Posts by Khaptain

Re: other countries with a far greater accesibility to firearms,Israel and Switzerland

Dear AC,

As it happens I have actually lived and worked in all of these countries, have you ? I have also frequented many many people that own or have access to firearms for a multitude of reasons.

Israel : I lived and worked there for several years and have on several occasions been on field trips into the desert, we were accompanying children, and I was asked each time to carry a loaded Galil, instructions were simple "help protect" the group should a situation arrive, all of the adults were armed ( forget the legality and welcome to the real world) . I have the photos to prove handling of IMI Desert Eagles; One of my ex-colleagues was a IDF Sniper ( the real world kind not the movie kind - I worked with him for 2 years before he even mentioned it, I learned a lot about life from that guy).... None of these situations are exceptional, firearm accessibility in Israel is a lot different from the States, do not confuse the two.

USA : Rednecks in Arkansas/Texas - mainly hunting firearms but lots of them. I won't bother going into details about what or how the hunts were conducted. They also introduced me to hunting crossbows and compund bows, both of which are just as deadly. San Diego, I once opened my apartment door and a gun was promptly stuck in my face, the police were looking for someone and confused my aprtment with that of the guy downstairs, they checked my identitiy, excused themselves then headed of down below as if it was entirely normal. ( remember what I wrote about mentality).

Switzerland : Having worked there for over 8 years, I won't even bother going into the details about the expectations that the country has towards each man being armed/owning his service firearm and being able to use it. The Swiss have some excellent marksmen, it's not without reason. Come and visit, get to know the people and maybe then you will understand that firearms are a lot more prevalant that you might imagine. Have a quick check up on firearms suicides, the figures are a little bit embarrasing for the Swiss, they dont like to publish the numbers and ahve recently made some votes about firearms in the home because of this.

I also have both hunting and sporting licences and therefore also frequent people on a "weekly" basis, all year round. Have you ever been a member of a shooting club, you would be amazed at just how many people own one or more firearms, legally....and even slightly less legally. head off over to some of the above mentioned countries online forums and have alook at how active the forums are, they are a buzzing hive of activity if you follow them.

We won't even begin to cover illegal firearms or the bad guys....

By the way, the States was the only place that I ever heard anyone talk about shooting people, even just for fun, outside of a survival situation.

I intentionally used the word "Accessibility" because I fully understand the difference between ownership and accessibilty.

Correlation is not in direct relation to gun ownership.

Guns do not kill people, people kill people.

Leaving aside the USA for the moment.

Serbia, Finland, Sweden and even Switzerland have a similar or much higher gun ownership percentage than that of Uruguay. Yet the homicide rate in Uruguay is more than double that of the others combined.

This shows an example whereby there appears to be no direct correlation between gun ownership and homicide. I would hazard a guess that the real problem is either drugs, gambling, some other vice or possibly the mentality. The USA has probably more drugs, gambling and vice than any other of country and also the highest homicide rate, possibly a correlation here.

The 'Mericans are also brought up not into a gun culture but into a culture whereby a man can use lethal force to defend his property, herein lies another part of the problem....the mentality. The Mericans choose to use the gun as the means, other cultures use don't. Again possibly a correlation.

If someone wants to kill another I am sure that with or without a gun they could quite easilly find the means, fortunately most people are not brought up into that kind of culture.

I have lived in the States and also other countries with a far greater accesibility to firearms,Israel and Switzerland, but I felt less safe in the States.

Nothing more than my tuppence worth.

Can we therefore infer that it is easier to corrupt a Federal Circuit judge than a Supreme court judge ?

Re: Cell

Can't we just have the huge statue which we could then use as a urinal, spit bowl, punch bag <insert favorite punishment, torture method here>.

Nicolas Cage is probably a great guy in real life but he is one of the cheesiest, least credible (or is that edible), cheesy actors that Hollywood ( the Copolla familly) has ever spawned...

Unless of course the reference to a budgie cage relates to the fact that he will spend his day being shit upon.

Did I forget to mention just how cheesy this guy is?

Re: lol

In 2013 MS had a net income of 21 Billion dollars.

How much did you earn ?

Now who hasn't got a clue ?

Unless of course you know about some another, for the moment unknown OS that doesn't require updates and that works perfectly everytime. Please share the secret with the rest of us.

Re: Underlying meaning of the data ...

And strangely enough so are 85-90% of business: ie the people that actually pay us.

If 85-90% of business used *nix there would probably be 85-90% of El Reg's readers using *nix.

I really don't have a preference whether it is indirectly MS, Apple, Canonical or IBM that helps me pay my bills just as long as my bills get paid and my company can keep doing business.

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Re: In the dark, bare feet

Either that or the edge of a door.

Re: Still hate the tiles and the window decorations

>I am not sure that the guts of Windows 8 are all that bad.

Definately agreed, if we have the choice to completely switch off all of the Metro stuff it would actually be a very nifty OS.

Re: Desktops

>It is a bit shocking that the minimalist desktops seem to have overtaken the big lads. Linux users generally gravitate towards MATE, XFCE, LXDE and so on. I have gone from KDE to XFCE. Gnome and the other behemoths go on releasing self-indulgent albums but nobody is listening.

I would go as far as saying that that is probably one of the main reasons for Windows 8 failure, the desktop became too apparent. Although I am principally an MS bod, I always have a VM running somewhere and the machine in my garage running Linux; Mint in its various forms for the last year or so.

I have also not used Gnome or KDE for years because of their general bloaty/heavy/over present feeling, I stick to XFCE, I dont care if XFCE doesn't have feature X or feature Y, the fact that it remains "behind the scenes" and out of my face is what makes it nice, light, reactive and very user friendly.

YMMV but I feel that XFCE just hits the right boundary.