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Comment Re:and it begs the question (Score 1) 622

for NON-Violent crimes, I absolutely agree that their rights should be reinstated, even for firearms. I would also expand that definition to include small time drug offenses, if it isn't already. But I'm afraid for someone who was guilty of assault, rape, murder, etc. has already amply shown that they can't control themselves, and shouldn't have the right to own a gun reinstated.

Comment Re:A grander plan (Score 1) 141

to some degree the redundancy in the translation codons is there because the mating tRNA isn't always an exact match.

We like to think of it as a nice clean process, but in reality it's a VERY messy process involving lots of fuzzy factors and probabillities. The way that the ribosome works is by having the tRNA "crash" randomly into the opening. If it's the correct tRNA it will bond to the DNA and stay there. Ones that don't fit are repelled by molecular forces. There is such a small difference between the bonding potential of GUU and GUA that if they were assigned to different amino acids there would be many many more mistakes, resulting in miscoded proteins.

redundancy in wetware is usually there for a reason!

Comment Re:old, really old, news (Score 1) 586

This was the reason that on little boy the bombardier practiced for days arming and disarming the bomb. The original plan was to arm it before takeoff by installing the powder charges. He was terrified of the plane going down and the bomb taking out the airfield and base. He spent a lot of time on the ground practicing climbing down into the bomb bay, removing the cover, inserting the charges and reinstalling the cover. For his efforts he died young of cancer.

Comment Re:The dilema ... (Score 1) 427

The human race has had constant war for several hundreds of years. There has always been someone on this ball of dirt fighting with someone else on the same ball of dirt. Usually its over that same dirt.

The US has been in nonstop conflicts somewhere in the world since WW2 at least, if not longer.

Lets get real, espionage has not stopped war, nothing will. Maybe it's mitigated some of the damage from them, but even that is a hard sell.

Espionage is just another type of war, one where the casualties aren't nearly as apparent, and the objective is information.

Comment Re:Nope. (Score 2) 245

"things like the 19k gun suicides" that your "common sense" measures WOULD DO NOTHING to stop.

It only takes ONE bullet in ANY gun to take a life. By eliminating a certain style of gun you aren't necessarily going to stop the deaths.

I'll go for the low hanging car analogy: Sports cars and motorcycles cause a disproportionately large number of deaths. Let's make the streets safer and ban sports cars and motorcycles! Sound ludicrous? While thats just like banning a certain type of firearm.

Cars and motorcycles with higher horsepower cause more deaths. Theres no reason that ANYONE should need a car with more than 4 cylinders! Let's put a capacity limit on engines! Number of cylinders, displacement, horsepower, take your pick! Sound ridiculous? This is just like setting limits on the number of rounds a magazine can hold.

Also note that neither one of these laws would probably end up saving a single life. Stupid people are going to do stupid things regardless of what sticks you give them to hit themselves with.

And if you want to put your expectations into law don't get pissed when others do the same. Drug laws, Marriage laws, Car laws, etc etc.

Please mod me and parent as off-topic, because that's what this is!

Comment Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score 1) 780

"With the introduction of softer, heavier alloys for non-toxic shot, there is no legitimate reason to be using lead shot" Except for the fact that these new "green" bullets are 400% more expensive than their lead counterparts. Gee, we can't disarm the population so lets make bullets REALLY FREAKING EXPENSIVE so that they can't use them anyways.

Comment Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score 1) 780

except that IN SPITE of the lead ban AND a 92% compliance with it as reported by Dept. fish and game, LEAD LEVELS HAVE CONTINUED TO INCREASE in the condors. Using the scientific method, once one source has been eliminated but the effect continues to grow the cause is probably something different!

Comment Re:Rival, yes. Biggest, no. (Score 1) 223

"it's still funneling people into Google's web suite." And that my friends is all that Google should care about. It's their stated mission for Android, so it's a win-win situation. Google purchased Motorolla for PATENTS, not because they wanted to start making money selling phones. If Google is smart they will use the Moto phones to roll out new features that users want but manufacturers are leary of. It should work well for them to use that brand to set a baseline Android experience, much as they've done with the nexus series. Hell, if they haven't complained about amazon building their own app store (and conveniently leaving Play out) I really don't think that they care much about what direction Android takes, as long as it continues to use Google search and display Google Ads.

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