Those who should be scared are those who live in disarmed societies.

Their governments controlled gun use for generations, and firearm scarcity was the result. But technology has caught up, and scarcity will no longer be able to keep guns away from criminals.

Perhaps there is a positive; many of those countries may go to hell before America has the chance to disarm its law-abiding citizens. It should be a valuable lesson.

Obviously, people on Slashdot don't understand the concept of hyperbole.

And this goes for both sides.

One side says that global warming exists and is manmade. They go too far and decide that your personal car and incandescent lights are solely to blame. You are selfish and should give back to society and the government for your misdeeds.

One side looks at that stance as foolish. But they go to far and reject global warming completely in an effort to distance themselves from their political opponents. And then when shown results that contradict their position, they say that it isn't manmade.

If you ignore the politics and let the science do the talking, you might actually get somewhere.

[citation needed]

Meanwhile, I found data that completely reverses your assertion.

Average Wage in US:
Dec. 1970 = $3.70
Dec. 2010 = $19.24

Are you sure your source wasn't already inflation adjusted?

Where I live, the municipal government gets zero income taxes and very little in property taxes. Their main source of revenue is sales taxes.

So why wait? Set 5 MPH speed limits, catch anyone going 1 MPH over, and make sales taxes 100% or more.

If it's such a good idea when government is mismanaged, it must be at least as good an idea when government is acting responsibly.

I've seen something similar (in Mexico) where the green light flashes for a short period of time before the amber light. The idea is essentially the same; give drivers extra time before they have to stop. These systems give drivers enough timing information to determine whether the best action is to slow down or not.

This pisses me off so much. Research studies have shown that increasing amber delays is one of the best ways to reduce both fatal and non-fatal collisions at intersections.

These municipalities think that more red light camera revenue = more money = great and glorious government. They forget two things:

- Fines, cost of repairs, and insurance premiums eat away at their citizens' bank accounts. Less money = less spending = less sales taxes, and a lot of angry, pissed off citizens.

- It's not a zero-sum game within the closed system of citizens and the government. The vendors get a lot of those fines.

So the net result is a slower economy, tax revenue is not nearly as high as expected, and vendors line their pockets.

(I recently worked for years in the highway safety sector, and one of my colleagues, a former cop, did a research paper on this subject. He started the research with a high opinion of red light cameras, but found that red light cameras had no significant effect on fatalities while significantly increasing non-fatal collisions.)

Obama knows all about that. Funny that he doesn't want law-abiding citizens to buy or sell guns, but doesn't mind distributing guns to Mexican cartels.

And your counter-argument is... ?

A good system would, in my opinion, have two parts for each law: the specific and official word of law (such as "Thou shalt not drive an automobile greater than the posted speed limit"), and another that conveys the intention ("To reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries"). The second portion is useful when ambiguities exist, and a judge or jury is called to interpret the law in an unforeseen situation.

This might help cases where, for instance, a driver is caught going over the posted speed limit, but the limit was established for the obvious purpose to catch speeders and not to enforce safety limits as specifies by highway engineers.

The problem is that if Bitcoin takes off, banks will still treat it like regular currency. Once you make a deposit, the bank will add it to a pool, and withdrawals will come from that pool. Your account holdings will still be a decimal formatted number in a database somewhere.

Banks and creditors need a new transaction system built on cryptography, single use keys, and enhanced by Internet connectivity, to protect their customers. And they needed it yesterday.

http://www.ubuntu.com/tablet

I love this concept. It's the first phone-to-tablet-to-PC concept I've seen that feels somewhat complete.

No, it doesn't. Microsoft doesn't have to do anything. Haven't you figured that out yet?

If you were only taxed when you spend money, the sales tax would be around 30%. If you were only taxed when you earn money, state income taxes would double.

The government will get its money.