echo1

In most places, you are legally entitled to refuse such treatment. But there is of course a difference between letting someone die, and making someone die. I have no issues with the former, the latter makes me nervous. ---------- Post added at 09:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:15 PM ---------- I know a few people who've went through phases of severe depression that left them suicidal. Given that some of them are close friends of mine, I'm quite happy not to live in a world were we facilitate people killing themselves so to not inconvenience bystanders. If they're not interested in saying goodbye, they're going to kill themselves anyway aren't they? Think about it. I just don't think that legislation should suggest that people who are not thinking straight should be free to kill themselves is necessarily a desirable thing. ---------- Post added at 09:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:19 PM ---------- That, and if you consider diseases like MS that tend to be the disease in question in many high profile cases of euthanasia - if it becomes the 'done thing' for people with such conditions to kill themselves off, where's the incentive to search for a cure or suitable treatment? Research expertise is few and far between, and costs a lot of money. They cater to the interests of the people who give them money, and they tend to favor diseases in which there is sufficient interest in curing, so the sad fact is that unless there are people suffering from these things, the people with the potential power to fix them cant and/or wont care.

I elaborated on why it's a bad idea in general on the first (and possibly second) page in the thread and didn't really feel like typing it all out again. The problem is that when you normalize the idea of killing people, it has a desensitizing effect, and people will start to accept things that really aren't kosher. For example, if it is acceptable for someone wasting away from the effects of terminal stage MS to request that their doctor bump them off, and everyone accepts this as being morally acceptable, what about a scenario where someone is not able to communicate to the doctor properly, and the family has to be involved in the decision process? Is that really such a far jump from letting the patient request death from the doctor themselves? That example may not be bad within of itself, but when you have 'nested' desensitization, you start to get thoroughly unpleasant things. Switzerland is letting people with depression chose to kill themselves (I thought we were meant to help and prevent people with depression from killing themselves?) and in the Netherlands, you have this mess. Again, go back to my posts on the start where I ruminate on the topic a bit further. You can have a problem with something without it directly affecting you. The freedom of choice in any matter must be balanced against the potential harms that it does to the people affected, and society as a whole. So saying that people should have a right to choose and that if you're not interested you shouldn't do it is just a poor attempt at trying to finish the debate before it has even started. ---------- Post added at 01:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:19 PM ---------- Thanks for giving an example of the sort of meaningless straw man arguments and guilt trips that I was talking about, and even highlighting them in bold writing and CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis. You also managed to throw in a few references of what looks like pain being inflicted on me because I don't agree with you (apparently a broken leg requires a life support machine?). Still not proving anything. ---------- Post added at 01:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:22 PM ---------- Maybe not atheism, but you seemed to insinuate that an anti-Euthanasia stance is inherently intertwined with religious beliefs. The insinuation that inevitably arises out of that one way or another is that only demented Catholic grannies and deranged Islamic suicide bombers would object to euthanasia.

The road to disaster is always paved with the best of intentions. I don't think it was ever a question over whether it was 'humane' or not, the issue is whether it is really a good idea when the big picture is looked at. One of the problems I have with the pro-Euthanasia camp is the strong reliance on straw man arguments, and appealing to people's guilt, and fear of pain and suffering (albeit not necessarily deliberately in the latter two instances). People can churn out stories of situations where euthanasia would have been perfect for someone they knew who was wasting away in agony, and it sort of puts people in a situation whereby if they don't think that the suffering person deserved to chose to end their own suffering, then they look like an asshole, and they feel reluctantly obliged to agree with the idea of euthanasia. But there are a lot of issues, both practical and moral, that these idealized scenarios don't address, and so any meaningful assessment of euthanasia has to look beyond petty name calling and insinuations that people who disagree with you are religious lunatics in order to go anywhere useful. To labor the point further - I've been an atheist since I was ten years old. I don't think Euthanasia is a good idea. Your argument is invalid.

Don't bother with non-brand PSUs, they're shit. Just get a Corsair and it will work perfectly.

One of Corsair's PSUs... something in the 550-650W region.

Well, I hardly 'Chrome the Intertubes', do I?

The irony is that the 'slippery slope' argument he made was in reference to one of my posts, in which I used the Dutch system as an example of how it can go horribly wrong. Refer to my first post on the first page of the thread.

Anyone try the IE9 beta?

Well actually, the US is only 57 miles away from Russia. Ever look at a map of Alaska? They're even thinking of building a bridge over it.

When, for example, a life support machine is turned off, there's always a chance that if it was left on for one second longer that the person would make a miraculous recovery, jump out of bed and scream Alleluia. But probability tells us strange things may happen when we now in reality that they're not. So a fine line has to be drawn somewhere.

There was a case of a woman in the Netherlands who was bereaved of her children in an accident, and successfully sought euthanasia because of the anguish she felt. Anywhere else, she would have been given counseling, maybe some anti-depressants. In a society that tolerated euthanasia, she was bumped off. The issue with euthanasia is this - as it stands in most countries, we don't actively kill sick people. We help them along in the late stages by increasing the morphine dose which can speed up the death process, but not directly cause it. The usual argument is "But why should someone in a hopeless condition have to live on in agony, and without hope, in order to get to that point?" and this is a reasonable argument in isolation. So we legalize Euthanasia with provisions so that only people in the terminal stages can be killed, for example - the patient has to be certified to be terminal, in agony, and is estimated to have about 6 months to live. But then comes the slippery slope. People start to ask "Why should I have to wait till I have only one year left?", "Is it really necessary for me to be in agony? I may not be in agony, but I'm paralyzed and can't do anything at all". Of course, now that killing people in agony with only six months to live is morally acceptable, that seems pretty reasonable now too. So we change the laws accordingly. Sooner or later, we are killing people suffering from depression. Sooner or later, we just kill anyone who is sick. If we don't, the system begins to seem as arbitrary as our current one does to some people. Obviously a line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere. The most consistent and logical place to draw it is at the bit where euthanasia is not allowed. Simple as that.

This somewhat worries me.

I still want to know where this militia is and what it is called... I want to join - I'm an ex-Marine Delta SEAL, and the boathouse in Hereford is pink with polka dots.

What is this militia called? Where is it based?

The parts look good, but as pointed out, get a case without a PSU. In fact, the ones that come with PSUs are usually low quality.

This is like some video game equivalent of Policy Academy...

They're also expensive and have a limited firing life.

I think you've misunderstood my point - Most automatic weapons are dependent on the energy generated by the explosion of the propellant - either using the gases (gas operated) or recoil (blowback operated). Subsonic rounds generate less recoil and gas because of the lighter load. Consequently, most rifle caliber subsonic cartridges will turn the weapon into a bolt action rifle because it cannot cock the bolt by itself. AFAIK, the same happens when certain special cartridges are used with semi-automatic shotguns. I think in the case of the MP5SD, they just figured that they could get away with using regular full power cartridges and make it sufficiently silent, so that's what they did. I'm sure that there may have been additional considerations that were valid then but not now.

This morning I wore a red jumper. In the afternoon, it rained. Explain that.

Yes, one of those pictures indeed. Problem with subsonic bullets is that they don't put out a lot of energy and thus makes it hard to make an automatic weapon that uses them. Obviously there are plenty of examples of automatic weapons that can use subsonic rounds, but that could have been a design consideration.

Most pistol rounds are supersonic.

The MP5SD is designed specifically to use regular supersonic rounds. In fact, I don't think it will work with subsonic rounds. I have also read somewhere that because the design of the SD's suppressor is relatively old, that a regular MP5 with a screw on silencer is more silent.

They're busy porting ArmA 3 to the Crysis engine so that it will work better with SLI setups.

When I google for the forums to get here, I see the old one is still around with it's '..will be removed' header... Is it ever going to be removed?

I realized that the thread title makes absolutely no sense, it was meant to be something like "How long is the old forum going to be up?"