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( .hj by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-31 18:56 · Score: -1, Offtopic · on Matchbox -- a Small Footprint Window Manager

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Re:ugh (ot) by DonkPunch · 2000-06-26 22:56 · Score: 2 · on ESR Invited To 'Advise' USPTO

Man, it took a long time for you to reply.

The Second Amendment was not a huge mistake. It provides the fail-safe for making sure the rest of the Bill of Rights is respected. You are obviously willing to trust our government and elected officials to respect the Constitution. I don't share your faith. History provides too many examples of benevolent leaders who stopped being benevolent once they stopping fearing the people.

We have enough problems in this country getting the government to respect our rights as it is. It is a strikingly bad idea to unilateraly reduce the power and autonomy of the law-abiding citizens.

You say that you will never surrender your freedom of speech/religion/press. My question is: Once you have surrendered your ability to defend yourself, what choice do you have? How, exactly, will you protect your other freedoms?

I am more than a little insulted at your suggestion that I would "forget" to secure my weapon or shoot someone by mistake. You obviously don't know the first thing about responsible firearms handling or even good defensive tactics. What you DO seem to know is every piece of misinformation and half-truth passed off by ABC News and Time magazine. It amazes me that some people can be so good at spotting anti-Linux bias in a ZDNet article, but can't spot one-sided reporting on guns. Here is an article that explains things far better than I could:

http://www.reasonmag.com/0006/fe.ks .loaded.html

You're damn right the founders of this country were paranoid. After what they went through, they had every reason to be. You are fortunate. You live in a small window in history when most of the freedoms you seem to care about aren't immediately threatened. It is incredibly self-centered and arrogant for you to assume that it has always been this way and will always be this way. You also don't seem to care about the rights other people cherish and that shows a degree of selfishness.

We are approaching a holiday in the United States. It is the anniversary of our independence. Please take the time to really think about what it took to secure your freedom of speech. Think about the price paid by those who came before you.

Faced with a similar situation, would you do what they did? Would you have risk everything to insure that your descendants could enjoy freedom?

Or would you march down to the nearest government office, turn in your weapons, and call for everyone else to do the same? Would you choose an illusion of safety over liberty?

Recursive example of copyright censorship by FreeUser · 2000-03-21 22:25 · Score: 3 · on Do IP Laws Stifle Popular Culture?

The most dangerous thing about restrictive copyright laws isn't what they do to old works. It's what they do to new ones. Copyright has traditionally been tempered by the doctrine of "fair use," which allows a limited amount of appropriation for the purpose of parody or criticism. [ ... ] In 1991, for instance, the long-forgotten '70s pop star Gilbert O'Sullivan, discovering that rapper Biz Markie had appropriated three words from his song "Alone Again (Naturally)," successfully sued, not for a share of the royalties, but to suppress Biz Markie's record altogether.

How ironic, that a link in this story may have been the catalyst for further censorship via copyright and legal thuggary, as it appears that the 15 minute silent film "Star Wars: The Remake" Parody has now vanished from the net, after receiving a rather glowing review in the aforementioned article.

Remind me to give George Lucus another $8 when his next Star Wars film comes out. (NOT)

This has been going on for some time.. by IronClad · 2000-01-04 23:33 · Score: 2 · on The Feds' Ramsey Electronics Raid Blow by Blow

I recognize this pattern from a series of raids in San Antonio and elsewhere.

I found some interesting case law here, if you can stand such legal drivel, and and interesting commentary on this enforcement trend from back in '95.

Violanti:
I don't know how to answer that. Use is use. If you place a device in a clock ...

Such are the great legal minds enforcing this: blindly speculating that someone might be using for surreptitious purposes.

The only thing they left out of this violation of common sense was the usual line about how someone can use this technology to abuse children.

Re:FM? by lordsutch · 1999-12-30 16:38 · Score: 2 · on FCC Relaxes Entrance To Ham Radio

I severely doubt it; on issues of already-commercialized segments of the spectrum (i.e. everything except Ham), the FCC is in bed with the big corporations that own the spectrum (and don't want competitors). For starters, try this article from Reason.

Debunking myths with references by peterb · 1999-10-06 06:24 · Score: 4 · on Keyboards - Dvorak or Qwerty?

First of all, the QWERTY keyboard was not designed to slow down typists. It was designed to reduce mechanical problems by intelligent arrangement of the letters (maximizing the separation of the most frequently used letters), and thus the angles at which the swingarms interacted. Those few of you who (like me) have ever USED a mechanical swingarm typewriter know what i'm talking about -- the swingarms that jam are the ones that tend to be close together. But the other story sounds better, and so it gets repeated in places like Newsweek -- and, of course, Slashdot. A nice article on this myth effect can be found at http://www.ddj.com/articles/1 998/9875/9875l/9875l.htm

Second, there have been no conclusive studies that Dvorak typists are any faster than QWERTY typists. The article at http://www.reasonmag.com/9606/Fe.QWERT Y.html gives a reasonably good summary of the non-evidence of Dvorak superiority.

Lastly, my personal experience is that a friend who has switched to Dvorak said "It's a nightmare of pain relearning a new layout for no benefit whatsoever. Go ahead and learn Dvorak if you don't know how to type, but don't go through the psychic trauma of rewiring your fingers if you already are using QWERTY. Its not worth it."

Anyway. Use whatever keyboard makes you happy.

Peter

Also See... by MoNickels · 1999-09-30 21:23 · Score: 3 · on QWERTY, Dvorak and More

That Dvorak keyboards are no better is old news (and has been submitted to Slashdot at least twice before), but for related interesting info see:

Typing Errors in Reason magazine.

Network Effects, Path Dependence and Lock-In

DISMAL SCIENCE FICTIONS Network Effects, Microsoft, and Antitrust Speculation

intent of the Second Amendment by jinschoi · 1999-09-23 03:24 · Score: 1 · on Everything We've Heard About Columbine is Wrong?

While it is impossible to say with certainty what the Founding fathers would have thought of any of the changes this country has gone through in the last 200 years, the vast majority of Second Amendment scholarship agrees that it was intended as an individual, not a collective, right. In fact, this is even referred to as the "Standard Model." Check out this article for an interesting summary of the current state of Second Amendment scholarship. Here's a quote:

But in places where close attention is paid to what words actually say, the states'-rights reading of the Second Amendment has attracted surprisingly little support. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, shall not be infringed." Nor do the words of the amendment assert that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is conditional upon membership in some sort of organized soldiery like the National Guard. Indeed, if there is conditional language in the Second Amendment at all, evidently the contingency runs the other way: "Because the people have a right to keep and bear arms, states will be assured of the well regulated militias that are necessary for their security." Some version of this reading is supported by almost all of the constitutional historians and lawyers who have published research on the subject. Indeed, this view is so dominant in the academy that Garry Wills, the lone dissenter among historians on the proper reading of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," has dubbed it the Standard Model of the Second Amendment.
...no ambiguity at all surrounds the attitude of the constitutional generation concerning "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." To put the matter bluntly, the Founders of the United States were what we would nowadays call gun nuts. "One loves to possess arms," Thomas Jefferson wrote to President Washington (whose own gun collection, Don Kates notes, contained more than 50 specimens). And to his teenage nephew, the author of the Declaration of Independence had this to say: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
They took from Locke the principle that people have a right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, and from both Hobbes and Locke--to say nothing of their own experience with the Crown --the principle that central governments have a tendency, which requires systematic mitigation, to become overmighty with those subject to their power. The purpose of an armed population was to guarantee that the central government could not possess a monopoly of violence (no wonder modern-day liberals find the Second Amendment so hateful) and to assure that citizens would have the wherewithal to defend themselves and their communities against tyrants and wrongdoers.

And as to the question of what the Founding Fathers thought of guns, check out this article about a gun law recently overturned on second amendment grounds, which also speaks to the point of the intent of the authors of the Bill of Rights.

One of the quotes from the sidebar:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined...The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun. -Patrick Henry

One can argue that they might be "dismayed" by the proliferation of guns, or that they didn't intend for everyone to be able to carry a gun, but I don't think that view is well supported. They intended the Second Amendment to act as a preventative towards tyranny. Not particularly so that people can shoot at targets or go hunting, although those tend to be what most people use guns for.

A lot of people would like to make the Second Amendment irrelevant to these times, and ignore it. You can't just ignore Constitutional Amendments, especially one on the Bill of Rights! If it is not relevant, it should be repealed. If allowed to remain, it should not be ignored.

Re:the story at the end by Demona · 1999-04-28 03:58 · Score: 1 · on ReviewDave Barry in Cyberspace

His book on Japan was similar: Vintage humor throughout, and then a surprisingly sober, thoughtful reflective piece at the end. In fact, the last chapter of his Japan book was one of the best things he's ever written, humorous or otherwise.

Whatever he writes, though, I don't think we have to worry about Dave calling for net regulation; in an interview with Reason magazine, he effectively debunks the myth that freedom is bad "because then everyone would have sex with dogs." Great stuff.

URLs with More Details by MoNickels · 1999-04-05 00:55 · Score: 4 · on The Myth of QWERTY

These two articles give far more details, and, I think, provide a convincing case that the evidence in favor of Dvorak is "cooked." "Should technology choice be a concern of antitrust policy?" and more specifically related to QWERTY vs.Dvorak, "TYPING ERRORS: The standard typewriter keyboard is Exhibit A in the hottest new case against markets. But the evidence has been cooked."

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