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Comment Re:Corporate freedom, unless we say otherwise (Score 1) 367

Personally, I object to Fedex's position because they're citing concerns about the law, when the law says nothing about gun-smithing tools.

And yes, a lot of guns get shipped despite their policy marked as 'machine parts'.

If they just said 'we don't want to ship this because we don't support gun-rights', then we could boycott them with a clear heart.

(Note: More libertarian than conservative).

Comment Re:"an act of social provocation"? (Score 2) 367

The way the law is written, it is fully legal to create your own lower receiver and convert it to a fully functional weapon without registration as long as it is for your own personal use. It can never be given away nor sold.

Actually, it can. Beware of state rules, it has to have a maker's mark and serial #, and you definitely can't be 'in the business' without a FFL, But if you make a firearm, the decide to sell it(and it's the only one you sell) in a used condition 4 years later, having fed 1k rounds through it, then you're good to go. Selling a non-used individually manufactured firearm is an indication that you 'might' be in the business, so don't do that. Try to not make a profit on your hobby. Definitely don't make a business so you can deduct your tools & supplies.

But I still recommend on reading up on the rules first.

You've been able to get '80%' finished receivers for decades that didn't need much more than a drill press to finish. This does lower the bar, but not by much.

If I got something like this, I'd

Comment Re:Just Askin' (Score 1) 367

Personally, I'm in support of 'all of the above'. The internet today fills the place that phones did back then. I also think that the 1st applies to more than hand operated printing presses and the 2nd to more than muskets.

If a law doesn't make sense anymore, it's time to amend or repeal it.

Comment Re:Net metering is little more than theft (Score 1) 374

Excessively small control of waterways results in more economic harm because you get gridlock, so 'nobody' gets 'anything'.

For the pinkertons - I suggest studying history. It was bad, they were used more to enforce virtual slavery than libertarian freedom. It's part of the reason I'm a moderate - I keep the lessons of history in mind. That's actually conservative. ;)

An HOA is a form of government, if a limited and unofficial one. You have elected representatives, and it can pass 'laws', IE rules and regulations, that affect you in the future, and your only option is to campaign against them, summon help from a higher government power, or leave the community.

Also, leaving said community is only marginally easier than leaving the country. I've left the country multiple times, so I know just how hard it is. Fact is, once you have your bags packed, it's only marginally harder to leave the country than it is to move to another house in the same city.

You are still making arbitrary judgments for the country as a whole.

And you keep flipping the goal posts. First you attack me for 'micromanaging', then you attack me for NOT micro-managing by dividing the country into arbitrarily small chunks for special treatment on the pollution front.

I've already outright acknowledged that it's not perfect, but that I consider the gain in efficiency and freedom to be worth it.

Because they don't work, and because entire societies have destroyed themselves in pursuit of your false and unworkable solutions.

Please provide citations for the societies that have pursued my solution, and how they destroyed themselves. Heck, please provide a citation for a society that tried 'simply' charging for pollution, as opposed to issuing 'permits' and charging 'fines', often waiving them, and finding it a disaster.

you justify policies based on reasoning about groups of people and what is best for them; that is a progressive viewpoint, not a libertarian.

'Groups of people' = groups of individuals. Do not mistake my referring to 'groups' as anything more than shorthand, and my admittedly flawed grasp of the english language. I also don't claim to be a fundamentalist libertarian. You're trying to shove me into a different pigeonhole, but if we got into topics where you weren't looking at something that causes wide amounts of generalized harm, you'd quickly get into where I'd be giving the progressives even more heart burn.

Especially given that pollution tends to affect LOTS of individuals, if not the country as a whole.

Though I guess you have convinced me - there needs to be something in the system where if the pollution is somehow concentrated enough to affect individuals specifically enough to separate out the harm, then said individuals should have the right to seek compensation from the polluter.

I'd only have the EPA charging for the 'generalized' harm, that is too diffuse for proper compensation.

Whether those choices produce good or bad outcomes for those individuals, or what groups you divide society into, is irrelevant.

You're forgetting the principle of non-aggression. Where I differ from fundie libertarianism is that I believe that there needs to be a recourse other than the expensive court system to try to manage and prevent the harm up front, rather than trying to bankrupt the company after the fact, leaving many harmed with no recourse from a bankrupt company.

Comment Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving (Score 1) 362

Why should death and serious injury be the deciding factor?

ewibble and Jane Q. Public make good points, but mine is a lot more prosiac.

It's simple enough: The statistics available for serious injury accidents in the USA is detailed enough to chart known BAC levels and get a good idea of how various levels really affect driver's tendencies to get into serious accidents.

That data is simply unavailable for minor and no injury accidents, and we're already making it such that 'busted for DUI' is the biggest 'cost' for low BAC drivers, and it can be a real moneymaker for police departments.

Comment Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving (Score 1) 362

Flying car lanes would wind up being violated to shave off "precious" seconds.

You still have to consider that, unlike with ground traffic, you have a lot more 'lanes' in the air. Ergo, traffic jams are much less likely unless everybody wants to land at the same spot. Possible, but less likely.

Other than that, it appears that you didn't realize that I was talking about the collision-avoidance problem, not the 'requirements' for giving everybody a flying car. I wasn't disagreeing with the need for self-driving flying cars, I was disagreeing that the problem is harder in the air.

Comment Re:Not completely self-driving (Score 1) 362

Well, the first rule of a self-driving car should be 'don't hit anything'. The second should probably be 'don't impede traffic'.

So yeah, avoiding you should be one of their primary jobs.

The problem that I was pointing out, that the USAF is having with drones is that in some ways there's a 'valley' where you have too much automation for the operator to pay sufficient attention, yet not enough to handle all situations, such that you still need the operator.

Imagine a job where you stare at something. As long as the object does nothing, you do nothing. If the object does something, you have 5 seconds to hit a button. The object normally does something about once every other 8 hour shift.

Ideally you'd replace said human with automation ASAP, because the average human is going to suck at that job.

Comment Re:Do pilots still need licenses? (Score 1) 362

What part of autonomy is missing?

It can't get you to your destination if your destination is off road, if there is significant construction in between, significant rain, snow or ice on the road, etc...

Right now it's equivalent to a very safe 'fair weather' driver. The type that stays home if conditions aren't optimal.

Comment Re:Responsibility belongs to the driver . . . (Score 1) 362

Nonsense, the insurance would never get shifted onto the manufacturer, because maintenance happens after that, and is part of the accident risk.

Over in England, the cost for insuring a young/new driver is apparently so out of whack that car companies are selling their cars with 3 years of full coverage insurance included. Now, yes, these are cheap cars of the type that aren't likely to do as much damage even if they hit something else, but the manufacturer is already including the maintenance and insurance for the first 3 years in the price.

At a big enough discount that there's apparently not much of a 2nd hand market for these cars.

Comment Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving (Score 2) 362

The collision-avoidance problem, in some ways, is multiplied in the air. At least on the ground you have specific lanes with traffic control devices on them (lights, etc.).

Just the opposite. Consider that we developed drones long before we developed a self driving car. You can program specific lanes for flying, they're used all the time by commercial aircraft, but by the same token there's a lot less static clutter, margins are greater(no worrying about whether the kid on the side of the road will dart out), etc...

There are reasons why we developed self-piloting plants decades before we developed self-driving cars.

Comment Not completely self-driving (Score 2) 362

Actually, this would be a problem. The USAF is currently struggling with some of this - they automated their drones too much, operators don't have enough to do to keep proper attention on the drone in case something does happen. They're actually considering removing some of the automation...

I don't disagree that this is the most likely current situation, but it's going to be virtually impossible to keep the driver from doing other things as you remove more responsibility and control from them.

Comment Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving (Score 2) 362

An airplane doesn't have this fail safe stop option, and needs to have human overlords present at all times to take control if something happens the programmers didn't foresee.

Even then, there's arguments for removing the human pilots today because they actually cause around half the accidents.

Comment Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving (Score 1) 362

On the other hand, if you study actual injury statistics inside the USA, you'll find that you don't see serious increases in serious injury accidents until around .2%.

The majority of fatal accidents involving alcohol as a real contributing factor are well above .2%, so if .05 is lost within statistical noise, is it really saving lives?

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