Raven

Another word of wisdom from Lotharr, and I'm using the term wisdom in its broadest sense.

Unless you play ISS of course, then you'll have to wait around for the Gammulans to destroy all the other fleets before they get around to you.

quote: I think the tone of my statement whatever will assist police in catching bad guys indicated within reason and BF is reasonable. Well darling, whatever the tone of you're argument might have been, it excessively exaggerated the importance of supporting the police and made no mention of civil liberty. quote: But by all means take up the cause of the poor downtrodden criminal being tortured by the police. That is so in line with your previously posted opinion on people less fortunate than yourself. Now you're a champion of the underclass! Unbelievable! I now think you may be quite mad. Mad? Isn't that just a little bit much? And besides, I'm not suddenly looking out for the little guy, the little guy is so completely unimportant that it's not worth my time, but it's in nobodies best interest for us to have a police force that can ignore our constitutional rights. quote: Even when someone who is a liberal steps outside of the box and sides with (yechh!) law enforcement a most decidely non liberal cause, you disagree out of pure reflex. How utterly sad and predictible So I assume that my obvious attempt at gathering information about this process prior to having an opinion is pure reflex and utterly sad? My apologies darling, but I see nothing reflexive in my rejection of a process which will be of limited value (whatever a couple of police may think), no doubt considerable expense, and potentially unconstitutional (and I'll let Jaguar argue the last point, that's his forte). quote: There, now try again please, because maybe you need to live somewhere else, or else learn the constitution and your ACTUAL rights, instead of the ones you think you have and the ones you think that I DON'T have. Yep, I knew that, it's actually one of my biggest gripes with the way our government has been going for a while.

quote: well first, i didnt say this was a cureall... by no means... and i wish people would understand that. i believe other methods should be implemented to weed out the non desireables. and i didnt say it was perfect either... i know it has some flaws. I'm not sure how it would be used to weed out the "non desirables" though; it seams more a method for finding out who committed a crime rather then preventing crime in the first place. Nothing is wrong with this, but the way you stated that suggests that ballistic fingerprinting would stop crimes from being committed. quote: well if you fingerprinted it after the crime it would be a bit late dont you think??? kind of like closing the barn door after the horses get out. Not at all, a ballistic fingerprint would only serve two real functions as near as I can tell, the first being identifying the murder weapon, and the second (assuming a file is kept as is suggested) being determining who owns an as of yet unfound murder (or assault, or whatever) weapon. In the first case it would be better to fingerprint afterwards anyway, thus providing a recent fingerprint. For the second purpose having such a comprehensive file would be useful, but (if we are to believe Jag) most crimes committed with a gun are done so with illegally owned weapons anyway, so the ballistic fingerprint file would be of little use. quote: yes you can, but even 2 weapons made by the same manufacturer are alot different. the headspacing could be off by .100 of an inch, there could be a microscopic scratch in one of the barrels from machining etc etc... stuff that would show up different. My point exactly, and thus it would be relatively easy to change to ballistic fingerprint of a weapon by swapping the barrel and firing pin. Furthermore, I have to wonder if the fingerprint is based off of such fine details, what else can be done to disguise the fingerprint of a gun? quote: this part all depends on how vigorously the pursuing detectives are willing to investigate the crime. if its put out on the black market it had to get there from somewhere right??? someone had to have bought it... it can be traced... the resources available to some of the investigating agencies are more than most people think. Perhaps, but this is still of limited usefulness. quote: The technique is sound enough that a number of Fraternal order of police leaders around the country are in favor of it. But I guess they are "gun control socialists" as well. Give me a break! Any tool that assist police in catching bad guys should be applauded, but once again the gun crazies show they lack brains as well as a conscience. Oh? Well then we should scrap all that nonsense about the Fifth Amendment, and perhaps allow the use of torture during police interrogations, and any number of other delightful means we can think of to assist our poor, beleaguered, police officers catch the "bad guys". quote: Give them just a little peek into the door of gun registration, that's what it is by the way, and they will eventually go after them all. Unfortunately true, and not just of gun control (after all, look at the way socialism is going in this country). quote: What group of people have you decided dies first? Gays, liberals, catholics, Jews, the rich. Who? Liberals, it's called poetic justice. quote: Once you have gun control, the government goes out of control, that's history, it's a fact of life. Once the peoples only weapon of self defense is removed, they are helpless to stop any sort of barbarism. I wouldn't say that guns are peoples only means of defense, but rather there last line of defense. quote: Yeah, I may be paranoid, but I have a clue of what happened in the past. The liberals have stood the constitution on it's head with all their socialist programs, they are more then willing and able to force any number of things on us once we are helpless. Including killing those that disagree with them. Yea Jag, you're a paranoid gun crazy, but you also have a very good point. I think you exaggerate the probability of the government going out of control like that, and I'm not sure how much good hand guns and rifles would do anyway if such an occurrence were to happen, but there really is no point to taking needless risks like that. [ 11-05-2002, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: Dragon Lady ]

quote: In America everyone's earnings are inflated. The poor really don't have to exist here....we have so much of the worlds wealth that if we supported the less fortunate we could still maintain a super class imbalance....but not the oppressive image. First of all, I have to wonder why bother in the first place? If someone is so incapable as to fail financially, then redistributing wealth to assist them is both wasteful (after all, what benefit comes of spending money to support the dregs of humanity) and counterproductive as it encourages people to leech off of the system and be generally unproductive. Second, attempting to reduce the number of poor would accomplish nothing, poverty is relative, and thus there would still be extremely poor people. Besides, in a historical context even the poorest American is fairly wealthy by the standards of, say, the 15th century. quote: FACT: max income disproportion is 1,400,000 : 1 FACT: average income disproportion CEO to national family ave is 400:1 FACT: 400:1 equals $14,000,000 to $35,000 The average American family is being f*cked over. Arnold has made some good shoot em' up flicks but he ain't worth that much. To hell with the idea of screwing people over being the best system man has to offer. Well darling, what's your point? Does is bother you that some people are incredibly more successful then others? Is there something wrong with success being rewarded in a massive way? The average American family is not worth much of anything, and it shows. It isn't a matter of screwing people over; it's a matter of the incapable, incompetent, and generally mediocre people screwing themselves over. It's perfectly natural for those who succeed to have money and power, that's the point of success, and it's also for the best that people who don't succeed have little in the way of money or power and thus are driven to succeed. quote: American mass media is owned an operated by about five people and it costs over 7.2 mil to run for the senate. 1/5 of the population vote during a house race..... I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE THERE IS A PROBLEM You can sit there and believe whatever you want but you can only hide from the truth for so long. The people are not being represented, yet they are being taxed.....the rest is history. So what, people are gong to revolt because they're to lazy to go vote? The lack of representation is a result of public apathy and the realization that no one persons vote makes much difference. People who think like that are not the kind of people who will revolt. Furthermore, the problem is with our sociopolitical culture not with our government.

I'm not as familiar with firearms as some of you people, but the idea of ballistic fingerprinting raises a few questions for me. First; how accurate is this technique? Would a few shots (or a few dozen) change the signature of a gun enough that it wouldn't stand up in a court of law? Second; is there any advantage to fingerprinting the gun when it is first sold rather then after any crime has been committed with it? That is to say, wouldn't it be more accurate (and cost effective) to simply fingerprint a weapon after a crime has been committed then before? And third; how much time and money would it take to implement this kind of comprehensive ballistic fingerprinting (especially considering that this is an unproven process)? Also, there seams to be a couple of flaws in some of your reasoning. Just because changing the firing pin and barrel cost money and leave a paper trail doesn't mean it couldn't be done, and such a paper trail couldn't be used to convict anyone of anything. Also, wouldn't it be possible simply to swap barrels and firing pins between two weapons of the same type? Furthermore, this would be only useful in finding people who legally owned guns, if someone had a stolen or black market weapon then there would be no way to trace that weapon to them, and thus ballistic fingerprinting a weapon before it is sold is no more useful then any other type of gun control.

LOL That's a good one Jag. [ 11-04-2002, 11:55 PM: Message edited by: Dragon Lady ]

And how, pray tell, do you determine this?

Well, as I recall a CD key is required to play, and because this CD key is authenticated whenever you log on, so it should be a simple matter for SC to invalidate the CD keys of people who run spam bots. Oh, and my score is now 147, and I can't listen to ride of the valkyries without "kill the popups" running through my head. AHHHHHHHH [ 11-01-2002, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: Dragon Lady ]

The trick with reviews is to listen to people who like the same kinds of games you like, especially with amateur reviews.

Oh dear? this is terrible?

Ok, I played twice and got 97 on the second go. That's a truly horrid (if somewhat accurate) game.

Interesting, pity it tells me connection refused every time I try to register.

I really have to go with SC on this one, the forum seams just fine. Oh, it would be nice if there were say, 50% more people posting, but that's a lot different then a flood of clueless n00bs.

That's rich darling, truly it is (besides, it matches with my ideas of religion). As to Litvyak, well, my condolences.

ROTFLMAO!!! That's absolutely hilarious, I love it. And besides, I agree without reservation, kids draw the worst stuff. It's not cute, or nice, and by no means is it creative, it's just awful.

March... my birthday is in March, how appropriate.

A tractor... how horrid...

LMAO!

LOL Happy birthday darling, and good luck with the explosive decompression

Well there was at least one good thread, though I don't think cat psychology has much to do with being a crazed liberal. [ 10-27-2002, 01:56 AM: Message edited by: Dragon Lady ]

Utter nonsense!

Mine came out as Saruman... hmmm... apparently they didn't include for the possibility of a woman taking the test...

Yea, Mountain Dew is so much better...

I?m not even going to ask how that is relevant, I just won?t.