StrangeSox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 12:21 PM) Let's be realistic - how much money and man power would it take for that to be effective? It's a gated community mind you. If you're a teenager staking out a place, how difficult is it to hide behind a bush until the "patrol" drives by? How effective have Zimmerman's armed patrols been? The criminals haven't been caught and an innocent person is dead. Is Martin's life the price society pays in order to send a message to would-be criminals?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 12:17 PM) He was trained with his weapon right? Licensed/certified all that. He wasn't someone who stumbled upon a gun and decided to start shooting people. I have no idea what sort of training Florida requires for a CC license. However, I strongly doubt it includes actual policing training that would be appropriate in a scenario where you're following a suspicious subject around the neighborhood. Civilians are not trained to deal with that sort of situation, how to approach someone, how to deal with the adrenaline rush and the tunnel vision, how to apprehend someone, how to deal with the situation psychologically. You're conflating home defense and CC/SYG here.

If only poor Trayvon had been armed

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 12:12 PM) I think someone's presence like Zimmerman's is going to be more effective than relying on people to call something into the police AFTER the crime has already occurred. That's the point i'm trying to make. Increasing police funding to do more patrols or to speed up response times isn't going to do anything because at that point the crime is already over. Ideally if Martin were a potential robber, Martin "stalking" him would have ended up being a phone call to the police before or during Martin's crime, not after he was already gone. Why wouldn't more frequent police patrols serve as a deterrent?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 12:07 PM) Sorry I don't buy into the media hype of this situation when innocent kids in my own city are killed on a nightly basis. It's a tragedy, no doubt about it, but we deal with these incidents on a daily basis without a second of thought. Plenty of people give the deaths of those innocent kids thought. There are community organizations, marches, rallies, educational sessions, counseling etc. "We shouldn't care about an innocent black kid being shot to death and his shooter not being charged because we (as a larger society) don't care about other kids being gunned down" isn't exactly a great argument, nor does it address where the biggest injustice in this case is.

Jenks, please tell me I'm reading your posts wrong: It's acceptable that armed, untrained civilians actively "take back their streets" from burglars, even if it significantly increases the likelihood that an innocent victim who was incorrectly profiled winds up shot to death? That the loss of a human life is a tragic event, but that we need to move past it in order to look at the bigger picture of stopping burglaries?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 11:59 AM) We deal with tragic losses daily and continue moving forward because the bigger picture is more important. I don't see how this case differs. If Zimmerman and his fellow neighbors could turn the tide of his neighborhood by being active, by showing an attitude that they're not going to accept the crime, that they will be armed and might act in protection of their life/property, then perhaps the criminals will think twice about what they're doing. As is, criminals are in fear of nothing. They don't fear their victims and they don't fear getting caught because they know, especially with theft/robbery, they'll be back on the streets in no time. Police can't keep up (and again, they're role isn't to prevent crime in the first place) so I'm 100% ok with people like Zimmerman taking an active role in trying to take back their street. This is shockingly callous.

what is this I don't even

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 11:52 AM) Right, but this is precisely why those communities try to start neighborhood watches, to start reigning in their communities with their churches, etc. They're TRYING to do SOMETHING, not just protect their home and hope nothing bad happens. Unfortunately for the communities here it's far too late and it's just a perpetual cycle that won't be broken until those communities are broken up. But that's a different topic. I know I linked to the Frontline episode called The Interrupters in this thread. These communities in Chicago are not just sitting back and hoping the police handle it (they don't trust the police); they're being proactive and trying to stop the violence.

QUOTE (God Loves The Infantry @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 11:48 AM) No one should rely on the police. The police are reactive, not proactive. If someone is going to break into my home and kill me and my girlfriend, the police won't stop them. The police will possibly start the process of putting the bastards away after the fact. But we'll be dead. What will keep us alive is the HK in my nightstand, the rifle in the closet and the shotty in the other closet. Maybe the 1911 or the Glock in the safe. That's what I rely on to keep my family safe. The cops? Ha. Let 'em show up afterwards and scrape the poor f***er's brains off the wall. Arguably, those weapons won't stop them either if they know what they're doing. I have zero problem with home defense. I used to be ambivalent on CC but now lean against.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 26, 2012 -> 10:59 AM) This is why the south and west sides are completely lost. The communities have thrown up their hands and relied on the police to deal with the problem. Unfortunately the police are reactionary. They don't prevent crime, they clean up the mess as best they can. Generally speaking, poor minority communities do not rely on the police. They strongly distrust the police. edit: and I really doubt armed civilian response is going to stop violence from organized gangs. In fact I'd place a good deal of money on homicides increasing!

Some people take non-violence as an absolute, even going so far as to disavow violent retaliation or defense. I believe there were Quakers on the frontier who held these views.

So all of this dog stuff is pretty dumb, but a Romney advisor had a pretty hilarious burn on the President/Axelrod.

I liked the Ron Paul "iron standard" joke

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 25, 2012 -> 03:23 PM) The only reason I ask is that I can spend an extra 20 bucks and get the unlocked i5 chip. If it's something I might eventually do (i.e., easy enough to do) I'll just do that. My ATI Radeon graphics card from back in the day had that feature and it rarely worked properly. I think the unlocked version has HD3000 graphics instead of HD2000. It's a pretty substantial difference if you were at all considering using the integrated graphics for at least a little while. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-san...-2100-tested/11

With the new GUI BIOS screens overclocking is super easy. Based on a few articles I've come across at sites like tomshardware, it's not hard to get substantially more performance out of an i5-2500k, pushing it up into i7 territory and not increasing the thermal load much at all.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 25, 2012 -> 01:10 PM) We're in the NBA Finals already? I took that as a reference to last year.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 25, 2012 -> 10:41 AM) Also, keep in mind that a *GOOD* monitor costs a LOT. Whether you buy pre-built or not, when it comes to LCD's you get what you pay for. Note that I didn't say a crappy knock off monitor, I said a good monitor...for photo/video/gamers like myself, the monitor is just as important as the graphics card. I have two of these at work: http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/hp-lp...7-33230410.html

That computer has a slower HDD @ 5400RPM as well. 7200 RPM disks are widely available.

I'm sure some of the other people who actually work in the field can offer stronger recommendations (y2hh?), but I run free anti-virus from Avast! on my machines and haven't had any issues.

You can run into weird problems and even potentially damage your components by under-powering them. Newegg has a handy calculator for recommended power supply sizing. Since I knew I was sticking with integrated graphics for now, I haven't really read up on graphics cards.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 25, 2012 -> 09:44 AM) Ugh, forgot about that. Yeah I might just buy a cheap i5 computer and buy a decent video card for 150 bucks and call it a day You can get a copy for $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16832116986 Going with the BB computer is definitely easier in the short term and probably a little bit cheaper. Just keep in mind that you may be replacing the power supply down the road.

Oh and I'm not sure how well it actually correlates to performance, but the "Windows Experience" rates my new desktop as 5.6 out of 7.9 overall, with the graphics being the lowest rating. I haven't actually tried to run any games, though. For comparison, my work PC, which has a $500 workstation graphics card, gets a 6.7 graphics score.

One thing to keep in mind is that you'll need to either use a free OS like something Linux or acquire a copy of Windows, so factor that into your budget. I had a purchased copy of Windows 7 that I installed on my old netbook that I broke so I used that.