Dak

yeah, but, that last bit pretty much acknowledges the possibility that, even if it's in your house, it can get stolen. the argument is that people should be required to make sure that their guns can't be stolen and used to kill someone. I dont really care if it's on your coffy table whilst you're watching southpark, because it's attended. what concerns me is when it's unattended, and thus potentially stealable. im thinking of something like they have in germany for hunting rifles: you can own them, use them, etc, but you need a licence, training, and to lock them up in a hefty metal gun-case when not in use. you gotta remember tho that several gun owners are criminals or idiots. eg, i bet that several, maybe even most, gun owners who'd be prepared to shoot at an intruder haven't checked which walls in their house are flywalls, the thickness of the floors, and the penetration power of their firearm, so that they know which walls/floors the bullet will go through (and potentially kill someone on the other side), and so don't know which area's in their house are safe to shoot in, or maybe buy a weeker gun that won't penetrate the walls. or give their kids safety lectures. or lock them up whilst out of the house. this is why you have to legislate safety stuff with guns. there are some much, much lower-tech things that, imo, should be a legal requirement for guns, but which aren't. a double-safety, with a conventional safety switch and also a glock-like double-trigger saftey-thing would make guns safer without impeding their function, and even something as simple as those little indicators that tell you if a bullet is chambered could lower accidental gun-deaths. but imposing laws like that is hard in america... yeah, you can 'register' the whole family for it, if they'll spend some time down the range so the gun can get familiar with them. see now, a theif, seeing your unlocked gun cabinet, will think: a/ 'uh-oh, he's armed', and b/ 'whoo-hoo, free guns!' he'll take your gun from the cabinate... when you're asleep, the cabinate should be locked as a compromise: something simple like a special combination-holster screwed to your bed/bedside table, where you have to punch in a pin-number to release the gun, would make is both secure and quickly accessable. a theif might be able to sneak into your room without waking you, but they couldn't break off the holster without waking you. if you leave the house, you could either take the gun with you or transfer it to a hefty metal case to make it harder to steal. course, non-lethal or biometric guns would remove the neccesity to do the above. theft isn't punishable by death by law, and the person requires a fair trial, because, yes, even something as seemingly unjustifyable as being in someonelses house in the middle of the night requires an initial presumption of innocence. if people are afforded trial in this situation, and not punished by death if found guilty, i dont see why civilians should be able to summararily execute them on sight. incapasitate, sure, but kill? no. so: this is what laws are for. just make it so that everyone is required to use a non-lethal weapon -- stun gun, rubber-bullet shotgun, pepper-spray, whatever -- and the situation becomes a whole-lot better imo. anyhoo, gun ownership isn't the only way of lowering crime...

you seemed to be complaining about imposing rules onto warfare at all. my appologies if i misinterpreted. but, iirc, terrorists aren't afforded protection under stuff like the geneva convention because they're considered naughty armed civillians, much like organised crime gangs (mafia, etc), as opposed to soldures. so, you can shoot terrorists with non-standard rounds, and you don't need to afford them POW status; but, by doing so, you're placing them definately in the 'civillian' camp, rather than the 'soldure' camp. civillians taken by the state -- even if taken from another state -- should be afforded a fair trial. in a 'real' war, you'd afford the enemies POW status, not fair trials.

i seem to recall that if your trying to do anything like this, it's an idea to roll-back any relevent drivers to the generic version before doing it. so, if xp loads custom hdd-drivers (can't remember), uninstall them and roll-back to the generic hdd drivers first. maybe turn off system restore, etc, aswell?

download something like puppylinux or knoppix, whack it into the cd tray, and boot from that if you want a graphical environment from which to sift through your hard-drive and find/replace your boot.ini file. command-line interfaces can be a pita if you're not used to them. or possibly the 'XP Quick Boot Diskette' from here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

if a gun can be stolen or 'borrowed' from a home, then it's not out of reach merely by being in the home. i really dont see the argument against saying that if people want to posess tools designed soley to kill people with, then they should be required to keep them safely secured. for personal defence from intruders, a non-leathal weapon such as a stun gun might work just as well, not require locking down, and result in less accidental deaths. however, maybe technology will give us a more eloquent solution: i remember reading some development thats being done on biometric guns, where the gun-grip measures the plasement and magnitude of pressure around the gun handle when wielded, and can tell wether the holder is the owner or someone else, and automatically lock-up if wielded by a non-owner. i believe it can still id the owner if the owner is wielding it whilst stressed, but is somewhat unreliable (and i'd assume that making removal of the lock-up mechanism non-trivial is somewhat hard). something like that would work as a compromise between gun ownership and gun responsability; tho for home defence i'd still like to see stun-guns rather than traditional, lethal guns.

unless you live in a country like the UK, where guns are illegal. then, by and large, the criminals dont have guns and, incidentally, less people get murdered...

like the rules against killiing unarmed soldures and civillians? the rules against using biological/chemical weapons? the rules about not mistreating captive soldures? in other words, all the rules that we complain about other armies for not following? how, for example, can you complain about the terrorists for being so 'uncivilised' and 'barbaric' as to attack and kill unarmed non-combatant civillians, whilst your own army is breaking your own human-rights rules? how dare al quaida break your rules, that you yourselfes dont follow? not to mention that, from a non-military point of view, not granting fair trial is something that we also complain about foreign govournments for doing *cough* china *cough* from an international relations POV, this is definately hurting you. America isn't "the good guys" in this anymore, america is just "the less arseholish side".

http://www.c-p-p.co.uk/product/asp/ProdID/2120/CtgID/1006/af/page.htm something like that? (it doesn't state it in the link, but iirc it's non-harmful to the eyes) i see the same problems associated with that tho: if i have one, and 5 people have them, and those 5 people attack me, i'm gonna loose. i'm gonna incapasitate, say, 3 of them if i'm lucky and readied my spray beforehand, then get blinded myself, and the two who aren't blinded will kick the shit out of me and take my wallet. sure, they'll be blue for 3 days, but then so will i -- they'll just give the same explanation i would: 'i was attacked'. and if they get the jump on people, they're unlikely to get sprayed atall. mind, it's better than guns, and arguably better than just fists imo.

maybe, then, people would be willing to part with an extra $100/month, but only some will want it spent on crime prevention -- others will want the NHS prioritised, others global warming, others other stuff... i guess your left with limited options... "give us $20,000 a month and we'll address all the issues that you all want us to address", or "give us $100/month and we'll address issue x", which would result in most people shouting "no, address issue y first"... I guess the govournment is allready doing the only sane compromise: "give us $100/month, and we'll slightly ameliorate most of the problems". personally, i wouldn't mind "give us another $100/month and we'll spend it on fixing one problem -- reducing crime to as near to 0 as we can get it, equipping the NHS, etc"; once the problem has been fixed, i doubt it'd take an extra $100/month to maintain, say, a near-0 crime rate, or a better-working NHS, so the money can be switched to fixing another problem, untill they've all been adressed... People would still windge about the taxes, tho. the problem with democracy is that it gives people what they want -- and what people want seems to be a crappyer, poorerly run society, and a widescreen TV

I think you over-estimate peoples niceness. concider this: if theres a 1/1000 chance that someones kid will get murdered in their lifetime, will they pay $100/month to reduce that to 0? mostly, no. people will want the extra $100/month spending money with a 1/1000 chance of their son being murdered. sure, they'll be uneasy about it, and they'll maybe not want to actually admit that they're doing this, but they'll still do it -- or, at least enough people will do it to make charging the extra $100/month democratically unfeasable. also, someone will point out that the above figures mean that for everyone who pays $100/month to save their kid, there's 999 that pay $100/month with no tangable reward (ie, their kid would not be murdered without the extra policing); in other word, for every person saved, we're paying $100,000 tax-payers money every single month of their life, that this is probably someone elses kid anyway, and that its tax that could better be spent on education, research, NHS, defence, etc, (of course, the alternative of charging more tax for these area's is unthinkable)... all it would take is for someone to point out that, say, $100,000/month extra to the NHS would save two lifes, and people would grab the rationalisation not to be sold on spending the money on policing (not that they'd spend it on the NHS, either). bottom line: the police, the fire-brigade, our soldures, the NHS, scientists researching cures for cancer, and many other groups for who money directly translates into more saved lifes are underfunded, because, yes, human life does have a price, it's not very much, and, no, apparently inaction is not as bad as action, and so a few extra pints for someone/month and that new wide-screen TV that they've got their eye on is well-worth someone elses life, be it due to less-than-best policing, understaffed/equipped hospitals, lack of life-saving research, or whatever. they'd balk at murdering someone for $100/month, but not at letting 1/000th of the population die for the same. and If lucascapa comes along and points out i'm being overly-optimistic about humans here, i'm gonna just lose all faith in humanity drug-dealers -- at least the big trafficers -- are usually quite violent, and organised crime is much more of a problem than random thuggery, as it represents a concerted and organised effort to disreguard our societies rules. legalising drugs is viable; expending less resourses against organised crime (including drug-trafficing, for as long as it remains illegal) is not.

why not DNA and fingerprints? if someone knows that, even with a clean record, raping someone will likely result in his being captured due to a DNA match, or glassing someone will result in him being captured by a fingerprint match, then they'd be much less inclined to commit the crime. as for why not cameras, i agree with you, but a significant number of people dont, it would appear; tho, googling about i didn't find the plethora of "oh noes, teh cameraz are invading!!!11" that i thought i would, so maybe i just heard a few of the more vocal anti-camera brigade? achk. i'd be opposed to a 'think of the childeren' line used to justify it (same as i'd be opposed to a 'think of the terrorists' line to justify it), but i guess that might go some way to fixing the problem. maybe the police force is less under-staffed in the US than in the UK, but over here, you'd have, i think, to have a rather large tax increase to have a significant effect. iirc, the amount of accidental deaths in the home by gunshot > the amount of shot 'intruders' that later turn out to be a resident returning unexpectedly > the amount of people shot with a gun the interloper picked up in the house > the amount of actual theives that are shot. you may have a point with sweden, but then you may not. out of sweden, EU countries, and america, the 'everyone can own guns' countries have both the highest and lowest gun-crime rates... so i suppose you can't clearly say that banning them is good or bad. however, i will maintain this: if it's established that criminalising or heavily regulating guns would lower crime in america, thered still be heavy opposition. my bad; you're right, that bit only applies to theives, not violent criminals. yeah, but you have to consider why no polititians have done this... i recon they suspect people would be disinterested when the cost is mentioned. You'd have to have a pretty water-tight plan, with a high chance of payoff...

ah, that happens all the time in students who over-load themselves to the point where the workload seems inpossible. you sit there for ages, aware that the clock is ticking away, incapable of starting even tho you know your making it worse by delaying. it essentially boils down to giving up on some level. force yourself to start, and dont care if it's crappy; at least you'll get it out the way, and when you get started it'll become alot easyer. then, once you've cleared your workload, try to manage it a bit better in the future.

Just to nip this in the bud: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change global warming = has consensus. Mokele I believe Oreskes, 2004 (from the wp article) was the paper you cited early but couldn't remember the name of, that indicates 0% disagreement with certain assertations of GW theory. ---- if anyone wishes to continue the GW argument, may i suggest a different thread, as GW debates tend to be OP-consuming.

I think the reason we accept crime is simply because we're not willing to accept the methods that might near-eliminate it. put cameras on every street corner, sample everyones fingerprints and DNA when they turn 16, and you'll have virtually 0-crime. will people accept that, tho? no. it'd be 'a police state', or 'a violation of civil liberties'. quadruple the police force, the forensic-science service's budget, and the CID, and crime would plumet. are we willing to pay the extra tax neccesary? no. we'd rather have more beer-money. Illegalise guns, and murder would plummet. this is a proven fact, by assessing murders in countrys with/without easy access to firearms. will you do it? hell no, your right to get shot is constitutionally protected. accept that some people are poor and/or jobless through no fault of their own, and that occasionally crime is the only option to provide for ones family; accept that people must be given a legal option to provide for their family before crime will approach 0; and provide this option through minimum wage laws, govournment employment, welfare, etc. this costs money. will the extra tax be accepted? NO! wanna pay the tax neccesary to turn prisons into educatoinal and rehabilitation detention centres, that -- whilst offering education that would allow a legitimate carreer upon leaving -- are not 'criminal schools' no! people accept crime because they wont accept the cures for crime. even the least extreme -- increasing the police force -- wont be tolerated, as people genuinely prefer lower taxes to safety, in a "it'll never happen to me" kinda way.

^ re-read cap'n's post, and the quote it was in responce to. the brain in the jar has communicative abilitys, there was a 'temporary' in the original comment about comatose people and unfairness, and no implication that Terry could think. [OT] chimerisism is a term that can mean several things, depending upon which field you're in. eg, histologically, my example is a chimera as it contains tissues from two distinct organisms, although it's genetically achimeric as no cells contain genomes of mixed origin (see: individuals who are naturally chimeric, i.e. two zygotes fused into one: genetically achimeric, as each genome is from one individual, but histologically chimeric, as some tissue is of one origin, and other tissue of another origin). What you describe are genetically chimeric, but a histologist would call them achimeric, as all the tissue is from one individual and is genetically identical (albeit a genetically chimeric individual)... women with phenotypic differences due to genes on the x-chromosome that manifest in 'patches' due to bar-body formation (like tortoise-shell cats) are also said to be chimeric. [/OT] this is biomedics, so yeah, as i'd argue that biomedics is a marriage between science and ethics. I'm somewhat appauled that my attempts to be pessimistic and cynical can be mistaken for optimism when compared to actual reality... ----------------------------- This may be a revealing thought-experiment about what criteria we use to judge personhood, or it might just be bizzare, but: if elves, dwarfs, hobbits etc -- basically, everything from middle-earth/lord of the rings -- existed, would they be people? what about bugs bunny? chitty-chitty-bang-bang? stitch from lilo and stitch? etc? they're somewhat similar to us, but are they similar enough? and why?

My appologies if this is prying too much into your personal life, and feel free not to answre: but how did you end up with most of your friends being gay? it seems a bit statistically anomolous?

speaking of chimeras, the fact that human/pig (etc) chimeras exist in people who have undergone organ transplants, and who are still concidered a 100% person, kinda proves that people will concider at least partially histologically chimeric individuals as people. i suspect if the chimerisism affected the brain it'd be different, tho.

[cynisism] I think what it comes down to most of the time is this: the only thing special about people is that i'm one people (read: I), therefore, shouldn't be mistreated. anyone who qualifies as a person (read: similar to me) shouldn't be mistreated, because it's wrong to mistreat people (read: me). iow, theres no qualities that make you a person, and thus worthy of basic rights; rather, everyone realises that if everyone else agrees not to hurt one-another, we'll live in a happyer place; specifically, by ganging up with other 'people' (read: everyone) it's easyer to secure basic rights for 'people' (read: me) soooooooo... from a practicle pov, i think that 'people' is best defined as 'those who can benifit us', and 'those who could harm us, but agree to refrain' ('us' means 'me', btw), and who we, in return, refrain from harming, and aid if they ever need it. cos then they're people, and people help other people (read: 'me' on that latter one), and definately dont hurt people (me). from an ethical pov, it could be 'anything capable of feeling pain', for example, but -- still with my cynical hat on -- only if they can reciprocate and grant basic rights to other people, including humans, and esecially including me, else only really to cement the idea that people (read: you) dont hurt things capable of feeling pain (read: me). so: 'person' means 'us', basically. [/cynacism]

in addition to what klaynos said: email clients, web browsers, and instant messangers are all common aplications that make 'holes' in your firewall; the common and insecure ones (read, internet explorer, outlook, and, to a lesser but increasing extent, MSN-messanger), are all frequently targeted as ways to get malitious informaiton onto firewalled computers, or unfirewalled computers without the 'do you want to download and run this' box popping up. ---------- Atomica: i'd more-or-less second klaynos, but with a minor modification -- tho it really depends on what you use your computer for. the most secure option, for a variety of reasons, is using a non-microsoft computer; if you do online-banking, it's worth at least having a dual-install (ubuntu's quite good) or a live cd (in which case i'd check out puppy linux) to fire up whenever you want to throw your bank details across the internet. other than that, the most inportant things you can do are, AT LEAST: USE A LIMITED ACCOUNT! use an in-bound firewall (hardware is the best, so if you have a router with a firewall, that's all groovy; if not, sunbelt make a lightweight inbound firewall if you choose the 'simple' mode) use non-microsoft browsers (firefox or opera), e-mail clients (web-based email or something like thunderbird) have some kind of auto-scanning anti-virus; on-access scans, for example, or -- if you're doing all the above -- just auto-scanning CDs/floppys and stuff downloaded from the internet should be ok scan regularly (1 a week to 1 a month, depending how much porn you look at) with an anti-virus and anti-spyware (avg antimalware is quite good for the latter). keep your software -- espescially your OS -- up to date for a non-bear-minimum, you could add: two-way firewall (zone alarm, or somesuch) complete on-access anti-virus scanning (if you dont allready have it) on-access anti-spyware scanning (have to pay i'm afraid), non-microsoft IM (trillian or gaim are good choices) scan a rootkit detector (like microsoft/sysinternals rootkitrevealer) 1 a month either way, none of this will protect against fishing or craply configured wireless routers... if your a bit computer savvy, it might be worth looking into one of the new-fangled HIPS... spybots teatimer is one example (will notify you when key registry values are changed), as is anything that monitors other keys sistem stuff, such as the system32 folder, the hosts file, etc... tho you kind of have to know what the relevence of 'blah.exe is trying to change HKCU/clisd/.gif' before it becomes any use...

Do you not think that leaving is over-reacting somewhat to the fact that Mokele over-reacted somewhat? anyway, i assume that the mods moderate each other behind the scenes... you got banned, you got unbanned, if the other mods think that Mokele over-reacted, or behaved incorrectly in some other way, I'm sure that they'll have pointed it out to him. [ot] that latter one still goes completely against Nobel's intent... I didn't know we've never used ICBMs [/ot]

alice is designed for 5-year-old girls I know this 'cos i played with it, having heard it was designed for entry-level programmers. the interface is pink still, i can see your point... i recognised the very basics of programing in alice that i'd just learnt from python. it might be worth, if you recomend it, mentioning that it's designed for young girls and not to be put off by the pinkness and the fwuffy bunnies. I'm by absolutely no means a programer, but one thing that helped me pick up the basics of python quicker was a (very) basic competence in html. it gave me a feel for programing without actually being as complicated, and let me play with tiny nuggets of code (javascript). plus it doesn't require learning how to use anything complicated, just a simple text editor and a browsser. just thought i'd mention that from a beginners pov.

i headed for a tele-station and bought a ticket to albequerque, home of the only known functional time-machine... (so close to spelling alburquerque right )

<rant> I think this is the single biggest flaw in every single form of govournance -- 'were the best'. if you trace an overly-brief history of, say, america (and take england as it's father), then you get something vaguely along the lines of: tribal rule (wars) loads of little kingdoms, bringiing with it a strengthened country (wars) despotic monarchy, bringing with it an even more powerful and cohesive country (civil war) feudalistic monarchy, limiting the power of the monarch, bringing with it 'freedom' for a select few, and allowing forshadowing of capitalism, democracy, and basic human rights. (another civil war) democracy for a few years (another, admitedly small civil war) constitutional democracy, bringing with it, eventually, a level of freedom for most people, and basic human rights; 'end' of 'plebs serve presbs'. off to settle america, and we see: subjugate colonies of british empire, bringing with it support from a global power during americas early years (civil war) democratic federal/republic/country, eventually bringing same benifits as 2 steps ago (freedom, basic human rights, self-determination, etc) now... i'm notising a pattern. 1/ every switch of type-of-govournance brought benifits 2/ every switch required a war. this is because every form of govournance had, ingrained for no reason into it's ethos, 'were the absolute uber-best'. the fact that people still will believe that their idea will be the best, in any situation, for any peoples, for all time, despite their form of govournance coming after a long string of other forms that thought the same and have been proven wrong, pisses me off. I note that the EUs (thankfully failed) constitutuion essentially says 'democracy and capitalism roxors a fat one, and allways will. the eu will allways be a capitalist democracy' anyway... when russia changed from a (iirc) despotic monarchy to a democratic socialism that actually turned out to be a despotic socialism, it required a civil war to overthrow the tzar... when iraq changed from a despotism to a 'democracy' it required a war... the only two notable exceptions that i can think of are nazi germany (democratically changed into a fascist kinda-despotism; iirc, germany have now fixed their system so this cannot reoccour) and, potentially, the eu, which i'm not sure counts as the countries and the eu are democratic, so it has the potential more for a border-change than a govournance change. imo, any form of govournance that doesn't incoporate self-inprovement, the acknowledgement that it's not the 'one true form of govournance', and a mechanism whereby the form can be peasfully changed to another, better form, has absolutely no claims to being good, let alone the best. </rant> more in line with what you asked, i suspect that, if we understood politics enough, we could make a list of forms of govournance, each of which make sence to switch through sequentially; eg, despotism till one is strong enough to form a democracy, capitalism till one is strong enough, economically, to have a mixed economy; once the human rights etc that democracy brought are intrenched and unremovable, switch to avoid the cumbersome slowness and weekness of a democracy (some form of meritocracy perhaps? direct democracy? open-source-stylee govournance?) after a certain level of technological advancement has been achieved, maybe socialism? i've seen some economics research, for example, that suggests that a non-free market and a level of govournmental corruption actually benifits an economically under-developed despotism, and helps it get to the point where it could more easily support democracy and capitalism, whereas in most advanced forms of govournment 'corruption-resistant' and free-marked are concidered boons. i dunno, but im sure that no one form of govournance will be the best in every situation. mokele: if one were to travel through such a city, would one pass through multiple legal realms, or would the city collectively establish 'street-rule' for law whilst travelling down roads, using shops, etc? if not, i could imagine that being a pita.

idea about having an encyclopedia that caters for multiple levels of people (beginner, expert, etc) a pretty obvious idea imo, but not one that i've seen implimented anywhere... feel free to edit the example to improve it if you want other than that, remember that any FAQ's, reccuring threads, etc can be ditched on wisci.

dont forget that the emergence of societies probably had something to do with NS. ie, when we started hanging out in co-operative tribes, we survived better than those who wished to survive as individuals, so we continued to do so. I tend to think of lezzy fair capitalism as a hightly individualistic approach, whilst socialism is more of a society-based approach. given this, it actually makes more sence that socialism be used, as it's more in line with the fact that we're social creatures, as (at least partially) a result of NS. not that i'm saying that's a very good argument for socialism, just that, if NS is relevent, it would seem sensible to act in a way consistant with the societies that we formed to make it easyer for us to survive the NS process... Also, as d h said, science is pretty socialistic and 'liberal', with a history of sharing results with other scientists (even across borders), and so on. 'conservatism' -- the idea that we should stick with tradition -- should be an at least slightly alien concept to scientists, due to the continualed abandonment of traditional beliefs when we find that they're inacurate (as we continually do). I'd suspect more scientists savvy the open source method as well, for similar reasons -- science is pretty open source, so we can see, first hand, why it works (and also that uber-mega huge and expensive projects are better done by big pharmasutical companies who have the money) that was nobels idea. the person after whom the peace prize is named developed a more powerful explosive for use in field artillery, on the assumption that war would become so horrific that no-one would ever be insane enough to start one. since then, we've developed stealth bombers, ICBMs, napalm, nukes, tanks, assault rifles, and all manners of other nasty shit, and we're still killing each other. so, that rationalization is flawed.