Benevolence implies a zero-sum game. Non-zero sum games are almost always more beneficial and sustainable.

Right on, Google.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not the first person to consider that problem.

The researchers commissioned by the DoJ used anonymizing techniques when surveying people. Another group of researchers asked people if they were on the receiving side of DGU's rather than the giving side (to eliminate the risk of answering), and this doubled the response rate. That study had other problems though and its results (2.4M DGU's per year) is considered too high by the serious academics in the field.

It's true, though, another 'study' was done with interviews by federal officers - they got a 15-30x lower response rate than academics with anonymous guarantees. Still, about 80,000 people admitted to DGU's in the prior year when talking to sworn federal officers. I assume they were the ones unaware of the brandishing laws.

There are enough studies now with a variety of methodologies (each with their own flaws) for statisticians to consider the likely true range to be around 800,000.

76F34BB0EF7 849 Thu May 23 12:57:02 icinga@example.com
(host mx.cingularme.com[209.183.32.63] said: 452 Insufficient system storage (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
                                        6035551212@txt.att.net

The crap we all put up with from our leaders at times is a much better alternative to having all-out anarchy, and deep down even you understand this.

The people who feel really strongly about this tend to be the ones who haven't looked into it very deeply. Remember, the cost of having government is a human sacrifice rate of about 5% of the population. There's no strong ethnological case that societies without governments do worse than this. Then there are the economic costs.

There is considerable scholarship available on various proposals for running a society that are not based on a-priori threats of violence (that is, mechanisms for governance, not government). There are hundreds of hours of serious lectures on YouTube alone if you're open to such new ideas and shelves full of academic books on the subject.

I question anybody who thinks that society's evolutionary pinnacle is _right now_.

Is it fear that keeps people from applying the basic methodology of statistics to gun ownership? Guns were the great equalizer of power that changed society from being run by warlords ('Kings' in British parlance) to being one that supports democracy.

The USDOJ has a comprehensive study on defensive gun use available, the US CDC has a searchable database of causes of death, John Lott will make his merged database available gratis (not 'free', there are no redistribution rights), and Rummell at U. Hawaii has comprehensive democide statistics (Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein, et. al.). Several places (CIA World Fact Book, Wikipedia, UN) have violent crime statistics available for all countries. If only the UK could be as safe as Switzerland where every home is required to keep at least one military-grade weapon.

But, don't take my word for it, this is science; do the analysis yourself - it's all available and accessible.

regular battery servicing - probably cheaper just to run copper.

Sounds like a good application for iron-nickel batteries. Inefficient to charge, but they last forever. The nano-versions are more efficient but not on the market yet, though the customer is paying for the charging power so it probably doesn't matter.

instead of investing in the network, they flog the life out of the old crap they have to avoid investing in the network

Because the smart thing to do would be to rip up thousands of miles of fiber that can carry 800Gbps and replace it all with thousands of miles of fiber that can carry 800Gbps. :can't tell if kidding or IBEW:

Yes, everybody knows they're wings (that's somewhat inherent in X-Wing).

Nerds call them S-foils.

wings

I think you mean S-foils.

You can turn in your nerd card at the door.

I bought a couple to experiment with. Yeah, they're fine little boards you can ssh into. I thought the hardware accelerated video was going to be the killer feature, so I got a few of the XBMC images, played some videos, and, then googled to find all the people who are also complaining about blocking artifacts, lockups, and generally buggy video decoding on the things. Got the latest firmware updates, etc.

So, useless for that purpose, but it doesn't say so on the tin. Maybe I'll grab Pidora and set them up as vnc clients screwed into the back of a display. I think they can manage that OK, but from what I can see they're still prototypes.

I thought they'd be my kids' C=64's, but buggy doesn't encourage good learning.

Brace yourselves - here come the Apple prior-art posts.

Ron is not using the State to acquire RonPaul.com

Yeah, he is. He's making the case for an 'Intellectual Property' right to the name. Such ideas are only State-derived.

What's most sad is that the free market solution is so obvious.

If it's a violent act against a government actor, it's terrorism, so it deserves your liberties to be eradicated by that government.

If it were 'just' violence against a little girl, it would be merely a statistic, not nearly as important (according to government actors).

But I'm sure it's the driver, and only the driver making the difference here. What a ridiculous comparison.

If you look at TFA, he's making both a whole-stack comparison and separately a driver version comparison.

The OSX stack appears to fair worse against most of the linux tests, and the new driver does marginally better than the old driver.

Thank you, Intel driver folk, for reassuring my purchasing decision (based on linux driver support).

POTUS-PRIME

Great, now I have to imagine Roosevelt with Peter Cullen's voice saying, "Allied Forces, roll out."