Original intent is a bitch. Clearly the articles indicate that the government has power to regulate the militia, as the text talks about the importance of organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and that the militia is in fact regulated. On the other hand, it does say that the government should not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. The trick is how we regulate the militia, which is the dominate phrase, while not infringing the right to keep and bear arms, which is the secondary phrase.
One minor problem with your "regulation" based argument is failing to realize what the term "well regulated" meant in the 18th century. It didn't mean "controlled by laws and limited by strict guidlines", it meant "practiced and skilled". Note the terminology of the time referring to "regular troops" (men who could shoot well), and "irregular troops" (riff-raff pulled of the streets and handed muskets) illustrates this word's meaning quite well. A "well regulated militia" is one consisting of men who can shoot straight and reload quickly. To paraphrase, the 2ndAmd essentially says "since we need men to be able to shoot well when we call upon them, they gotta be able to own and carry guns around". That's all they meant. Regulated isn't about rules, it's about skill and practice.
The word militia had a radically different meaning at the time the constitution was written. There was, at that time, no suggestion that the government was in control of it.
Yep, and in addition, many of the founders were vehemently opposed to the very existence of a professional standing army.
I'm not sure how deliberate your misreading needs to be. The only real problem is how you reconcile the first part of the sentence with the last, and I don't think the confusing word is well-regulated, or even arms. I think the word you'd have to interpret is "people". I think I'm fairly safe in saying that "the people" in the Constitution is often referring to the country as a whole, not individual citizens.
Consider Amendment V - No person or Amendment VI - the accused. Each time they didn't use a generic "people" because they were giving specific rights to specific people. However, notice Amendment X. Here there are clearly three general layers of government: Federal, States, and "The People".
No body argues that "The People" of the United States should be allowed to own guns, but the amendment doesn't have to be contorted to say that INDIVIDUALS aren't necessarily uniformly given that right.
So you're saying that when they say "people" they mean something different than when they say "person"? That's a real stretch, man. For one thing, how do you reconcile the 2nd Amd "people = gov't militia" with your three clear layers of Fed, State, and "The People"? Is not the last group of those three just a combination of every Tom Dick and Harry on the street? I'm not sure this "collective" view of "the people" is even a reasonable argument against individual rights, because if there's one thing that's ABUNDANTLY clear, it's that "the people" is NOT "the government". This being the case, the farthest one could stretch this logic WRT the 2nd Amd would be to say that only large groups of non-government people can but guns-- a patently absurd notion.
Essentially, the there are no rights that are enjoyed only by groups of two or more people; they all apply equally, down to the level one person.
Where in the constitution does it give Govt. power to do any number of things that they already do?
It doesn't, but that's an entirely different can of worms. The interstate commerce clause has been twisted and abused so badly that the feds no longer even pretend to make a plausible case for the crap they pull. They make a handwave at interstate commerce and then tell people they can't smoke a joint in their living room. It's all crap. That's why we we need the guns. I call for a revolution on wednsday, right after I finish my laundry.
I'm sorry you were among the group of people too stupid to recognize that as an obvious poke at stereotypical Slashdot responses. Take comfort in the fact that you were not in exclusive company, though.
Heh. I think the humorous jab was a bit too deadpan to be clear, i.e. it is exactly what a typical slashbot Linuxista would say. A better poke would've been something like:
"Install Linux. That's the best solution. Just ask anyone here."
This is one of the big contributors to loss of rainforest: if you clearcut a swath through the forest, you raise local temperature and reduce local evaporation. Reducing local evaporation means there's less water in the air flowing over the adjacent rainforest, and it doesn't rain in the forest. The newly dehydrated rainforest dies, and fails to provide water to forest further downwind, which dies...
So if the edges of a rainforest can't survive without protection, how did the edges of the rainforest survive before clearcutting?
(not defending clearcutting; just interested in the climate modeling)
Heh. How long do you think it'll take for someone to come up with an activation code keygen? Honestly, do they really think this stuff works?
Troll? It's a legit question. Borland C++ Builder 6, with a similar registration/activation scheme, had a keygen out within weeks. I suppose it's my AC "friend" modding me down because he's too chickenshit to speak to me through even a pseudonym. Wassa matta? Widdle baby scared? pfff.....
Honestly, is amazes me that people fall for crap like this. It always reads like someone in bulgaria wrote it with with an English/Bulgarian dictionary. My favorite misspellings/miswordings are "asterik" and "social insurance number".
Just like XP, you have to let your machine either contact Adobe over the internet, or phone their customer service number to get the activation code that's locked to your individual computer.
Heh. How long do you think it'll take for someone to come up with an activation code keygen? Honestly, do they really think this stuff works?
Taiwanese don't have the right to claim independence without the consent from the PRC government
So rights come from the government? Cripes, you're fucked up, man. Governments that rule without the consent of the governed are totalitarian and evil.
Also, the question of whether or not parts of the license being unenforceable would void the entire license are far from clear.
Yeah, at that point it's going to come down to a judge. In other cases where contract provisions have been found unenforceable and the whole contract is declared null and void, it has generally fallen one of two ways. Either the judge says "no contract, no deal; both of you go home", or "party A paid party B for (whatever), so party A gets to keep it". The latter happens under some sort of "implied contract", under the premise that when you buy something, you reasonably and prudently expect it to be yours to use. But since GPL'd software is FREE(as in beer), it's hard to argue implied contract. I guess it'd come down to a question of whether a reasonable and prudent person would, in a judge's mind, expect to get free(beer) OS/software without any limitations on its use.
IANAL either, but it's sure amusing to try and think like one sometimes.
On the other hand, this would probably be lowered quite a bit if they were looking for unique information. A lot of the data farms are compiliations of other data. But it would be a major undertaking just to define what "unique" meant.
Yeah, that opens up a really messy can of worms. I guess it all depends on what you define as a discrete unit of information. Taking it to the extreme, one could say there are only two bits worth of unique digital data: 1 and 0 -- they're just combined in various orders in variable length sets...
This guy ripped this right out of an earlier thread.
Sorry pal, but I didn't. There may be something similar in another thread, but I didn't see it. Not surprising, though, as I merely pointed out the obvious, only in a mildly humorous fashion.
The fact that Dun Malg hasn't been leashed out of Slashdot by his tiny balls is a travesty.
Huh? That sentence sense not makes!
Crap, I'm replying to an AC. Damn. Whatsa matta? Too chickenshit to insult me even through a PSEUDONYM? Morons like you are Block 8.
2 stories ago, we wished Microsoft would be punished for firing a blogger, no we wish they'd stop being sued by Eolas...
Thanks Slashdot, but I'm confused, now.
It helps if you stop and realize that/. isn't a single, monolithic block of identically programmed robots.
In reality, it is a collection of pehaps a half-dozen different monolithic blocks of identically programmed robots. The "punish MS" group is Block 1. The "patents bad" group is Block 4.
Now, I've been to demostrations... and I've created demostrations. But to "fake it" sounds like lying to me. How good can a voting system be if it's based on untruths?
The demo != the finished product, so the system isn't "based on untruths". All demos that companies whip up for the [meeting/trade show/bigwig's visit] are technically "lies", but so what? It's not like they said "rig up a demo and we'll use that instead of the finished software in the production model".
No, it's not *just* a sig.
It's a sig of a person working for a company that is actively trying to remove any possibility of citizens being able to elect their own leaders in the US.
That is why it is frightening.
Your tin foil hat is showing. None of the archived memos shows anything other than typical corporate ineptitude. If an email sig and a message about whipping up a demo to show clients is the evidence for conspiracy, I'd say their fiendish master plan is pretty laughable.
Temp worker fired for taking pictures at work and posting them online without permission!
in other news:
-Pizza fresh from the oven found to be HOT!
-water inhalation the leading cause of most drowning deaths!
-dogs like potato chips!
c'mon people, this dumbass was a TEMP. Temps already have one foot out the door. Couple that with a guy that thinks it's OK to snoop around with a freakin' camera at work, and I'd fire his dumb ass too.
To those who say the jobs are "voluntary" so if you are being mistreated it's your own fault... Well, *someone* has to the work, if every meatpacker quit we would have no meat
So, you're saying that meatpacking plant workers don't quit their jobs because, if they did, there'd be no meat? Your line of reasoning is absurd.
Sorry - if a consumer wants to own a movie s/he should hire a film crew, construct the sets, pay big names outrageous fortunes, write the scripts, pay for post production, etc. After you spend at least a million (and that's LOW budget) THEN you own a movie, can make copies and give it away, rip it, edit it, whatever you want.
The consumer owns the disc. The copyright holder, once it's sold, does not. Copyright doesn't grant ownership of the movie, it only grants exclusive right to copy. Have you not read any of the explainations posted on/. describing the difference between property and copyright? I'd go over it again, but no one ever seems to listen...
Over in Saudi, for Desert Storm, we were issued M16s without a forward assist. You could fire one shot and then it'd jam. I guess, after that, you could swing it like a bat or throw it. Glad I took along my 1942 RemingtonRand 1911. Just loose enough to keep functioning with all the grit. 37th AeroMedical Evacuation Group (USAFR) MacDill AFB
That's the Air Force for ya'. They haven't made the M-16 since the mid 60's (M-16A1 has forward assist) and the AF hasn't gotten rid of theirs yet? Of course, PT testing in the AF is riding a stationary bike every 6 months to prove you're not dead, so it's no surprise that they don't have much in the way of combat gear...
Murphy's Combat Law #6: Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
Insightful, and yet scary. What happened to "the best tools for the job"?
Actually, it's not all that scary and, when you think about it, not even very insightful. The weapons are indeed manufactured by the lowest bidder, but that's actually "the lowest bidder who can produce the item well enough to meet standards". For example, if Colt Firearms puts in a bid for M-16A2 rifle manufacturing at $1 million per 10,000 units, I can't just go in and say "I'll do it for $500 per 10,000" and automagically get the contract without providing a manufacturing sample showing that I can deliver a weapon that meets standards. On top of all this, there is ALSO the fact that the weapon wasn't designed by the lowest bidder, and the manufacturers can't change the designs according to their whims and fancies. There may be a few cases of complex weapons systems (cough)sgt york(/cough) that never should have seen the light of day, but those are usually the result of outside political pressure from congresscritters and they generally don't get fielded once their uselessness is exposed.
Millions of little children in third world countries huddled around a bucket of water for 14 hours a day carefully separating hydrogen out of water for use by rich uncaring Americans. In fact, perhaps Michael Jordon should be commissioned to do a commercial to improve the public image of hydrogen extraction. We could pay him just slighly less than all of their collective wages for a year.
Hah! Let's do it! Maybe then they won't take all of those valuable help desk jobs away from 'mericans when they grow up.
Slashdot Mirror
One minor problem with your "regulation" based argument is failing to realize what the term "well regulated" meant in the 18th century. It didn't mean "controlled by laws and limited by strict guidlines", it meant "practiced and skilled". Note the terminology of the time referring to "regular troops" (men who could shoot well), and "irregular troops" (riff-raff pulled of the streets and handed muskets) illustrates this word's meaning quite well. A "well regulated militia" is one consisting of men who can shoot straight and reload quickly. To paraphrase, the 2ndAmd essentially says "since we need men to be able to shoot well when we call upon them, they gotta be able to own and carry guns around". That's all they meant. Regulated isn't about rules, it's about skill and practice.
Yep, and in addition, many of the founders were vehemently opposed to the very existence of a professional standing army.
So you're saying that when they say "people" they mean something different than when they say "person"? That's a real stretch, man. For one thing, how do you reconcile the 2nd Amd "people = gov't militia" with your three clear layers of Fed, State, and "The People"? Is not the last group of those three just a combination of every Tom Dick and Harry on the street? I'm not sure this "collective" view of "the people" is even a reasonable argument against individual rights, because if there's one thing that's ABUNDANTLY clear, it's that "the people" is NOT "the government". This being the case, the farthest one could stretch this logic WRT the 2nd Amd would be to say that only large groups of non-government people can but guns-- a patently absurd notion.
Essentially, the there are no rights that are enjoyed only by groups of two or more people; they all apply equally, down to the level one person.
It doesn't, but that's an entirely different can of worms. The interstate commerce clause has been twisted and abused so badly that the feds no longer even pretend to make a plausible case for the crap they pull. They make a handwave at interstate commerce and then tell people they can't smoke a joint in their living room. It's all crap. That's why we we need the guns. I call for a revolution on wednsday, right after I finish my laundry.
Heh. I think the humorous jab was a bit too deadpan to be clear, i.e. it is exactly what a typical slashbot Linuxista would say. A better poke would've been something like:
"Install Linux. That's the best solution. Just ask anyone here."
So if the edges of a rainforest can't survive without protection, how did the edges of the rainforest survive before clearcutting?
(not defending clearcutting; just interested in the climate modeling)
Troll? It's a legit question. Borland C++ Builder 6, with a similar registration/activation scheme, had a keygen out within weeks. I suppose it's my AC "friend" modding me down because he's too chickenshit to speak to me through even a pseudonym. Wassa matta? Widdle baby scared? pfff.....
Honestly, is amazes me that people fall for crap like this. It always reads like someone in bulgaria wrote it with with an English/Bulgarian dictionary. My favorite misspellings/miswordings are "asterik" and "social insurance number".
Heh. How long do you think it'll take for someone to come up with an activation code keygen? Honestly, do they really think this stuff works?
So rights come from the government? Cripes, you're fucked up, man. Governments that rule without the consent of the governed are totalitarian and evil.
Yeah, at that point it's going to come down to a judge. In other cases where contract provisions have been found unenforceable and the whole contract is declared null and void, it has generally fallen one of two ways. Either the judge says "no contract, no deal; both of you go home", or "party A paid party B for (whatever), so party A gets to keep it". The latter happens under some sort of "implied contract", under the premise that when you buy something, you reasonably and prudently expect it to be yours to use. But since GPL'd software is FREE(as in beer), it's hard to argue implied contract. I guess it'd come down to a question of whether a reasonable and prudent person would, in a judge's mind, expect to get free(beer) OS/software without any limitations on its use.
IANAL either, but it's sure amusing to try and think like one sometimes.
Yeah, that opens up a really messy can of worms. I guess it all depends on what you define as a discrete unit of information. Taking it to the extreme, one could say there are only two bits worth of unique digital data: 1 and 0 -- they're just combined in various orders in variable length sets...
Sorry pal, but I didn't. There may be something similar in another thread, but I didn't see it. Not surprising, though, as I merely pointed out the obvious, only in a mildly humorous fashion.
The fact that Dun Malg hasn't been leashed out of Slashdot by his tiny balls is a travesty.
Huh? That sentence sense not makes!
Crap, I'm replying to an AC. Damn. Whatsa matta? Too chickenshit to insult me even through a PSEUDONYM? Morons like you are Block 8.
nah, I think that would also fall under Block 4 - "patents/copyrights bad"
I hadn't really thought about it, but off the top of my head:
Block 1 - "MS bad"
Block 2 - "Linux/OSS rulez!"
Block 3 - "Capitalist/government Conspiracy!"
Block 4 - "Patents/copyrights bad"
Block 5 - "redundant jokes" (soviet russia, beowulf cluster, etc)
Block 6 - "contrarians" (they automatically believe the opposite of the other 5 blocks)
I suppose there are more, but those are the ones the occur to me as I write...
It helps if you stop and realize that /. isn't a single, monolithic block of identically programmed robots.
In reality, it is a collection of pehaps a half-dozen different monolithic blocks of identically programmed robots. The "punish MS" group is Block 1. The "patents bad" group is Block 4.
The demo != the finished product, so the system isn't "based on untruths". All demos that companies whip up for the [meeting/trade show/bigwig's visit] are technically "lies", but so what? It's not like they said "rig up a demo and we'll use that instead of the finished software in the production model".
Your tin foil hat is showing. None of the archived memos shows anything other than typical corporate ineptitude. If an email sig and a message about whipping up a demo to show clients is the evidence for conspiracy, I'd say their fiendish master plan is pretty laughable.
in other news:
-Pizza fresh from the oven found to be HOT!
-water inhalation the leading cause of most drowning deaths!
-dogs like potato chips!
c'mon people, this dumbass was a TEMP. Temps already have one foot out the door. Couple that with a guy that thinks it's OK to snoop around with a freakin' camera at work, and I'd fire his dumb ass too.
only catholic priests.
So, you're saying that meatpacking plant workers don't quit their jobs because, if they did, there'd be no meat? Your line of reasoning is absurd.
The consumer owns the disc. The copyright holder, once it's sold, does not. Copyright doesn't grant ownership of the movie, it only grants exclusive right to copy. Have you not read any of the explainations posted on /. describing the difference between property and copyright? I'd go over it again, but no one ever seems to listen...
That's the Air Force for ya'. They haven't made the M-16 since the mid 60's (M-16A1 has forward assist) and the AF hasn't gotten rid of theirs yet? Of course, PT testing in the AF is riding a stationary bike every 6 months to prove you're not dead, so it's no surprise that they don't have much in the way of combat gear...
Insightful, and yet scary. What happened to "the best tools for the job"?
Actually, it's not all that scary and, when you think about it, not even very insightful. The weapons are indeed manufactured by the lowest bidder, but that's actually "the lowest bidder who can produce the item well enough to meet standards". For example, if Colt Firearms puts in a bid for M-16A2 rifle manufacturing at $1 million per 10,000 units, I can't just go in and say "I'll do it for $500 per 10,000" and automagically get the contract without providing a manufacturing sample showing that I can deliver a weapon that meets standards. On top of all this, there is ALSO the fact that the weapon wasn't designed by the lowest bidder, and the manufacturers can't change the designs according to their whims and fancies. There may be a few cases of complex weapons systems (cough)sgt york(/cough) that never should have seen the light of day, but those are usually the result of outside political pressure from congresscritters and they generally don't get fielded once their uselessness is exposed.
Millions of little children in third world countries huddled around a bucket of water for 14 hours a day carefully separating hydrogen out of water for use by rich uncaring Americans. In fact, perhaps Michael Jordon should be commissioned to do a commercial to improve the public image of hydrogen extraction. We could pay him just slighly less than all of their collective wages for a year.
Hah! Let's do it! Maybe then they won't take all of those valuable help desk jobs away from 'mericans when they grow up.