Actually, the US is literally founded on the principle that if laws suck, you overthrow the government in an armed revolution and install your own regime.
Hehehe! Although, really, that's more of a historical fact about how the US was formed rather than a statement of any founding principle. And a big contributing factor was the fact that the colonies were being ruled from overseas, whereas many of the people involved were born on this continent and considered themselves to be "Americans", not "Englishmen". They considered their English rulers as foreigners. History shows that people ruled by a power they consider foreign are rarely ruled by it for too much longer.
--
Re:Something very wrong on slashdot today
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
Yes. He can be a good programmer, but this does not give him any sort of "sacred" aura to talk about everything and everyone without the option of being criticized.
Of course not. Criticize away. You're just way out of line calling him an "idiot" because you disagree with his views on keyboards. And it's silly to assert this has any impact on his credibility. I didn't think he was a perfect, living god before, so I'm not terribly disappointed to find out he has some strange notions about what makes a good keyboard (or a good article for that matter). You were saying he'd suddenly lost all credibility, and called him an idiot. Since I don't engage in the kind of hero worship you talk about, he didn't have any credibility when it comes to advice about keyboards before now, so he hasn't lost any in my eyes. If he lost any in yours (and you claim he did), it must be that you do engage in this kind of hero worship...
I really don't understand this. There's the opportunity to speak your voice freely and what you (nothing personal, I'm talking in general) do is just following the Cabal around, whatever they say?
Can somebody explain me this?
Yes. You're hallucinating. I've never seen an article on/. about anything that didn't bring out a lot of people to disagree with whatever was said. Granted, there's also been people who agreed, but that too is natural. If no one agreed, I'd be suspicious that people were idiotically disagreeing with whatever anyone said. On a given day, statistically speaking, there must be a certain percentage who even happen to agree with every article posted that day, and some who disagree with them all. So what?
Ask yourself this: If you were Field Agent Smith, would you pass someone with such a background, when many other qualified applicants exist with squeaky records?
Depends on what the results of the investigation were. If the Bureau's best did their darndest to dig up any dirt on the subject and only succeeded in proving the person's a living saint who never even smarts off to his mother, yeah, I'd pass it.
The problem I have with "There's really nothing wrong with that. It's their job to investigate.." is that the FBI can and has been used as a tool of intimidation/brutality over and over through-out it's history.
True, this can be abused, and that is wrong.
You claim that they didn't harass him. Explain that to Richard Jewel(spelling??) another target of "just an investigation."
Huh? Where did Richard Jewel say that Simpson was being harrassed? If you can point out where he said this, I'd be happy to explain to him why I disagree. If not, your request makes no sense. If you're attempting to claim Richard Jewel was harrassed himself, that may very well be true, but it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Since I don't know the specifics of the case in question, I couldn't possibly comment on it. It's rather odd that you'd bring it up except as a distraction since it has nothing to do with anything I said in my post...
* Since you're so good at quoting documents, could you quote this one or at least provide a reference?
Merry Christmas, parner! It's Title 10, Section 311 of the U.S. Code. I had it bookmarked. And it's actually 17 years old. My bad.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
Read the Federalist Papers, and find out what the founding fathers, MY ANCESTORS, thought about guns.
Not actually as relevant to Constitutional law as a lot of people think (what's more relevant is what the Supreme Court justices think of the Federalist Papers), but a worthy read nonetheless.
Also, the supreme court has ruled on only 4 cases relating to the 2nd amend. this century. See US vs. Miller, 1939, a supreme court case which ruled in favor of the right of everyone to keep and bear arms.
Or the inability for the law to deny that right for whatever reason the law under question did. It doesn't mean much without considering the specifics. The Supreme Court has upheld the ability for laws to restrict or deny the right to bear arms for some reasons. The only thing that really prevents a general ban on guns is legislative effort. Relying on the Supreme Court to uphold this right is foolhardy.
* maintained by a "State" Slow down, pardner! It doesn't say ANYTHING about states being involved - just that militias are necessary for states to be free!
I disagree, which is irrelevant. The Supreme Court disagrees, which is not. "Every male 18 or over" does not constitute "A well regulated militia" in either case.
* I did not say that the 2nd Amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years But Americans have ALWAYS owned guns, and it would have to be a misundetstanding if they really weren't allowed to!
Irrelevant. The question was whether the US Constitution supports that right. Whether or how long Americans have owned guns has absolutely nothing to do with it.
* So, the Supreme Court at least has not misunderstood the constitution The "Supreme" Court vs. 80 million gun owners about Constitutional law? I go with the 80 million side.
Hehe! True, but again irrelevant. Under US law, it's the Supreme Court's job to interpret the Constitution. It's the opinion of those 9 people who matter vis a vis Constitutional law, and nobody else's.
* I don't suppose lying to support a cause What are you implying?
That it's a waste of time to run around saying the 2nd Amendment guarentees you the right to own a gun when it doesn't, rather than concentrating on providing good arguments why you should. And there are plenty of good arguments, so why waste time with the bad ones?
Again, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have the right to bear arms. I own a gun myself and think its a good idea for a certain portion of the population to do so. I'm just saying "The Constitutional Right" argument is bad, and really ought to be avoided if you're actually serious about advocating gun-rights. It's a pointless distraction that makes you look bad when it's rather easily refuted.
If you lok at the IR footage taken from helicopters, you see that BATF/FBI/Delta Force people were firing at the exits and preventing people from escaping. Debris was bulldozed next to the building to prevent people from jumping out, and to corral them into fields of fire.
This doesn't hold water. People will do just about anything to avoid being burned to death. Jump out of 30 story windows and fall to their deaths, for example. If the BATF corralled people so that if they tried to escape the fire, they would be shot, that wouldn't stop them from trying to escape the fire. And in the second place, I saw footage of the compound while it was on fire. There were plenty of windows that weren't blocked by debris.
The BATF wouldn't have been able to get away with killing them if their religion had been mainstream.
Actually, there'd have been a lot less controversy surrounding this incident if they'd all been mainstream Christians.
Are you American? From what I read of your posts, you have a shaky grasp of American current events and our constitution.
I am an American, and I appear to have a much better understanding of constitutional law than you.
It so happens that I have an "actual" copy of the constitution before me. The second amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Exactly. You have the right to bear arms in connection with your service as part of the militia. Thank you for quoting the actual constitution for me, I didn't remember the actual wording off the top of my head. It quite clearly does not grant anyone the right to bear firearms except in relation to their militia service.
According to the United States Code, the militia consists of all able-bodied males over 18. This coincides nicely with "private citizens."
Since you're so good at quoting documents, could you quote this one or at least provide a reference? And "US Code", you say? The amendment deals with the right of a State to maintain a well-regulated militia. I highly doubt any federal law can be made which deals with the composition of a state militia. Further, note that "all able-bodied males" is hardly a well regulated militia. So even if this section of US code exist, it's not relevant to the 2nd Amendment, which deals with "A well regulated militia" maintained by a "State".
I think your argument that the 2nd amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years is rather baseless.
I did not say that the 2nd Amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years. For one, since the 2nd Amendment is only about 210 years ago, this would be a very stupid thing to say. And for two, the US Supreme Court has already correctly pointed that the 2nd Amendment does not guarentee the right of any citizen to keep a firearm for any old reason on several occasions. So, the Supreme Court at least has not misunderstood the constitution, which is good since its part of their job to understand it!
Take your facist ideas back to Japan, please. Where the Shoguns prohibited people from owning weapons.
Why? I would oppose that, just as I oppose excessive gun-control. I support the right of individuals to own firearms. I have never said otherwise. I merely pointed out that the constitution doesn't necessarily do so. I don't suppose lying to support a cause, and I think its stupid to stick your head in the sand pretending the constitution will protect your rights when in fact you need to fight for sane laws if you want your rights in this area protected.
* Which no one ever disputed, certainly not the BATF...
I'm afraid that this assertion is incorrect. Part of the problem was the BATF's failure to understand what David Koresh was thinking and expecting. During the negotiation, when he talked about how his religion, the BATF negotiators dismissed what he had to say as "bible babble."
How does this make my assertion incorrect? My assertion was that the BATF did not dispute their right to worship as they please. The fact that they didn't believe it doesn't mean they didn't think the Davidians had the right to.
As for the rest of your reply, we simply have a dispute over facts. It'll do neither of us any good to rehash different versions of what happened. Some people say the Davidians started the blaze, some say the BATF. We'll not find the truth by arguing about it here. I do wonder, though, if the BATF started it, and the Davidians were not in fact attempting to kill themselves, why didn't they flee? It went up quick, but not that quick. There was time for most of those people to get out if they wanted...
Once again, slashdot has embellished the headlines to make them more contraversial. The FBI did not accuse anyone of treason, only of performing an "anti-social act".
Actually, even this overstates the issue. The FBI hasn't accused him of anything. All it has done is do a little investigating, which is what we pay them for, after all. We may not like what they're investigating, and it's probably a waste of resources, but we don't help things by inflating this into something its not.
Absolutely! The second amendment isn't about duck hunting. It's about protecting your self from evil governments.
Actually, it's about state governments protecting themselves from the federal government. Whether they're good or evil doesn't enter into it, nor does it have anything to do with the rights of private citizens, although those who know little about the actual constitution seem to frequently think so.
That's a job for engineers. Mathematicians and true scientists should avoid such considerations at all costs. To even consider whether something you're working on is applicable or not is to consider yourself more clever than all the humans who will live after you, since you're essentially second-guessing whether they'll find an application for it or not. Believe me, I don't care who you are, you aren't qualified to make that judgement...
However, if I'm put under investigation by the FBI for some computer crime (ie "hacking"... quotes used because i'm one of those guys who thinks that's the wrong term) then my name is forever tainted... this is the problem with our "trial by media" system. If my name is ever again mentioned by someone who doesn't know me directly, they are talking about that "hacker guy" who broke into... some government division with an acronym... and it is now impossible for me to get a job with anyone without them wondering if I'm breaking into their networks. Under investigation = guilty in the eyes of the public.
True, but not the FBI's fault or problem. In an ideal world, we'd only investigate guilty people, but in the real world, we don't know who's guilty until we investigate. Either we have to investigate innocent people or we can never investigate anyone...
No but it cannot help. That bars him from getting a job in virtually any government office even as the janitor. Working in any company that would have government contracts or works on classified material. Basically any criminal reccord including traffic tickets are used routinely to prevent people from obtaining jobs.
Reality check: Getting a traffic ticket is a part of your criminal record. Getting investigated for anything (even murder or treason) is not a part of your criminal record. He is not barred from getting a job in a government office as janitor or anything else for having been under investigation. If the job involves anything serious, he'd be investigated anyways, since everyone who's seriously considered for such a position gets investigated! We never hire anyone for those kinds of positions unless they've been investigated! Now, it may be he would be denied even if not prosecuted based on what the investigation was for and what it turned up, but in that case we wouldn't have gotten the job to begin with.
I'll name one: the Branch Davidians. They were Christians brutally murdered by the strong arm of our government, the BATF.
That statement is, of course, blatantly false. The Branch Davidians killed themselves. If a BATF simply wanted to kill them, they could have simply opened fire on them on when they first got there. There was a long, drawn-out stand-off precisely because the BATF wanted them alive!
They may not be "real" Christians, but they had every right to practice their religion in peace.
Which no one ever disputed, certainly not the BATF, and their religious beliefs had absolutely nothing at all to do with why the BATF was there attempting to arrest them.
The site appears to have recovered from the/.effect, and I finally got to read what I was speculating on. It appears the FBI isn't even alledging anything (not to mention my mental wires were crossed and I was confusing Simpson with Bradner, but nevermind). They were apparently investigating Simpson, but that's all, no allegations. There's really nothing wrong with that. It's their job to investigate people, and prosecute if there are grounds, but they can only know if there are grounds by investigating! I may disagree with their waste of resources on investigating someone for the reasons they did (assuming I know all the reasons, maybe they know more about Simpson than I do -- actually that's quite likely -- but I mean they know something relevant that would make him more worthy of investigation -- my guess is probably not), but they haven't actually done anything illegal. They didn't harass him in any way (if his friends hadn't said anything we wouldn't have known he was under investigation). So, although I don't like it, I can't argue they did anything wrong in the strictest definition...
I didn't know that advocating that laws be changed could possibly fall under the charge of Treason.
It can't. I believe the problem is not that he advocated changing laws, it's that he alledgedly advocated violating existing ones. It's the difference between saying "we need to legally change crypto law" vs. "we need to illegally ignore crypto law and export it regardless of what the law says".
The United States is founded on the principle that if laws suck, you change them through the democratic process.
Exactly. If you want to export strong-crypto to North Korea, you get the laws changed through the democratic process. If you instead subvert the democratic process and attempt to do it in violation of existing law, then you're open for prosecution. This is, I believe, what the FBI is alledging...
I have yet to see a program which uses "Super", "Hyper", or "Menu".
The two I use most often are (1) WindowMaker, which technically I use all the time regardless of what other programs I'm running, and (2) Emacs. WindowMaker, like any decent window manager, has a useful menu of items that comes up when you right click on the background, and a different one when you middle-click, which is nice but useless if you've got a window maximized. My Menu key brings up the same menu as background-right-click, and Hyper-Menu brings up the same menu as background-middle-click. I also bind many useful window operations to the extra modifiers, and many useful Emacs commands.
--
Re:How 'bout those "Natural" keyboards?
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
Indeed, research into keyboard typing speed has demonstrated that typing speed is improved by having keys typed by alternate hands, i.e. the words that are typed the most quickly are those where each letter is typed with the opposite hand from the last. The hand not typing the current letter prepares to hit the next one, even starts to do so before the other hand finishes its task, accomplishing a sort of "typing SMP". What you've done (and I do the same, incidently) is optimize your typing so that you take advantage of this effect whenever possible. I go to some extremes in this myself. For example, just now when I typed the word "whenever", I hit the "v" with my right(!) index finger while keeping my left middle finger on the "e", so typing "ever" doesn't require any hand movement. I do this for the word ever, even, etc., as well as words containing those strings. I'm sure there are a hundred little tricks like this I do (I just noticed this one while typing this message). I've never bothered to catalog them. All I know is, under normal circumstances I touch type, never taking my eyes off the screen. Put a "natural" keyboard in front of me, and I'm reduced to hunt and peck.
The Happy Hacker keyboard commits an unforgivable sin in my book, one that prevents me from even considering one until they offer an alternative layout: there should be nothing to the right of the right shift key. Why is that silly "Fn" there? There's plenty of room below for it. My employer recently bought a keyboard that had a key labled "Turbo" in the same position. Luckily, he only paid $9 for it so I didn't feel too bad telling him to stuff it somewhere out of the way while I go out and buy a proper keyboard. Not that I would have said anything different if he'd paid more for it...
--
Re:Not everyone lives in USA, not everyone is a co
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
but e.g. my girlfriend, who's not a hacker, but still does work a lot with computers, she writes mostly all kind of documents etc., she uses the Caps Lock key much more often than the tab key. She can write a 10 pages long document and hit the tab key let's say 5 times, and hit the Caps Lock key for 40 times. (Remember, you should use Caps Lock if you're going to write more than 3 letters in capitals).
Is your girlfriend in the military or something? Most normal people typing normal documents type three capital letters in a row far less often than programmers do. People in the military, though, tend to have a jargon laced with many abbreviations that are typed in all-caps. If you should only use the caps lock key when typing three or more caps characters in a row, then normal people have far less use for the key than programmers.
Also, I disagree with the statement that you should use the Caps Lock if you're going to write more than three letters in caps. I write a lot, and I've found that if I hit the caps lock key, then attempt to write 4 capital characters, I end up with 4 lowercase characters! The silly key turns any attempt to enter a capital character into lowercase! Now, for someone who doesn't write a lot, they may find they don't have a constant urge to reach for the shift key while typing in capital letters, but I just instinctively without thinking about it depress shift while typing something I know should be caps. Once you reach the typing proficiency level where you no longer think about the keys, trying to type capital letters while the caps lock is on becomes very difficult and slow, since you have to conciously override what your hands will do if you aren't exerting effort to prevent them from doing it. At least, that's been my experience...
--
Re:Something very wrong on slashdot today
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
Your respect for a programmer is influenced by what you think of his opinions about keyboards?
What an idiot.
--
Re:Kinesis Ergonomic Keyboards
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
3. The single biggest failing in the standard keyboard is the spacebar. Of the eight non-thumb digits, they each have on average about 5 different keys they can hit. The two thumbs (which are the strongest two of your 10 digits) have ONE key between them. Talk about inefficient. Luckily the Kinesis addresses this problem, with all the most frequently used keys under the strong thumbs: Enter, Space, Backspace, Delete, Ctrl, and Alt (and a few others).
The thumb may be the strongest finger, but there's a reason for the expression "all-thumbs": it's also the least dexterous. For some of us, it's even worse than others -- my thumbs are fairly worthless for anything other than opposing my other digits while holding my pop can or the like. I cannot use those trackballs that put the ball under the thumb. And for that matter, while typing, I usually hit the spacebar with my right index finger. This "Kenisis" sounds like a nightmare to me...
A friend of mine has a full-size desktop keyboard from IBM that has the mouse-stick in it. I'd buy one if it weren't for the fact that it's a 101-key keyboard rather than a 104-key. Yes, that's right, I need my "Win Keys", even if I don't use Windows. It's easy enough to file the Windows logo off the extra keys, and I must have at least one key on the keyboard for each of Meta (Left-Alt), Alt (Right-Alt), Super (Left-Win), Hyper (Right-Win), Menu, and Compose (Right-Ctrl). 101-key keyboards just don't cut the mustard for me, not enough extra useless keys to reassign for my use.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehehe! Although, really, that's more of a historical fact about how the US was formed rather than a statement of any founding principle. And a big contributing factor was the fact that the colonies were being ruled from overseas, whereas many of the people involved were born on this continent and considered themselves to be "Americans", not "Englishmen". They considered their English rulers as foreigners. History shows that people ruled by a power they consider foreign are rarely ruled by it for too much longer.
--
Of course not. Criticize away. You're just way out of line calling him an "idiot" because you disagree with his views on keyboards. And it's silly to assert this has any impact on his credibility. I didn't think he was a perfect, living god before, so I'm not terribly disappointed to find out he has some strange notions about what makes a good keyboard (or a good article for that matter). You were saying he'd suddenly lost all credibility, and called him an idiot. Since I don't engage in the kind of hero worship you talk about, he didn't have any credibility when it comes to advice about keyboards before now, so he hasn't lost any in my eyes. If he lost any in yours (and you claim he did), it must be that you do engage in this kind of hero worship...
I really don't understand this. There's the opportunity to speak your voice freely and what you (nothing personal, I'm talking in general) do is just following the Cabal around, whatever they say?
Can somebody explain me this?
Yes. You're hallucinating. I've never seen an article on
--
Depends on what the results of the investigation were. If the Bureau's best did their darndest to dig up any dirt on the subject and only succeeded in proving the person's a living saint who never even smarts off to his mother, yeah, I'd pass it.
--
True, this can be abused, and that is wrong.
You claim that they didn't harass him. Explain that to Richard Jewel(spelling??) another target of "just an investigation."
Huh? Where did Richard Jewel say that Simpson was being harrassed? If you can point out where he said this, I'd be happy to explain to him why I disagree. If not, your request makes no sense. If you're attempting to claim Richard Jewel was harrassed himself, that may very well be true, but it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Since I don't know the specifics of the case in question, I couldn't possibly comment on it. It's rather odd that you'd bring it up except as a distraction since it has nothing to do with anything I said in my post...
--
Merry Christmas, parner! It's Title 10, Section 311 of the U.S. Code. I had it bookmarked. And it's actually 17 years old. My bad.
Thanks! I'll check it out.
Read the Federalist Papers, and find out what the founding fathers, MY ANCESTORS, thought about guns.
Not actually as relevant to Constitutional law as a lot of people think (what's more relevant is what the Supreme Court justices think of the Federalist Papers), but a worthy read nonetheless.
Also, the supreme court has ruled on only 4 cases relating to the 2nd amend. this century. See US vs. Miller, 1939, a supreme court case which ruled in favor of the right of everyone to keep and bear arms.
Or the inability for the law to deny that right for whatever reason the law under question did. It doesn't mean much without considering the specifics. The Supreme Court has upheld the ability for laws to restrict or deny the right to bear arms for some reasons. The only thing that really prevents a general ban on guns is legislative effort. Relying on the Supreme Court to uphold this right is foolhardy.
--
Slow down, pardner! It doesn't say ANYTHING about states being involved - just that militias are necessary for states to be free!
I disagree, which is irrelevant. The Supreme Court disagrees, which is not. "Every male 18 or over" does not constitute "A well regulated militia" in either case.
* I did not say that the 2nd Amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years
But Americans have ALWAYS owned guns, and it would have to be a misundetstanding if they really weren't allowed to!
Irrelevant. The question was whether the US Constitution supports that right. Whether or how long Americans have owned guns has absolutely nothing to do with it.
* So, the Supreme Court at least has not misunderstood the constitution
The "Supreme" Court vs. 80 million gun owners about Constitutional law? I go with the 80 million side.
Hehe! True, but again irrelevant. Under US law, it's the Supreme Court's job to interpret the Constitution. It's the opinion of those 9 people who matter vis a vis Constitutional law, and nobody else's.
* I don't suppose lying to support a cause
What are you implying?
That it's a waste of time to run around saying the 2nd Amendment guarentees you the right to own a gun when it doesn't, rather than concentrating on providing good arguments why you should. And there are plenty of good arguments, so why waste time with the bad ones?
Again, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't have the right to bear arms. I own a gun myself and think its a good idea for a certain portion of the population to do so. I'm just saying "The Constitutional Right" argument is bad, and really ought to be avoided if you're actually serious about advocating gun-rights. It's a pointless distraction that makes you look bad when it's rather easily refuted.
--
This doesn't hold water. People will do just about anything to avoid being burned to death. Jump out of 30 story windows and fall to their deaths, for example. If the BATF corralled people so that if they tried to escape the fire, they would be shot, that wouldn't stop them from trying to escape the fire. And in the second place, I saw footage of the compound while it was on fire. There were plenty of windows that weren't blocked by debris.
The BATF wouldn't have been able to get away with killing them if their religion had been mainstream.
Actually, there'd have been a lot less controversy surrounding this incident if they'd all been mainstream Christians.
--
This should of course say, "I don't support lying to support a cause..."
--
I am an American, and I appear to have a much better understanding of constitutional law than you.
It so happens that I have an "actual" copy of the constitution before me. The second amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Exactly. You have the right to bear arms in connection with your service as part of the militia. Thank you for quoting the actual constitution for me, I didn't remember the actual wording off the top of my head. It quite clearly does not grant anyone the right to bear firearms except in relation to their militia service.
According to the United States Code, the militia consists of all able-bodied males over 18. This coincides nicely with "private citizens."
Since you're so good at quoting documents, could you quote this one or at least provide a reference? And "US Code", you say? The amendment deals with the right of a State to maintain a well-regulated militia. I highly doubt any federal law can be made which deals with the composition of a state militia. Further, note that "all able-bodied males" is hardly a well regulated militia. So even if this section of US code exist, it's not relevant to the 2nd Amendment, which deals with "A well regulated militia" maintained by a "State".
I think your argument that the 2nd amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years is rather baseless.
I did not say that the 2nd Amendment has been misunderstood for 300 years. For one, since the 2nd Amendment is only about 210 years ago, this would be a very stupid thing to say. And for two, the US Supreme Court has already correctly pointed that the 2nd Amendment does not guarentee the right of any citizen to keep a firearm for any old reason on several occasions. So, the Supreme Court at least has not misunderstood the constitution, which is good since its part of their job to understand it!
Take your facist ideas back to Japan, please. Where the Shoguns prohibited people from owning weapons.
Why? I would oppose that, just as I oppose excessive gun-control. I support the right of individuals to own firearms. I have never said otherwise. I merely pointed out that the constitution doesn't necessarily do so. I don't suppose lying to support a cause, and I think its stupid to stick your head in the sand pretending the constitution will protect your rights when in fact you need to fight for sane laws if you want your rights in this area protected.
--
I'm afraid that this assertion is incorrect. Part of the problem was the BATF's failure to understand what David Koresh was thinking and expecting. During the negotiation, when he talked about how his religion, the BATF negotiators dismissed what he had to say as "bible babble."
How does this make my assertion incorrect? My assertion was that the BATF did not dispute their right to worship as they please. The fact that they didn't believe it doesn't mean they didn't think the Davidians had the right to.
As for the rest of your reply, we simply have a dispute over facts. It'll do neither of us any good to rehash different versions of what happened. Some people say the Davidians started the blaze, some say the BATF. We'll not find the truth by arguing about it here. I do wonder, though, if the BATF started it, and the Davidians were not in fact attempting to kill themselves, why didn't they flee? It went up quick, but not that quick. There was time for most of those people to get out if they wanted...
--
Actually, even this overstates the issue. The FBI hasn't accused him of anything. All it has done is do a little investigating, which is what we pay them for, after all. We may not like what they're investigating, and it's probably a waste of resources, but we don't help things by inflating this into something its not.
--
Actually, it's about state governments protecting themselves from the federal government. Whether they're good or evil doesn't enter into it, nor does it have anything to do with the rights of private citizens, although those who know little about the actual constitution seem to frequently think so.
--
That's a job for engineers. Mathematicians and true scientists should avoid such considerations at all costs. To even consider whether something you're working on is applicable or not is to consider yourself more clever than all the humans who will live after you, since you're essentially second-guessing whether they'll find an application for it or not. Believe me, I don't care who you are, you aren't qualified to make that judgement...
--
True, but not the FBI's fault or problem. In an ideal world, we'd only investigate guilty people, but in the real world, we don't know who's guilty until we investigate. Either we have to investigate innocent people or we can never investigate anyone...
--
Reality check: Getting a traffic ticket is a part of your criminal record. Getting investigated for anything (even murder or treason) is not a part of your criminal record. He is not barred from getting a job in a government office as janitor or anything else for having been under investigation. If the job involves anything serious, he'd be investigated anyways, since everyone who's seriously considered for such a position gets investigated! We never hire anyone for those kinds of positions unless they've been investigated! Now, it may be he would be denied even if not prosecuted based on what the investigation was for and what it turned up, but in that case we wouldn't have gotten the job to begin with.
--
That statement is, of course, blatantly false. The Branch Davidians killed themselves. If a BATF simply wanted to kill them, they could have simply opened fire on them on when they first got there. There was a long, drawn-out stand-off precisely because the BATF wanted them alive!
They may not be "real" Christians, but they had every right to practice their religion in peace.
Which no one ever disputed, certainly not the BATF, and their religious beliefs had absolutely nothing at all to do with why the BATF was there attempting to arrest them.
--
The site appears to have recovered from the
--
It can't. I believe the problem is not that he advocated changing laws, it's that he alledgedly advocated violating existing ones. It's the difference between saying "we need to legally change crypto law" vs. "we need to illegally ignore crypto law and export it regardless of what the law says".
The United States is founded on the principle that if laws suck, you change them through the democratic process.
Exactly. If you want to export strong-crypto to North Korea, you get the laws changed through the democratic process. If you instead subvert the democratic process and attempt to do it in violation of existing law, then you're open for prosecution. This is, I believe, what the FBI is alledging...
--
The two I use most often are (1) WindowMaker, which technically I use all the time regardless of what other programs I'm running, and (2) Emacs. WindowMaker, like any decent window manager, has a useful menu of items that comes up when you right click on the background, and a different one when you middle-click, which is nice but useless if you've got a window maximized. My Menu key brings up the same menu as background-right-click, and Hyper-Menu brings up the same menu as background-middle-click. I also bind many useful window operations to the extra modifiers, and many useful Emacs commands.
--
--
--
computers, she writes mostly all kind of documents etc., she uses the Caps Lock key much more often than the tab key. She can write a 10 pages long document and hit the tab key let's say 5 times, and hit the Caps Lock key for 40 times. (Remember, you should use Caps Lock if you're going to write more than 3 letters in capitals).
Is your girlfriend in the military or something? Most normal people typing normal documents type three capital letters in a row far less often than programmers do. People in the military, though, tend to have a jargon laced with many abbreviations that are typed in all-caps. If you should only use the caps lock key when typing three or more caps characters in a row, then normal people have far less use for the key than programmers.
Also, I disagree with the statement that you should use the Caps Lock if you're going to write more than three letters in caps. I write a lot, and I've found that if I hit the caps lock key, then attempt to write 4 capital characters, I end up with 4 lowercase characters! The silly key turns any attempt to enter a capital character into lowercase! Now, for someone who doesn't write a lot, they may find they don't have a constant urge to reach for the shift key while typing in capital letters, but I just instinctively without thinking about it depress shift while typing something I know should be caps. Once you reach the typing proficiency level where you no longer think about the keys, trying to type capital letters while the caps lock is on becomes very difficult and slow, since you have to conciously override what your hands will do if you aren't exerting effort to prevent them from doing it. At least, that's been my experience...
--
What an idiot.
--
The thumb may be the strongest finger, but there's a reason for the expression "all-thumbs": it's also the least dexterous. For some of us, it's even worse than others -- my thumbs are fairly worthless for anything other than opposing my other digits while holding my pop can or the like. I cannot use those trackballs that put the ball under the thumb. And for that matter, while typing, I usually hit the spacebar with my right index finger. This "Kenisis" sounds like a nightmare to me...
--
--