Posts by sisk

Re: Edge

Bah. Edge is IE just like Sharepoint Designer is Frontpage. A change in the name and cosmetic differences on top of the same old codebase does not a new product make.

Re: So basically

Hey hey hey, don't go insulting Captain Cyborg like that.

Re: Not good

The most likely outcome is that the gun will be taken from the 103 pound woman and used to force her to comply

Reality disagrees with you. The most common outcome of that scenario is this: rapist menaces woman, woman pulls gun, rapist runs like hell. If he doesn't run and the woman actually knows how to use the gun odds are he'll be shot before he's close enough to try to take it away. Do your research and you'll find this to be true. The "it'll just get taken away" argument is pure fantasy and has no bearing on reality. Don't believe me? Just try to find a case where it's happened. You can find a few cases where the opposite has happened and plenty of cases where a rapist has been shot by a gun toting would-be victim, but no case of a rapist taking a gun has ever been in the news.

Re: Not good

There is a good deal of straw-clutching going on when you watch people trying to argue in favour of gun ownership.

There's also a good bit of fear mongering going on whenever you see people arguing in favor of tighter gun control.

Handguns really have no justifiable use the hands of the public in any place that is not already awash with them.

Sports shooting, for one. Also the gun's status as an equalizer makes the self-defense argument valid no matter what what the specific circumstances. Unless you're one of those who think a 103 pound woman can fend off a 250 pound rapist by pissing herself. You may not agree with it, but you can't deny that it's an argument worth considering.

Re: Not good

So, Britain has way less gun crime, per person, not because we have far fewer guns but because...we like each other more?

First, stop confusing "gun crime" and "violent crime". The terms are not interchangeable and gun crimes are no worse than any other violent crime.

Second, yes Britain has less violent crime than the US. Britain also has less poverty and less population density than the parts of the US that are largely responsible for our crime statistics being so high (the big cities). There are also cultural factors to consider. Basically when you compare the US to Britain on crime you're comparing apples and oranges. There are too many factors to nail it down with to any one of them.

Re: Not good

At some point, I've tried to half-seriously research defence against a knife-attack (because reasons - don't ask). The main point I came away with was - there's no such thing. Well, for a fairly average bloke that is, without any sort of "my hands are registered lethal weapons" shenanigans.

Speaking as someone who could by strictest definition call his hands lethal weapons (meaning that, yes, I could kill with my bare hands without too much effort should I choose to do so and no, the average guy on the street would probably not be able to prevent me from doing so), let me say that even with such skills unarmed defense against knife attacks is no sure thing. Odds are you WILL get cut unless you're a world-class 7th+ degree black belt. In fact I know a couple world-class 7th and 8th degree black belts and they assure me that they would run from someone with a knife.

Conversely, if one gets into the fight with the expectation of getting wounded to some degree and does not lose one's head if it happens, apparently one stands a fair chance of striking back effectively, at which point the consensus seems to be "just run - don't try to 'win'"

That's pretty much basic rule number 1 to self defense no matter what the specifics are. I don't trust any self-defense teacher who doesn't use "If you can get away, run" as the foundation of what they're teaching.

Re: Not good

f someone is going to try to murder me, I would very much prefer that they attempt it with a knife instead of a gun. You have a better chance of surviving;

Only if you've been trained in hand-to-hand combat and thus know how to deal with a knife wielding attacker. Otherwise your odds really aren't any better or worse. If anything you're more likely to bleed out from a knife wound that a gunshot. Guns most often kill from shock, which is slower than bleeding out usually and gives you more time to get help. One slice to a major artery and you've got under two minutes to live unless there's someone right there who knows what to do.

they have to get in close which is a psychological barrier that will stop some people

Someone who's willing to pull the trigger on a human being will have no psychological problem with stabbing them. And getting close is no problem for someone who wants to kill you unless you've got personal security. Knives, even biggish ones, are very easy to hide.

and -even if they win- they will probably be covered in a fair amount of evidence which will increase their chances of being successfully caught.

Fair enough, but that's not going to matter to you at that point.

Consider, also, the scale of the thing. How many victims could a knife-bearer reasonably expect to get away with before being dogpiled/shot? Compare that with the usual victim count of someone with an assault rifle.

One mass stabbing left last year 29 dead and 140 wounded. Link. Another in 2012 left 22 school kids wounded, many in critical condition. Link. Another left 6 dead in a railway station. Link.

In other words, pretty similar to what you could expect from a gunman shooting up a public place.

Re: Not good

Do you compare as a total or as states? Each state has its own laws and some of the worst for violent crime are heavily restricted. Oddly some of the worst gun crime states were (probably still are) the most regulated.

Even more true at the city level. The US city you're most likely to get shot in is Chicago, which is also the US city with the most restrictive gun laws. On the flip side you can probably count the gun related murders in a given year in all of Kansas (where you'd be hard pressed to find more permissive gun laws) on your fingers (though, granted, the entire population of Kansas is probably less than the population of Chicago, plus the effects of the new license-less concealed carry law have yet to be seen - I expect that particularly ill conceived change in law to result in a lot more accidental shootings since concealed carriers no longer have to go through a safety course and prove they can shoot straight.)

Re: Not good

To argue that gun control has no effect of gun related crime is absurd

True, but I didn't say "gun related crime". I said "violent crime". Do you think being stabbed to death is somehow better than being shot?

Re: Not good

I suppose this is true if you believe the magic imaginary statistics* peddled by the NRA, real evidence backed statistics suggests otherwise.

I've never seen the NRA's numbers. I used the numbers from the UN office on drugs and crime. The real data shows, very clearly, either a zero impact or a rise in violent crime in a given area when strict gun control measures are put in place. In the UK, for instance, violent crime rose for 10 years straight before plateauing when they took your guns away.

Both the NRA and the anti-gun crowd have an annoying habit of comparing different areas (and cherry picking the areas they choose), which contaminates their data with other factors. By taking one area and comparing before and after statistics you get a much more reliable picture of the impact of gun control. And that approach, frankly, makes gun control look inefficient at best.

I've taken the time to do the research myself rather than listening to people who have agendas. Maybe you should try it. The numbers are all easily accessible and paint quite a clear picture.

Re: Not good

Guns are easier to control than people.

You would think so. Until you learn a little about the issue and realize that controlling guns doesn't have much of a statistical impact on violent crimes.

I had several other drives of that model - and one had the same rev numbers on the controller board components. Had high hopes of a "miracle" - but to no avail

As I understand it your odds of successfully performing that particular miracle increase substantially with access to a laboratory clean room. I probably wouldn't even attempt it without that.

Re: so he scoffed “a huge handful of ibuprofen and acetaminophen”

Just got to point out that an overdose of acetaminophen ( paracetamol) is VERY dangerous and will often prove fatal.

That's no joke. Acetaminophen is one of those things that the more you learn about it the more you wonder why the hell it's legal. It's dangerous stuff.

Re: What is, having a spine instead of an exoskeleton?

In fairness, the ID (Idiotic Design) argument is only taught in US schools

ID is not taught in US schools. There's a push by the ID believers that direction, and for a (very) brief time schools in one state had the option to include it in the curriculum (after which the state school board who made that decision were shown the exit en masse during the next election), but only in religious schools is ID taught as anything other than...well, religion.

Re: We have hundreds of attack vectors that never get used

Someone dressed as a doctor or a nurse could easily add extra chemicals/drugs to a drip.But no, we freak out about the new electronicy thing.

No they couldn't because hospitals have this thing called security. The whole "put on a lab coat and walk through the hospital unchallenged" thing is pure fiction. My mom used to get stopped and questioned if she took a shortcut from the cafeteria back to her own nurse station through a different ward, and that was before the world got all paranoid.

Re: Dongle?

Someone dressed as a nurse or doctor passing from station to station with a pocketful of these could easily compromise every pump in an infusion centre.

Wouldn't happen. Despite what you see on TV hospital staff generally know each other and will challenge a stranger who's messing with the equipment or looking at patient charts. A strange doctor or nurse going along visiting every patient is going to arouse suspicion real quick.

Re: Well, I guess we'll never... What? You've figured it out ALREADY?

So if you're going to bash anyone, bash Washington DC.

Oh come on. We can't bash DC. What fun is bashing when all the good bits are served up to you on a silver platter?

Re: Where's a frackin...

I want to see a picture of the TV that can somehow accomodate a grown man.

Ask your grandparents about the TVs they had growing up. My grandparents' TV (which they kept well into my childhood) wasn't particularly big for the time, but it could easily accommodate a grown man. Possibly even with room for a second if said man were on the leanish side.