies that are promoting firing pin and breech microstamping technology, never mind that it can be defeated in a matter of minutes with some fine grit sandpaper.

They're not invested in making the world safer, they're invested in making their wallets fatter, and they bribe representatives toward that end. They don't just want to put a new product on the market, and promote it for what it is. Heck no. They want state-sanctioned mandatory monopolies. They want to outlaw these devices as they traditionally exist, in favor of their own monetary interest. Is that a threat? I say yes!

All of this said, I cannot imagine for the fuck of it a situation where I would want a fucking piece of shit that only fires if I am wearing a watch

Also, assuming the watch/firearm actually work as designed: god forbid you have have to shoot with your weak hand for some reason (such as your strong arm/hand being injured) and all you can do is uselessly pull away at the trigger (since the watch is more than 10" away), as your attacker continues to do whatever it was that prompted the use of lethal self-defense in the first place.

This attitude is exactly why we will persist in having such flagrant assholes and abusers of democracy in office. There is precisely one, and only one scenario that it's not good to vote for a third party (supposing that party more correctly aligns with your ideals than the others), even if they're going to lose; rather, especially if they're going to lose.

And that scenario is this:
When the lesser of two evils is on the brink of losing to the greater of two evils.
Whatever the lesser/greater means to you as an individual.
There. That's it. Pretty damn simple.

As you pointed out, if you know a major party candidate is going to lose by double digits, it's pointless to vote for that candidate. It's throwing your vote away. However, if you agree with their agenda even a little bit, voting for a third party in that situation sends a message. A message that says people are fed the fuck up with the other two options. It gives mind-share to the third party in general.

If enough people did that in races where it's going to be no contest, an interesting thing could happen: the two parties might take notice and actually fix something about their politicking (HA HA! Yeah, right), or maybe, just maybe...a third party could become viable enough to be included in debates and start taking a significant chunk of the vote.

(ever hear of a drive by stabbing?)

Funny you mention it in that context...Why, yes, I have...

Strange you say? So, let's replace some of the contentious words so we can get a better idea of the sentence structure, without having the associated emotions derailing us.

A well stocked fridge, being necessary to the health of a free man, the right of the people to keep and eat ham sandwiches, shall not be infringed.

Huh. You know, it reads alright to me. The problem isn't the wording. I think the problem is the founders didn't or couldn't imagine a time in the future where so many uneducated and uninvested people would have the opportunity to vote.

If you need to resist it, you have already failed, as it had already affected you.

Charisma, like the old tree branch that scratches your window at night, and the drive to eat and fuck, primarily affects the old lizard brain. It's near the same biological level as the autonomic nervous functions. Unless your name is Spock or Jesus H. Christ, of course you've already failed. That doesn't mean you're done for though.

Most electric carts I've used have only one pedal. When you push it, the cart moves forward. When you let go, it brakes

Yeah, that's pretty much how a Model S works as well. When you let off the accelerator, regenerative braking kicks in. It kind of feels like engine braking in a manual transmission car. Regen braking can ramp up to 60kW, which can actually be quite a jolt if you do the opposite of stab the accelerator. The aggressiveness of regen braking is even user customizable through the computer, to reduce that effect.

The brake exists for times where 60kW of regen braking isn't enough. i.e. you need to stop fast. What you're proposing, however would be this: when you completely let off of the accelerator, full brakes are applied. I mean, enough to lock the rotors if there weren't ABS. That would simply be about the most retarded thing ever.

With unknown quantities of browser and associated exploits out there, it really would be smart to restrict the visiting unscrupulous sites to inside a VM, where you can revert to a known-clean snapshot with the click of a button.

Yes, Slashdot is "News for Nerds". But we don't come here to passively "consume" news. We come here to actively debate the news. That's what makes Slashdot different.

Not only can we all come here and read and then talk about the nerdly news, but as it happens often enough, the nerds actually making the news are members here themselves. From physicists and IT guys at CERN, Linux and other OSS coders, celebrity nerds, spooks at the NSA (they're posting GNAA trolls on their lunch break, and we all know it), university students working on some cool project, etc. etc. I can't count the number of times I was browsing the comments of a story, and one of the subjects actually involved crops up and joins the conversation; and you know, that's pretty freaking cool.

As a collective, we're the circus performers, the contributors, the commentators, and the critics, all at once. Where else do you find this on the net? Nowhere. As far as I know, Slashdot is unique in this regard.