Personally, I'm a fan of the properly installed gun safe, or at least a gun locker. They aren't hard, and work well at preventing accidental shootings. The rules should be that if the gun isn't ON the parent, then it's in the safe. Thieves might be able to get into a gun safe, but they'll generally leave a bolted down one alone; it takes power tools to get into a good one quickly.

Quick-open safes and locks also exist which can allow you access to your weapons in seconds.

You're making an ad hominem attack here. I don't object to tossing the parents or whoever gave the child unmonitored access to the firearm, much less while loaded, but I've known many children with firearms, where said firearm lived in the parent's safe when not on the range.

In one case I remember a Short Barreled Rifle(SBR) that required NFA approval being used by a pre-teen - it was a perfectly proportioned single-shot rifle in .22lr. The child never had it out of his parent's site, and it was provided to him at the range, and removed at the range(into the case to go back in the safe back home).

The other question is how you define child - I remember some anti-gun propaganda that defined 'child' as 'under 25'. Are you still a child at 13? That's about when I earned my shooting merit badge in Scouts.

Parts of Yahoo can certainly survive and thrive, but the problem is, Yahoo has no cohesion when compared to Google/MS. Parts of Yahoo are actually quite good like Flickr, but then there's parts of Yahoo that are absolute crap when compared to Google and Microsoft's offerings such as their e-mail service.

Would a S&W 686 count? I'll have to double check when I get home, but I think that one locks up the cylinder as well when cocked. After all, last thing you want when the hammer is dropping is the cylinders moving.

As for making it safe, well, I'd hope I was at the range and/or armory. Procedure:
1. MAKE SURE THE WEAPON IS POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION. Preferably stuck in a clearing barrel or pointed at a berm.
2. insert key into lock, place finger between hammer and gun, keep pointing in a safe direction.
3. Turn key, keeping gun pointed in safe direction and finger interfering with hammer
4. work the trigger lock off with one hand, keeping it pointed in safe direction. If barrel so much as twitches, pause and think about actions before starting again
5. Once off, make safe as per normal procedures. While pointing it in a safe direction.

Did I mention keeping it pointed in a safe direction the entire time?

I remember Consumer Reports looking into trigger locks and failing 99% of them, specially noting one particularly unsafe one that tripped the trigger on a 10/22 with a slight jar when installed per directions.

The technology is technically possible. However, I have a few points to make:
1. Guns are currently purely mechanical. Adding ANYTHING electronic into the firing system is going to lower reliability. Remember, the most common police weapon(Glock) doesn't even have a manual safety switch. The recognition system would have to work 99.999999% of the time in a fraction of a second.
2. When fired, the firearm itself suffers a large shock. One 9mm handgun weighs 770 grams, fires a 7.45 gram projectile at 390 m/s. Laws of physics means that every time the handgun is fired it suffers a shock sufficient to move it back at 3.8 m/s, or 14 km/hour. That is NASTY to electronics, it's roughly equivalent to being hit with a hammer. It's mean to mechanical parts as well, but at least we've had hundreds of years of engineering to fix the issues.
3. Perhaps most critical, police officers are much more likely to be killed by their own weapon after it's been taken from them. 26 officers over 10 years. (or have others killed with their weapon if taken from them). Despite this, police organizations(departments, unions, professional) will campaign hard and long to exempt themselves from any such gun legislation. I believe that New Jersey already has a smart gun requirement on the books - but no gun manufacturer makes a firearm that meets the standard.
4. The common figuring is a lot like that of DRM - a 'smart gun' will stop a non-authorized person only on a tactical, immediate basis. Criminals will be able to bypass any protections on a long term scale(IE days) if they successfully steal the weapon, making any 'smart guns' of limited protection.

In the end, its all about quality of life.

Would I be willing to take a lower-paying job that I really loved when compared to a higher-paying job that I dreaded going to? Yes.

Having a flexible work environment is something that would keep me working for less of a paycheck and still be happy. On the other hand, a very restrictive work environment I'm really not going to like so I better have good pay.

"Free perks" do not mean that developers thrive, but a relaxed work environment (that costs next to nothing!) helps developers thrive. Flexible hours and a relaxed dress code (T-shirt, shorts and flip flops should be ok) cost nothing to implement but yet can really help tech-minded people thrive. The thing is, managers who understand how the "techie mind" work generally tend to go a bit overboard and include a bunch of other stuff too, which does help, but not to the same degree.

Bottom line, if you expect your IT people and developers to come in wearing suits from 9-5 and be "productive" for all those hours sitting quietly in a cubicle, you're going to have to pay your tech people a lot. On the other hand, if you can make going to work feel more like a hobby, more relaxed and more interesting, you can find people who will work for you for less.

My understanding of HD plans is that there's nothing preventing insurance companies from incentivising(IE paying for before the deductible is exhausted) preventative treatment, especially if said treatment saves them money in the long run.

As for the $700 to go to the doctor, my father and brother have found that they can generally save oodles of money by shopping around and asking a few questions. Dad's on a high deductible plan, brother's uninsured, but generally has money to pay up front.

Reading the above, I am *so* glad I live in a country with free healthcare for all.

Go ahead, rub it in.

I honestly can't see how anyone who can make a sane argument against that.

If you're the majority shareholder of a HMO organization that owns hundreds of hospitals and a US senator at the same time, you may still not be able to make a sane argument against it, but you're going to try like hell.

It's perfectly fine for there to be a new deal. Personally, I think that healthcare should be more of a personal thing, and move with you between jobs as opposed to the mess that can leave people without healthcare for extended periods of time even if they never have a real interruption in employment, merely by moving between jobs.

You don't expect your work to provide your car insurance, why something so much more personal as healthcare? Of course, the system as set up now would be unsuitable, but there are comprehensive plans for the shift to personally obtained healthcare insurance out there.

I've known quite a few people 'trapped' in their current job because they had disabled children and/or illnesses that essentially chained them to their job because they couldn't afford any interruption in healthcare coverage.

Assuming the technology was there and that it worked flawless, it still has a key flaw, namely that a bad guy isn't always going to be the other person to pick up the weapon. What if your home gets broken into when you're not at home? Wouldn't you want your spouse or your child to be able to defend themselves? What if you were in some sort of hostage situation where the hostage-takers killed a security guard, wouldn't you want to be able to use that guard's gun?

Furthermore, it would encourage people to break the law to get fully functioning firearms. The same things that happen with electronic "piracy" would happen to guns, whenever the "system" is working to a degree that it doesn't make the product defective, a good chunk of the people will follow "the system", when an illegitimate product becomes superior is when more and more people start to break the system.

Do you mean a 'real healthcare program'? Because a proper 'high deductible' plan is closer to actually being insurance(IE something you're not supposed to use all the time) than most health care plans offered today.

For example, my dad's HDIP* actually saved him oodles of money when he got cancer. Why? Once he hit the deductible he was covered 100%, and not responsible for $40 copays, $40 per visit, etc... A traditional 'low' deductible plan would have bled him more financially over the course of that.

Plus, it gave dad predictability - keep at least the deductible in his HSP, and he knows precisely the maximum his healthcare could cost him that year.

*High Deductible Insurance Plan

Nobody has shown that what Apple has done shouldn't be morally acceptable.

I know I'll regret responding to such an obvious troll, but...

1) When a company like Apple avoids/evades paying taxes, it hurts the free market by taking for themselves an advantage that other companies can or do not. Primarily, a company the size of Apple does this by using its tax advantage to press anti-competitive advantages by buying up other companies. If you or I wanted to buy a company that Apple also wanted to buy, and the company cost $1billion, Apple would basically be able to buy that company for $700million while we would have to pay the full $1billion. By using this advantage to destroy competition, there is greater consolidation and greater loss of competition. Pretty soon, it's not really a market at all, much less free.

If you believe a "free market" is a force for good, then what Apple is doing is bad.

2) By not contributing their share of taxes (the same share that other companies have to pay), Apple uses public assets without paying for them, forcing the shortfall onto the rest of us and their competitors. Bad for us, and bad for the free market.

3) Stealing is immoral. Even you would probably agree that taking something that you have not paid for is immoral. Apple uses a lot of common resources, from infrastructure to the legal system, at a much higher rate than most people (or companies) by not paying their share of the costs, those costs are shifted on to us. In the language of the American Right, Apple is "stealing from future generations".

4) Lying is immoral. Here's one of Apple's tax "avoidance" scams: They register a patent in the United States. This forces the United States government to use resources to protect Apple's patent rights. Then, Apple transfers the ownership of that patent to a company that does not exist in Ireland, which pays its fees to another company that does not exist in say, Holland (thus the famous "Dutch-Irish Sandwich"). Because the ownership of that patent is in the other country and removed further by paying license fees in the third country, Apple completely avoids any taxes at all. Yet, if an Apple patent is threatened, they sue in US court and the US government is called upon to protect Apple's patent. So, for the purposes of taxes, the patent is not American, but for the purposes of enforcement, the patent is American. I'm pretty sure you can see how this is immoral.

Further, I'm betting that Apple's claim that 2/3 of their profits come from outside the US and indeed outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation, Apple's lying. This is why they're going to settle this ASAP, because if the forensic accountants go to work on Apple's books, the penalties could be astronomical and Apple's already wounded share price would halve again.

5, 6 & 7: Corporations were given special status to protect investors and owners from direct liability, not to protect them from having to act in a moral way. You seem willing to absolve Apple from any moral responsibility for anything, yet you want them to be treated as a person for the purposes of political activities. So now the moral questions are directed at you, khallow.

Finally, if you believe that taxes are immoral on their face, I would remind you that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to achieve freedom from taxation, but rather from taxation without representation. You cannot make a persuasive argument that you are not represented. You may not like your representation, but that's the way our system was designed. If you don't like the American system, then we have a different discussion altogether.

I'm curious how this thing will 'tune' in TV?

Do they have deals with ATT UVerse, Cox/Charter/You Name it Cable channels, Dish/Direct TV Satellite companies to hook into their systems? That would actually be some coup if they were to be able to integrate into all these systems...will it also act as a DVR? I mean, if they want to be a 1 box fits all, that would be one big requirement I'd guess.

Sure it can play games....but how well does it do the other stuff ?

Except we're far from just barely surviving, while there are people actually struggling. Your indoctrination in individualism does not allow you to see how immoral that is... A little bit of empathy would do you good.

Well, what can I say? There are winners and losers in the world, always has been, always will.

Nothing shy of taking everyones money/wealth, and redistributing so that everyone has an equal share, whether they earned it or not, you are not going to have people that don't 'struggle" as you say.

I certainly hope you aren't proposing that....because at some point, you run out of people willing to work harder and excel, only to have their rewards given to someone that didn't/couldn't do the same work or had the same luck.

Life is a contest....you have to fight to win. Not everyone gets that.

Really so I have a tax lawyer I don't know about?

Much of this stuff is not clearly laid out online. If it was I surely would not want to take advantage of it either.

Wait, are you giving people grief because they took a little extra time and effort to learn what tax laws and breaks are applicable to them? Heck, if anything, people that take the time to truly learn what they are doing, SHOULD get to keep more money, lets reward effort, eh?

I have described in the past what I was able to save using a S-corp to save a good deal on employment taxes (SS and medicare) 100% legally with my companies I've had. I set this up WAAYY before everything was out there on the Web for easy research. I heard about S-corps, and how best to run a self employment business, and did the footwork and research to find out what the best path to pursue for my situation was. Some internet, some phone calls.

Today, it is much easier, with a little effort to find these things out. Heck, if someone was interested, and quit watching American Idol, they could use that time to learn a lot of things...tax laws are just one of them.

And hey, if you don't want to take advantage of it..that's fine, but don't fault others for doing so as long as it is perfectly legal.

Personally, I can't understand why you wouldn't take advantage of it as you mentioned...unless you really think a large, bloated, faceless national bureaucracy can allocate and spend YOUR money YOU earned in a much better, efficient and humane way than you could. Frankly, I'd rather give my extra charity dollars directly to people or entities that "I" vet as being efficient and causes I support.

But, that's just me.

Most of what you were talking about, the services used are LOCAL ones, and covered by local city/state taxes.

Look if you want to make it fair...redo the tax system. Let's take it all and do it from scratch.

Start with the Feds, minimize it to their constutional level needs (defense, etc...there aren't that many things the Feds are really mandated to cover. That will ease off the need for DC to print and borrow so much money.

Bring most of the taxation back to the states, and the states have more flexibility to tax based on the states needs. I'd be more for a simple flatter (if not flat or fair tax). You make this...you pay % of this, no deductions. And almost no one (except true poverty) would get out of the tax game without a little skin in it. Everyone should pay something, even if it is only a fucking dollar.

Now, that way, everyone pays less, reasonable amounts, then you can feel moral about taxation...and no one gets what you term "unfair" loopholes.

I still don't see doing whatever I possibly can that is legal to keep as much of my money as a moral issue at all, but if you don't like people using whatever they have at their means legally to reduce their taxes, then you should be for extreme simplification, which is fair to everyone, and everyone pays something, and with this set up, overall, less money is required by govt. and power begins to shift, as it should, back to the people.