The threat of the Soviet Union was -much- less of a threat than what we have with Islamic radicalism, when did the Soviets attack on US soil? They never did, did the USSR have spies? Of course they did. Did they have rockets pointed at our major cities, yes of course they did. But we had the exact same thing, theres no doubt we had missiles pointed at Russia, we had spies, spy planes, satellites, etc. Did the Soviets commit huge human rights abuses? Yes, but so did we. Or are you forgetting things like the Japanese Internment Camps, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and various other human right abuses.
Not to mention that the entire paranoia completely neglected the fact that Communism in the form that the USSR practiced, could never be sustainable.
WWII wasn't just because the entire European front (and a lot of the pacific front) could have been avoided if we hadn't been imperialistic to begin with. If we hadn't screwed up the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler wouldn't have come to power because of the fact that Germany's economy wouldn't have been in shambles and people wouldn't be looking to nationalism to solve their problems.
Did you know Communism was evil? I'm an atheist, I don't have the same "right" or "wrong" moral view you might think I have. But under any definition the Soviet's were fucking evil. Stalin = GWB? You're fucking insane if you go that route. The Taliban did blow up the Towers. The US should have gone in there. Iraq is more muddled, but at the same time Saddam never should have been allowed to stay in power. You know, France loved financing his regime, but whatever. Imperialism is bad. Tell that to the Moors when they tried to conquer Europe. If the world was all hippy's I'd love to stop military spending. But you know, until that happens I'd rather the US be the power then say Iran. I know I know. 6 of 1 half a dozen of another. Just two sides the same coin. Be glad there are people that make sure you have internet access if though you shit on them.
Yes, the Soviets did do evil things, so did the US, so did the UK, so did Germany, etc. All governments are corrupt by definition. If you look at the reasons why the Taliban had the resources to blow up the towers is because we funded it yes, our tax dollars went to support the very people who we are fighting.
Theres nothing wrong with defending a country from foreign attacks, but defend it, don't go out looking for a fight. When we go out looking for a fight, we end up paying for the bullets that they use to shoot at us with. I'm not a "hippie" I'm not a pacifist, I do however know history and history isn't on the side of those who wage imperialistic wars, especially the US. Get out of the middle east and the rest of the world, cut military and domestic spending by a lot, decrease taxes and watch the economy grow leaps and bounds.
...Only because we were lied to and were impulsive. If people thought we would still be actively fighting a war in Afghanistan in 2010, I can guarantee you that it wouldn't have much support. If people actually remembered their history and realized that we keep funding the people who we fight a generation later, and this was widely proclaimed through the media, there wouldn't be much support. But alas, the American people was essentially told that the fighting would be over in a few weeks and the mainstream media was too sensationalized to actually look at history so "we" got stuck with the war.
We have a republican form of government that in essence boils down to a democracy. Ask people why they voted a certain way and the vast majority of people voted because of a few "key" issues, issues like abortion, global warming, stem cell research, wars, taxes, etc. So yes, we do have a democracy when it comes to wars, think of how many people voted for Bush the second term rather than any other candidate simply because they supported the war or some other single issue.
The vast majority of races for congress, governor, president, etc. have come down to basic democracy on a few issues.
But carry on. Keep obsessing and feeding the vain egotistical schmuck. Keep giving him the power to dictate and jerk you around like a dog on a leash. Put him on a pedestal as an authority and praise his name like he's some new messiah. When you find out you've been wasting your time and people get hurt you might learn.
Yes, because we all know that imperialistic wars historically have always been great, right? Oh wait... they haven't. Explain to me how by using facts and reason I'm being led like a dog on the leash.
FACT The US helped arm and fund Islamic radicals in the 80s.
FACT The US is wasting tons upon tons of money in these imperialistic wars
FACT The US has killed many civilians in this imperialistic war
Explain to me how using facts and reason is making me be a sheep? Lets see here the argument in favour of the war and the "troops" goes as follows:
We were attacked by Islamic terrorists on 9/11 THEREFORE we must invade 2 countries, kill lots of civilians, cause mass chaos and waste money and if you don't support this you are "Un-American" because terrorists are bad.
Now granted, 30 years ago the argument was:
The Communists have an atomic bomb!!! THEREFORE we must invade countless countries, support various Islamic organizations and right wing dictators and waste money if you don't support this you are "Un-American" because COMMUNISM IS EVIL JUST PURE EVIL
These documents only echo history, imperialistic wars waste taxpayer money, kill innocents, support murders and decline standards of living.
Why don't we be angry at "our" government for forcing us into this war despite popular opinion and history against it (want to know why Saddam and radical Islam control the middle east? Look back to the 80s when we were actively funding them).
Yes, because killing civilians and continuing imperialistic wars has really made the world a better place! Look back 30 years, how the hell do you think the Taliban got into power? Oh wait, back then Russia was the "bad guy" and fundamentalist Islam was the "good guy" so we ended up supplying them with guns, bombs, etc. How do you think Hussein got into power? Oh wait we helped him get into power... How do you think that all these dictators running most of South America got into power?
The sooner we end the wars the better it is for the US and the rest of the world.
Democracy can only work if people have access to -all- the information available to make an informed decision. Tainted information be it from media bias or government secrecy undermines it. How do you know what the Taliban does? We are fed propaganda every day. No, I'm not saying that the Taliban are nice people, that we should support them (though we did) or that the conventional view is wrong, but think about where you get your information from and you will find that you really could have been fed pure lies. Without information, how do you make that decision?
It is important to end imperialistic wars because it -always- bites us in the ass later on. These ever so evil Taliban fighters? Oh wait we supported them against the "evil" USSR. Saddam Hussein? Oh wait we helped him too...
If you think the US supports human rights you are sadly mistaken, imperialistic wars like the wars in the middle east and Vietnam have -always- ended up in a net loss for human rights and a net loss for the world.
Bullshit. The only person he put at risk are the warmongers running this country. If I invest in a company I have a right to know the financial details of the company, but yet when I'm forced to "invest" in a war suddenly they can obscure all the details?
A democracy becomes nothing more than a mob if information is not released, if the government wouldn't release it, I applaud Julian Assange for having the balls to post it so the world can make a rational decision on whether it is worth it to continue the war.
Because if you are uploading something to Facebook the geolocation info is not going to be any benefit to you, if you resize the pictures and the like, stripping the geolocation is just another step that doesn't harm the uploader. Now, I'd be against stripping geolocation data over something like e-mail, but over something like Facebook or something like Tinypic the geolocation information is not going to be beneficial. If your trying to put together a map with your photos, then use the originals, don't use the resized Facebook pictures.
This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures. The original pictures still have the sometimes useful geolocation data, but your Facebook pictures won't.
The nice thing about all-in-one devices is it doesn't take up extra pocket space. Try stuffing a camera, MP3 player, DS and GPS all in your pocket, you can't fit them all in. Of course a camera is going to take better pictures, an MP3 player (might) be better at playing MP3s, a DS better for playing games and a standalone GPS best for navigation. But its a lot nicer to put one device in your pocket that can play lots of games, can find the nearest coffee shop, that has all of your music and can take basic pictures than to keep all the stuff in your pocket. And its generally a lot cheaper if you don't need insanely high quality products to buy a phone which is, what? $100, 200? on contract and with most carriers not offering discounts for SIM-only plans, the subsidized cost is a non-issue. Yes, you are going to get higher quality games on the DS, but for having 10 mins to kill, playing a game of Super Mario Bros on an NES emulator is going to be just as fun as playing Super Ultra Mario Bros DS for 10 mins, same thing with cameras, chances are unless your a pro photographer, you don't need a DLSR, you just want to take a few pictures for your facebook, and spending $600 on a camera is usually useless, etc.
...And a lot of the reason that Android users don't spend a ton of money on apps are threefold.
A) Android has a lot of really good free apps and it has lite apps that don't suck.
B) Most people who use Android aren't the type of people who spend lots and lots of money on needless things.
C) With no restrictions on app development, the person who makes a $.99 fart application loses business to the teenager with an hour of free time and an SDK who makes his own one and releases it for free for his own amusement. With the iPhone that app might cost $50 or more to develop.
Have you ever used a phone for gaming? It sucks. Even when emulators run beautifully for it, you either have to get a GameGripper-like device to use the keyboard or hook up a Wii controller via bluetooth to play it.
Using a phone as a controller would be one of the worst moves ever (even worse than the Wii's basic controller)
Is Star Trek really predicting things or is it more that the current generation of geeks were raised on Star Trek and they make it happen? I think its more of sci-fi pictures a futuristic world of utopia and has some gadgets to make it seem realistic and futuristic, people want to make the utopia happen and such so they go back and make real-world implementations of the gadgets.
...And how many of the BlackBerry users really -like- BlackBerry OS and didn't just pick a BlackBerry because it was cheap, their company bought one or the like? BlackBerry OS is aging, and although its rather irrelevent for the military, just compare a simple cross-platform app like Facebook, the iPhone has the best quality app, next Android (especially since the last update) then WebOS, then WinMo and BlackBerry OS.
The iPhone would be the worst out of all of them because it comes with only a single form factor, the BlackBerry hardware is decent but lets face it, the fact it reroutes a lot of traffic to non-military servers would be a problem not to mention the OS problems. Android can be made in multiple form factors, as could WinMO but until WinMO comes out with version 7... it completely sucks. Even PalmOS (yeah, the old one running on like the Palm Centro) is more usable than Windows Mobile.
The problem with Africa is that eventually the dictators running the majority of the countries in Africa will wake up and put tighter controls on the internet and there goes the "net" generation. The only reason why Africa is currently thriving when it comes to "new" technology is because the governments are in the interim stage between freedom and complete control, currently the majority of Africa even the countries run by dictators is so vast and infrastructure is so poor and resources are so limited that the dictators don't care to wiretap phones, to run the servers needed to censor the net, etc.
As soon as technology becomes more affordable that the poorer countries in Africa can have it, you can bet that innovation will be stiffed by their oppressive government which made the countries to be poor to begin with.
No, no it wasn't spam that killed it, it was the unfriendly interfaces. E-mail ended up having several crappy carriers each with various silly limits that existed until fairly recently when Gmail basically forced them out (such as tiny inboxes, limited messaging, limited space, unreliable servers, etc) not to mention that HTML-e-mail could be malicious and there was no way to embed some things in it (such as Video) and images got a bad rep after people started using them as tracing.
MySpace ended up being killed by unattractive profiles, fake names were prevalent and the fact that there was just a small user base (teens and indie bands) didn't help things.
Facebook is good because it combines the best of everything. If you want to search for someone you don't have to search for xx_HaloPlayer43234, you can just type in "Bryan Smith" and find your friend. You can easily share images, video, etc. and chat (when it works) it a lot nicer than having 4 accounts for MSN, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ, it easily embeds with phones (even dumb-phones via text) and has a huge userbase.
E-mail is pretty much dead because E-mail was being forced to do things that E-mail wasn't designed to do and was only hacked on with HTML-Email.
No, I think you're reaching this conclusion only because you want to. You're extrapolating way beyond Kagan's statement and envisioning a land where the "minority" (the US citizenship I presume) live in subjugation under the harsh dictatorship of the "majority" (some kind of self-perpetuating regime of former Democrats). While that's a great premise for a sci-fi novel, thankfully there's no connection to the appointment of Kagan.
But we are already seeing it, albeit not with a constitutional question (yet) look in California and the banning of gay marriages (yes it was overturned but still). Does it even matter if gays marry? Seriously, does the fact that someone lives across the street and is gay make you gay? You have a case where the majority (straight people) are essentially telling the minority what to do even when it doesn't affect them.
There are a lot of other cases like that sadly where the majority who won't be affected with what the minority wants use elections to tell the minority what to do.
Do you really think that the commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause are clear? Because if you do you'd be the only one.
They are both rather broad powers that gives Congress a central power to pass laws in accordance to the constitution. It basically does as it says, lets Congress regulate trade and let congress pass laws needed at the time in accordance to the constitution.
Does the second amendment guarantee a individual or collective right to keep and bear arms?
An individual right, as shown in various quotes from people who lead our country in the 1700s.
"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
Thomas Jefferson, note man, singular.
And there are a lot more from almost every person there. None of them said anything to deny each (free) person the right to bear arms.
Does the constitution grant a right to privacy? What about anonymity?
The Constitution provides several limits on the government's power collectively they form a right to privacy. There is no listed "right" of anonymity, but when the rest of the constitution is preserved, the ability to be anonymous is also preserved.
Can a state secede from the union? (I think this was a pretty big deal a while ago)
Do they have the constitutional authority to do so? I think so. Do they have a practical right to do it, not after the civil war.
Then there's the minutia. What exactly is a "naturally born citizen?"
Someone born in the US or to people of US decent.
On which side of the cruel and unusual line does prison overcrowding fall?
Now that is something the supreme court actually should interpret because that is one of the few passes intentionally left vague for interpretation throughout history.
Does full faith and credit mean that Utah has to recognize gay couples married in California?
I think when it comes to the marriage issue we have to step back and really wonder why the hell the state is defining our relationships in the first place. And then determine that question later:P
One needs only to look at the viewpoints of various founding fathers to see why that one fails and why the proper interpretation is
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Meaning that because a well regulated Militia is needed for the security, people must have the right to bear arms in order to form a Militia to secure a free state. Without the right to bear arms, it becomes impossible to create a Militia.
The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."
Alexander Hamilton
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
Thomas Paine
"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
James Monroe
Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour."
George Washington
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson
If the right to bear arms meant as you thought it meant, why would the people who wrote the Constitution and served the country in its earliest days have this opinion which strongly suggests the right for every free man to keep and bear arms to defend the country from internal tyranny?
Show me an example of constantly unresolved point of the constitution.
Yes, some of it was deliberately vague, but the majority of the time its very specific. For example, how the hell do you take the ninth amendment along with the fourteenth and suddenly create another right, the right to an abortion? If you read both of those amendments, the same logic used to create a right to an abortion can be used to overrule just about every single state law.
The problem is, people take the specific parts of the constitution and try to force them into some ideological form and create things with constitutional authority without making amendments to them.
You can't create rights out of nothing, you can't in essence "amend" the constitution from the bench without passing an amendment, but this is exactly what the Supreme Court consistently does.
The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.
Kagan gets this one dead wrong. The Constitution is provided to provide for a limited government, no matter what you or I want, unless we pass an amendment. History is filled with tyrants who got to power because people wanted them to have it then they turned on their people.
Limited government is a requirement in the Constitution, any change to give the government more power must be passed through an amendment, not just a simple majority vote.
This is a very strong sign of activism, disregarding the constitution in favor of a form of democracy that puts the minority in the tyranny of the majority, such a thing is no different than living in a dictatorship.
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The threat of the Soviet Union was -much- less of a threat than what we have with Islamic radicalism, when did the Soviets attack on US soil? They never did, did the USSR have spies? Of course they did. Did they have rockets pointed at our major cities, yes of course they did. But we had the exact same thing, theres no doubt we had missiles pointed at Russia, we had spies, spy planes, satellites, etc. Did the Soviets commit huge human rights abuses? Yes, but so did we. Or are you forgetting things like the Japanese Internment Camps, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and various other human right abuses.
Not to mention that the entire paranoia completely neglected the fact that Communism in the form that the USSR practiced, could never be sustainable.
No, I'm saying that there are 3 situations, none of them are good things.
A) "Our" leaders deliberately lied to the American people to get support for the war
B) "Our" leaders are too incompetent to actually win a war that needed to be fought
or C) "Our" leaders lied to the people, then are too incompetent to actually win the war they wanted to get us into.
Which one is it? "Our" leaders either lied to the American people are incompetent, which ever one it was, they shouldn't be leading the country.
Did you know Communism was evil? I'm an atheist, I don't have the same "right" or "wrong" moral view you might think I have. But under any definition the Soviet's were fucking evil. Stalin = GWB? You're fucking insane if you go that route. The Taliban did blow up the Towers. The US should have gone in there. Iraq is more muddled, but at the same time Saddam never should have been allowed to stay in power. You know, France loved financing his regime, but whatever. Imperialism is bad. Tell that to the Moors when they tried to conquer Europe. If the world was all hippy's I'd love to stop military spending. But you know, until that happens I'd rather the US be the power then say Iran. I know I know. 6 of 1 half a dozen of another. Just two sides the same coin. Be glad there are people that make sure you have internet access if though you shit on them.
Yes, the Soviets did do evil things, so did the US, so did the UK, so did Germany, etc. All governments are corrupt by definition. If you look at the reasons why the Taliban had the resources to blow up the towers is because we funded it yes, our tax dollars went to support the very people who we are fighting.
Theres nothing wrong with defending a country from foreign attacks, but defend it, don't go out looking for a fight. When we go out looking for a fight, we end up paying for the bullets that they use to shoot at us with. I'm not a "hippie" I'm not a pacifist, I do however know history and history isn't on the side of those who wage imperialistic wars, especially the US. Get out of the middle east and the rest of the world, cut military and domestic spending by a lot, decrease taxes and watch the economy grow leaps and bounds.
...Only because we were lied to and were impulsive. If people thought we would still be actively fighting a war in Afghanistan in 2010, I can guarantee you that it wouldn't have much support. If people actually remembered their history and realized that we keep funding the people who we fight a generation later, and this was widely proclaimed through the media, there wouldn't be much support. But alas, the American people was essentially told that the fighting would be over in a few weeks and the mainstream media was too sensationalized to actually look at history so "we" got stuck with the war.
We have a republican form of government that in essence boils down to a democracy. Ask people why they voted a certain way and the vast majority of people voted because of a few "key" issues, issues like abortion, global warming, stem cell research, wars, taxes, etc. So yes, we do have a democracy when it comes to wars, think of how many people voted for Bush the second term rather than any other candidate simply because they supported the war or some other single issue.
The vast majority of races for congress, governor, president, etc. have come down to basic democracy on a few issues.
But carry on. Keep obsessing and feeding the vain egotistical schmuck. Keep giving him the power to dictate and jerk you around like a dog on a leash. Put him on a pedestal as an authority and praise his name like he's some new messiah. When you find out you've been wasting your time and people get hurt you might learn.
Yes, because we all know that imperialistic wars historically have always been great, right? Oh wait... they haven't. Explain to me how by using facts and reason I'm being led like a dog on the leash.
FACT The US helped arm and fund Islamic radicals in the 80s.
FACT The US is wasting tons upon tons of money in these imperialistic wars
FACT The US has killed many civilians in this imperialistic war
Explain to me how using facts and reason is making me be a sheep? Lets see here the argument in favour of the war and the "troops" goes as follows:
We were attacked by Islamic terrorists on 9/11 THEREFORE we must invade 2 countries, kill lots of civilians, cause mass chaos and waste money and if you don't support this you are "Un-American" because terrorists are bad.
Now granted, 30 years ago the argument was:
The Communists have an atomic bomb!!! THEREFORE we must invade countless countries, support various Islamic organizations and right wing dictators and waste money if you don't support this you are "Un-American" because COMMUNISM IS EVIL JUST PURE EVIL
These documents only echo history, imperialistic wars waste taxpayer money, kill innocents, support murders and decline standards of living.
Why don't we be angry at "our" government for forcing us into this war despite popular opinion and history against it (want to know why Saddam and radical Islam control the middle east? Look back to the 80s when we were actively funding them).
Yes, because killing civilians and continuing imperialistic wars has really made the world a better place! Look back 30 years, how the hell do you think the Taliban got into power? Oh wait, back then Russia was the "bad guy" and fundamentalist Islam was the "good guy" so we ended up supplying them with guns, bombs, etc. How do you think Hussein got into power? Oh wait we helped him get into power... How do you think that all these dictators running most of South America got into power?
The sooner we end the wars the better it is for the US and the rest of the world.
Democracy can only work if people have access to -all- the information available to make an informed decision. Tainted information be it from media bias or government secrecy undermines it. How do you know what the Taliban does? We are fed propaganda every day. No, I'm not saying that the Taliban are nice people, that we should support them (though we did) or that the conventional view is wrong, but think about where you get your information from and you will find that you really could have been fed pure lies. Without information, how do you make that decision?
It is important to end imperialistic wars because it -always- bites us in the ass later on. These ever so evil Taliban fighters? Oh wait we supported them against the "evil" USSR. Saddam Hussein? Oh wait we helped him too...
If you think the US supports human rights you are sadly mistaken, imperialistic wars like the wars in the middle east and Vietnam have -always- ended up in a net loss for human rights and a net loss for the world.
Bullshit. The only person he put at risk are the warmongers running this country. If I invest in a company I have a right to know the financial details of the company, but yet when I'm forced to "invest" in a war suddenly they can obscure all the details?
A democracy becomes nothing more than a mob if information is not released, if the government wouldn't release it, I applaud Julian Assange for having the balls to post it so the world can make a rational decision on whether it is worth it to continue the war.
Because if you are uploading something to Facebook the geolocation info is not going to be any benefit to you, if you resize the pictures and the like, stripping the geolocation is just another step that doesn't harm the uploader. Now, I'd be against stripping geolocation data over something like e-mail, but over something like Facebook or something like Tinypic the geolocation information is not going to be beneficial. If your trying to put together a map with your photos, then use the originals, don't use the resized Facebook pictures.
This is why upload services should simply just strip out the un-needed info of the pictures. The original pictures still have the sometimes useful geolocation data, but your Facebook pictures won't.
The nice thing about all-in-one devices is it doesn't take up extra pocket space. Try stuffing a camera, MP3 player, DS and GPS all in your pocket, you can't fit them all in. Of course a camera is going to take better pictures, an MP3 player (might) be better at playing MP3s, a DS better for playing games and a standalone GPS best for navigation. But its a lot nicer to put one device in your pocket that can play lots of games, can find the nearest coffee shop, that has all of your music and can take basic pictures than to keep all the stuff in your pocket. And its generally a lot cheaper if you don't need insanely high quality products to buy a phone which is, what? $100, 200? on contract and with most carriers not offering discounts for SIM-only plans, the subsidized cost is a non-issue. Yes, you are going to get higher quality games on the DS, but for having 10 mins to kill, playing a game of Super Mario Bros on an NES emulator is going to be just as fun as playing Super Ultra Mario Bros DS for 10 mins, same thing with cameras, chances are unless your a pro photographer, you don't need a DLSR, you just want to take a few pictures for your facebook, and spending $600 on a camera is usually useless, etc.
...And a lot of the reason that Android users don't spend a ton of money on apps are threefold.
A) Android has a lot of really good free apps and it has lite apps that don't suck.
B) Most people who use Android aren't the type of people who spend lots and lots of money on needless things.
C) With no restrictions on app development, the person who makes a $.99 fart application loses business to the teenager with an hour of free time and an SDK who makes his own one and releases it for free for his own amusement. With the iPhone that app might cost $50 or more to develop.
Have you ever used a phone for gaming? It sucks. Even when emulators run beautifully for it, you either have to get a GameGripper-like device to use the keyboard or hook up a Wii controller via bluetooth to play it.
Using a phone as a controller would be one of the worst moves ever (even worse than the Wii's basic controller)
Is Star Trek really predicting things or is it more that the current generation of geeks were raised on Star Trek and they make it happen? I think its more of sci-fi pictures a futuristic world of utopia and has some gadgets to make it seem realistic and futuristic, people want to make the utopia happen and such so they go back and make real-world implementations of the gadgets.
...And how many of the BlackBerry users really -like- BlackBerry OS and didn't just pick a BlackBerry because it was cheap, their company bought one or the like? BlackBerry OS is aging, and although its rather irrelevent for the military, just compare a simple cross-platform app like Facebook, the iPhone has the best quality app, next Android (especially since the last update) then WebOS, then WinMo and BlackBerry OS.
The iPhone would be the worst out of all of them because it comes with only a single form factor, the BlackBerry hardware is decent but lets face it, the fact it reroutes a lot of traffic to non-military servers would be a problem not to mention the OS problems. Android can be made in multiple form factors, as could WinMO but until WinMO comes out with version 7... it completely sucks. Even PalmOS (yeah, the old one running on like the Palm Centro) is more usable than Windows Mobile.
...This is NYC though, they aren't going to be moving any too fast.
The problem with Africa is that eventually the dictators running the majority of the countries in Africa will wake up and put tighter controls on the internet and there goes the "net" generation. The only reason why Africa is currently thriving when it comes to "new" technology is because the governments are in the interim stage between freedom and complete control, currently the majority of Africa even the countries run by dictators is so vast and infrastructure is so poor and resources are so limited that the dictators don't care to wiretap phones, to run the servers needed to censor the net, etc.
As soon as technology becomes more affordable that the poorer countries in Africa can have it, you can bet that innovation will be stiffed by their oppressive government which made the countries to be poor to begin with.
No, no it wasn't spam that killed it, it was the unfriendly interfaces. E-mail ended up having several crappy carriers each with various silly limits that existed until fairly recently when Gmail basically forced them out (such as tiny inboxes, limited messaging, limited space, unreliable servers, etc) not to mention that HTML-e-mail could be malicious and there was no way to embed some things in it (such as Video) and images got a bad rep after people started using them as tracing.
MySpace ended up being killed by unattractive profiles, fake names were prevalent and the fact that there was just a small user base (teens and indie bands) didn't help things.
Facebook is good because it combines the best of everything. If you want to search for someone you don't have to search for xx_HaloPlayer43234, you can just type in "Bryan Smith" and find your friend. You can easily share images, video, etc. and chat (when it works) it a lot nicer than having 4 accounts for MSN, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ, it easily embeds with phones (even dumb-phones via text) and has a huge userbase.
E-mail is pretty much dead because E-mail was being forced to do things that E-mail wasn't designed to do and was only hacked on with HTML-Email.
No, I think you're reaching this conclusion only because you want to. You're extrapolating way beyond Kagan's statement and envisioning a land where the "minority" (the US citizenship I presume) live in subjugation under the harsh dictatorship of the "majority" (some kind of self-perpetuating regime of former Democrats). While that's a great premise for a sci-fi novel, thankfully there's no connection to the appointment of Kagan.
But we are already seeing it, albeit not with a constitutional question (yet) look in California and the banning of gay marriages (yes it was overturned but still). Does it even matter if gays marry? Seriously, does the fact that someone lives across the street and is gay make you gay? You have a case where the majority (straight people) are essentially telling the minority what to do even when it doesn't affect them.
There are a lot of other cases like that sadly where the majority who won't be affected with what the minority wants use elections to tell the minority what to do.
Do you really think that the commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause are clear? Because if you do you'd be the only one.
They are both rather broad powers that gives Congress a central power to pass laws in accordance to the constitution. It basically does as it says, lets Congress regulate trade and let congress pass laws needed at the time in accordance to the constitution.
Does the second amendment guarantee a individual or collective right to keep and bear arms?
An individual right, as shown in various quotes from people who lead our country in the 1700s.
"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
Thomas Jefferson, note man, singular.
And there are a lot more from almost every person there. None of them said anything to deny each (free) person the right to bear arms.
Does the constitution grant a right to privacy? What about anonymity?
The Constitution provides several limits on the government's power collectively they form a right to privacy. There is no listed "right" of anonymity, but when the rest of the constitution is preserved, the ability to be anonymous is also preserved.
Can a state secede from the union? (I think this was a pretty big deal a while ago)
Do they have the constitutional authority to do so? I think so. Do they have a practical right to do it, not after the civil war.
Then there's the minutia. What exactly is a "naturally born citizen?"
Someone born in the US or to people of US decent.
On which side of the cruel and unusual line does prison overcrowding fall?
Now that is something the supreme court actually should interpret because that is one of the few passes intentionally left vague for interpretation throughout history.
Does full faith and credit mean that Utah has to recognize gay couples married in California?
I think when it comes to the marriage issue we have to step back and really wonder why the hell the state is defining our relationships in the first place. And then determine that question later :P
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Meaning that because a well regulated Militia is needed for the security, people must have the right to bear arms in order to form a Militia to secure a free state. Without the right to bear arms, it becomes impossible to create a Militia.
The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."
Alexander Hamilton
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them."
Thomas Paine
"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
James Monroe
Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than 99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes, we need them every hour."
George Washington
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson
If the right to bear arms meant as you thought it meant, why would the people who wrote the Constitution and served the country in its earliest days have this opinion which strongly suggests the right for every free man to keep and bear arms to defend the country from internal tyranny?
Show me an example of constantly unresolved point of the constitution.
Yes, some of it was deliberately vague, but the majority of the time its very specific. For example, how the hell do you take the ninth amendment along with the fourteenth and suddenly create another right, the right to an abortion? If you read both of those amendments, the same logic used to create a right to an abortion can be used to overrule just about every single state law.
The problem is, people take the specific parts of the constitution and try to force them into some ideological form and create things with constitutional authority without making amendments to them.
You can't create rights out of nothing, you can't in essence "amend" the constitution from the bench without passing an amendment, but this is exactly what the Supreme Court consistently does.
The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.
Kagan gets this one dead wrong. The Constitution is provided to provide for a limited government, no matter what you or I want, unless we pass an amendment. History is filled with tyrants who got to power because people wanted them to have it then they turned on their people.
Limited government is a requirement in the Constitution, any change to give the government more power must be passed through an amendment, not just a simple majority vote.
This is a very strong sign of activism, disregarding the constitution in favor of a form of democracy that puts the minority in the tyranny of the majority, such a thing is no different than living in a dictatorship.