Do we start sending signals to it and waiting 190 years to see if something comes back?
Yes.
carry on with improving life here?
Yes.
Because if that signal is some advanced civilization, it means nothing practical beyond, "Hey look, life in other parts of the universe! Wow!"
What if they've been sending us instructions on how to make fusion power for the last 1000 years and we've just have been listening closely? We would know where to look and listen. And that's not trivial if you need to position a telescope 550 AU from the sun to get a crisp image.
Signals aren't actually that hard to send out if you place the antenna correctly around the sun. THAT SAID, placing a radio station at a set point out in the solar system isn't childs play.
I think I heard you can get a message out to Vega with a 40W radio.
mobile app development.... The constraint that C object code should remain small and fast doesn't help here.
Huh? That seems like exactly the sort of area where small and fast would help immensely.
I still find it infuriating when I want to have half a second for this clunky program on my phone to do it's thing.
Moreover the C programming language doesn't evolve like the other big languages such as Java, C++ and C#. There is a "new" C11 standard available but this contains only minor changes.
The language being stable is a good thing. A shining feature. Unless you enjoy all your skills turning to dust as you have to adapt to an ever changing platform. Who likes to build a house on shifting sand?
Yet another reason why C is getting into trouble is that there is no big company promoting the language. Oracle supports Java, Microsoft supports C++, C# and TypeScript, Google supports Java, Python, Go, Dart and JavaScript, Apple promotes Swift and Objective-C, etc. but none of them supports C publicly.
Also kind of a good thing. Because it's "Oracle, where tech goes to die". And Microsoft, where they keep bloody changing everything because some minor boss somewhere gets a bonus if he can convince 9% of the MS developer base to register with SilverLight tools, or how Sharepoint is "the next big thing". And frankly, I was surprised that every Go project wasn't mandated to direct their users to go sign up for google+.
C is punk. Fuck corporate.
It's portable as all fucking get-out. Low enough that you can make it smokin' fast. And it doesn't play any games with magical crap you can't see. The code is truth in advertising (unless you fuck around with macros like an idiot), and that makes it easier to debug. And everything as C APIs, so if there's a library out there you want you can typically go hook into it. Every bloody language has weird quirks and nuances you just have to be aware of. The tools that help you use the language are where it's at. MVS, while run by Satan, is actually pretty decent. But the classic C tools of makefiles, gcc or clang, and vim are powerhouses of usability that have been refined for decades. It's not the best if you want to talk to browsers. Javascript is the defacto standard there. And it's not the best if you just want to make yet another GUI button clicker for clueless suit. And Bash or whatever script of choice glues together the solutions of yesterday. But C is what you whip out for the hard cases for real meaningful programming. And certainly for anything critical like life support, satellites, weapon platforms, or kernels.
Except that there is also selection bias when it comes to real Astronauts. Indeed, they do NOT want a random sampling. That would be pretty terrible.
The experiment isn't perfect. Ideally, we'd also have a set of ~10 groups all going at once. But it's close enough to be useful. And a sample size of one still tells us something. And I imagine anything they ran into within the last year and documented will be referenced by psychologists in various papers for decades to come.
Well... ok. Let's look at the black-lining of this happy puffy cloud.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Truckers and cabbies are all going to lose their job. It'll be a big wave of unemployment for a sector of the populace that was already wasn't doing well. A lot of disenfranchised people with not much to lose is a worry.
2. Clean Energy: (this ones harder... ok, got it). It's a step towards these clean-energy eco-nuts outlawing coal. You'll have to.... (No that doesn't make any sense... AH) The more people that switch to distributed power generation, the less support the power grid will have. It benefits from economy of scale, but chip away at that and have half the populous stop paying, and you have problems for a public utility. The first to go with be mandates for rural electrification. Farmers will be cut off. Without the power lines being subsidized, communication lines won't be able to piggyback. (It's a stretch, but it's something)
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: You know how kids these days barely look up from their phones? Get ready to have blind-deaf (sadly not mute) meatbags ignoring you with twice the power. Kids wandering into streets chasing their pokemon. If they can overlay their own better reality, they'll disconnect from your reality. Oh, and this.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: With a camera on there, now it's feasible and cost effective to operate a panopticon where the FBI or anyone else with $200 are always watching.
Flying cars are one of those classic tropes for letdowns. In reality, it's just more expensive to operate a plane. I know a pilot with a shitty commute and there's an airstrip RIGHT next to work, but he still drives simply because he can't justify the cost of a plane. Automate the pilot license requirement, and rich people probably will fly everywhere. Let's hope the budget for road maintenance is still approved.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Remember those truckers? Get ready for whole swaths of office workers to go away. It's not like everyone from HR will get laid off. But none of them will touch paychecks and there will just be two to handle sensitivity training. Generalist doctors, the sort that diagnose you when something is wrong, could probably be replaced by Watson right now. The only barrier is who do you sue when it screws up.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: Uhh... something something, company leash you can't run away from, tracking you everywhere, the crushing disappointment that we gave everyone super-computers with the grand sum of human knowledge at their finger tips and the ability to instantly communicate with anyone anywhere (and have the language translated for you) and they only use it to look at pictures of cats.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Yay, a secret money to buy cocaine online with! And as for business-minded uses of blockchain technology... I'm still not sure how that's any different than running a co-opt.
8. High-Quality Online Education: It's been there for a couple decades and people are still pretty stupid and uneducated.
9. Better Food through Science: (This one is also hard)...I got nothing. Maybe something about soil degradation?
10. Computerized Medicine: Robo surgeons are going to get hacked and then they're going to hack you.
11. A New Space Age: (I could probably find something negative about this, but I really like space. SPAAAAAAAACE!)
Ok, I ran out of steam at the end. Too much pessimism is as bad as too much optimism.
whooooaaaaaaaaa. Well this ought to be interesting.
What I've found is that all of the posts on either side are simple blind insults. Clinton is dirty and corrupt, Trump is a racist and bigot, there's not much else to see here. I've even called out the readership, asking for any *rational* reason to vote for Clinton over Trump (my particular choice - it would work as well the other way). No one has ever put forth a reasonable and rational reason for one candidate over the other(**).
Well Clinton IS corrupt and Trump IS a racist. But alright, here you go buddy.
Reasons to vote for Clinton over Trump.
1) Clinton more or less follows the democrat party platform. Anyone who is historically a democrat or otherwise shares the political views of democrats will more or less agree with her stance on most issues.
2) Trump does not follow the republican party platform. Anyone who is historically a republican or has like-minded views aren't going to necessarily like his plan. Arguably, he's not even really a Republican given his history of jumping parties. And considering how hard he pushed for Clinton in 2008, it's made me seriously consider if it's just a false flag operation. Normally I'd dismiss that sort of hogwash as a conspiracy nutcase. (After consideration, naw, still don't buy it)
3) The sheer amount of crazy that has come out of Trump. Now, this might sound like a baseless insult, and while it IS an insult it's not baseless. He is* an anti-vaxer, a birther, doesn't believe in global warming (and worse, it's all a ruse by the Chinese to kill US manufacturing [DESPITE, US manufacturing growing. The rabbit hole just keeps going and going]), encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies, encouraged espionage from Russia, pretended to be one "Chris Miller" when talking about his divorce in a phone interview, admitted in court to using the name "Chris Miller", and then denied using the name "Chris Miller", and he's advocated for committing war-crimes by suggesting we target the families of terrorists. This list goes on and on.
4) The in-feasibility of his plan to "Build a wall". It's pointless without a patrol, and then why not just have a patrol? (The answer: Money)
5) The pope came out against "Those who build walls". And then Trump bashed the pope.
6) While Clinton's shortcoming are far less than ideal, the ramifications for corruption are a few ambassadors and appointments who don't really deserve it. The culture of corruption is the worse thing, and yeah, that would probably take a hit.
7) And she's a slimy politician who does whatever will get her into power. This is bad, but it also means she knows how to play the political game. As opposed to Carter who was a great guy, but couldn't get much done. I don't think either Clinton or Trump actually want to destroy America. They just have different views about what needs to be done.
8) While it would send a nice message to "the establishment" as some sort of 4 year protest vote, the resulting damage would send so much support towards the establishment that they would never face competition again. It's like calling someone's bluff, you have to have a decent hand yourself.
9) Clinton can smile and play nice with foreign dignitaries. Trump is a little more... Brash.
10) Speaking of foreign affairs, Trump wants to defund/exit NATO and talked about using Nukes again. Coming from the biggest dog in the fight, this is the sort of thing that gets our allies nervous and ruins alliances. While Congress and the courts could probably keep Trump in check for domestic affairs, as long as he doesn't wield the FBI's surveillance like a club, there's little keeping him from screwing up foreign affairs.
11) If you're Mexican or Muslim you're probably going to face less static in the streets if Clinton is elected.
Holy shit. This is annoying as hell. Their webpage is intentionally vague. You can't find out SHIT about it unless you sign up.
Let me save you some time guys.
What the fuck is IFTTT:
It's a tool to program common tasks within a set group of services when a trigger occurs. Tasks like: scan everything in/r/books for "sci-fi" and send a summary to an email. Do it daily. Sum up the number of reads your IMDB review got and text it to you at 10pm so you can cry yourself to sleep.
Hey, it's bringing automation scripts to the masses. Most people won't learn Bash scripting, this is sort of like lowering the bar. Unfortunately, it doesn't give them any control and assumes they're on a phone. You hand it access to all the accounts, so it's DAMN scary from a security perspective.
Last I looked, it was very anti-thetical to open source, but if they're allowing third-party scripts, that's a small step in the right direction... And absolutely HORRIFYING from a security perspective.
It's only legit "value-add" over a set of bash scripts people can run, is that it handles the security aspect and handles ALL YOUR PASSWORDS. Which is also the part that smells the most.
I want to see a competitor though: Parse This Bullshit, Then That Bash. PFTBTTB. It carries it's own theme-song.
Realize that electronic waste has more gold in it than gold ore. We're more knowledgeable about refining gold out of rock than breaking down old motherboards into copper and gold, but that's just some R&D away. It's not an insurmountable problem by far.
As for scattering our resources, landfills are more like concentrated masses of previously unusable resources. (With a lot of crap that still isn't usable in there). Imagine a landfill that existed prior to aluminium recycling. It'd be a gold-mine (ba-dum-tsh)!
But yeah, we should recycle aluminium whenever we can. It recycles great.
Right now we mostly use a system of allowances based on your contributions to society as determined by society. They can only give you as much as they have. The placeholder for "resources" is called "money". The system is called "capitalism". It's not pure capitalism as the top actors get to decide the money->resources exchange, as well as the typical taxation process to keep the infrastructure up and running. Oh, and keeping the jackboots off our necks. (Quite a bit goes towards that last bit actually.) Furthermore, there are some resources that are restricted; you can't build a condo in Yellowstone and you can't play with nukes. And the EPA is attempting to account for externalizes that you inflict upon others without paying for it by the way of pollution laws and carbon tax.
It's certainly not perfect, but it's better than other attempts. At least it's not a controlled economy with price fixing.
Focus on things that can be objectively measured like global average temperature, emissions and aerosols in the atmosphere, and things like that.
Sounds great.
Let's add how many resources have been consumed. I'm pretty sure they know how many barrels of oil have been pumped and burned. Or how much lumber has been made.
And then let's add them all together for an overall metric of "How we doing?"
"they don't sen their best. They are [thieves, crooks, scum] and rapists.... And some, I assume, are good people"
And
"Climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese to move manufacturing overseas".
How did I do?
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Eh... Fairly close. I skipped over the filler. And I knew I didn't get it exactly right in the middle. Oh man, that pause between rapists and good people though.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
ok, I got the structure of this one all wrong. He didn't it a conspiracy by name. Damnit, and I missed the detail that he called out global warming instead of climate change. Which is even sadder as global warming is easier to prove. But the gist is mostly the same.
Are you going to try and claim these things didn't come from him? That it's some sort of media ruse? Listen, Cilnton isn't a great choice. She's a pretty stereotypical slimy politician. Privacy will take it in the pants. And Snowden might get disappeared. But Trump is sheer crazy, and I'm not sure congress and the courts could keep him from doing too much harm for 4 years. And I don't think trying to push for Bernie is viable at this stage.
Military craft are supposed to be EM shielded against this little guy, but I'm not really sure how much real-world testing this has really been put through. It's not the sort of thing you find in the third-world nations we kick around. And of course we don't stir up shit with real developed nations, we all have nukes and the rest of the military is really just for show.
But an EM pulse wouldn't "jam" the computers. It would fry them. You could say "permanently jammed", I guess.
Soooo... You have 8 times as much income as that other guy.... And after taxes you'd have 5-7 times as much as that other guy. And you've got your panties in a twist over this?
If that guy can get by on one widget, and you've got SEVEN times as much.... how much do you care if you don't have 8?
Surely if you look at that it is obvious that a progressive tax system acts as a disincentive for me to work longer.
That's the MAGIC of capitalism. If you want more, you have to work more.
You are STILL incentiveized to work longer and make more money. There are diminishing returns, but there ARE returns. And the bulk of people are greedy little monsters that'll chase after that. Because no matter how much they have, they'll see someone with more than themselves and they'll want it.
You can either say people are greedy and they'll work for more regardless of the diminishing returns, or that people aren't that greedy and shouldn't care about the taxes since they've already got plenty to cover their needs.
Wow. I can't believe someone would try to argue about tax rates when they don't know the difference between marginal tax rates and effective tax rates.
The tax bracket you're in is the marginal rate. That's how much you pay in taxes for additional money you make from that point on. You're ALSO in the all the lower tax brackets and paying those rates for those sums of income.
Why not? Do you honestly think I'd do a WORSE job than either Trump or Clinton?
Worse than Hilary, if this is your plan.
You're assuming the Federal Government needs to stay its current size. I'd fix that
Yeah, so far you'd expand it a lot: You'd have it take over healthcare, run an active military campaign to "secure the border", and called $30 Billion "chump change". Disarming nuclear capabilities kind of makes it smaller. Otherwise you haven't actually stated how you'd make it any smaller. I mean, if you plan on axing the bulk of the military, that's a pretty major change you probably want to tell people about.
And dear god, your sense of economics is laughable. You're really comparing the wall construction to the great wall of china? That took centuries to build.
48 million Americans live in "food insecure household"
Wow. That's terrible. If only we had a number of programs to feed them.... Like 61% of those 48 million partake of. The rest have some sort of trouble taking the hand out.
speaking of which
better mental health systems will go a ways towards fixing some of that...
Truth.
Meh, people aren't going to stop caring about their fellow human beings over it, what it will do is remove a ton of fraud and cheating... Non-Profits live in society, they need to help pay for it...
You fucking monster. Sure, they might still care. But the organizations will have a hell of a lot less cash to help.
Stop giving bottled water to people crossing the border and shoot them instead...
You fucking monster. You want to abolish the death penalty, but shoot people on US soil without any trial or identification. Sweet Jesus, have you thought this one through at all? You're telling me I can grab a motherfucker, drive down to Arizona, push him into this no-man's-zone, and have my buddy in the national guard gun him down without any other due-process? You're gonna need TWO walls on either side of that clusterfuck.
you would not be walking free if I was King... If you believe in jihad, then your beliefs are not compatible with civilization...
Let's say the guy giving the talk was a believer in Jihad, and was giving talks to the mosques around the US about how it's supposed to be non-violent. Typically you only "put down the dog" when people perform an illegal activity. Or did you want to outlaw a religion or something?
Are you proposing some sort of thought-crime?
If you're raped, then getting an abortion during the first three months shouldn't be hard...
Sure. Probably not. But it happened. Now what? Is it illegal?
If an unborn child is 6 months old and is at risk of killing the mother, I'm ok with that...
You fucking monster. How about if the child is given a 10% chance of living? Yeah, this shit gets tricky doesn't it?
Have you been lawfully released? Did you serve your time?
I have the same problem with sex offender registration, that shit is stupid... If you can't trust the person released, why are they OUT OF PRISON?
Because they were lawfully released after having served their time. That doesn't mean JACK SHIT for trusting them with a gun. Right now, we DON'T trust them with a gun. You're proposing that we just don't release people because "we don't trust them".
I don't want ANYONE to have nuclear weapons, including governments!
Yeah, they're scary. But so far they've kept the prats from going at it. And frankly, you can't disarm them. It would require you to not only be king of the world, but an omniscient GOD. It'd be too easy for one player to just keep a few secretly and POOF, next conflict they just declare their milit
The tap on the German Chancellor's phone line is not an illegal act for our intelligence services. It's what they exist to do.
What? ok, this one is easier to find. Because it wasn't just the German Chancellor, Snowden also revealed that we ordered espionage on Ban Ki Moon, the head of the U.N. And that's internationally illegal, per an convention that the USA is a signatory. Specifically, The U.N.'s property and premise is immune to search and confiscation.
Also, it's sure as shit illegal under German law, and US law, and we have an extradition treaty with germany, so that's an illegal action that can be prosecuted across state borders.
Do you remember why the bulk of the CIA's actions are clandestine? Because they're illegal. As in, "if this got out, we're going to deny you ever worked for the CIA or that we know you at all, because we can't be associated with that sort of blatantly illegal activity". It's their job like it was their job to infect a bunch of poor black people with syphilis. Or like it was the job of Unit 761 to torture the Chinese. Or how Al Capone's hitmen were paid to shoot people. Yes, that is indeed what they were assigned to do. But that doesn't make it legal, and it certainly doesn't make it right.
I mean, you're right about the likely end-state of prisoner swaps. The spy agencies care more for their own than justice. But there's definately trials and criminal prosecution and prison-time before those deals happen. And if the USA didn't HAVE any german spies tucked away in a prison, like if there were no German agents to catch, then they'd be sitting a long time in prison.
The rules are simple, everybody collects on everybody.
And that doesn't make it legal.
Furthermore, while anyone is free to collect information, doing things like tapping wires, invading privacy, burglary, and home invasion are not legal.
BUT HEY! If this is just "part of the game", and the laws don't really matter, then who gives a shit if Snowden trampled the USA's privacy rights?
Who? What lives?
With regards to the German tap, combat troops if the contents of the tap results contained sensitive information about troop movements in Operations where we are working with the Germans.
....What? That is UTTER BULLSHIT. You're saying that the CIA not hearing where our ALLIES troops are moving would put our troops in danger? Are you nuts? They are allies fighting together in the same war/operation. If we want to know where their troops are moving, WE JUST GO ASK THEM! They don't want us to shoot them any more than we want them to shoot us. Because we're on the SAME BLOODY SIDE. You don't think our military's do any coordinating?
Wait, wait, are you suggesting the CIA is looking out for some sort of betrayal from Germany? Like the Chancellor is going to get a phone call and it's going to be along the lines of "it's time to backstab ze Americans! Let's ally with ISIS and fire on their Marines!" Because that's about the only scenario I could conceive of where a tap on the chancellor's phone would save our combat troops. And guess what? These sort of activities are the type of thing that would make Germany do that! (I mean, it would take a lot more than just this, but it's in that direction). If we have to worry about german troop movements, it's thanks to the CIA performing these sort of illegal operations.
Oh, wait, you were bitching about progressive taxes.
Listen, if you can somehow make 20 widgets while everyone else around you works just as hard and only makes 2, and all widgets are currently sold at the same price, then you've got plenty of cash to afford the higher tax. If we didn't do this, historically you'd undercut those around you, dominate the market, form a monopoly, and generally be abusing to everyone. Progressive taxes are part of the solution to stop that.
But with regards to fairness, I have never understood how, if I am making widgets, I will get paid $5 for the first widget I make but then get paid $3 for the 20th widget I make. Are my widgets now worth less than they were? Is my labor not as valuable?
...Yes. Yes, that's exactly how it works. The first one is the hardest to make, it's one of a kind, rare, and whoever paid for it obviously needs it. Piecemeal work has no economy of scale and is labor intensive. It's expensive as fuck and operates like it's back from the medieval period with their cottage industry.
If you make widgets en'mass then the value of the widgets plummets. If the world needed 5 widgets and you only made one, then the world is going to fight over that one widget, and it's going to be valuable. If you make 10 widgets, the world will take 5 and maybe a couple more as backups, and you'll be left with 2 widgets with a value of $0, because nobody wants them. Now, your overhead remains the same, and you can distribute it over multiple widgets, so you can sell them at a lower cost and still come out ahead.
If you're making something so common and standard that it's a commodity then the profit margins are going to be razor thin. Which is a good thing for society. Not great for you personally, I guess. I too would love if I could command a paycheck of a million dollars for what I do. Great for me, but a kick in the pants to society. And that's capitalism. It works better than the other systems we've tried, usually.
Ideally, nobody owes you jack shit for widgets or your labor. It's up to you to get as much as you can for it. Let me put that other way: Widgets have no inherent worth or value past their utility to others. If you spend a year building worthless widgets that nobody wants, that's bloody stupid of you. Now, that's ideally. We've had a history of labor disputes and really horrible abuses, so now we've got some laws about minimum wage. At least when it comes to big companies. If they can't afford to pay someone a minimum wage to do something, then it's not worth it to society to have them do it. But those sort of labor dispute solutions are a little long in the tooth now that robots are doing a lot of the work.
I'd reset income taxes to 20%, flat across the board [with a ton of foodstamps]
HOOOOOOOOLLY SHIIIIIIT! Where are you going to get all your money from? Our effective tax rate is around 27%, so you're in deep financial shit. But, oh, okay, "all numbers are subject to change". So let's just assume that it's a flat tax at $(ENOUGH) to have the same income as today. Why do you want to give so much money to rich people? Historically, they've been getting hella wealthier while the bulk of people have lagged behind.
Also with no exceptions, most non-profits go away. Which is a real kick in the pants to the poor and anyone hoping for a scholarship.
Finally, food is cheap. Starving isn't really that big of an issue in America. Housing though, housing is expensive as hell. Unless these food stamps can be given to a landlord, you're looking at a massive homeless issue. The problem is not having enough homes. There are something like 3-5 empty homes for each homeless person. The problem is they don't have money for a home.
The Corporate Tax would be abolished, instead companies would pay a 5% gross receipts tax
...Noooooooo you just said "no exceptions" to the income tax. Corporations as separate people with special tax rules is a pretty big exception. "Business expenses" and all that. If you tax revenue rather than profit, you're going to see a diaspora of business interest from the USA. That's a brutally massive change.
Marry who[m]ever you want... Now you have health care rights
What are you talking about? You just have everyone universal healthcare.
All sales taxes nationally go away, replaced with a 10% VAT,
Replacing a sales tax with a sales tax. Got it. But did you mean national sales tax or all sales taxes across the nation? It sounds like the latter, primarily because there really isn't a national sales tax. But in that case, how do states and cities get money?
I would build a HUGE wall on the Mexican Border... I would not attempt to throw out 11 million illegals, that isn't reasonable
I find it humorous that you stated these two thing next to each other. Do you have ANY idea how unreasonable a big-ass wall is? Do you have any idea how much it would cost? Do you think it would actually be effective? I mean, a 20' rope is pretty cheap. And if you want it to be patrolled by the military... holy shit dude, that cost makes the construction look like chump change.
if we don't have a secure border, we don't have a country
Stop drinking the kool-aid from the crazy guy. Take a look at the border between Germany and France. It's open. With agreements that people can walk or drive through whenever they want. Do you think Germany and France are no longer countries? Are the USA and Canada no longer countries? That one's pretty insecure.
If you REALLY want to do something about illegal immigrants, just start prosecuting the companies that are hiring them. Send CEOs and mid-level bosses to prison.
The 2nd amendment says exactly what the fuck it says, you can own guns, any type of guns, that you want.
Really? I want a recoiless nuclear-ordinance launcher. Unless you're going to magically restrict the sales of bullets. I think it'd be nice to be a nuclear power.
I also want to own, manufacture, and sell 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type cannons. I'm pretty sure I could find a market willing to buy them. Maybe those Mexican cartels. I'm sure I could find someone across the border that would pass a background check. Or I could just lose them conveniently some where. You're not going to audit which guns I currently possess, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Do we start sending signals to it and waiting 190 years to see if something comes back?
Yes.
carry on with improving life here?
Yes.
Because if that signal is some advanced civilization, it means nothing practical beyond, "Hey look, life in other parts of the universe! Wow!"
What if they've been sending us instructions on how to make fusion power for the last 1000 years and we've just have been listening closely? We would know where to look and listen. And that's not trivial if you need to position a telescope 550 AU from the sun to get a crisp image.
Because we have liquid water? That's fairly noteworthy when it comes to plants.
Signals aren't actually that hard to send out if you place the antenna correctly around the sun. THAT SAID, placing a radio station at a set point out in the solar system isn't childs play.
I think I heard you can get a message out to Vega with a 40W radio.
It's still #2. And twice the index score of #3.
mobile app development. ... The constraint that C object code should remain small and fast doesn't help here.
Huh? That seems like exactly the sort of area where small and fast would help immensely.
I still find it infuriating when I want to have half a second for this clunky program on my phone to do it's thing.
Moreover the C programming language doesn't evolve like the other big languages such as Java, C++ and C#. There is a "new" C11 standard available but this contains only minor changes.
The language being stable is a good thing. A shining feature. Unless you enjoy all your skills turning to dust as you have to adapt to an ever changing platform. Who likes to build a house on shifting sand?
Yet another reason why C is getting into trouble is that there is no big company promoting the language. Oracle supports Java, Microsoft supports C++, C# and TypeScript, Google supports Java, Python, Go, Dart and JavaScript, Apple promotes Swift and Objective-C, etc. but none of them supports C publicly.
Also kind of a good thing. Because it's "Oracle, where tech goes to die". And Microsoft, where they keep bloody changing everything because some minor boss somewhere gets a bonus if he can convince 9% of the MS developer base to register with SilverLight tools, or how Sharepoint is "the next big thing". And frankly, I was surprised that every Go project wasn't mandated to direct their users to go sign up for google+.
C is punk. Fuck corporate.
It's portable as all fucking get-out. Low enough that you can make it smokin' fast. And it doesn't play any games with magical crap you can't see. The code is truth in advertising (unless you fuck around with macros like an idiot), and that makes it easier to debug. And everything as C APIs, so if there's a library out there you want you can typically go hook into it. Every bloody language has weird quirks and nuances you just have to be aware of. The tools that help you use the language are where it's at. MVS, while run by Satan, is actually pretty decent. But the classic C tools of makefiles, gcc or clang, and vim are powerhouses of usability that have been refined for decades. It's not the best if you want to talk to browsers. Javascript is the defacto standard there. And it's not the best if you just want to make yet another GUI button clicker for clueless suit. And Bash or whatever script of choice glues together the solutions of yesterday. But C is what you whip out for the hard cases for real meaningful programming. And certainly for anything critical like life support, satellites, weapon platforms, or kernels.
Except that there is also selection bias when it comes to real Astronauts. Indeed, they do NOT want a random sampling. That would be pretty terrible.
The experiment isn't perfect. Ideally, we'd also have a set of ~10 groups all going at once. But it's close enough to be useful. And a sample size of one still tells us something. And I imagine anything they ran into within the last year and documented will be referenced by psychologists in various papers for decades to come.
Well... ok. Let's look at the black-lining of this happy puffy cloud.
1. Self-Driving Cars: Truckers and cabbies are all going to lose their job. It'll be a big wave of unemployment for a sector of the populace that was already wasn't doing well. A lot of disenfranchised people with not much to lose is a worry.
2. Clean Energy: (this ones harder... ok, got it). It's a step towards these clean-energy eco-nuts outlawing coal. You'll have to.... (No that doesn't make any sense... AH) The more people that switch to distributed power generation, the less support the power grid will have. It benefits from economy of scale, but chip away at that and have half the populous stop paying, and you have problems for a public utility. The first to go with be mandates for rural electrification. Farmers will be cut off. Without the power lines being subsidized, communication lines won't be able to piggyback. (It's a stretch, but it's something)
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: You know how kids these days barely look up from their phones? Get ready to have blind-deaf (sadly not mute) meatbags ignoring you with twice the power. Kids wandering into streets chasing their pokemon. If they can overlay their own better reality, they'll disconnect from your reality. Oh, and this.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: With a camera on there, now it's feasible and cost effective to operate a panopticon where the FBI or anyone else with $200 are always watching.
Flying cars are one of those classic tropes for letdowns. In reality, it's just more expensive to operate a plane. I know a pilot with a shitty commute and there's an airstrip RIGHT next to work, but he still drives simply because he can't justify the cost of a plane. Automate the pilot license requirement, and rich people probably will fly everywhere. Let's hope the budget for road maintenance is still approved.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Remember those truckers? Get ready for whole swaths of office workers to go away. It's not like everyone from HR will get laid off. But none of them will touch paychecks and there will just be two to handle sensitivity training. Generalist doctors, the sort that diagnose you when something is wrong, could probably be replaced by Watson right now. The only barrier is who do you sue when it screws up.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: Uhh... something something, company leash you can't run away from, tracking you everywhere, the crushing disappointment that we gave everyone super-computers with the grand sum of human knowledge at their finger tips and the ability to instantly communicate with anyone anywhere (and have the language translated for you) and they only use it to look at pictures of cats.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Yay, a secret money to buy cocaine online with! And as for business-minded uses of blockchain technology... I'm still not sure how that's any different than running a co-opt.
8. High-Quality Online Education: It's been there for a couple decades and people are still pretty stupid and uneducated.
9. Better Food through Science: (This one is also hard) ...I got nothing. Maybe something about soil degradation?
10. Computerized Medicine: Robo surgeons are going to get hacked and then they're going to hack you.
11. A New Space Age: (I could probably find something negative about this, but I really like space. SPAAAAAAAACE!)
Ok, I ran out of steam at the end. Too much pessimism is as bad as too much optimism.
Well that's a fairly reasonable post...
and this fits in well with my support of Trump.
whooooaaaaaaaaa. Well this ought to be interesting.
What I've found is that all of the posts on either side are simple blind insults. Clinton is dirty and corrupt, Trump is a racist and bigot, there's not much else to see here. I've even called out the readership, asking for any *rational* reason to vote for Clinton over Trump (my particular choice - it would work as well the other way). No one has ever put forth a reasonable and rational reason for one candidate over the other(**).
Well Clinton IS corrupt and Trump IS a racist. But alright, here you go buddy.
Reasons to vote for Clinton over Trump.
1) Clinton more or less follows the democrat party platform. Anyone who is historically a democrat or otherwise shares the political views of democrats will more or less agree with her stance on most issues.
2) Trump does not follow the republican party platform. Anyone who is historically a republican or has like-minded views aren't going to necessarily like his plan. Arguably, he's not even really a Republican given his history of jumping parties. And considering how hard he pushed for Clinton in 2008, it's made me seriously consider if it's just a false flag operation. Normally I'd dismiss that sort of hogwash as a conspiracy nutcase. (After consideration, naw, still don't buy it)
3) The sheer amount of crazy that has come out of Trump. Now, this might sound like a baseless insult, and while it IS an insult it's not baseless. He is* an anti-vaxer, a birther, doesn't believe in global warming (and worse, it's all a ruse by the Chinese to kill US manufacturing [DESPITE, US manufacturing growing. The rabbit hole just keeps going and going]), encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies, encouraged espionage from Russia, pretended to be one "Chris Miller" when talking about his divorce in a phone interview, admitted in court to using the name "Chris Miller", and then denied using the name "Chris Miller", and he's advocated for committing war-crimes by suggesting we target the families of terrorists. This list goes on and on.
4) The in-feasibility of his plan to "Build a wall". It's pointless without a patrol, and then why not just have a patrol? (The answer: Money)
5) The pope came out against "Those who build walls". And then Trump bashed the pope.
6) While Clinton's shortcoming are far less than ideal, the ramifications for corruption are a few ambassadors and appointments who don't really deserve it. The culture of corruption is the worse thing, and yeah, that would probably take a hit.
7) And she's a slimy politician who does whatever will get her into power. This is bad, but it also means she knows how to play the political game. As opposed to Carter who was a great guy, but couldn't get much done. I don't think either Clinton or Trump actually want to destroy America. They just have different views about what needs to be done.
8) While it would send a nice message to "the establishment" as some sort of 4 year protest vote, the resulting damage would send so much support towards the establishment that they would never face competition again. It's like calling someone's bluff, you have to have a decent hand yourself.
9) Clinton can smile and play nice with foreign dignitaries. Trump is a little more... Brash.
10) Speaking of foreign affairs, Trump wants to defund/exit NATO and talked about using Nukes again. Coming from the biggest dog in the fight, this is the sort of thing that gets our allies nervous and ruins alliances. While Congress and the courts could probably keep Trump in check for domestic affairs, as long as he doesn't wield the FBI's surveillance like a club, there's little keeping him from screwing up foreign affairs.
11) If you're Mexican or Muslim you're probably going to face less static in the streets if Clinton is elected.
* But of course all that
...Why would any company willingly lock themselves into using a third-party scripting language that they have no control over?
Holy shit. This is annoying as hell.
Their webpage is intentionally vague. You can't find out SHIT about it unless you sign up.
Let me save you some time guys.
What the fuck is IFTTT:
It's a tool to program common tasks within a set group of services when a trigger occurs. /r/books for "sci-fi" and send a summary to an email. Do it daily. Sum up the number of reads your IMDB review got and text it to you at 10pm so you can cry yourself to sleep.
Tasks like: scan everything in
Hey, it's bringing automation scripts to the masses. Most people won't learn Bash scripting, this is sort of like lowering the bar. Unfortunately, it doesn't give them any control and assumes they're on a phone. You hand it access to all the accounts, so it's DAMN scary from a security perspective.
Last I looked, it was very anti-thetical to open source, but if they're allowing third-party scripts, that's a small step in the right direction... And absolutely HORRIFYING from a security perspective.
It's only legit "value-add" over a set of bash scripts people can run, is that it handles the security aspect and handles ALL YOUR PASSWORDS. Which is also the part that smells the most.
I want to see a competitor though: Parse This Bullshit, Then That Bash. PFTBTTB. It carries it's own theme-song.
hmmm. I think you might be a bit off.
Realize that electronic waste has more gold in it than gold ore. We're more knowledgeable about refining gold out of rock than breaking down old motherboards into copper and gold, but that's just some R&D away. It's not an insurmountable problem by far.
As for scattering our resources, landfills are more like concentrated masses of previously unusable resources. (With a lot of crap that still isn't usable in there). Imagine a landfill that existed prior to aluminium recycling. It'd be a gold-mine (ba-dum-tsh)!
But yeah, we should recycle aluminium whenever we can. It recycles great.
For example: We used as much chromium in 2014 as we did from 1900 to 2000 combined.
...Don't look at ME! I use Firefox.
"We" are not deforesting. Mostly third world nations are.
Wow. They must have a lot of excess lumber.
Maybe they sell it or something?
I wonder who buys that.
Who decides what resources we're allowed to use?
Right now we mostly use a system of allowances based on your contributions to society as determined by society. They can only give you as much as they have. The placeholder for "resources" is called "money". The system is called "capitalism". It's not pure capitalism as the top actors get to decide the money->resources exchange, as well as the typical taxation process to keep the infrastructure up and running. Oh, and keeping the jackboots off our necks. (Quite a bit goes towards that last bit actually.) Furthermore, there are some resources that are restricted; you can't build a condo in Yellowstone and you can't play with nukes. And the EPA is attempting to account for externalizes that you inflict upon others without paying for it by the way of pollution laws and carbon tax.
It's certainly not perfect, but it's better than other attempts. At least it's not a controlled economy with price fixing.
Focus on things that can be objectively measured like global average temperature, emissions and aerosols in the atmosphere, and things like that.
Sounds great.
Let's add how many resources have been consumed. I'm pretty sure they know how many barrels of oil have been pumped and burned. Or how much lumber has been made.
And then let's add them all together for an overall metric of "How we doing?"
Lemme see:
"they don't sen their best. They are [thieves, crooks, scum] and rapists.... And some, I assume, are good people"
And
"Climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese to move manufacturing overseas".
How did I do?
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Eh... Fairly close. I skipped over the filler. And I knew I didn't get it exactly right in the middle. Oh man, that pause between rapists and good people though.
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
ok, I got the structure of this one all wrong. He didn't it a conspiracy by name. Damnit, and I missed the detail that he called out global warming instead of climate change. Which is even sadder as global warming is easier to prove. But the gist is mostly the same.
Are you going to try and claim these things didn't come from him? That it's some sort of media ruse? Listen, Cilnton isn't a great choice. She's a pretty stereotypical slimy politician. Privacy will take it in the pants. And Snowden might get disappeared. But Trump is sheer crazy, and I'm not sure congress and the courts could keep him from doing too much harm for 4 years. And I don't think trying to push for Bernie is viable at this stage.
I believe the international standard for implying sarcasm is
He's got a point.
I'd actually like to see both of them stand trial for this
Military craft are supposed to be EM shielded against this little guy, but I'm not really sure how much real-world testing this has really been put through. It's not the sort of thing you find in the third-world nations we kick around. And of course we don't stir up shit with real developed nations, we all have nukes and the rest of the military is really just for show.
But an EM pulse wouldn't "jam" the computers. It would fry them. You could say "permanently jammed", I guess.
Soooo... You have 8 times as much income as that other guy.... And after taxes you'd have 5-7 times as much as that other guy. And you've got your panties in a twist over this?
If that guy can get by on one widget, and you've got SEVEN times as much.... how much do you care if you don't have 8?
Surely if you look at that it is obvious that a progressive tax system acts as a disincentive for me to work longer.
That's the MAGIC of capitalism. If you want more, you have to work more.
You are STILL incentiveized to work longer and make more money. There are diminishing returns, but there ARE returns. And the bulk of people are greedy little monsters that'll chase after that. Because no matter how much they have, they'll see someone with more than themselves and they'll want it.
You can either say people are greedy and they'll work for more regardless of the diminishing returns, or that people aren't that greedy and shouldn't care about the taxes since they've already got plenty to cover their needs.
Wow. I can't believe someone would try to argue about tax rates when they don't know the difference between marginal tax rates and effective tax rates.
The tax bracket you're in is the marginal rate. That's how much you pay in taxes for additional money you make from that point on. You're ALSO in the all the lower tax brackets and paying those rates for those sums of income.
The top bracket had marginal tax rate of the 1940's and 50's was 90-some percent. And they paid it, for the war effort. Soooo, yeah, people WILL pay it, if need be.
Why not? Do you honestly think I'd do a WORSE job than either Trump or Clinton?
Worse than Hilary, if this is your plan.
You're assuming the Federal Government needs to stay its current size. I'd fix that
Yeah, so far you'd expand it a lot: You'd have it take over healthcare, run an active military campaign to "secure the border", and called $30 Billion "chump change". Disarming nuclear capabilities kind of makes it smaller. Otherwise you haven't actually stated how you'd make it any smaller. I mean, if you plan on axing the bulk of the military, that's a pretty major change you probably want to tell people about.
And dear god, your sense of economics is laughable. You're really comparing the wall construction to the great wall of china? That took centuries to build.
48 million Americans live in "food insecure household"
Wow. That's terrible. If only we had a number of programs to feed them.... Like 61% of those 48 million partake of. The rest have some sort of trouble taking the hand out.
speaking of which
better mental health systems will go a ways towards fixing some of that...
Truth.
Meh, people aren't going to stop caring about their fellow human beings over it, what it will do is remove a ton of fraud and cheating... Non-Profits live in society, they need to help pay for it...
You fucking monster. Sure, they might still care. But the organizations will have a hell of a lot less cash to help.
Stop giving bottled water to people crossing the border and shoot them instead...
You fucking monster. You want to abolish the death penalty, but shoot people on US soil without any trial or identification. Sweet Jesus, have you thought this one through at all? You're telling me I can grab a motherfucker, drive down to Arizona, push him into this no-man's-zone, and have my buddy in the national guard gun him down without any other due-process? You're gonna need TWO walls on either side of that clusterfuck.
you would not be walking free if I was King... If you believe in jihad, then your beliefs are not compatible with civilization...
Let's say the guy giving the talk was a believer in Jihad, and was giving talks to the mosques around the US about how it's supposed to be non-violent. Typically you only "put down the dog" when people perform an illegal activity. Or did you want to outlaw a religion or something?
Are you proposing some sort of thought-crime?
If you're raped, then getting an abortion during the first three months shouldn't be hard...
Sure. Probably not. But it happened. Now what? Is it illegal?
If an unborn child is 6 months old and is at risk of killing the mother, I'm ok with that...
You fucking monster. How about if the child is given a 10% chance of living? Yeah, this shit gets tricky doesn't it?
Have you been lawfully released? Did you serve your time?
I have the same problem with sex offender registration, that shit is stupid... If you can't trust the person released, why are they OUT OF PRISON?
Because they were lawfully released after having served their time. That doesn't mean JACK SHIT for trusting them with a gun. Right now, we DON'T trust them with a gun. You're proposing that we just don't release people because "we don't trust them".
I don't want ANYONE to have nuclear weapons, including governments!
Yeah, they're scary. But so far they've kept the prats from going at it. And frankly, you can't disarm them. It would require you to not only be king of the world, but an omniscient GOD. It'd be too easy for one player to just keep a few secretly and POOF, next conflict they just declare their milit
The tap on the German Chancellor's phone line is not an illegal act for our intelligence services. It's what they exist to do.
What? ok, this one is easier to find. Because it wasn't just the German Chancellor, Snowden also revealed that we ordered espionage on Ban Ki Moon, the head of the U.N. And that's internationally illegal, per an convention that the USA is a signatory. Specifically, The U.N.'s property and premise is immune to search and confiscation.
Also, it's sure as shit illegal under German law, and US law, and we have an extradition treaty with germany, so that's an illegal action that can be prosecuted across state borders.
Do you remember why the bulk of the CIA's actions are clandestine? Because they're illegal. As in, "if this got out, we're going to deny you ever worked for the CIA or that we know you at all, because we can't be associated with that sort of blatantly illegal activity".
It's their job like it was their job to infect a bunch of poor black people with syphilis. Or like it was the job of Unit 761 to torture the Chinese. Or how Al Capone's hitmen were paid to shoot people. Yes, that is indeed what they were assigned to do. But that doesn't make it legal, and it certainly doesn't make it right.
I mean, you're right about the likely end-state of prisoner swaps. The spy agencies care more for their own than justice. But there's definately trials and criminal prosecution and prison-time before those deals happen. And if the USA didn't HAVE any german spies tucked away in a prison, like if there were no German agents to catch, then they'd be sitting a long time in prison.
The rules are simple, everybody collects on everybody.
And that doesn't make it legal.
Furthermore, while anyone is free to collect information, doing things like tapping wires, invading privacy, burglary, and home invasion are not legal.
BUT HEY! If this is just "part of the game", and the laws don't really matter, then who gives a shit if Snowden trampled the USA's privacy rights?
Who? What lives?
With regards to the German tap, combat troops if the contents of the tap results contained sensitive information about troop movements in Operations where we are working with the Germans.
....What? That is UTTER BULLSHIT. You're saying that the CIA not hearing where our ALLIES troops are moving would put our troops in danger? Are you nuts? They are allies fighting together in the same war/operation. If we want to know where their troops are moving, WE JUST GO ASK THEM! They don't want us to shoot them any more than we want them to shoot us. Because we're on the SAME BLOODY SIDE. You don't think our military's do any coordinating?
Wait, wait, are you suggesting the CIA is looking out for some sort of betrayal from Germany? Like the Chancellor is going to get a phone call and it's going to be along the lines of "it's time to backstab ze Americans! Let's ally with ISIS and fire on their Marines!" Because that's about the only scenario I could conceive of where a tap on the chancellor's phone would save our combat troops. And guess what? These sort of activities are the type of thing that would make Germany do that! (I mean, it would take a lot more than just this, but it's in that direction). If we have to worry about german troop movements, it's thanks to the CIA performing these sort of illegal operations.
So... Do you guys think any other language would do a better job?
(Is there anything else that would even work on a PIC32 MCU?)
We're talking about "the most portable language". Even if there are gotchas, if it's the only game in town, it's the most portable by default.
Oh, wait, you were bitching about progressive taxes.
Listen, if you can somehow make 20 widgets while everyone else around you works just as hard and only makes 2, and all widgets are currently sold at the same price, then you've got plenty of cash to afford the higher tax. If we didn't do this, historically you'd undercut those around you, dominate the market, form a monopoly, and generally be abusing to everyone. Progressive taxes are part of the solution to stop that.
You're rich. Quite bitching.
But with regards to fairness, I have never understood how, if I am making widgets, I will get paid $5 for the first widget I make but then get paid $3 for the 20th widget I make. Are my widgets now worth less than they were? Is my labor not as valuable?
...Yes. Yes, that's exactly how it works. The first one is the hardest to make, it's one of a kind, rare, and whoever paid for it obviously needs it. Piecemeal work has no economy of scale and is labor intensive. It's expensive as fuck and operates like it's back from the medieval period with their cottage industry.
If you make widgets en'mass then the value of the widgets plummets. If the world needed 5 widgets and you only made one, then the world is going to fight over that one widget, and it's going to be valuable. If you make 10 widgets, the world will take 5 and maybe a couple more as backups, and you'll be left with 2 widgets with a value of $0, because nobody wants them. Now, your overhead remains the same, and you can distribute it over multiple widgets, so you can sell them at a lower cost and still come out ahead.
If you're making something so common and standard that it's a commodity then the profit margins are going to be razor thin. Which is a good thing for society. Not great for you personally, I guess. I too would love if I could command a paycheck of a million dollars for what I do. Great for me, but a kick in the pants to society. And that's capitalism. It works better than the other systems we've tried, usually.
Ideally, nobody owes you jack shit for widgets or your labor. It's up to you to get as much as you can for it. Let me put that other way: Widgets have no inherent worth or value past their utility to others. If you spend a year building worthless widgets that nobody wants, that's bloody stupid of you. Now, that's ideally. We've had a history of labor disputes and really horrible abuses, so now we've got some laws about minimum wage. At least when it comes to big companies. If they can't afford to pay someone a minimum wage to do something, then it's not worth it to society to have them do it. But those sort of labor dispute solutions are a little long in the tooth now that robots are doing a lot of the work.
who wants me to be King?
Well not me.
But I LOVE shooting holes in ideas. Let's see:
I'd reset income taxes to 20%, flat across the board [with a ton of foodstamps]
HOOOOOOOOLLY SHIIIIIIT! Where are you going to get all your money from? Our effective tax rate is around 27%, so you're in deep financial shit. But, oh, okay, "all numbers are subject to change". So let's just assume that it's a flat tax at $(ENOUGH) to have the same income as today. Why do you want to give so much money to rich people? Historically, they've been getting hella wealthier while the bulk of people have lagged behind.
Also with no exceptions, most non-profits go away. Which is a real kick in the pants to the poor and anyone hoping for a scholarship.
Finally, food is cheap. Starving isn't really that big of an issue in America. Housing though, housing is expensive as hell. Unless these food stamps can be given to a landlord, you're looking at a massive homeless issue. The problem is not having enough homes. There are something like 3-5 empty homes for each homeless person. The problem is they don't have money for a home.
The Corporate Tax would be abolished, instead companies would pay a 5% gross receipts tax
...Noooooooo you just said "no exceptions" to the income tax. Corporations as separate people with special tax rules is a pretty big exception. "Business expenses" and all that. If you tax revenue rather than profit, you're going to see a diaspora of business interest from the USA. That's a brutally massive change.
Marry who[m]ever you want... Now you have health care rights
What are you talking about? You just have everyone universal healthcare.
All sales taxes nationally go away, replaced with a 10% VAT,
Replacing a sales tax with a sales tax. Got it. But did you mean national sales tax or all sales taxes across the nation? It sounds like the latter, primarily because there really isn't a national sales tax. But in that case, how do states and cities get money?
I would build a HUGE wall on the Mexican Border ... I would not attempt to throw out 11 million illegals, that isn't reasonable
I find it humorous that you stated these two thing next to each other. Do you have ANY idea how unreasonable a big-ass wall is? Do you have any idea how much it would cost? Do you think it would actually be effective? I mean, a 20' rope is pretty cheap. And if you want it to be patrolled by the military... holy shit dude, that cost makes the construction look like chump change.
if we don't have a secure border, we don't have a country
Stop drinking the kool-aid from the crazy guy. Take a look at the border between Germany and France. It's open. With agreements that people can walk or drive through whenever they want. Do you think Germany and France are no longer countries? Are the USA and Canada no longer countries? That one's pretty insecure.
If you REALLY want to do something about illegal immigrants, just start prosecuting the companies that are hiring them. Send CEOs and mid-level bosses to prison.
The 2nd amendment says exactly what the fuck it says, you can own guns, any type of guns, that you want.
Really? I want a recoiless nuclear-ordinance launcher. Unless you're going to magically restrict the sales of bullets. I think it'd be nice to be a nuclear power.
I also want to own, manufacture, and sell 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger Gatling-type cannons. I'm pretty sure I could find a market willing to buy them. Maybe those Mexican cartels. I'm sure I could find someone across the border that would pass a background check. Or I could just lose them conveniently some where. You're not going to audit which guns I currently possess, right?
Can I get a gun if I'm a convict? How about a con