Small town sheriff buys tank: "the United States of America has become a war zone"

boing
83

When you say “concern driving trollies”, it seems like you are saying you think people are being inauthentic and just bringing this stuff up in bad faith to get their trolley kicks. I think there is just a disagreement about how the framing

I looked up “tank” in the dictionary and copied the synonyms. Go back and read it, please. That’s all anyone else had to do instead of wasting space in this thread with trite semantics and pedantic, distracting concern driving trollies over said trite semantics.

I think boingboing is a place for critical thinkers that can whip out a dictionary if there’s any semantic confusion and focus on the real issues instead. But, that would mean putting aside OCD-driven pedantry and egos, I suppose.

I read the article, looked at the fucking thing and thought about the horrible state some of our police forces are in when they’ve become conditioned to think they need military-style vehicles like this. That’s what bothers me deeply. And, if it bothers you, the last thing I’d think you’d want to fret about is the terminology of tanks. And, if you didn’t like the terminology, look it up in the dictionary like I easily did.

Direly fretting over the usage of the word “tank” is ridiculous, distracting and infantile. If you think it’s important enough to derail the thread, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I have said all I need to about this stupid waste of time.

1 Like
84

Mod note: Snark levels getting high in here. Knock it off.

1 Like
86

I used to use FlashBlock and similar for Firefox, but they ended up creating more problems than they solved.

Most of the time you click to activate a video or plugin, it doesn’t actually work - forcing you to deactivate the blocker and restart the browser to watch a simple video or let a download pop-up through or whatever. Pausing the rare self-starting video is a lot less hassle than restarting your entire browser for every video you do want to watch.

And even when everything works perfectly, you still have to make an extra click for every single damn instance of video, on top of the fact that most video players require a click to autoplau anyway. And you can’t see a freezeframe of the video to get a sense of what it contains, which is immensely frustrating on webpages with certain layouts, especially when you have multiple video players embedded next to each other and want to watch a single specific video among them.

Security has to be balanced with useability. If you stick your vital papers in a safe, then launch that safe into orbit, it’s going to be really damn secure - but the moment you need to access the safe to retrieve and use the papers, you’re in trouble. A safe in your own home isn’t quite as difficult to get into - both for nefarious outside parties, and for yourself.

You can also change your security to suit your needs on the fly. For normal everyday web browsing on trusted sites, basic security is plenty. For the occasional deep diving in the weird parts of the web looking for specific things that can only be found there, you’re going to want to turn on a few more plugins.

Most of us readers here on BoingBoing don’t expect to need to switch to maximum security just to read new stories here. So when one of the tech-savvy internet folks who contribute to this blog embeds a self-starting video, we’re suitably annoyed - and rightly so. It didn’t do any real harm, it was just an accident I’m sure, but they honestly ought to know better.

The problem isn’t that readers aren’t protecting themselves, the problem is this is BoingBoing and we shouldn’t have to. If we go browse 4chan or some shady Russian sites, sure, then you can tell us off if we don’t protect ourselves.

But to most of us, BB is more like a pleasant park in a nice neighborhood than a filthy back-alley in Mega-City One. When the town mayor invites a public speaker to the park who turns out to have a drug problem and just throws their spent needles in the grass, you don’t blame the park-goers for not wearing impenetrably thick boots - you blame the mayor for not properly vetting their guest speaker and ensuring their proper behavior.

87

No, just apparently our schools.

88

I’ll tell you what I read in that statement and you can tell me if I’m getting it wrong or not: Does that statement have to do with gun control (or the presumed existence thereof) in America?

89

That’s not 100% accurate. Some people did live in warzones over that time. Just not middle class white people…

90

I believe I’ve seen a cartoon similar to your expression.

91

I used to use FlashBlock and similar for Firefox, but they ended up creating more problems than they solved.

You don’t need to use that in Firefox. It has a click-to-play plug-ins option built-in and works with everything. Even Firefox for Android has tap-to-play and it works flawlessly. Chrome has the option built-in as well. Safari has Marc Hoyois’ ClickToPlugin Safari Extension which is my favorite for the added flash video download options, but newer versions have click-to-play built-in as well.

With any of these options I’m never forced to restart the browser to load video and it makes web surfing much more secure.

If we go browse 4chan or some shady Russian sites, sure, then you can tell us off if we don’t protect ourselves.

I wasn’t telling anyone off, thanks.

You’re also incorrect about browsing habits. Normal browsing of the web can lead you to legit websites that have been hacked without the owner’s knowledge and Flash and other plug-ins like Java is one of the main gateways for hackers to compromise your computer without your knowledge. Boing Boing can link to sites that have been hacked without their knowledge. At least with click-to-plug-in options, strange calls to load plug-ins are easily thwarted by the user instead of running silently in the background.

If you think the Web is only dangerous at “shady” websites, you haven’t been keeping up with widespread security issues. It’s a very bad idea to surf anywhere on the Internet in 2014 whilst loading any and all plug-ins in the background without your knowledge.

Evidence of legit sites being hacked and dispensing malware, phishing, exploits, etc:

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/security/massive-flash-exploit-campaign-directed-at-japan-seeks-financial-data/

More info:

Firefox 30 blocks plugins by default
http://news.yahoo.com/firefox-30-blocks-plugins-default-121726858.html

Improving plug-in security

92

A quick look up on my mac:

2 a heavy armored fighting vehicle carrying guns and moving on a continuous articulated metal track.

93

That small town is located in Indiana. As I already provided for - Indiana is one of the worst states in the union for the production of meth. Since they already had a similar vehicle (and they drive like farm equipment) there’s not a lot of specialized training involved. Maintenance and replacement parts are the only real increased costs - except those would be just as bad for an older vehicle that’s falling apart. I’m sorry, but for the vehicle, I can’t agree with you.

94

So long as we’re just buying Maggie’s baby new shoes, I’m cool with it. My fear is that BoingBoing may be saving up to buy an MRAP of their own.

2 Likes
95

I’m kinda looking forward to seeing it at Maker Fair…though I’m less sure about Jackhammer Jill replacing her iconic jackhammer with a crew served machine gun…

96

A two day riot in a single city is a far cry from a war.

97

Expand your knowledge horizons and look up synonyms online. You’re capable of that, I would hope. Otherwise, you’re frankly embarrassing yourself.

98

Cowicide, your post is all snark and no substance.

Synonyms are not necessarily words with identical meanings. Word choice matters and makes a difference. “Abacus,” “adding machine,” “mainframe” and “PC” are all synonyms for “computer”, but they don’t all mean the same thing. An “abacus” didn’t just pass (or fail) the Turing test, even though abacus is a synonym for “computer”. Likewise, A small town sheriff didn’t just buy a “tank” even though you can type in “armored personnel carrier” and search an on-line thesaurus for synonyms.

1 Like
99

No, I was regarding it more from the Canadian side of things, given where I live. Our Police are steadily militarizing as well, and actively seeking to confiscate firearms that they deem are ‘too scary’. Just two months past the RCMP randomly decided that two firearms that had been sold legally in Canada for the better part of a decade were suddenly completely illegal and everyone who owned them had to turn them in, without compensation, or be branded criminals of the worst order.

Law-abiding citizens, mind you, not criminals. Everyday people who just shoot for fun, now threatened to have their property stolen by the police, who themselves are wanting military-grade gear.

That scenario has happened a few times before. The results were never good.

1 Like
100

No, using the word ‘tank’ to make an absurd purchase look psychotic is what is ridiculous, distracting, and infantile. Cory could have simply discussed what they bought with ‘armored military vehicle’ and made his point. But he decided that the story wasn’t crazy enough and that he would use hyperbole to take the story the n-th level by calling it a tank.

It isn’t a tank and people should describe things as they actually are. His hyperbole is making this story more about his ego than about the militarization of police forces.

101

Synonyms are not necessarily words with identical meanings

So you now want to take pedantry to an even lower level and have a semantic argument over what synonym means.

:smiley:

102

using the word ‘tank’ to make an absurd purchase look psychotic is what is ridiculous, distracting, and infantile.

I’m shocked you’d bother to continue reading anything from Cory since he commits such ridiculous and infantile acts such as using the term “tank”.

Your obsessive, compulsive pedantry aside… It’s a nice, short synonym to use as shown above.

Meanwhile… Like most boingboing readers with critical thinking skills, I’m going to focus on the point of Cory’s thread instead of delving into trite, beside-the-point, distracting, concern-driving trollies semantics.

Thank you for your direly important reply.

103

You’re saying the small town needs this military-style vehicle and all the ongoing expenses it requires because there’s lots of meth in Indiana. Can you explain this position with facts and sources? And, do you also agree with the sheriff that he needs this vehicle in his specific small town because it’s part of a war zone?