Posts by Kiwi

Re: "Rational Gun Control"

Those who vehemently oppose Trump should appreciate the difficulty an armed populace presents to a would be dictator in the US.

I think you're failing to see the nature of the orangeutan.

As to your "seems that government can be dangerous and gun control makes a genocidal government more efficient in their killing." - well, you need to look at what the US has within it's military. Is your piddly little pea-shooter going to keep you alive against the US army, or the air force, or the navy or the navy's air force? Even the most chickenshit member of the national guard reserves will outgun you while you're cowering in your home trying to hide behind the tatters of your constitution.

If chump gets his way, those in Yankeeland will be getting a good taste of what a dictator is like.

Re: So hiring a hitman is fine then?

You have the right to say many things, but words have power and you also have the duty to face the consequences of your words.

Best keep your mouth shut and your keyboard unplugged then. You might accidentally say something that could be considered bad, and you have a duty to face the consequences of your words.

I know it all too well what words can do. I'm actually quite qualified to speak on so-called "hate speech" having been a victim of it a great many times. I quite literally bear the scars of someone using words to incite another to act with violence.

I'm quite qualified to speak on it. Are you? Have you ever been held by a teacher who tells your classmates to beat the gayness out of you? Has that teacher had his boot on your throat - legally - while he tells your class that "evil must be destroyed"? and suggesting that while they cannot kill you, they can encourage you to kill yourself? (Yes, it wasn't a crime in the mid 80s).

People better and braver than me won the right for those of us born/made different to live and love. To do that they had to win some very significant "freedom of speech" rights, as there was a time when saying "I'm gay" was an admission of a crime and you would either go to prison or go to a psych ward. I was still growing up then, but I have a very deep, personal understanding of what many of these men and women faced as I faced it from my own school. Few people stood with me or stood up for me, and they faced their own risks.

If we allow freedom of speech or freedom of association to be destroyed, then we allow every other right to be lost. No government, given that power, would give it up nor would they long allow us to have the other rights and privileges we currently enjoy. Those rights are under increasing attack - especially our rights to privacy. So much blood has been shed to give us the freedom we enjoy today - are you going to be so quick to throw that away? For shame.

I have the right to tell my chosen that I love him, but that right would quickly go if we allow free speech to be taken. I have a lot to lose and nothing to gain by such things.

(And if you're reading R.D - I still remember what this day means, and I'm still so grateful for what you endured to be my friend!)

Re: @lglethal -- Guns or the people using them?

Those motivated to do evil won't be stopped by gun controls or any other panacea. It's the mindset they have. Changing that will be a big part of the solution but also a very daunting task to say the least.

Start small, and set examples. Encourage and educate as best you can, and encourage others to do the same.

Large scale societal changes can come from amazingly good orators who feed on the right public emotions at the right time, but they can also come from someone starting small in their local village. Sometimes it's a tidal wave that spreads through a population in weeks, sometimes it happens so slow no one can actually say when it changed.

My nation was the first to give women the vote, one of the first to go with decent gay rights (in my lifetime it was illegal, many people went to prison or were locked up in psych wards over it), probably one of the first to give "indigenous people" the right to vote. Several other changes, some good some terrifying, have come because of a shift in public opinion, and that shift came from people being brave and sometimes smart enough to stand up for what they believed was the best way, and to speak out. Many probably took a while just to get things beyond their neighbourhood.

So there's the key. Start small, start to change your local area. Make your life right, and when someone asks why you're different tell them - you may have a convert who also tells someone else. If you find strong opposition then ignore it where you can and move on. If some local gun nut won't listen, don't speak to them but speak to their neighbours.

Even in the face of violent opposition who has the law on their side, change is possible. I've seen it in my own lifetime. But, to quote Londo Mollari - "it is the quiet ones who change the universe. The loud ones just take the credit" (paraphrased).

Re: Banned from Cloudflare?

Yep. That will solve all of our problems. Just ban all speech I don't like.

I advocate freedom of speech and freedom of association.

A part of that "Freedom of association" means I should be able to choose who I wish to serve in my shop for whatever reasons I wish, perhaps short of not serving physically disabled people (although I know shops who have had a lot of shoplifting done by people in wheelchairs, and as they don't tend to cater to those people's needs they'd like to not have to put up with the hassle)

Oblig XKCD - I personally think CF are within their rights as a private company to choose their customers, or who they associate with. I've seen some very good talented people close up shop because they've been forced by law to violate their conscience and serve people they don't want to associate with. So they've closed up the shop and put their staff back into the job market (generally willingly as they agreed with the owner) rather than be forced to go against their principles and work for people they don't want to.

I cannot argue to be allowed to associate with or avoid whoever I want unless you are afforded the same right. If I want to turn someone away because I don't like the shade of sunglasses they're wearing or who they hold hands with, you must be able to do the same to me.

[I work with and for disabled people and you must know what I faced in my youth by now - I have experience with all sides of this argument, and not all of it comes down to easy answers.]

Re: @Charles. So, since 1961 ...

Oh, and they DID prove the bug bomb thing to be true, though they did qualify that it may have been exacerbated by using more canisters than actually needed.

Yup. Even though they doubted it happened very often they actually found out it was a very common occurance (IIRC during the early episodes where they had the lady who did the checking to find the origin of the story, sometimes they said "this cannot happen" and she said "there are hundreds of reports from fire brigades of this happening every year" - strangely she did not last in the show very long).

As to taking out a house while making it look like an accident - despite all their blocking of labels (often very easy to tell what if you knew the pails yourself :) ) the bug-bomb one did teach me an idea or two.

Now.. What happens if I fog my office at the refinery.. I think one can every 2" should be enough...

There's no such thing as hate speech, it's all free speech, no matter you like it or not.

I know personally that there absolutely is "hate speech", I know that first hand.

But it's also "free speech" and you should have the right to it. I can't speak my mind freely if you can't speak yours freely.

Re: Guns or the people using them?

Wanna bet? You've never been to the likes of El Salvador, have you?

I've been to Australia. I'm sure that's close enough.

One country being messed up is NOT an excuse for you not doing your bit to fix yours. Stop making stupid excuses to live a life of fear, start seeing reasons to live a life of freedom, and start making your part of the world a better place.

It doesn't take a lot of hard work, it does take a decision to not be ruled by fear.

Re: So, since 1961 ...

I never had any sort of hassle even when canvassing alone, at night (which falls at 16:00 in mid winter).

Going out alone, after dark, where there are other people around? Poor people even? But surely you need several tank divisions to protect you!

And running? Don't you know running suggests fear, and that makes you a target? And if you have decent running shoes, obviously you have wealth and they'll be after you even more, even if just for your shoes!

You must be lying! How can anyone go into a poor neighbourhood without a nuclear deterrent at their disposal and not crap themselves the moment some disgusting wage-earner looks at them?????

(do I really need a "</sarc>" tag? :) )

I also treat everyone, absolutely everyone I meet as an equal human being. I may be an academic type but I don’t assume everyone else is stupid.

Some of my most embarrassing mistakes have been doing just that. And one of my greatest and longest-enduring friendships started when I sat down next to one of the "dumb kids" who was in a special needs class at intermediate. Perhaps his influence is why I do what I do today :)

Re: "Rational Gun Control"

Citizen groups all over NZ inspired by this are trapping their local areas.

And I thank you all for your efforts! Where I live, we have morepork, kereru, tui (large numbers!) ruru (I think, not one I heard till recently) among others. Wild NZ is returning quickly, and these efforts are helping. Probably getting ferrets under control helps a lot as well. I wonder if I'll see a Saddleback in my lifetime - I mean in the wild, not in a reserve (not seen one there even).

The bee populations are still low, but I think are regaining the losses to varoa.

As to wasps... I've seen them taking insects out of spider webs. And if you've seen the Huntsman, you'll wonder why you can see anything more than balls with the wasps that steal from them! (I hear the Huntsman's bite, while non-toxic, is worse than a wasps sting - I don't wish to try that for myself)

Re: Grammar Nazi alert

Or is it "slew"?

Dunno, but there's been a slew of posts on the topic...

Re: @Kiwi ... "You can [..] draw a conclusion that bad actors are going to [..] do bad things."

In 2019 there had been 255 mass shootings (>4 injured excluding the suspected perpetrator) in the USA as of yesterday.

How many bombings have occurred in the same time period? Even worldwide it's fewer.

You're missing something very critical. The US has had at least 255 mass murders so far this year. Has the rest of the world had even 50 - combined? With all forms of mass murders, not just shootings - how many have occurred this year outside the US? In countries with the likes of ISIS? Massive problems with drug cartels? Pirates (in the true sense of the word)

The guns may make it easier, but there's still a fundamental problem when the rest of the world combined doesn't even begin to compete (assuming I am right in my belief that the rest of the world hasn't seen that many mass murders).

When guns aren't readily available or aren't the best method, those so inclined will switch to another tool. Some tools may be more effective than guns, once people start trying them. Some may already have been used but not counted as murders but 'accidents'.

No other country has anywhere near the same rate of mass murders as the US. Guns aren't the problem as many countries have comparable and even higher rates of gun ownership than the US. The problem is a fundamentally broken culture, and until the nation is willing to change how they think about others they have no hope of stopping the violence.

Fix the culture, and gun issues will follow. Leave the culture as it is - you could get rid of every gun, every crossbow, every arrow, every volatile chemical, every sharp or blunt object, and yanks will still find a way to kill en masse. And bleat about their right to live in mortal fear of their neighbours.

Re: @Kiwi ... "You can [..] draw a conclusion that bad actors are going to [..] do bad things."

Sorry, but bad people are going to do bad things. We need good people there to stop them.

Working on the culture will help. I have the knowledge of many ways to kill many people. I've worked with dangerous chemicals, I have skills with fabricating from wood and metals and can build electronic circuits and have even designed a few circuits based around a Pi (commonly triggering relays in response to certain events - like a key stage of a bomb or other trigger), and I've driven all sorts of large vehicles.

I've also had a number of the life experiences that turn people from law-abiding citizens into mass-murdering psychopaths (or mentally deranged, or exceedingly pissed off or....). But the one thing that means I won't harm anyone is that I value life.

Ok, there's probably several reasons why I would not harm anyone (without them being a very clear threat to someone else), but the value I place on life is almost certainly the key one. Teaching people to value life has to be critical to reversing the modern trends. It'll also help with cutting our waste of resources and polluting of the planet. When you care for your neighbour's wellbeing, you act to protect them.

Re: "You can pretty much draw a conclusion..."

You should at least compare their implementation, usability, lethality and victims reaction time side by side. By the time you've done that, you'll see why gun is the popular choice and the overpowered choice (portable, easy to use, high lethality, and little time for victims to react).

I know how to use a gun, having fired hundreds of rounds and used a few different styles. Though a bit rusty, I think I could get a decent rhythm going with a bolt-action rifle, and I probably have the engineering skills to turn a 5 round magazine into something with a bit more capacity.

I used to work as an industrial chemist. The Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) gave clear warnings about how mixing certain substances with certain other substances would react in certain ways, including temperatures for flashpoint and auto-ignition. With that information, looking at what NOT to do if you want to live, you can also learn a lot about what TO do if you want to make a nice hole in the earth. Some chemicals give of very deadly gasses, some can burn up the oxygen in a room, some cause high rates of cancer or paralysis. Some of these can be made from fairly readily available chemicals. For those with a little knowledge, it's not hard to make something that messes people up badly (although many don't have the knowledge they think they have, and very efficiently carry out the second half of "get rich or die trying").

But it's still quicker and easier for me to use a car, van or truck to cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. As I suggested earlier, dropping a truck off a bridge at a time when 2 packed commuter trains are about to pass underneath^[1], cause some chaos on the roads (NZ driving isn't that bad though, but seeing some dashcam videos of trucks meeting lines of parked cars at speed - well that probably doesn't do much really. probably looks worse than it is). A truck or van through a crowd of pedestrians is perhaps still one of the most effective and simple ways to kill a lot of people. And you may even be able to get away with it if you can convincingly fake an accidental overdose of your prescription medication that caused you to lose control at a really convenient moment for those poor innocent children.

^[1] Actually I don't know if there are any bridges in the region where 2 commuter trains pass under a bridge at near enough the same time for this to be effective - but I'm sure you get the idea. See various incidents where 2 or 3 passing trains have been involved in very bad accidents.

Re: Guns or the people using them?

Since when can you educate the crazy out of someone?

It is possible to educate some people how to do things in a different way, how to change or re-direct thinking to less destructive ideas.

Maybe not everyone, I've known some people who really are just so caught up in their own mind that nothing seems to get through, but I've also seen some people turn around massively - perhaps aided by sufficient quantities of helpful meds but sometimes also by the right words from the right person at exactly the right time (miss any one of these 3 and it fails).

Re: Guns or the people using them?

"pretty much every moody teenager/young adult everywhere has at one point wished they had a gun and could shoot everyone."

I seriously doubt this is true. Do you have any studies to support that claim?

I can't say I have ever wanted a gun like that.

I can say that one of my earliest memories was when my mother had really upset me, and I thought of setting fire to the house and getting my siblings and my father out, but not warning mum. I can say I wondered how much damage I could do to the school teacher's cars with the tractor I used to drive.

Damn, maybe you're right.. There's really not much mass-mayhem I've ever considered (from the standpoint of actually doing it - I don't count knowledge of chemicals and wondering how much damage they would do in certain circumstances). Maybe I've been a Christian far too long and missed one of the more enjoyable parts of childhood - fantasising about wiping out large groups of people who seriously pissed me off? Or perhaps it was the early part of my childhood - finding out first-hand what it was like to be hated for being 'different' (probably much of that by people who were more 'the same' than they wanted to admit) that made me both anti-violence and not fearful of being on the receiving end of a beating :) Either way, I came to this post to argue with you and walk away largely agreeing with your point :)

Re: Guns or the people using them?

But what about the Second Amendment? The Supreme Court has already ruled that it's an individual right AND that a militia can be one person.

BUT what IF the GOVERNMENT just CHANGES the AMENDMENT. they ARE just WORDS on PAPER after ALL?

Isn't that your common argument when others talk of rule-of-law?

Re: "guarantee me that no one with evil intent will try to break in my house or assault my person"

I manage to deal with it and don't feel the need to live in fear or arm myself against the nebulous "evil" at my door.

Hear hear!

--> May you never be short of these (or your preferred variant), good sir!

Re: "guarantee me that no one with evil intent will try to break in my house or assault my person"

Unless the fear is JUSTIFIED, as in people all around them ACTUALLY DO get burglarized on a routing basis, sometimes in ways that pretty much say if they want in, they'll get in in spite of God, Man, or the Devil.

You mean like the neighbourhood I live in?

Sorry, your rationalisations with violence yet again don't wash. Being burglarised is barely a justification for violence, and not at all a justification for lethal force. My possessions are not worth causing harm to others.

Such a level fear of these things is not in any way justified, and shows the person with the fear to have some problems that can be dealt with through either faith (the best way) or a bit of time with a psychiatrist or decent counsellor.

or because all other ways are blocked.

How do you imagine this?????????? You're trying to justify violence as an acceptable form of conflict resolution?

Get help.

--> El Reg, we need something strong than this. Much stronger!

Re: inspired by 8chan

Or to put it another way, it is very difficult to murder 20 people and injure another 26 in the space of 5 minutes with anything other than a gun.

Molotov cocktails around a crowded shopping centre (they'll do most of the killing/maiming themselves), truck or car through a crowd, simple IED perhaps placed on vehciles parked near mall entrances (not necessarily mine or stolen vehicles), perhaps even a few loud bang devices placed in rubbish bins.

Explosives.. Heating up spray paint/deodorant etc cans can do that, as can gas bottles. I have no idea how quickly the latter will go off in a burning car, and perhaps the relief valve will work well enough to prevent an explosion (unless I jam it). Of course I could try to let the car fill with gas and ignite it later, but I may drive out too much oxygen so not manage to get things to burn. Nitrous Oxide - readily available in handy sized pressurised containers IIRC - could be another fun one if the bottles can be made to explode.

Poison gasses can be easy to make as well, although getting anything into a strong enough concentration to be truly effective is perhaps not very easy. (I can make large quantities of carbon monoxide just by going for a drive, capturing it, storing it, and releasing it so it'll work is another matter)

With a decent panic, especailly with many armed people in the crowd, you don't even need to directly kill. Hell, I probably could kill 50 people just by letting off a small firecracker around a jumpy armed crowd.

Re: inspired by 8chan

That's arguable if someone has to commute two hours each way into the boonies to work (meaning no public transport, high capacity fuel tank is essential, and a powerful engine may be needed to negotiate steep terrain).

Why is a "high capacity fuel tank" 'essential' for someone who has to "commute two hours each way into the boonies to work"?

Why does that preclude public transport? You do know that if there is a potential demand, there will be transport provided, right?

Why is a powerful engine" needed to "negotiate steep terrain"?

My 125cc bike with it's 5L (just over a gallon for those stuck in the olden days :) ) managed all that happily. Being a dirt bike converted for road use, I could even climb terrain that 4WD/SUVs wouldn't manage. 4 hours driving time even at highway speeds was also readily achievable. And I see a LOT of people on ~50cc scooters commuting between Upper Hutt and Wellington, also lots of people on push bikes doing it. Some even cross the Wainuiomata Hill or go up the Ngarunga Gorge on them (push bikes and scooters).

I had a bike that has an 18L tank. That also gave me plenty of riding time including (especially) during commuting. (And yes, I've known people who have missing limbs yet still ride).

Re: inspired by 8chan

No, because it'll only increase incidents of higher crimes as people who NEED the car for their job to feed the family (as they're the breadwinners) get dinged for too many minor things, lose their wheels, and they can't feed the spouse and kids. IOW, you just start creating a group of VERY desperate people. And you know what they say about desperate people...

If you're too dumb to use indicators you're too dumb to drive, and I doubt many people would want to employ you. If you're too arrogant to use indicators, then you're a threat and should not be driving.

I had a problem with speeding myself. In NZ you get so many 'demerit points" when you get caught speeding, and if you get a certain number inside a certain time (I think it's 100 in 2 years), you automatically lose your license for IIRC 6 months. Inside a couple of months I had enough incidents to get very close to that point. In the more than 10 years since, I haven't had a single traffic ticket. It's an effective deterrent and when people get close to seeing their license gone, they behave. And when they have to behave for long enough, the behaviour gets ingrained.

And if you think committing a crime is OK because you failed basic drivers ed and are so unliked you cannot get someone to help you out, well, you have some quite serious problems and the sooner you're in prison the better for the rest of us.

I know people who've lost their license for things including drunk driving. People who have a spouse and kids to feed, and work where/when public transport is unavailable. They don't work alone, so they make arrangements for others to drive them in. It really is simple. Even people who are utter arseholes to their workmates and roundly hated by all can still manage to make legal arrangements.

Charles, you sometimes seem to have some scary rationalisations for why it is OK to commit "higher crimes". You seriously should consider seeking professional help, or at least a mentor. Desperate people don't need to do anything illegal, tempting as it may be. Nor do angry people. There are better and easier ways, and most people understand this.

Re: inspired by 8chan

Perhaps he's taking a roundabout path to declare that the root problem is part of humanity itself and is pretty much intractable. To use the meme, "Haters gonna hate."

If it was an "intractable" "part of humanity" then the rest of the world would have the same problems the US has.

We don't.

We do tend to have freedom of speech, we do tend to have very easy access to weapons, we do have people with mental health problems and people wanting to have their own way regardless of consequences, but we don't have the same levels of people killing each other.

Nor do we have the culture that says we should fear our neighbours and clamour for the right to kill them at the first apparently askance glance.

The problems are with the culture. If 'haters' are a part of your culture, and that is a problem, then you fix the culture of hate.

Re: So, since 1961 ...

It was wildly ineffective, because the terminal ballistics of a .223 are not appreciably changed by whether the rifle has a traditional wooden hunting stock like what your grandfather had or a scary black polymer stock with a pistol grip...

Always bothered me some as well that. Ok, so a black gun with a pistol grip etc does have a look that shows it is intended for use against people vs the largely wooden hunting rifles.. But by the time I was 10 I could get through a fair few rounds with a bolt-action .303 in a few seconds (though IIRC it did make the shoulder ache some - but I am struggling to recall what weapons hurt what bit in which way).

At close enough range a human torso is a pretty large target, and at further range I think I'd find a traditional rifle (supporting the barrel on something for steadiness) much more accurate.. Though if I am firing into a crowd then accuracy counts for nothing, randomly dropping anyone and every one I can would be what matters if terror is my object. Unless I want to target only a specific group like a spoilt little racist brat of course.

The look of one is more intimidating than the other, but someone somewhat trained with a traditional hunting weapon will be more of a threat than someone untrained with a fully automatic, pistol grip, matte-black with white racisms, 15,000,000 round magazine etc weapon. The Christchurch kiddy belonged to a gun club IIRC, where is was fairly well trained in how to use a gun.

Re: So, since 1961 ...

Furthermore, with the horrendous Sandy Hook Elementary School murders of 20 children back in 2012, an opportunity was lost by then President Obama to take a strong lead on rational gun control.

I don't think gun control would make much of a difference. NZ has gun control laws, but we also have a lot of illegal guns in circulation (whether they would actually fire or not is a whole different issue). But gun crime here is relatively low, and while the numbers have increased a fair bit recently shootings are also quite low.

We have self defence laws and yes, they allow for lethal force if necessary - but you will find yourself at a murder trial to determine if you did actually need to kill that person, or if their death was unintended ("I tackled him to the ground while he was chasing her, he hit his head on the curb.."). What we don't have is a culture of "I had a flat tyre, they were walking towards my car, I thought they might be a threat so I killed them without warning" - in that case you'd rightly find yourself on a life sentence.

The US needs to get away from their culture of fear and start to see the value of their neighbours instead of seeing them as something to be afraid of. Instead of wetting yourselves in terror when someone looks at you funny, offer them your hand in a gesture of welcome and make them a beneficial part of your neighbourhood. Get to know and love your neighbours, instead of locking yourselves inside and hating them out of fear.

Then you can all wander around proudly showing off your penis replacements guns knowing that you won't need to use them for anything more than dispatching a few cans and maybe the odd rodent.

Oh, and those who promote this culture of fear? Labour camps would be good for them I think. Ones run by robots. Somewhere they can contribute to society but not be in a place to cause any more pain to others. Let them terrify each other without hurting the rest of your society.

Re: Even to this day...

Luckily managed to avoid that myself, but had to avoid smirking as I watched the consultant setting up some new routers do exactly that.

Be careful! Too many times I've boasted about not making a mistake, or teased someone about one they made, only to do so myself within a few days.

Sods law 'n all that... :)

Re: Ahhh passwords...

One of my friends married an admin/helpdesk type who's secret super power was remembering passwords: <type type type> -- 'hey how did you know the password?' <type type type> You told me the password. When I was here 3 years ago'

I have that same ability.

I won't call it a gift. I'll call it a burden.

Do you know how much of a pain it is to remember people's passwords from 5 years ago? To find out they still work? And, when you still know their password, to get those 'special looks' reserved only for certain classes of person - looks that do not convey feelings of trust or security in your abilities?

There is so much in this industry I wish I could forget. Passwords are up there with photo screen savers... (When you get clients who use those.. Who are nudists.. And when you realise (very quickly) that most nudists are older and much much heavier people... Then you'll know why I dread other people's screen savers... There are things you cannot unsee...)

--> I shall be ordering mindbleach by the truckload tonight. This is the closest icon we have!