"Speed" code tends to be poorly documanted and maddeningly squirrely. I've tried to use code written by a serious gak head, and it turned out to be easier to just rewrite it from scratch.
The difference is in the US most of the failures where public.
And they weren't catastrophic enough to A) kill lots of people, or B) destroy critical launch facilities. Soviet failures were generally much more spectacular, due to their tendency to employ inadequate safeguards.
Serving in the US military doesn't mean you'll always tell the truth
Heck, it doesn't even mean they KNOW the truth.
, especially if they're selling something:)
I'd tell about all the UFO's I saw when I was in Saudi in 90-91 if I thought I could make a buck, and the fact that I didn't actually see any wouldn't stop me!:)
Get over yourself. He's kidding. 'Visable' and 'comvert' should be considered hints.
I don't think he was kidding. Two spelling errors in a dry and otherwise factually correct description of how a fluorescent light works doesn't really clear the bar for humor. Maybe if he'd actually spelled "convert" wrong as you seem to think (look again, he didn't) but as it sits it's not umor. I think he didn't get my joke because he didn't know "flourescent" is the wrong way to spell it, and went on to explain how a fluorescent light works because he thought I didn't know.
Maybe it helps if the V8 in question is cooled by a small radiator. I tool around in an old Crown Vic PI and I'm in the halfway-to-work-with-no-heat boat myself
It's a function of the thermal mass of the engine and the thermostat. Water doesn't circulate through the radiator until it's hot enough to open the thermostat. The heater, being itself a small radiator on the water cooling system, doesn't work either until the thermostat opens. A big-block engine will take longer to get up to the running temperature than a small block. I had an Olds Toronado with a 454 V8 engine (giant cast-iron block) that took 10 minutes to start blowing lukewarm air. My '90 Volkswagen Vanagon with a 2.1l flat-four (cylinders are thin steel sleeves surrounded by a water jacket) starts blowing air hot enough to pop popcorn in about 90 seconds.
The old fashioned Jeep hasn't seen service since 'Nam, and you know it.
The M151A2 was used by the Marine Corps as late as 1997 in Albania. The US Army replaced most of their M151's with the M998 HMMWV in the early 80's, so the old Jeeps were around quite a while after VietNam.
The HUMMWV has been used as a FAV by the Army and Marines for more than 20 years now, and it's configuration reflects this.
The HMMWV is unsuitable for the specific role the M151A2 filled. Note the requirements for the ITV/LSV/RST-V program: it needs to be internally transportable in the CH-46 CH-53 and V-22, a requiremtn the HMMWV cannot meet.
This is why the humvee is loathed by the Marines because it's too big and inefficient for what it's asked to do, but the DOJ forced it on them.
Yeah, the DOD forced them into the one-size-fits all nonsense without regard for the Marine Coprs' specific needs. That's why they didn't get a replacement for the M151A2 until 2000-- the Interim Fast Attack Vehicle (IFAV).
They'd rather use the Galendawagen.
Yes, the Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen, the IFAV. I think they should stick with that and shitcan that stupid hybrid FutureMobile.
Most of what you say is true, however, I have a friend who actually has driven one of these off-road and he tells me it can do shit he wouldn't DARE TRY in his Cherokee Grand. Sideslope at extreme angles, it climbs like a goat, these were the kind of quotes I have.
And he started out prepared to ridicule the thing for exactly the same reasons you are using. Still, it's not a mil-spec vehicle.
Oh, it's certainly BUILT to go offroad, I agree. I was just thinking of the cosmetic appearance and luxury interior stuff. The H1 is obviously just an carpeted HMMWV with better seats. The H2 is clearly designed from the beginning for carting the kids to soccer practice and driving to grandma's house on the interstate, rather than drag-assing around muddy USFS fire roads or BLM jeep trails in the desert.
The H2 is just a cheaper knockoff of the H1,but without a turbodiesel engine option, so you can't even *try* to keep fuel costs down.
Yeah, and it barely even counts as a knockoff. It's a Chevy Tahoe with a body kit that makes it resemble the H1. Doesn't even bother with the pretending it's for offroad use.
"Is the DoD feeling the crunch of sky-high gasoline prices or are they being overrun by a bunch of Greens? Who cares, the latest Humvee looks to be a more capable and greener machine than its predecessors."
I don't see any evidence of a shift at the DoD.
Not to mention the fact that the hybrid vehicle in the article isn't intended to replace the HMMWV in any capacity whatsoever. It even says at the end of the military.com article that it's replacing the M151A2, which is the old jeep. The dumbass at military.com did no research whatsoever. He apparently just looked at the pictures and assumed that the Shadow Fast Attack Vehicle was some kind of Hummer replacement.
Or the fact that you just don't see jeeps in the military anymore, they were replaced mostly by hummers, a few replaced by civilian light trucks, and a few by John Deer Gators.
I spent five years in the Marine Corps, and a year in the Army National Guard, and the only jeeps I saw were old rusting hulks, often cut up for scrap metal, shoved off in a corner of the motor pool parking lot.
So I'd write it off as shoddy research as well, but not for the reason the grandparent did. You can't replace the jeep because the damn thing already has been replaced.
Yeah, I think a had the M151 listed on my US Army driver's license back in '88, but even then it was a joke because my unit had perhaps three of them rotting behind the motor pool garage, and no one ever drove them. As I understand it, the Marine Corps still had a few M151A2's in service up until '97, but by '99 they were pretty much completely replaced with the MB290 Wolf based IFAV. Technically, the Shadow is designed to replace the M151A2, as the IFAV is just an "interim" design and the "official" Fast Attack Vehicle is still the M151A2.
Regardless, the presumption by the author of TFA that the HMMWV ever had anything to do with the Marine's Fast Attack Vehicle is still sheer idiocy. The bonehead clearly did no research beyond looking at the picture of the Shadow and concluding that it was meant to be some sort of "new Hummer". Personally, I'd expect better than that from military.com.
Possibly the Hummer was tested against the Shadow as a potential replacement for the jeep?
No, the Hummer has been in service for 20-odd years and has always been a big, bulky vehicle. Nobody in the Marine Corps would ever seriously suggest replacing small, light jeeps with the Hummer for the Fast Attack Vehicle role because it cannot be transported inside a CH-53 or CH-46 helicopter or the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, which is a requirement for the FAV. They've been soliciting designs to replace the M151 jeep for years. Currently they are adopting the LKW Wolf by Daimler/Chrysler as an Interim Fast Attack Vehicle until they settle on a new design.
TFA is ill researched crap. First, this Shadow hybid vehicle is not suitable as a 1:1 replacement for the HMMWV except in a very small number of roles; it's a light attack vehicle with no cargo capacity. The hummer is 1 1/4 ton truck. Then there's this choice bit of irrelevancy:
A typical Humvee guzzles over 1,000 pounds of fuel per mission, and the civilian equivalent (the Hummer H2) was ranked among the "12 Most Environmentally Unfriendly Vehicles of 2004."
The Hummer H2 is not the civilian equivalent of the HMMWV, the H1 is. The H2 is a totally unrelated vehicle based on the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The military is obviously interested in reducing fuel consumption, as driving tankers of diesel around is a logistical nightmare, but really that's about the end of it. And at the end there's this glaring error:
the Shadow RST-V is slated to replace the M151 A2 fast attack vehicle currently used by the Marine Corps for Special Forces (SF)support. After test and evaluation and rigorous trials, the RST-Vs superior mobility, deployability and fuel economy are welcome advantages over the Humvee's loud, gas guzzling ways.
OK, so the Shadow isn't replacing the "gas guzzling" Hummer, it's replacing the M151A2! The M151 is the good old fashioned jeep, with a tiny 4 cylinder gasoline engine. Hardly a gas guzzler.
The author clearly wanted to put a "green" spin on the story, but didn't bother to research a number of his assumptions, the stupidest of which was assuming the M151A2 was the Hummer!
Hopefully, atleast this will make people realize that animals should be given much the same right as humans
Rights are not "given", they simply exist. They are a philosophical concept essentially limited to sentient beings. Rights only exist for those that are capable of respecting the rights of others. No animal, as yet, has demonstrated this capability. They do deserve our protection, but they cannot exercise rights.
I was hoping that you were being sarcastic, but sadly, it does not appear to be the case.
What are you talking about? The part where he says "As long as you never ever do anything wrong, and never make a mistake" pretty much makes it sarcasm. Everybody knows there's no such thing as a person who always does right and never makes a mistake.
You mean when he opposed the right of the Confederate States to leave and sunder the Union all in the name of slavery? Oops, that's right I forgot, the Civil War wasn't *really* about slavery, just like the Holocaust didn't really happen. Riiiiiiight.
I love fucktards like you who think that anyone who points out that Lincoln was a strong federalist is some redneck who flies the confederate flag and thinks jews have horns. The Civil war was about states' rights, just as the redneck morons say; but the main way the southern states were trying to exercise those rights was in perpetuating the immoral practice of slavery. The situation Lincoln was in was unenviable: either A) respect states rights as the founding fathers intended and let the union fail because half the states wanted to force black men to do their hard work for them, or B) essentially ignore one of the central pillars of the constitution and fight to keep the nation whole. Frankly, even though I say he gutted the 10th Amd, I don't blame Lincoln for doing it. If fault is to be laid at anyone's feet, I think it should be pinned squarely on the slave owning culture of the south that brought the matter to a head. Slavery had been abolished for 60-80 years in the rest of the civilized world (including the northern states), but it took a civil war to drag those backwards fucks into the modern day.
Pfff! As if there was anything left of the tenth! Lincoln gutted it way back when, and FDR buried whatever was left. The feds usurping states' power was a done deal long ago.
If the Bells can charge exhorbinant rates for call termination it'll put Vonage, Packet 8, and the rest out of business in a year.
Get off your hysteria horse-- they can't charge exhorbinant rates for call termination. This part is, and always has been, regulated. Vonnage's connection to the phone network at large is like that of any of the long distance companies. SBC can no more charge Vonnage higher termination rates than they can AT&T and Sprint-MCI. All SBC can do is compete with them on price, which isn't a bad thing.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of those Jason-and-the-Argonauts skeletons, and bad stop-motion animation. If we see any CGI effects, I bet they'll be cheesy - on purpose.
I definitely agree with you here. You can tell the direction he'll probably go by looking at the Hercules and Xena TV shows. AoD was still rubber skeletons and stop-motion, but he jumped straight into CGI as soon as he could (as seen on Hercules and Xena); nevertheless, he retained the corny comic-book feel. I'm predicting a lot of very well rendered and very funny zombie/skeleton things.
...he wanted to do Army of Darkness, but had done Evil Dead with a different studio, and so he couldn't use that footage in AoD, so he had to re-shoot it basically into Evil Dead 2
Actually, on the audio commentary track of AoD Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell explain that the reshoot had nothing to do with not having the rights to the original footage, but that the timing of all the scenes they wanted to use in the AoD intro was all wrong and just couldn't be edited in a way to make it fit right. So rather than try to shoe-horn in butchered bits of old footage in a way that fit the pacing of the intro, they just re-shot what they needed.
Really, even one year's worth of tax would probably be too much for people
Well, that really depends on the tax rate, doesn't it?
If it has to replace the current per-gallon tax, it needs to be pretty high. A driver who only fills a 14 gallon tank once a week will have to pay at least $131 a year to equal the current $.18/gal excise tax. That's a good chunk of cash to some people.
The constitution mentions the importance of a well regulated militia.
Well regulated, in the context of the Second Amendment, has nothing to do with limiting weapons or circumscribing the conditions of their posession. Well regulated means "practiced and ready for action". You see, in the 18th century soldiers could be generally classified into two categories: regulars, and irregulars. Regulars were the trained soldiers. The guys who knew how to march in formation, load under fire, and have a fair chance of hitting their targets. Irregulars were generally volunteers and/or conscripts with little training and haphazard equipment. The fact that the word "regulated" is no longer used in exactly the same sense as it was 200-odd years ago doesn't change the basis of the right to bear arms. Semantic drift does not modify the rights of man. If, 200 years from now, the word "peaceably" is predominantly used to mean "naked, bent over a chair", does that mean that the People only have the right to assemble if they're naked and speading their cheeks? Besides, interpreting "well regulated" to mean "limited by rules" throws the first part of the amendment into logical conflict with the second part. This should indicate to any reasonable person that this interpretation is wrong.
US vs. Miller set a precedent that not all weapons can be considered necessary for the existence of a well-regulated militia. "[I]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well- regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument." I would contend that the same remark could be made about a remote-controlled internet weapon.
So a remote controlled rifle, not being a useful militia weapon, should be banned based on US v. Miller? How do you feel about semi-auto military rifles, then? They are provably the most militia-appropriate weapons of all, but their manufacture was banned. Interesting how certain groups cite US v. Miller when they want to limit posession of a hunting arm based on its non-militia status, but then turn and steadfastly assert that military-pattern rifles should be banned because they serve no "legitimate sporting purpose" (note: I know you didn't take the latter position in your post; I am referencing others I have seen in the past taking both sides based on convenience).
At any rate, I submit that US v. Miller (while admittedly being precedent) was a bad decision. Being that there is no hard authority on what constitutes an appropriate militia weapon, the law limiting long arms to 18 inch barrels should have been thrown out. Saying that a militia is limited to certain arms requires a willful disregard for history-- militias have traditionally armed themselved with whatever they could get!
This, of course, assumes that militias are still relevant in the modern US, something about which I am not convinced.
And that is the root of the problem. Through all these endless weasel-word lawyer games people have completely lost sight of the basic philosophical principal upon which the right to bear arms is based: the people are the ultimate powerholders. You must ask yourself, should the police be the only ones with guns? Do I want cops to have no fears about kicking in doors because they know that you (at most) have a kitchen knife while they have a Mossberg 500 shotgun? The fact that 20 policemen will certainly win a gunfight against you is largely irrelevant. The fact that we are an armed population should cause each and every government agent to hesitate before acting in the name of the state; to stop and think, "hey, I could get shot; are my orders worth getting shot over?" An armed populace keeps each individual-- government agent and private citizen alike-- on an equal footing. When the population is disarmed, they become the
So it's not a matter of their installers being idiots and not calling tha 800 number before digging?
The installers already have the map that the people on the other end of that 800 number are using. Problems occur when that map is in error, or when the map reader is a fool. Both things happen with alarming frequency.
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"Speed" code tends to be poorly documanted and maddeningly squirrely. I've tried to use code written by a serious gak head, and it turned out to be easier to just rewrite it from scratch.
And they weren't catastrophic enough to A) kill lots of people, or B) destroy critical launch facilities. Soviet failures were generally much more spectacular, due to their tendency to employ inadequate safeguards.
Heck, it doesn't even mean they KNOW the truth.
, especially if they're selling something :)
I'd tell about all the UFO's I saw when I was in Saudi in 90-91 if I thought I could make a buck, and the fact that I didn't actually see any wouldn't stop me! :)
I don't think he was kidding. Two spelling errors in a dry and otherwise factually correct description of how a fluorescent light works doesn't really clear the bar for humor. Maybe if he'd actually spelled "convert" wrong as you seem to think (look again, he didn't) but as it sits it's not umor. I think he didn't get my joke because he didn't know "flourescent" is the wrong way to spell it, and went on to explain how a fluorescent light works because he thought I didn't know.
It's a function of the thermal mass of the engine and the thermostat. Water doesn't circulate through the radiator until it's hot enough to open the thermostat. The heater, being itself a small radiator on the water cooling system, doesn't work either until the thermostat opens. A big-block engine will take longer to get up to the running temperature than a small block. I had an Olds Toronado with a 454 V8 engine (giant cast-iron block) that took 10 minutes to start blowing lukewarm air. My '90 Volkswagen Vanagon with a 2.1l flat-four (cylinders are thin steel sleeves surrounded by a water jacket) starts blowing air hot enough to pop popcorn in about 90 seconds.
No, that's a fluorescent light. A flourescent light probably passes a high voltage through ground wheat powder in a vacuum or something.
The M151A2 was used by the Marine Corps as late as 1997 in Albania. The US Army replaced most of their M151's with the M998 HMMWV in the early 80's, so the old Jeeps were around quite a while after VietNam.
The HUMMWV has been used as a FAV by the Army and Marines for more than 20 years now, and it's configuration reflects this.
The HMMWV is unsuitable for the specific role the M151A2 filled. Note the requirements for the ITV/LSV/RST-V program: it needs to be internally transportable in the CH-46 CH-53 and V-22, a requiremtn the HMMWV cannot meet.
This is why the humvee is loathed by the Marines because it's too big and inefficient for what it's asked to do, but the DOJ forced it on them.
Yeah, the DOD forced them into the one-size-fits all nonsense without regard for the Marine Coprs' specific needs. That's why they didn't get a replacement for the M151A2 until 2000-- the Interim Fast Attack Vehicle (IFAV).
They'd rather use the Galendawagen.
Yes, the Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen, the IFAV. I think they should stick with that and shitcan that stupid hybrid FutureMobile.
Oh, it's certainly BUILT to go offroad, I agree. I was just thinking of the cosmetic appearance and luxury interior stuff. The H1 is obviously just an carpeted HMMWV with better seats. The H2 is clearly designed from the beginning for carting the kids to soccer practice and driving to grandma's house on the interstate, rather than drag-assing around muddy USFS fire roads or BLM jeep trails in the desert.
Is that some process where they coat the inside of the bulb with ground wheat?
it's fluorescent.
Also of note is the fact that the Shadow IFV isn't even intended to replace the Hummer in any capacity. The moron author even says so himself:
The M151A2 isn't the Hummer, it's the old Jeep!
The H2 is just a cheaper knockoff of the H1,but without a turbodiesel engine option, so you can't even *try* to keep fuel costs down.
Yeah, and it barely even counts as a knockoff. It's a Chevy Tahoe with a body kit that makes it resemble the H1. Doesn't even bother with the pretending it's for offroad use.
I don't see any evidence of a shift at the DoD.
Not to mention the fact that the hybrid vehicle in the article isn't intended to replace the HMMWV in any capacity whatsoever. It even says at the end of the military.com article that it's replacing the M151A2, which is the old jeep. The dumbass at military.com did no research whatsoever. He apparently just looked at the pictures and assumed that the Shadow Fast Attack Vehicle was some kind of Hummer replacement.
I think he means "impossible for a 5 year old child", and he has a point: You should never shut off the engine when your five year old is driving.
Yeah, I think a had the M151 listed on my US Army driver's license back in '88, but even then it was a joke because my unit had perhaps three of them rotting behind the motor pool garage, and no one ever drove them. As I understand it, the Marine Corps still had a few M151A2's in service up until '97, but by '99 they were pretty much completely replaced with the MB290 Wolf based IFAV. Technically, the Shadow is designed to replace the M151A2, as the IFAV is just an "interim" design and the "official" Fast Attack Vehicle is still the M151A2.
Regardless, the presumption by the author of TFA that the HMMWV ever had anything to do with the Marine's Fast Attack Vehicle is still sheer idiocy. The bonehead clearly did no research beyond looking at the picture of the Shadow and concluding that it was meant to be some sort of "new Hummer". Personally, I'd expect better than that from military.com.
No, the Hummer has been in service for 20-odd years and has always been a big, bulky vehicle. Nobody in the Marine Corps would ever seriously suggest replacing small, light jeeps with the Hummer for the Fast Attack Vehicle role because it cannot be transported inside a CH-53 or CH-46 helicopter or the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, which is a requirement for the FAV. They've been soliciting designs to replace the M151 jeep for years. Currently they are adopting the LKW Wolf by Daimler/Chrysler as an Interim Fast Attack Vehicle until they settle on a new design.
The Hummer H2 is not the civilian equivalent of the HMMWV, the H1 is. The H2 is a totally unrelated vehicle based on the Chevy Tahoe SUV. The military is obviously interested in reducing fuel consumption, as driving tankers of diesel around is a logistical nightmare, but really that's about the end of it. And at the end there's this glaring error:
OK, so the Shadow isn't replacing the "gas guzzling" Hummer, it's replacing the M151A2! The M151 is the good old fashioned jeep, with a tiny 4 cylinder gasoline engine. Hardly a gas guzzler. The author clearly wanted to put a "green" spin on the story, but didn't bother to research a number of his assumptions, the stupidest of which was assuming the M151A2 was the Hummer!
Rights are not "given", they simply exist. They are a philosophical concept essentially limited to sentient beings. Rights only exist for those that are capable of respecting the rights of others. No animal, as yet, has demonstrated this capability. They do deserve our protection, but they cannot exercise rights.
What are you talking about? The part where he says "As long as you never ever do anything wrong, and never make a mistake" pretty much makes it sarcasm. Everybody knows there's no such thing as a person who always does right and never makes a mistake.
I love fucktards like you who think that anyone who points out that Lincoln was a strong federalist is some redneck who flies the confederate flag and thinks jews have horns. The Civil war was about states' rights, just as the redneck morons say; but the main way the southern states were trying to exercise those rights was in perpetuating the immoral practice of slavery. The situation Lincoln was in was unenviable: either A) respect states rights as the founding fathers intended and let the union fail because half the states wanted to force black men to do their hard work for them, or B) essentially ignore one of the central pillars of the constitution and fight to keep the nation whole. Frankly, even though I say he gutted the 10th Amd, I don't blame Lincoln for doing it. If fault is to be laid at anyone's feet, I think it should be pinned squarely on the slave owning culture of the south that brought the matter to a head. Slavery had been abolished for 60-80 years in the rest of the civilized world (including the northern states), but it took a civil war to drag those backwards fucks into the modern day.
Pfff! As if there was anything left of the tenth! Lincoln gutted it way back when, and FDR buried whatever was left. The feds usurping states' power was a done deal long ago.
Get off your hysteria horse-- they can't charge exhorbinant rates for call termination. This part is, and always has been, regulated. Vonnage's connection to the phone network at large is like that of any of the long distance companies. SBC can no more charge Vonnage higher termination rates than they can AT&T and Sprint-MCI. All SBC can do is compete with them on price, which isn't a bad thing.
I definitely agree with you here. You can tell the direction he'll probably go by looking at the Hercules and Xena TV shows. AoD was still rubber skeletons and stop-motion, but he jumped straight into CGI as soon as he could (as seen on Hercules and Xena); nevertheless, he retained the corny comic-book feel. I'm predicting a lot of very well rendered and very funny zombie/skeleton things.
Actually, on the audio commentary track of AoD Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell explain that the reshoot had nothing to do with not having the rights to the original footage, but that the timing of all the scenes they wanted to use in the AoD intro was all wrong and just couldn't be edited in a way to make it fit right. So rather than try to shoe-horn in butchered bits of old footage in a way that fit the pacing of the intro, they just re-shot what they needed.
Well, that really depends on the tax rate, doesn't it?
If it has to replace the current per-gallon tax, it needs to be pretty high. A driver who only fills a 14 gallon tank once a week will have to pay at least $131 a year to equal the current $.18/gal excise tax. That's a good chunk of cash to some people.
Well regulated, in the context of the Second Amendment, has nothing to do with limiting weapons or circumscribing the conditions of their posession. Well regulated means "practiced and ready for action". You see, in the 18th century soldiers could be generally classified into two categories: regulars, and irregulars. Regulars were the trained soldiers. The guys who knew how to march in formation, load under fire, and have a fair chance of hitting their targets. Irregulars were generally volunteers and/or conscripts with little training and haphazard equipment. The fact that the word "regulated" is no longer used in exactly the same sense as it was 200-odd years ago doesn't change the basis of the right to bear arms. Semantic drift does not modify the rights of man. If, 200 years from now, the word "peaceably" is predominantly used to mean "naked, bent over a chair", does that mean that the People only have the right to assemble if they're naked and speading their cheeks? Besides, interpreting "well regulated" to mean "limited by rules" throws the first part of the amendment into logical conflict with the second part. This should indicate to any reasonable person that this interpretation is wrong.
US vs. Miller set a precedent that not all weapons can be considered necessary for the existence of a well-regulated militia. "[I]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well- regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument." I would contend that the same remark could be made about a remote-controlled internet weapon.
So a remote controlled rifle, not being a useful militia weapon, should be banned based on US v. Miller? How do you feel about semi-auto military rifles, then? They are provably the most militia-appropriate weapons of all, but their manufacture was banned. Interesting how certain groups cite US v. Miller when they want to limit posession of a hunting arm based on its non-militia status, but then turn and steadfastly assert that military-pattern rifles should be banned because they serve no "legitimate sporting purpose" (note: I know you didn't take the latter position in your post; I am referencing others I have seen in the past taking both sides based on convenience).
At any rate, I submit that US v. Miller (while admittedly being precedent) was a bad decision. Being that there is no hard authority on what constitutes an appropriate militia weapon, the law limiting long arms to 18 inch barrels should have been thrown out. Saying that a militia is limited to certain arms requires a willful disregard for history-- militias have traditionally armed themselved with whatever they could get!
This, of course, assumes that militias are still relevant in the modern US, something about which I am not convinced.
And that is the root of the problem. Through all these endless weasel-word lawyer games people have completely lost sight of the basic philosophical principal upon which the right to bear arms is based: the people are the ultimate powerholders. You must ask yourself, should the police be the only ones with guns? Do I want cops to have no fears about kicking in doors because they know that you (at most) have a kitchen knife while they have a Mossberg 500 shotgun? The fact that 20 policemen will certainly win a gunfight against you is largely irrelevant. The fact that we are an armed population should cause each and every government agent to hesitate before acting in the name of the state; to stop and think, "hey, I could get shot; are my orders worth getting shot over?" An armed populace keeps each individual-- government agent and private citizen alike-- on an equal footing. When the population is disarmed, they become the
The installers already have the map that the people on the other end of that 800 number are using. Problems occur when that map is in error, or when the map reader is a fool. Both things happen with alarming frequency.