Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Australia can get it right (Score 1) 145

The UK moved to a fully online vehicle registration system yesterday, can't you read? They are just having some zero-day issues, as most large-scale sites do.

As other posters have already explained, online payment for your tax disc nor the website are new at all. It is also not "fully online" as you can still pay at a Post Office, with cash even, if you wish. The only change that happened on the 1st of October was that you are no longer required to display a tax disc in your windscreen.

The problem appears to be a surge in users trying to use the website for some inexplicable reason; probably a complete failure to comprehend on their part, and there are a bunch of confused people trying to renew when they don't need to.

Comment Re:What about Israel? (Score 1) 78

Considering that Israel spies on the United States more than any other ally, I'm surprised they are not on the list.

Israel is our extra special hand puppet^W^Wfriend and we would never hack them because we own them and we don't need to hack them. They're doing precisely what we pay them for.

Comment Re:FBI hidden agenda (Score 1) 78

One giant global 'criminal' fishing expedition, with agents so blinded by the idea of becoming special agent super heroes then ended up breaking laws all over the planet without the permission or legal authority of those countries networks they were hacking.

HAHAHAHA. There's no way that this went down without the blessing of the superiors. None. They knew what they were doing, and they did it on purpose.

Comment Re:Scion marketed to, trimmed for younger, less ca (Score 1) 261

your suspension and anti-roll bars need to be reworked at a minimum.

Sure, but by "suspension" you mean dampers and maybe springs, and anti-roll bars are fairly inexpensive and trivial to upgrade. Bolting on the turbo is more work by far. And as stated before, you need a better tire and wheel package. So what, 1-3k depending on provenance? Before you get to the turbo, obviously. Since there's no cars to pull parts from, you do have to buy everything new, not actual Subarus where everything interchanges and they about snap together like Lego. I'd rather have an Impreza, anyway; I prefer my Subarus with AWD. I bought an A8 D2, which is kind of like the Impreza's classy uncle. I suspect that if you put the D2 next to a GC5 the similarities would leap out. Off to go do that in an image.

Comment Re:Drink IPA (Score 1) 119

Pliny is ~92, Hopfather is > 100.

Pliny is more bitter than hopfather, it says so right on their website, and it also says so in my mouth. And the younger is even moreso, and I can't figure out why anyone would give a shit about the elder any more because it has clearly. gone. down. hill. Last time I actually made it in for the younger (which I only do by accident, because life is too short to make plans around when a keg of beer is opened) it wasn't that good, either. It was missing something important from the hop character. Since they got mobbed, Russian River has lost the ability to give a fuck. They really need to expand, but make bullshit noises about keeping it small and not being able to do the same quality of beer if they grow. But they're not keeping the same quality of beer now, so what do they have to lose?

I also make 100%percentile coffees as well.

Is that what happened to your taste buds?

Comment Re:Doesn't sound all that practical, really (Score 1) 651

Hmm... That might be an interesting legal loophole if the sale/purchase of said rifles is illegal, but the construction of them isn't. Person A buys the CNC machine for $1200, uses it to mill 2-3 rifles that are illegal to buy. He then sells it and instructions to Person B for $1k, who does the same, etc...

Or hell, rents the device out for $100 a lower. Done.

Comment Re:Banning CNC would be utterly pointless (Score 1) 651

The full-auto sear would only be for ancient AR-15s, they've changing the milling so that to make an effective one you'd need to have a custom sear and do some milling work on the lower receiver.

In which case it's the sear itself that's consider the machine gun, as you mention. As far as I know there's absolutely nothing about the bolt that needs to be changed.

Of course, go back to WWII and weapons such as the M-3 'Grease Gun' and you'll find that with basic machining equipment - not even a precision CNC machine, and you can churn out machine guns for less than $100 a pop.

Comment Re: the solution: (Score 1) 651

Indeed, as an individual who leans libertarian, I have to admit that while I find the topic of child porn/abuse very disturbing, and have no problems with harsh sentences for child abusers(the creators of the works), I question the necessity to ban something completely, especially when the works people are trying to ban strays into things like 'child porn' where there wasn't any child harmed in the creation, specifically artificial child porn ranging from cartoon depictions to older actors manipulated to look younger through various techniques from makeup to digital editing. Especially when there's no solid evidence that said artificial works increase the odds that a child will be abused. My standard for banning something that doesn't directly cause harm to others is very high.

Take drunk driving - I allow the banning of the act, even though a drunk driver isn't necessarily going to cause harm to somebody else, because there's mountains of evidence that the risks of them doing so is vastly higher. I oppose movements to drop the limits even more though, because it's getting into statistical insignificance. Drunk drivers are much more likely to kill somebody when they're over .2, not below .08. I'd prefer the cops go after the .2 types as a result.

To paraphrase a saying I've heard: "Free speech isn't free if it can't offend anyone". So when considering whether to infringe on free speech we have to look at the most offensive examples. Child Porn. Fred Phelps and the Westboro baptist church. KKK demonstration marches. Mein Kampf, the communist manifesto, etc... That I'm generally very for freedom doesn't mean that I don't like what I fully know some will get up to with it. I just think that it's worth it overall.

Comment Flamethrowers (Score 1) 651

I agree on the flamethrowers, though I also remember versions of them being used for pest control as well as controlled burns, snow removal, and other such tasks.

They make a device that pushes out propane or natural gas into animal burrows, turning them into fuel-air explosives, then the operator triggers a spark using the device that detonates it, killing rodents such as gophers in the tunnel network through a combination of overpressure and oxygen deprivation.

It's not what most would consider a flamethrower, but it comes under it in the rules.

As for assault weapons - rifles are used for a statistically insignificant number of murders in the USA, much less the sub-category of 'assault weapons' that are rifles. I have to be specific here because some handguns count as 'assault weapons' as well. The state of California goes above and beyond and counts a firearm that's generally too heavy to be fired unsupported as an assault weapon, even if it's single shot. Never mind that finding a single murder in the USA from that caliber is rather difficult...

Comment Re:the solution: (Score 1) 651

Constitutional amendments have nothing to do with debating the merits of the topic.

It does when people start saying things like 'stop hiding behind paper' and 'the constitution is a living document'. Sure it's a living document, there's a way to change it built into the very document itself. Until then, pointing out that many gun control proposals are unconstitutional isn't necessarily out of line.

Also, going by what most recently happened in Colorado, what happened after the first assault weapons ban, and such, pushing for repeal or significant restriction on the 2nd is a good way to lose your office. Outright recalls in Colorado, with 2 politicians losing their seats over their votes(and a 3rd resigning rather than cost the democrats their senate majority), the loss of congress to the republicans because of the AWB, etc...

There's a good chance that the Democrats will lose the senate within the next couple elections because of their law.

Comment Re:the solution: (Score 1) 651

Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.

Consider that 40-50 years ago the NRA wasn't even a gun rights organization at the time, having a history of supporting things like the NFA, various 'Saturday night special' bans*, etc...

Then, as the rights people gained power the NRA did a complete about-face on some of the racist things, started considering gun rights as much as hunter safety and the proper operation of safe ranges.

*A 'Saturday night special is a now older term for a cheap handgun. Gun control laws targeting them at least have the benefit of actually targeting the weapons most criminals use. So few people are actually killed by rifles, much less 'assault weapon' type rifles, that it's a statistically insignificant cause of death. More people are beaten to death with people's bare hands and feet.

Comment Re: the solution: (Score 1) 651

U.S. v. Miller, in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, argued that the Second Amendment is “restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security.”

I think it's important to note that there was no defense presented in U.S. v Miller because the defendant had died during the appeals process and the firm pushing the case didn't pursue it further due to lack of funds/motivation.

Despite this, per their decision they only allowed the regulation of short barreled shotguns because no military use was presented to them. This was despite there being plenty of evidence available from WWII 'trench guns', but this evidence wasn't presented because, again, no defense was mounted. It was the equivalent of a default judgement, and even then it was actually pretty limited.

Comment Re:Racism of law-enforcement (Score 1) 651

Your attempt to include links to such statistics failed. Please, try again. Be sure, your links point to differences between ratios of law-breakers vs. prosecutions by race. Any pointers comparing ratios populations vs. prosecutions are meaningless and will be discarded.

Not the op, but how about this one:
The interaction of race, gender, and age in criminal sentencing: the punishment cost of being young, black, and male
"(1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations."

Translation: Young Black Males are the most screwed if they end up in court, likely to receive far longer sentences for the exact same crime. The severity of their likely sentence drops if they're female or a different race, or are older. "Young Black Male" is statistically treated significantly worse than "Young White Male", but once they start passing into middle age the significance drops.

A review of other articles (scholar.google.com) shows that sex&age are probably bigger factors though. An old black guy is about as well/badly off as an old white guy in most criminal trials. I hate Taylor Francis, btw, they don't take my university credentials to see the full papers, so I'm mostly working off of abstracts. Some of the issue seems to be that states with high percentages of poor black populations also tend to be the harshest sentence-wise. So a crime in a predominantly white state where the defendant(90% likely to be white) might get a year regardless of their skin color, but 'down south' where the defendant is statistically black(let's go with 60%), odds are he'll get a decade, again, regardless of skin color. Appropriate sentence for a crime is up to debate, of course, but I'm trying to keep it about race.

Comment Re:the solution: (Score 1) 651

Alas, he also had the skills to obtain guns legally.

Thus the 'probably'. Such types are so rare that it's not worth the cost to freedom in having to restrict things like CNC milling equipment - which is useful for a very wide variety of tasks depending on the exact equipment. Either you're restricting the freedom of hundreds of thousands of individuals, or you make getting a permit so loose that the law is ineffective anyways and all it does is either place an additional tax on the people for no good reason or throws our country even deeper in debt.

After all, is a requirement to serialize the firearm produced really going to stop a person so bent on mass murder that they're willing to use CNC equipment to make their weapons?

If we want to stop/slow that we might as well be like how I've heard the Japanese are - everybody gets an annual 'checkup visit' by the police once a year or so. Fixing our healthcare system, specifically the mental health part, would probably help more.

BTW guys, I suggest AGAINST taking the advice of any ACs on gun laws. Every one I've seen is very incorrect. Even I'm incorrect, but I like to think I'm a bit closer.

Slashdot Top Deals

If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.

Working...