Month: January 2011

Rachel Maddow Flat Out Lying

I’ve always known Rachel Maddow was a complete fucking moron but I never realized just how stupid she really was until I watched her following clip (you’ll have to copy and paste since I won’t be a referral to this idiot’s site):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908//vp/41030180#41030326

It’s Rachel Maddow on guns and it’s even more idiotic than I imagined. First she goes on a little rant about the all plastic gun that Glock was able to make. Yes you heard me right, an all plastic gun that Glock made. She claims Congress then passed a bill banning entirely plastic guns because of this magical undetectable-at-airports gun. What she is referencing (but never tells you) is the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988. Basically they law states any gun that can not be detected by a walk through metal detector is banned from being manufactured or imported into the country. The law also provided an exemption for any firearm that was already in the United States.

If the law was passed and Glock never actually made an entirely plastic gun then what was Congress doing passing any such law? Probably the same thing Wisconsin was doing when they banned electromagnetic weapons for hunting. In other words they were banning something that doesn’t exist. So where did Rachel get her firearm knowledge? Probably from Die Hard 2.

She then moves on to bitch about “cop killer bullets” (and Dick Cheney). There is no such thing as “cop killer bullets.” When people refer to such mystical things they are talking about armor piercing ammunition which is defined very specifically in the United States via the Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1985. In the United States armor piercing bullets is defined as handgun bullets (rifle and shotgun ammunition is specifically exempt) constructed from specified material. It also exempts any ammunition that the Secretary of Treasury exempts for hunting purposes.

Next she asks if her audience would like an anti-aircraft weapon. HELL YEAH I would. You know how awesome it would be to own a World War II anti-aircraft cannon? Pretty awesome that’s for sure. Anyways she states that there are federal regulations against having anti-aircraft weapon in airport observation areas. This is another stupid law because I’ve been in airport observation areas and honestly there is no way to wheel and anti-aircraft cannon in there. Have you seen the size of those things? They’re not exactly small rifles.

Funny enough she’s still not done bitch about guns. She goes on to talk about how everybody is stating passing gun control in this country is impossible (which, sadly, it isn’t) but she things differently. The reason passing gun control in this country is difficult is two fold. First we have a right to keep and bear arms codified in the second amendment. Second we’ve seen gun control laws never actual prevent or lower violent crime rates they only make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. If something has been demonstrated not to work time and time again why should anybody take it seriously?

She then follows by making a classic anti-gunner mistake, stating the “assault weapon” ban made purchasing standard capacity magazines illegal. That’s not even close to the case. The “assault weapon” ban made it illegal to manufacture new magazines with a capacity above 10 rounds unless they were meant for military or law enforcement personnel. The Arizona shooter could still have legally purchased a previously manufactured 30 round magazine even with the ban in place. Likewise she keeps calling them clips because she’s a moron who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Then the real bullshit comes up, she claims information on gun control laws are “un-Googleable.” She also tells her audience that they shouldn’t even try to Google gun control laws but instead research them at a library. Yeah, sure. Guess what? I always find my information relating to gun laws using Google, it’s pretty easy. There isn’t some super gun lobby conspiracy to filter the Internet of all things gun law related.

If her staff can’t Google information related to gun laws she needs to fire them and hire new people. Either way that was the absolute worst piece I’ve seen done since the Arizona shooting and honestly don’t know how it could be topped.

The Verizon iPhone

It seems as though people who know me actually value my opinion. I haven’t a clue why this is, maybe people asked me all sorts of questions about devices because they enjoy listening to me prattle off mundane details that nobody cares about. Either way a lot of people have been asking me about my opinion regarding the Verizon iPhone so here are my thoughts.

First the most obvious question, am I angry I went with AT&T so shortly before Verizon announced their phone? No. There are advantages and disadvantages to each carrier. AT&T uses GSM while Verizon uses CDMA which leads to some differences. The two things I like about GSM are the ability to use voice and data at the same time (on 3G, it doesn’t work on EDGE) and the ability to pull my SIM card out of one phone, plug it into another, and start using that new phone without getting AT&T’s permission. On the other hand Verizon has much better coverage. I can’t use my iPhone when I visit my parents while CDMA phones work perfectly fine. Of course I still have a Sprint phone for when I travel down there so I’m not too worried (granted my Sprint phone is mostly used for tethering at this point as Sprint’s data plan and network are second to none).

Honestly I’m rarely outside of AT&T’s coverage area so that’s a minor issue for me. Being able to use voice and data at the same time is extremely nice and honestly I’m getting quite addicted to it. Verizon hasn’t announced any plan pricing for the iPhone yet so that’s all up for speculation. Since I like to speculate I’m going to assume Verizon will use their current plans and rates. AT&T’s data plan is $20.00 for 2GB and $10.00 for each GB after that (so it’s a flat rate of $10.00 per GB basically). Currently Verizon is charging $30 for their unlimited data plan which is a much better deal. Frankly there is no competition between the two plans.

As far as voice plans are concerned AT&T and Verizon exactly mirror one another. If you want 450 minutes you pay $39.99, if you want 900 minutes you pay $59.99, and if you want unlimited minutes you pay $69.99. What is interesting is the price difference for their text messaging plans (also known as the biggest and most expensive data plan on Earth). For $20.00 AT&T gives you unlimited text messaging while Verizon’s plans with unlimited text messaging come in at an astounding, well, $20.00 as well. That’s a pretty even match.

Verizon is saying they’re going to throw in mobile hot spot for up to five devices on the iPhone for free. If so that’s one Hell of a good idea compared to having to pay an additional free with AT&T for tethering (although Verizon’s wireless hot spot tethering may not cover USB tethering which is valuable once in a great while when you find yourself at a hacker convention in Las Vegas and every Wi-Fi hot spot is being attacked and thus is basically unusable).

Basically if Verizon continues to use the plans they already have established they win out over AT&T without any competition.

As far as hardware there really isn’t any noticeable difference between AT&T’s iPhone and Verizon’s. The radios are different and the outer antennas are a bit different but everything else is basically the same. From what people have told me AT&T’s 3G data network is faster than Verizon’s but I’ve never used Verizon’s so I can’t attest to that. Verizon does have LTE now which is even faster than 3G but the iPhone doesn’t support it so it’s really not a valid criteria here.

One last advantage that AT&T’s phone has over Verizon’s is the fact you can actually use your AT&T phone in other countries (at the exorbitant cost of international roaming or plans). Of course since the iPhone is SIM locked you can just drop in a SIM card from a local carrier in another country but if your phone is unlocked you gain this advantage.

Basically it’s the same damned phone on two different networks. In this case if you want an iPhone you really have free reign to chose which of the two carriers you want to get it from. There are no game ending differences between the two as far as I can see.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

With all the bad news I’ve been posting lately I thought I’d post something that should lift your spirits up. It seems MySpace isn’t doing so hot and have had to lay off 47% (500 people) of their workforce. The fact that 500 people lost their jobs is sad but the fact that MySpace is slowly dying is great news.

Granted I’m a little bias and still have rage bottled up from day when everybody would link to their horrible MySpace page with the bright pink text on a neon green background.

Targeting Glock

The blame game is go and Glock is the target. Slate did a write up of Glock as a company and basically tries to make underhanded jibes that demonstrate how “evil” Glock is. They make several negative statements but never really mention anything good. In addition to that they also omit quite a bit of information that would make the article less ominous:

Second, and more important, Glocks held more ammunition than the standard-issue guns usually did at the time. With gang-driven gun violence rising, police departments decided to give the guns with the extra rounds a try. They caught on and then gained popularity in the consumer markets. (They also developed a particular cache among criminals, then broader cultural recognition, including numerous citations in rap lyrics.) By 1996, Sweeney writes, Glock had sold more than 1 million guns in America.

Yes police wanted more ammunition. What this story doesn’t tell you is the police departments weren’t upgrading from some 10 shot pistol but from six shot revolvers. Not only did Glock’s pistols hold more than six shots they were much faster to reload. But the biggest hurdle for Glock’s adoption was reliability, police were still using revolvers because they didn’t have much trouble in the way of jamming up. Glock was chosen not only because of additional ammunition capacity but also because of the reliability of their pistols.

Slate then continues to bring up other accusations made against Glock which have no bearing on the shooting in Arizona whatsoever. Of course they also have to point out how well armed we Americans are:

Several other states showed a significant sales bump. And national sales increased about 5 percent. All in all, Americans—not military or police, mind you, but private citizens—own more than 270 million firearms, about 85 guns per 100 people. No other country has such high rates of gun ownership, or absolute numbers of guns in the general population.

The insinuation is America has a high rate of gun related crimes because of how high our gun ownership is. Of course anybody who has looked into the matter knows this is bullshit as countries such as Switzerland and Finland have high rates of gun ownership and pretty low rates of violent crimes. Gun ownership rates have no correlation to levels of violent crimes in a country no matter how much anti-gunners want to believe it.

They also try to make Glock sound like a bad company because they make money:

So how profitable are companies like Glock? Again, we don’t know, because it keeps such information private. But the BusinessWeek story says Glock estimated its “profit margin per pistol” at 68 percent. And consider a major Glock competitor: Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, established back in the 1850s. The company’s last annual report cites a gross margin of 32 percent.

Isn’t making money the whole point of running a company? That’s like accusing a vehicle of somehow being bad because it gets you from point A to point B. You really can’t make something sound evil/bad/wrong when it’s doing the exact thing it’s supposed to. Of course to many out there making a profit is a bad thing that only evil capitalists would dare imagine doing (ironically many of the people making such accusations are rich from profits from capitalism).

Glock Sales Surge

In case you couldn’t predict the bloody obvious Glock’s sales have surged have the shooting in Arizona. The anti-gunners are spouting bullshit about this being some kind of sick desire to own the gun that killed so many people when in fact it’s not.

The reason Glock pistol sales have surged all of the sudden is most likely due to the gun control legislation ideas being pumped out by Washington. One of their own was shot and they’re out for blood meaning they’re going to go after anybody they can. A target in the cross hairs of Washington right now is Glock because they made the tools which was used by the shooter. It’s just like how Washington goes after the manufacturers of getaway vehicles when one is used to commit a crime against… never mind I forgot gun are somehow responsible for crimes while other tools are not.

Either way people want to get Glock pistols before any legislation that may make them illegal (maybe a ban on polymer framed pistols or other such nonsense) starts moving. Why would somebody want one of these pistols? Because they’re fucking amazing tools. Frankly this kind of thing happens whenever a gun is used in a high profile crime so it’s not surprising in any regard. But it’s not due to some desire to have a memento of the shooting.

Better Than Us

Our “representatives” have been positively frothing at the mouth with gun control legislation ideas. A New York “representative” appropriately named King is going to introduce legislation that makes it illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a federal official.

Of course the crazy ass Arizona shooter wouldn’t have shot Gabrielle Giffords if this law was in effect because it would be illegal to carry said gun that close to her. You know they really should just it illegal to shoot somebody as that would be kind of a catch all for these types of situations… wait it already is. I guess we just have to find that one magical law that will make murdering psychopaths reconsider their desires because that makes sense.

The other interesting thing to wonder is what will be the definition of federal official. The federal government employs a great number of people and chances are you have be closer than 1,000 feet to one without even realizing it. How will we know who are federal officials and thus who we have to keep an arbitrary distance from when carrying? Will federal officials be forced to wear some kind of indicator, maybe a “I ban guns within an arbitrary distance of me” sign, as they walk around? I doubt dip shit King put any such thought into these questions as they are concerns only of the peasants of which he rules over.

Hell Hath Frozen Over

Verizon actually annouced the availability of the iPhone on their network. Verizon is throwing in tethering for free which AT&T tries to nail you $20.00 a month for, very cool. Sadly the iPhone 4 won’t work on Verizon’s LTE (4G) network and like every other CDMA device on the planet will be unable to make phone calls and use a data network at the same time (one huge downside to CDMA that GSM doesn’t have to worry about). I did find one thing very interesting though:

11:23AM Q: Is the CDMA iPhone exclusive to Verizon?

Tim: It’s a multi-year, non exclusive deal.

Maybe that means it could work on Sprint’s network someday (sorry but I still love their data plan over Verizon’s). That would be cool although if Apple is working with Verizon I doubt the iPhone will ever have the hardware inside to run on WiMax.

Hopefully this announcement will get AT&T to start making some massive improvements to their network. One thing is for certain, competition is always good.

I Don’t Think the News Reads the News

Notice something wrong with this article?

They have bemoaned the state of America’s political discourse, called for leadership in toning down heated rhetoric, speculated over whether this is a turning point for Barack Obama or Sarah Palin and puzzled over the shooter’s mental state.

But one thing that has scarcely been raised is gun control.

Riiiiiight. It’s not like Feinstein and McCarthy are dancing in the blood happy that they may have a tragedy needed to push through a restriction on arbitrary capacity magazines or anything… oh wait that’s exactly what they’re doing. Wait a minutes, the article contradict itself:

But here in the US, the only regulatory response so far has been to call for a ban on the sale of high capacity magazines like the sort that Jared Loughner allegedly used in Arizona, enabling him to shoot 31 bullets from a semi-automatic handgun without having to reload.

So gun control is scarcely being raised but gun control is being raised. This makes no sense whatsoever until you realize it’s just one long anti-gun article. Those anti-gunners never were too strong on brains nor the ability to write something that doesn’t contradict itself. Hell even I can write an entire article that doesn’t forget earlier parts of itself exist.

Interesting Charges in the Arizona Case

Mr. Arizona Shooter appeared today in court and I found the list of charges interesting:

Mr Loughner was charged with five crimes – the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, the first degree murder of two federal employees and the attempted murder of two federal employees.

Why do all these charges involve attempted or successful murders of government officials? Because they’re like you and me only better. You get a much tougher punishment usually if you commit a crime against a government official as opposed to a little peasant such as you or me. It’s rather telling what our government thinks about us when they decide not to treat all murders with the same punishment (we’re just not that important I guess).

Also the blame game is still going on as everybody is trying to show out the shooter’s politics mirror the politics of those they disagree with. It doesn’t matter if the shooter was a liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, communist, or anything else because the simple fact is he killed people. Once you kill somebody your political beliefs are irrelevant as there are far more non-violent people who hold any political belief than there are violent ones. Stop trying to demonize everybody you don’t like because of the actions of one fucked up individual.