That's simply not true. Look at my post above. 'Well regulated' means 'proficient', as in the population is supposed to be proficient in the use of military arms. There never was any such requirement for members of the militia (the entire male population of fighting age who were not moral objectors) to have their firearms inspected. Yes, different people were expected to muster with certain types of arms, but there was no large scale inspection system as you suggest.
Sorry buddy, your collective 2A reading is a dying breed, and not too many well informed people are going to support it.
Maybe this will help clear things up: 'Well regulated' in the 18th century context means 'skilled' or 'well trained'. And 'militia' means the ENTIRE body of the male population who are of fighting age (17-45 IIRC). So the term 'a well regulated militia' means 'a population who is skilled in the use of firearms and combat,' and the best way to ensure this is to allow the private ownership of firearms.
Basically, the point of the 2A, as further described by the likes of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, et al in the Federalist Papers and other era writings, is to ensure the PEOPLE have MILITARY arms. The idea is that the body of the population be privately armed as well as, if not better than, any standing army so that they can be well prepared to defend themselves, their state, and their country against any enemy, foreign or domestic. Furthermore, those who privately own firearms are going to be far more proficient than those who have never shot a firearm before basic training, and almost always make far better soldiers.
Don't believe me? Look it up, but I suggest you stay away from the disingenuous Brandy Campaign types. Even a good number of prominent gun-grabbing law scholars accept this reading and openly criticize the Brady interpretation. If you don't like it, you need to petition congress to AMEND the constitution, as that's the only thing that is going to change it.
I also suggest checking out Heller v DC, which should be decided any day now on this very debate. Needless to say, your collectivist theory stands a snow ball's chance in hell of holding up in the SCOTUS. It looks more like it'll boil down to how strict of an individual right the 2A is and what powers, if any, the government has to infringe on that right. (Come on strict scrutiny, daddy needs a new MG!)
Actually, that was one of the few laptops that I've seen that ran Linux perfectly right out of the box.
I think the issue has little to do with drivers though. I think it's more of the fact that Linux spends a lot less time swapping (and thrashing) than Windows because it's a much lighter OS. Typically this is seen as a Linux system being faster and more responsive, but it would also makes sense that this translates to lower power consumption.
PS - I agree with your sig, those who are willing to give up liberties for a sense of safety are pretty much the scum of the universe.
I had a laptop that ran XP for the first year I owned it. The battery lasted maybe 2 hours if I was lucky. I loaded up Ubuntu and to my surprise I got at least another 30 minutes of run time and the thing ran MUCH cooler. My guess is the CPU spent more time idle in Linux than in Windows.
I have the same phone and IMO the phone is great except for WM sucks big time. I like OSX on the iPhone, but at the end of the day it lacks a lot a very basic functionality that WM has. When Android come out though, I'll be on that bandwagon in a heartbeat
Anyway, I strongly suggest looking into flashing it with a new radio and WM6.1 ROM. You can enable all sorts of great functionality like GPS, EVDO Rev A, and ICS (if you have VW and the bastards disabled it). Check it out here
With no disrespect intended, I think your support of net neutrality legislation is a bit naive. Granted, I, as many here, feel net neutrality is very important, but legislating it is not the way to go.
NN legislation is basically giving the federal government the power to regulate the internet, and while it seems good now to let them protect us consumers, it may not always be that way. All it would take would be one court case to set presidence for the entire country that not only could the government say what couldn't be censored, but also what could be. Think I'm being unrealistic? Take a look at eminent domain and Kelo v. City of New London as an example. Sure politicians will publicly denounce such misuses, but they would certainly take advantage them behind close doors.
The point is, as much as you distrust corporations, you must realize giving the government more power is not the best solution, because, guess what, the government as a whole panders to corporate interests.
Ability to raise money shows nothing about fiscal responsibility. It just shows people with money to burn like them.
The fact is, all candidates have made multiple references to enlarging the scope (and thus cost) of government. Seeing as we are already well beyond our capacity, any additional growth will mean more deficits, more taxes, or both.
Besides which, even if you got Gravel or Paul in office what about the state laws against marijuana? Those are the ones that actually impact pot-smokers on a day to day basis. Other than the bullshit Federal raids against medical marijuana dispensaries I'm hard pressed to think of any meaningful impact that the Feds make against pot-smokers.
Actually a lot of states won't even consider so much as medical marijuana for the simple fact that it is a federal crime. I guess they no longer get the point of federal vs state powers, and just go along with what the feds say. I am certain that a good number of states would put up referendums in the election immediately following the feds descheduling marijuana. So, yeah, changing federal law would most likely cause many states to also change their laws too.
Maybe copy rights, drug laws, video game bans, and porn are not important to you, but they are to others and certainly do involve the rights and liberties of others. So how can you say you are for the 'rights of all citizens', when you merely write off rights as 'frivolous adolescent worries' that you do not want or find important? That is the typical mindset that results in our loss of rights and liberties. 'Well, that right isn't that important to me and it'd be better for my safety/economic security/the good of all man kind if we gave up that right.' Sooner or later it'll catch up to you when they start banning and regulating 'rights' that you find important just because others felt they were nothing more than 'frivolous adolescent worries'.
Take 'bandwidth' for example. It traditionally means the width of a channel, as in the difference between an upper and lower cutoff frequencies.
So say you have a bandpass filter that blocks all frequencies below 1 MHz and above 5 Mhz. It's bandwidth is said to be 4 MHz.
In the digital era though, it has evolved to also mean data rate. This has come about because channel width on an analog medium directly impacts channel capacity; the wider the channel, the greater the capacity and the faster the data rates. This somehow got manipulated into using bandwidth to describe data rate in general, and now you regularly hear people using it to describe how fast their internet connections are.
Using the term bandwidth for a digital medium, (such as a differential signaling medium like USB,Firewire, PCIe, Fast Ethernet, etc) doesn't make any sense in the classical sense as there are no 'channels' to have 'widths'. In today's terminology though, it makes perfect sense and is completely acceptable.
Basically, get used to it. Technology evolves, and language must evolve with it. The fact is the people evolving the language aren't the ones evolving the technology; they're usually the ones selling the technology.
And the GP comment (don't take it personally) shows why the world is laughing at the US cellphone market.
If this were the case, then I'd think the US would have good reason to laugh at the world's ignorance. In the US, you can travel from coast to coast, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands all without roaming, so there is no need to have to swap SIM cards on any regular basis.
In Europe on the other hand, you can only get a couple hundred kilometers from your home before you're roaming and paying out the nose. This makes SIM cards a necessity for the reasons you mentioned.
Personally, I have a cheap quad-band GSM phone for when I go abroad to do just this. When I'm in the US though, I'd much rather have the higher quality and reliability of a CDMA based network over the inherent issues one faces with a TDMA based network.
Actually, Verizon will be switching to GSM to use LTE for their up-and-coming 4G network. If I had to guess, I'd say this is the main reason they're starting to open their network.
If they want to abandon closed proprietary technologies for an open international standard, they're going to have to make the same change to their handsets and open them. Might as well get your consumer hardware infrastructure ready for the change before hand.
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That's simply not true. Look at my post above. 'Well regulated' means 'proficient', as in the population is supposed to be proficient in the use of military arms. There never was any such requirement for members of the militia (the entire male population of fighting age who were not moral objectors) to have their firearms inspected. Yes, different people were expected to muster with certain types of arms, but there was no large scale inspection system as you suggest.
Sorry buddy, your collective 2A reading is a dying breed, and not too many well informed people are going to support it.
Maybe this will help clear things up: 'Well regulated' in the 18th century context means 'skilled' or 'well trained'. And 'militia' means the ENTIRE body of the male population who are of fighting age (17-45 IIRC). So the term 'a well regulated militia' means 'a population who is skilled in the use of firearms and combat,' and the best way to ensure this is to allow the private ownership of firearms.
Basically, the point of the 2A, as further described by the likes of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, et al in the Federalist Papers and other era writings, is to ensure the PEOPLE have MILITARY arms. The idea is that the body of the population be privately armed as well as, if not better than, any standing army so that they can be well prepared to defend themselves, their state, and their country against any enemy, foreign or domestic. Furthermore, those who privately own firearms are going to be far more proficient than those who have never shot a firearm before basic training, and almost always make far better soldiers.
Don't believe me? Look it up, but I suggest you stay away from the disingenuous Brandy Campaign types. Even a good number of prominent gun-grabbing law scholars accept this reading and openly criticize the Brady interpretation. If you don't like it, you need to petition congress to AMEND the constitution, as that's the only thing that is going to change it.
I also suggest checking out Heller v DC, which should be decided any day now on this very debate. Needless to say, your collectivist theory stands a snow ball's chance in hell of holding up in the SCOTUS. It looks more like it'll boil down to how strict of an individual right the 2A is and what powers, if any, the government has to infringe on that right. (Come on strict scrutiny, daddy needs a new MG!)
Actually, that was one of the few laptops that I've seen that ran Linux perfectly right out of the box.
I think the issue has little to do with drivers though. I think it's more of the fact that Linux spends a lot less time swapping (and thrashing) than Windows because it's a much lighter OS. Typically this is seen as a Linux system being faster and more responsive, but it would also makes sense that this translates to lower power consumption.
PS - I agree with your sig, those who are willing to give up liberties for a sense of safety are pretty much the scum of the universe.
I had a laptop that ran XP for the first year I owned it. The battery lasted maybe 2 hours if I was lucky. I loaded up Ubuntu and to my surprise I got at least another 30 minutes of run time and the thing ran MUCH cooler. My guess is the CPU spent more time idle in Linux than in Windows.
And lets not forget that embedded computers are an order of magnitude more common than PCs and Linux is a VERY popular embedded OS.
I have the same phone and IMO the phone is great except for WM sucks big time. I like OSX on the iPhone, but at the end of the day it lacks a lot a very basic functionality that WM has. When Android come out though, I'll be on that bandwagon in a heartbeat
Anyway, I strongly suggest looking into flashing it with a new radio and WM6.1 ROM. You can enable all sorts of great functionality like GPS, EVDO Rev A, and ICS (if you have VW and the bastards disabled it). Check it out here
With no disrespect intended, I think your support of net neutrality legislation is a bit naive. Granted, I, as many here, feel net neutrality is very important, but legislating it is not the way to go.
NN legislation is basically giving the federal government the power to regulate the internet, and while it seems good now to let them protect us consumers, it may not always be that way. All it would take would be one court case to set presidence for the entire country that not only could the government say what couldn't be censored, but also what could be. Think I'm being unrealistic? Take a look at eminent domain and Kelo v. City of New London as an example. Sure politicians will publicly denounce such misuses, but they would certainly take advantage them behind close doors.
The point is, as much as you distrust corporations, you must realize giving the government more power is not the best solution, because, guess what, the government as a whole panders to corporate interests.
Ability to raise money shows nothing about fiscal responsibility. It just shows people with money to burn like them.
The fact is, all candidates have made multiple references to enlarging the scope (and thus cost) of government. Seeing as we are already well beyond our capacity, any additional growth will mean more deficits, more taxes, or both.
Besides which, even if you got Gravel or Paul in office what about the state laws against marijuana? Those are the ones that actually impact pot-smokers on a day to day basis. Other than the bullshit Federal raids against medical marijuana dispensaries I'm hard pressed to think of any meaningful impact that the Feds make against pot-smokers.
Actually a lot of states won't even consider so much as medical marijuana for the simple fact that it is a federal crime. I guess they no longer get the point of federal vs state powers, and just go along with what the feds say. I am certain that a good number of states would put up referendums in the election immediately following the feds descheduling marijuana. So, yeah, changing federal law would most likely cause many states to also change their laws too.
Maybe copy rights, drug laws, video game bans, and porn are not important to you, but they are to others and certainly do involve the rights and liberties of others. So how can you say you are for the 'rights of all citizens', when you merely write off rights as 'frivolous adolescent worries' that you do not want or find important? That is the typical mindset that results in our loss of rights and liberties. 'Well, that right isn't that important to me and it'd be better for my safety/economic security/the good of all man kind if we gave up that right.' Sooner or later it'll catch up to you when they start banning and regulating 'rights' that you find important just because others felt they were nothing more than 'frivolous adolescent worries'.
The same can be said for other terms as well.
Take 'bandwidth' for example. It traditionally means the width of a channel, as in the difference between an upper and lower cutoff frequencies. So say you have a bandpass filter that blocks all frequencies below 1 MHz and above 5 Mhz. It's bandwidth is said to be 4 MHz.
In the digital era though, it has evolved to also mean data rate. This has come about because channel width on an analog medium directly impacts channel capacity; the wider the channel, the greater the capacity and the faster the data rates. This somehow got manipulated into using bandwidth to describe data rate in general, and now you regularly hear people using it to describe how fast their internet connections are.
Using the term bandwidth for a digital medium, (such as a differential signaling medium like USB,Firewire, PCIe, Fast Ethernet, etc) doesn't make any sense in the classical sense as there are no 'channels' to have 'widths'. In today's terminology though, it makes perfect sense and is completely acceptable.
Basically, get used to it. Technology evolves, and language must evolve with it. The fact is the people evolving the language aren't the ones evolving the technology; they're usually the ones selling the technology.
If this were the case, then I'd think the US would have good reason to laugh at the world's ignorance. In the US, you can travel from coast to coast, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands all without roaming, so there is no need to have to swap SIM cards on any regular basis.
In Europe on the other hand, you can only get a couple hundred kilometers from your home before you're roaming and paying out the nose. This makes SIM cards a necessity for the reasons you mentioned.
Personally, I have a cheap quad-band GSM phone for when I go abroad to do just this. When I'm in the US though, I'd much rather have the higher quality and reliability of a CDMA based network over the inherent issues one faces with a TDMA based network.
Actually, Verizon will be switching to GSM to use LTE for their up-and-coming 4G network. If I had to guess, I'd say this is the main reason they're starting to open their network.
If they want to abandon closed proprietary technologies for an open international standard, they're going to have to make the same change to their handsets and open them. Might as well get your consumer hardware infrastructure ready for the change before hand.