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.

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.

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.

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

Did you ever write a program? Did it work the first time, doing exactly what it was supposed/specified to do?

Did you ever figure that was an adequate excuse?

Of course not.

Not in what you say isn't the truth, because any software that hasn't been shaken down is usually pretty bad, but using the "first time" as an actual reason for insecure software? Completely unacceptable. If you worked for me with that attitude, you might end up in the mail department where you could have an easier job.

You obviously both misparsed my statement and aren't aware
of how *I* do software development.
It includes beating the HELL out of any piece of software before
releasing it (with a full coverage test suite built into the make
mechanism in a way that causes the build to fail if a unit test
fails.)

I've developed a methodology that lets me deliver such a fully
debugged software components, with test suite blazingly fast,
as well. It takes me about three times as long as it takes a
more typical programmers to get a new component of similar
size and complexity to successfully compile and link (but not
run correctly) after a moderate feature change.

And I'm thus familiar with some of the pathologies of
people who administer programmers with insufficient
insight into what they're doing and their modes of talking
about it. Because I'm so fast I don't generally report
progress until a component is DONE. Result: Some
administrators have compared my delivery of a complete,
polished, from-scratch, component to one debug iteration
of other team members. This lead to actual publication of
a statement to this effect: "[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]
takes three times as long as anyone else, but his stuff
usually works the first time."

I've been referred to as "a god" in hushed tones (over a
nearly non-existent bug rate in a ten thousand line application),
and had a colleague comment that I was the only person he'd
rust to program an artificial heart for him.

So I'm quite aware of how to make software solid.

My point was not making excuses for poor programmers.

My point was that commercial software operations usually
have management pathologies that lead to measuring
function and not measuring (or rewarding) security.
There's a lot of WORK involved in making software secure
and doing it is usually penalized rather than rewarded. So you
have to expect commercial software to USUALLY be riddled
with security bugs.

(Which is why I migrated to hardware design about 15 years ago.
The non-recurring costs of a bug-fix respin as SO high that
administrators often appreciate and reward solid design and
execution.)

You know, this makes me wonder what goes on with these types of lawyer. I mean, as I've aged I've realized that not all lawyers are scummy, it's a bit like bad cops - one scummy lawyer slimes an awful lot of other lawyers. Thing is, they always seem to be experienced lawyers, and generally get smacked by the 'disbarment' stick sooner or later, normally fairly quickly(within a couple years, out of a possible 40 year career).

So is it a case of where they start out following the ethics guidelines the classes taught them, but end up pushing the edge and pushing the edge until they go too far, with the process generally taking years, as they slowly become disillusioned and greedy?

Westborough Baptist Church

It's the fundies who like to picket funerals saying that the soldiers are dying because the USA supports gays too much. And by 'supports gays too much' I mean 'fails to burn them at the stake or something'.

Most of the family are apparently lawyers and there are rumors they finance their protests by suing anybody who violates their 'rights'.

At one moment in time, it was a really good way to get a hold of a high school or college kid (nephew, neice, cousin, whatever). Now it's SMS.

And the other side of that coin is finding it and reporting it. Then checking back x time later. Where they did nothing then say, why were you looking again?

How about:

1) To find out if the data was pulled down yet.
2) To be even nicer guys by waiting until the data WAS pulled down to run the story that would give tens of thousands of identity thieves a valuable present.

Shareholders, as they are otherwise uninvolved in the operation of the corporation other than the selection of executives, get to enjoy the limited liability. Executives, as actual decision makers, don't get to enjoy that protection if they decide that dumping toxic waste right into the river is a good money-saving idea.

I'm outright mean when it comes to this, taking a downright military view of responsibility - IE the idea that 'constructive ignorance' is no excuse. If you WOULD have been aware of the activities if you'd been exercising proper command and oversight, you're still guilty even if you hid in the executive offices snorting coke off of prostitute asses.

Or you know... people could start writing decent secure code to begin with... :)

Did you ever write a program? Did it work the first time, doing exactly what it was supposed/specified to do?

Took a lot of debugging and error correction, didn't it? Even if you are a programming expert.

Now write a program where "what it's supposed to do" includes "not get cracked and used by any malware, known or unknown, past or future".

Think you'll get THAT right the first time? Even if you are a security expert?

I thought silver was also a thing, but it looks like you're right.

I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually generate tests for copper infused working surfaces.

One interesting thing was that wood handles can harbor bacteria in any grooving, but I also remember studies about wood vs plastic for cutting boards saying that while wood will harbor bacteria more than plastic, unlike plastic the bacteria tend to stick to the wood better - meaning it gets onto your food less.

Then they weren't a very good gang, now were they? I'm surprised he couldn't arrange something better via the silk road and whatnot. Idiot(drug user).

Your view on libertarian belief systems is extremely distorted. Some counterpoints:
1. Libertarians typically don't believe in the 'personhood' of corporations. Ergo a 'corporation' can't misbehave. It might create liability for itself, but for actual misbehavior you should always be able to determine a *PERSON* who made said bad decision. If executives have to worry about prison...
2. "Government testing and standards" - Do you realize that the largest testing organizations are private? UL, Underwriters Laboratories, is independent.
3. Not all companies are publicly traded such that you can purchase stock in them. /Mild libertarian; more because I'm pissed at both the democrat and republican parties than because I toe the libertarian line 100%.