Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 1) 580
Like Team America the world police!
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 2) 580
Currently, there is not a gun dealer in the U.S. willing to offer a smart gun for sale. A company called Armatix, based in Germany with an office in California, this year had two gun dealers — one in Maryland and one in California — ready to offer its
The company promoted the breakthrough, and the national media jumped on the news. As a result, the two gun-shop owners were thrust into the eye of a national storm. They caught overwhelming criticism from gun owners and Second Amendment proponents. Both backed down and decided not to sell the gun.
from the second link I posted..
Yes, the law in NJ is dumb. So, is the reaction from gun rights activists/NRA on smart guns as a whole.
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 1) 580
I am literally shitting bullets with literal warzones in American streets! Does that mean the terrorists won? Or was it the commies?
Someone, tell it to me literally!
Someone, tell it to me literally!
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 1) 580
I think you would have bigger problems to worry about.
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 2) 580
. That's not a joke, either. You can walk down the street without a license carrying a loaded shotgun in each hand, handguns strapped all over your waist and legs, and rifles slung over your back, but nunchucks are illegal. We need to draw the line somewhere. This isn't the wild west any more.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
Any one sane doesn't like armed-to-the-teeth wanna-be vigilantes walking around with an axe to grind. They are being socially ostracized too.
It may not be the Wild West anymore but the culture it shaped still clings to "simpler times". When all a man needed was his horse and a gun to tame the Wild and make a life for his family, away from that meddlesome government.
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 1) 580
NJ State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg says she will work to reverse a law making smart guns mandatory in her state – if the NRA will agree to stop obstructing them.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/wa... http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
It does not give a pass for stupid laws from being passed in NJ that mandated a certain type of gun in the first place. However, there was a willingness to compromise to allow consumers make the choice and repeal said stupid law.
I am for gun rights, but the debate is so soured that any discussion to make guns safer cannot even take place.
Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 5, Insightful) 580
it's just that no firearms means less risk of gun related violence.
That may be true but a key difference in the US is that gun rights are codified into law and in the culture. What is the "Wild West" without guns? In Arizona, to this day, you can walk into a bank with a gun with no problems.
My biggest gripe with gun law conversations in the US is that the discussion never can have a middle ground. Gun law advocates never admit to the 2nd amendment while gun rights advocates never admit to sane policy. So, when there is a technology that may make guns safer or better, it gets muddied by talking point vomit.
The NRA gets upset over a "smart" gun because "hurr you have to wear a bracelet to use it". While anti-gun folks were mad because "hurr it's a gun therefore EVIL! In really, it was a interesting idea that has some issues that could be better with time and better tech.
Comment Re:locked in 25 points? (Score 1) 435
I hope you are wrong. :(
Comment Re:This silly person has no idea what will happen. (Score 1) 688
Talk to the people that build automated tests and build configurations for software. At the last place I worked, one specialized developer did the job of 3 testers and 1 developer that released software. That company was downsizing their development team because of automated tasks like that. That is currently happening in most IT shops where I have been.
Comment Already do it in Dayz (Score 1) 448
My Dayz avatar is black. Does that count?
What is a white man to do in a virtual black mans body in the zombie apocalypse? I killed my white friend on accident with a shotgun to the back of the head. I promise the virtual color of our skin was not a factor in his accidental death.
Submission + - NASA Provides Details of Unique Method for 3d Printing on Other Planets (3dprint.com)
ErnieKey writes: A major application of 3d printing that could revolutionize space travel, is that of ultimately using 3d printers to create structures on non-terrestrial bodies like the moon, other planets, and even asteroids. Researchers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center have been working to develop solutions to materials issues, and recently presented initial findings on the potential for using in-situ materials like basalt for 3D printing. Their innovative method is based on only using in-situ supplies, and not materials that need to be brought into space.
Submission + - The Vanishing Male Worker
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that the share of prime-age men, those 25 to 54 years old, who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s to 16 percent as many men have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. Technology has made unemployment less lonely says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, who argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations. Perhaps most important, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs as foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs open to high school graduates. The trend was pushed to new heights by the last recession, with 20 percent of prime-age men not working in 2009 before partly receding. But the recovery is unlikely to be complete. "Like turtles flipped onto their backs, many people who stop working struggle to get back on their feet," writes Appelbaum. "Some people take years to return to the work force, and others never do "
A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”
A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 can be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood (PDF). “When the legal, entry-level economy isn’t providing a wage that allows someone a convincing and realistic option to become an adult — to go out and get married and form a household — it demoralizes them and shunts them into illegal economies,” says Philippe Bourgois, an anthropologist who has studied the lives of young men in urban areas. “It’s not a choice that has made them happy. They would much rather be adults in a respectful job that pays them and promises them benefits.”
Submission + - NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a scathing indictment of the NASA bureaucracy, the Washington Post documents a $349 million project to construct a laboratory tower that was closed as soon as it was finished. "[The tower was] designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space. ... As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially 'mothballed' — closed up and left empty — without ever being used. ... The reason for the shutdown: The new tower — called the A-3 test stand — was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. ... The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didn’t need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. ... Jerked from one mission to another, NASA lost its sense that any mission was truly urgent. It began to absorb the vices of less-glamorous bureaucracies: Officials tended to let projects run over time and budget. Its congressional overseers tended to view NASA first as a means to deliver pork back home, and second as a means to deliver Americans into space. In Mississippi, NASA built a monument to its own institutional drift."
Why Didn't Sidecar's Flex Pricing Work? 190
Bennett Haselton writes Sidecar is a little-known alternative to Lyft and Uber, deployed in only ten cities so far,
which lets drivers set their own prices to undercut other ride-sharing services.
Given that most amateur drivers would be willing to give someone a ride for far
less than the rider would be willing to pay, why didn't the flex-pricing option take off? Keep reading to see what Bennet has to say.
Comment Re:No (Score 1) 1051
Tell me more about how you can encounter smallpox in the wild. Clearly, enough people encountered smallpox in the wild and built an inoculation over time. The people that died just got the wrong pathogen of course. It had nothing to do with vaccines, right?
When your immune system cannot fight off such pathogens and you have to rely on herd immunity, will you have the same reservations against vaccines?
