Month: October 2009

Most Retarded Argument Against the Right to Bear Arms Yet

I was reading through the commend on a post over at Dvorak Uncensored and read what is possible the most retarded argument agains the right to bear arms I’ve yet seen. User Theone has this to say:

Lol, I don’t own arms because unlike many morons out there I’m a good shot. I’ve competed in many ROTC in my younger years to know I can pick people off easily. I also know I had a bad temper and can get insane. That is why I’m against arms…people are insane.

Seriously, give me a rifle and I can toss that thing high in the air and without looking at it grab it and shoot you down in seconds, between your head. Now do you want some crazy like me to own a gun or knowing that I made the right choice not to own any?

If you disagree feel free to sign my contract allowing me to kill your sorry behind and I’ll happily do it…for free. We can even do it western cowboy style to give you a chance to hit me.

Wow what an idiot. He’s saying since he’s a good shot (which I doubt reading his post) and has anger management problems people shouldn’t have guns? Also another thing I noticed is the fact he brags up how good of a shot he is. Apparently he has magical powers as he can toss a rifle in the air, catch it, and without even looking nail you square between the eyes. 99% (I’d say 100% but there may be an exception somewhere) of the time somebody makes a bragging statement like that they’re lying.

Anybody competent with a rifle knows a simple fact, you can’t accurately shoot a rifle, or any gun, without looking. You need to see the target in relation to you in order to put a round in them. What this guy is probably saying is he’s a prohibited person due to a domestic violence case and since he can’t have guns nobody should be allowed to. Don’t get me wrong after reading that I’m glad he doesn’t have guns, he seems far too stupid to be responsible enough.

So Much For the Barnes and Nobel Nook Lending Feature

In the post I made previewing the Barnes and Nobel Nook eReader device I mentioned the lending feature. Well it appears the lending feature is completely gimped.

Well it appears each title you have can only be loaned out once and only for 14 days. Note that the wording seems to imply you can loan a title once period, not once per person. The other strike against this feature is a book can only be loaned out if the published allows this behavior. I can officially strike that feature off as something cool.

I Think We Have More People

Joe Huffman does a quick Internet approved survey to determine popularity between the gun rights crowd and the anti-gunners. He uses the number of followers each have on Twitter which is the Internet excepted method of determining everything.

Well we’re winning. In fact the Brady Bunch’s actual Twitter account is almost eclipsed in popularity by Mr. Huffman’s own daughter. Of course Mr. Huffman doesn’t take into consideration another possible meaning behind this. Anti-gunners are too stupid to understand how to use a service that involves sending 140 character messages. I guess typing is hard for any group of people who are using both of their hands to cover their ears while they scream, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA!” at the stop of their lungs.

People Want End to Mandatory Law Requiring Swiss Citizens to Own Military Rifles

Once again Says Uncle links to another interesting story. Apparently some whiny bitches concerned citizens are looking to change the law in Switzerland that requires males serving in the military to store a military rifle at home. Because of research what happens when you disarm a country I’m bias against laws restricting firearms. But I’m also willing to hear the debate so let’s take a look at both sides. First off the side of logical thought civilians owning guns:

But it wasn’t the militia that sparked Heim’s interest in guns as young man. It was an unassuming trip to a holocaust museum.

HEIM: I was going through all the exhibits and the soaps and the lampshades made of people’s skin, and while I was looking, I heard a funny noise, and there was an old woman, maybe two metres from me. She was trying not to cry. She was sort of sobbing very quietly. She was sort of holding it back. If she had been a few more meters away I wouldn’t have heard her. And that’s when it all hit me. I promised myself I will never be in her situation. I would want to be free and never in a situation where they could just march us off to ovens or prisons.or just take away our freedom.

Heim gets it. See Nazi Germany required civilians to register all guns with the government. Shortly afterwards the government confiscated all the registered guns. After the guns were confiscated and the civilian populace was defenseless the government started rounding up “undesirables” and sending them to death camps where they were gassed by the millions. Had the civilian populace been armed they could have fought back against the government.

OK let’s hear the other side of the argument:

However, not everyone sees guns the same way.

While gun crime is relatively low in Switzerland, more than 300 people a year are killed military rifles, the majority of them suicides. Recently efforts for more regulation have been picking up. And a certain faction of people want military rifles stored in army barracks, rather than peoples cellars.

So you’re saying that people taking their own lives with firearms is justification for disarming the populace? I have a newsflash for those who think this, people taking their own lives can do so without a gun. If a lack of guns had anything to do with suicide rates how to you explain Japan where guns are practically forbidden but the suicide rate is very high? This might come as a surprise but if I wanted to kill myself I could hang myself or slit my wrists with a knife. But the harsh truth of the matter is if somebody takes their own life that is their business and so long as they aren’t trying to take somebody else with them it’s their choice. Meanwhile if you disarm the populace you create a situation where people can not defend themselves against an outside force meaning to do harm.

Also the sheer idiocy of trying to compare 300 deaths by firearms to six MILLION deaths by government hands is ludicrous at best. Those deaths in Switzerland are .005% of the number of deaths caused by the Nazi government in Germany. How can people say the situation of a disarmed populace is better? How can people honestly be that stupid?

I Guess They Aren’t So Perfect

N.U.G.U.N. has a post informing us there is a new advertisement from Glock. Apparently they are claiming a “next generation of perfection.” Funny I always thought it something was perfect you couldn’t improve it. In fact an inability to improve something is the definition of perfection.

Well Guns, Holsters, and Gear says this is an advertisement for an upcoming line of Glock pistols with adjustable grips. Interesting theory I guess. If true there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be eating crow. One of the noted advantages of XD(m) owners is the fact the back straps can be changed out to fit your hand better. Glock fanboys say it’s just another useless doodad to break. Well if Glock heads down this path I will be laughing my ass off.

Being I have a Glock 30 I can say it’s not a perfect gun. It’s a very nice gun but certainly not perfect. The 10 round magazines are a pain in the ass to load (that last round just doesn’t want to go into the magazine), I find the trigger inferior to the one on my XD, and although the gun is physically smaller than the XD it’s slightly heavier. And before any Glock fan claims the added weight is a certain sign of better quality remember the 1911 is heavier than your Glock.

Shocking News of the Day

I hope you’re sitting down because this news is so shocking, so surprising, so impossible to predict that you will most likely shit yourself upon reading it. United Nations inspectors have gone on record saying North Korea’s human right situation is abysmal!

Really did anybody expect otherwise? North Korea is ruled by a man who uses fear of outside forces to show the country needs him.

Barnes and Nobel Nook

It’s no secret to those who know me that I read a lot. I also have a habit of reading several books at the same time. According to my girlfriend that’s messed up but alas I usually have several topics I’m interested in at the same time and depending on the interest that’s most peaked at the time I’ll read a different book. Due to this I’ve been following the e-book reader market.

I bought an Amazon Kindle about a year and a half ago and have absolutely loved it. It’s nice being able to carry my entire library with me wherever I go. It’s also convenient since I don’t have to either drive to a book store to purchase a book or order it online and wait for the title to be delivered. Before getting my Kindle I spent a lot of time in Barnes and Nobel carousing books. Now I stop in there maybe once every couple of months to browse their non-fiction titles since the Kindle store has a pretty horrible selection in that department.

Well Barnes and Nobel yesterday (or maybe the day before I forgot) announced their entry into the e-book reader market, the Nook. Of course this requires a comparison of the two products.

The Nook stands out from the Kindle in a few areas. The first, and most obvious, is the LCD touch screen located below the ePaper display. This is where you do all your navigating and controls. More on that in a bit. The second difference is the Nook uses AT&T’s 3G network instead of Sprint’s. But to alleviate the pains of using AT&T’s network (seriously their network has less coverage than most bikinis) the Nook also includes Wi-Fi. Two other features the Nook has that the latest Kindle doesn’t (although the previous model did) is a replaceable battery and a memory card slot.

I guess I’m going to cover my thoughts on the differences. First I want to talk about the LCD touch screen being touted as the chief wham-bam feature of the Nook. I don’t like it. Yup you heard me right I don’t like it. My reasoning is three fold. First LCD screens suck power every second they are one. Displays using ePaper technology only use power while they are actively switching pages meaning while you are reading a page no power is being used by the display. That means the LCD screen on the Nook will drop the battery life and long battery life is one of my favorite features of e-book readers.

The second issue I have with the LCD is viewing it outside. See ePaper displays work very well in direct sunlight so you can comfortably use the devices outside. LCDs on the other hand become very difficult to read in direct sunlight so the Nook has a contrast here. The main reader works best with a lot of light while the navigation screen works best without direct light hitting it. This seems like a duality in usefulness to me.

The third issue I have with the LCD screen is the fact LCD screens are backlit. This means the LCD screen is going to be much brighter than the ePaper display that you actually read from. The problem is the human eye is drawn more towards bright items then items having no source of light. Unless there is a way to easily kill the backlight on the LCD while reading a book I would find this to be quite an annoyance after some time. Again this is coming from a person who can plop down and read for a couple hours straight, I doubt it would be any sort of issue if you only read a few minutes at a time (but if that’s you why waste your money on an e-book reader?).

I hate AT&T’s network. You don’t hear this often but I love being on Sprint’s network. Why? Because I get data coverage almost everywhere and phone coverage in even more places. I can get high speed data in a podunk little town like Winona, Minnesota and basic data in Caledonia, MN (where AT&T coverage is practically non-existant). When my friends on AT&T have coverage issues I have three or four bars normally. Hell my phone works in my apartments garage. So needless to say I really like being able to purchase books on my Kindle from practically anywhere without the need for Wi-Fi. But having the option of Wi-Fi for times when data service coverage is unavailable is a great idea which I highly approve of.

With that said there are some features of the Nook I really like. There is a method of loaning books to friends which the Kindle completely lacks. Honestly I don’t really lend books to friends but it would be nice to have the option should the situation arise. The truth of the matter though is we need to eliminate DRM all together. Of course I believe it will take the publishing industry many years to figure this out. Hell look how long it took the music industry until they started allowing DRM free MP3s to be sold and later songs sold on the iTunes music store.

The removable battery is a huge plus in my book. I still have the first generation Kindle and hence a removable battery. But alas I’m not one to phase our my devices overly often unless a new device has new features that can justify an upgrade to me. I do run into battery failure issues with my devices and do desire a method to replace the battery myself when that occurs. This is one of the issues I have with the iPhone and iPod series of products. With that said I can’t imagine a situation where I’d need to replace a battery in an ePaper device due to depleting the battery through use. Seriously I can go a couple weeks with my Kindle without needing to recharge it so long as I keep the wireless switched off.

Barnes and Nobel is claiming 1,000,000 e-books when their store goes live. Amazon’s Kindle store currently proclaims 350,000 titles. Depending on what titles Barnes and Nobel is claiming (for instance they mention free e-books which are probably out of copyright titles which means I can also get them free on my Kindle) this could be a huge boon. I know the Kindle store has some odd gaps in their titles (Jurassic Park still isn’t available). If Barnes and Nobel can get a larger selection of titles that would jump them ahead pretty far.

The Nook does support native PDFs by the looks of it. Many papers I read are in PDF format and I can get them on my Kindle after a dance involving a free e-mail address that sends the PDF to Amazon to convert it. The Kindle DX natively supports PDFs but it’s also a huge honking device compared to my paperback sized Kindle. The more natively formatted formats supported on a device the better in my opinion.

I’ll hold my final judgement until the Nook is actually released but I really don’t see any major advantage it has over the Kindle and the LCD is a huge disadvantage on a dedicated reading device in my opinion. But one fact is certainly true competition is good and the Nook will give some heavy competition to the Kindle.

Barnes and Nobel are also claiming special in-store features. This is really meaningless to me since one of the advantages, to me, of an e-book reader is not having to go to a store to gain any features. But again I highly doubt any main feature of the Nook will depend on going into a Barnes and Nobel store to use it.

Because You Suck, We Hate You, But We Want Your Money

H&K may think you suck and hate you but they also want your money. Because of this notable fact they are rather angry at the Australian government. The Australian government placed a ban on importation of the H&K R8. The R8 itself is a special version of their SL8 which has the gas system removed so the gun functions like a bolt action rifle. This is required since Australian subjects can’t own semi-automatic rifles.

Well according to the Australian government claims the rifle is too similar to the G36 and have barred it’s importation. Now H&K not only thinks you suck and hate you but they feel the same about the Australian government. Honestly I agree with H&K on this point.

I Can’t Believe I’m Defending the TSA

But hey when somebody doesn’t fuck up it’s just as important to report it as when they fuck up. I found out that there is one time when the TSA didn’t actually act like jack booted communist check point military personnel.

A while back a women posted a story about how a TSA agent took her baby and ran off with him. She claimed the TSA agent said he needed to search her child and after handing her child over the TSA agent just kind of waltzed off.

Well TSA decided this bullshit story was a little to harming to their reputation. To point out the fact the above mentioned mother lied the TSA posted the surveillance video of that search on the TSA blog (yeah they have a blog and it’s so stupid it’s funny to read).

I hate the TSA as much as anybody else who has flown on a plane but I’m not going to start fabricating lies about them. Seriously that mother should have thought before posting that melodramatic heap of bull shit. Did she honestly think the TSA didn’t video tape those secure areas?