I admit, the documentation for RT leaves quite a lot to be desired, but at least there's a O'Reilly book, and once you've figured out the permissions system, it's all good. I'm sure I'm not the only consultant in the world that's figured out how to set up RT, so I would think you wouldn't have any problem locating one.
The great thing about RT, in my opinion, is its flexibility. Unfortunately, that leads to a certain amount of complexity, but you really can do just about anything with it.
That's absolutely true, although I've had clients purchase eMachines boxen, and had them last a very long time (more than 3, and even 5 years, in some cases).
I always advise people to build their own machines, and only use top quality, A-list, components (Antec cases/power supplies only, Intel mobo's only, Intel CPU's only, ATI or nVidia display adapters only, etc, etc). You'll end up paying more up front, but you'll get a better machine in the end. All the OEMs are building to a price point, and will inevitably cut corners somewhere.
That said, I'm still primarily a Mac guy.;) These days, most of my Windows and Linux stuff is being done on Apple machines, but I've always had good experiences with the above mentioned products for those purposes, plus some of the other top shelf component manufacturers.
Most every time I've called, I've gotten someone with a heavy Indian accent, indicating that the call center is probably somewhere in/around the Subcontinent. Which, of course would explain the "Queen's English" accent for some of more fluent speakers of English, being as most places outside of strong American influence tend to learn their English the old fashioned way, and well, India has a long history with the UK.
In any case, I'd like to point out that there are many more types of XP license keys than a previous poster indicated. There are OEM, Retail, and VLA versions for each form of Windows, plus keys from later SP2 CDs won't work with older CDs. There may even be other issues that I just haven't come across.
I discovered part of this recently while performing a company-wide XP migration of about 50 or so machines. A large group of the machines had been purchased right around the time XP came out, but the company elected to stay with Windows 2000 because it was deemed that XP was too new to be trusted. So, separate licenses for Win2K were obtained, the disks were wiped, and the machines Ghosted. Now, these machines had the recovery image on the original HDD, but the installation company didn't preserve them, and neither IBM or Lenovo would provide restore disks for these machines (either that, or we just couldn't find the right people to talk to at the installation company, IBM, or Lenovo). So, XP Pro SP2 OEM disks were used from a few new machines to re-install.
The license keys on the IBM boxes worked fine for the install, but activation failed for every unit. I spent quite a long time calling the activation number and manually activating all those machines. Fun, fun, fun. Well, at least the Microsoft people don't give you a whole lot more grief over it. That would just be adding insult to injury.
That said, my favorite is when the restore image is on the HDD, but the original HDD fails. Of course, hardly anyone ever bothers to make the restore CDs from the images, but in some cases I've been able to clone the recovery partition and transfer that to a new HDD. In other cases, the bizarre partitioning schemes used by some of the OEMs to do this trickery has gotten in the way in a rather intrusive fashion, causing it to be more work than necessary.
I can't tell you how many people I've converted to Macs after having them watch me recover a machine like this. With a Mac, at least you can generally boot from an external drive and fix the problem, plus there's no stupid registry and SUID issues to deal with. Macs are much, much easier, and far, far less costly to fix.
As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, the vast majority of fluorescent fixtures I have come across in the last decade are horrible polluters of the RF spectrum. I have a recording studio in my house, and I *cannot* run fluorescent fixtures because of this problem. Despite using all balanced connections, there is a marked increase in the volume of the noise floor whenever I replace the incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, or when I use the long-tube traditional types.
Not that I expect California's legislators to worry about this, even though CA probably has the largest concentration of movie, music, video, and television studios in the country, but what are they going to do to force the manufacturers of fluorescent fixtures (who are largely Chinese companies serving the megabox stores of America nowadays) to clean up their emissions?
I would also like to mention that I have been involved in the gaming industry in the past (d8 magazine, in case anyone remembers it), and that your post has not only caused me to start thinking about getting involved again, but has also installed in me the desire to be a play-tester for you, if you need them. I've never really though about board games before, as I'm more of a role-playing type, but now the wheels are turning for that type of idea.
Publishing a board game is a fairly trivial exercise. All you need is a good graphic designer and a good printer. Use the Internet to market your product. Take it on the road to gaming conventions.
Under no circumstances should you consider talking to a large existing corporation. If they decide to steal your idea for themselves, you will likely not be able to mount enough of a legal challenge to stop them.
The thing about games is that the game itself has to be compelling in the long term in order for it to survive. If the game is good enough to do that, why would you want to involve anyone else? If the game is good enough to survive on its own merits, eventually, the world will beat a path to your door.
Interesting though, that you chose not to cite the arguments of the other position.
In any case, in no way does an "original meaning" construction negate the reality that many of the phrases enshried in the Constitution were deliberately chosen for their vagueness, like "unreasonable search and seizure" (not because the meaning of unreasonable might change, but because what is reasonable in one circumstance might be unreasonable in another), because the Framers were quite well aware that they were only human and could not account for future possibilites in every case. Other phrases are deliberately precise, such as "shall not be infringed", because it was recognized that the importance of those phrases needed to be fixed in such a fashion as to eliminate debate of the meaning.
Let's be clear, there is no serious debate as to the "original meaning" of the text of the Constitution. Anyone who tells you such debate exists is doing so disingenously in order to further their own goals. The original meaning (which is quite distinct from the "original intent") is well-documented through other documents of the same historical period, including the writings of the Framers themselves.
This is not to say that the Constitution as it existed then, or as it exists today, is perfect in every way. Fortunately, the Framers accounted for that as well, by providing means to Amend the Constitution, though admittedly this is a process which may take a long time. (See Amedment XVII--more than 202 years passed between its proposal and ratification)
The main problem with this line of argumentation is that the government of Afghanistan did not directly attack the United States via a legitimate, state military force. Had they done so, the Geneva Convention would certainly apply. In this case, however, the best justification we can make for the treatment of any enemy combatants involved is to treat them as if they were common criminals, having committed a crime within US jurisdiction, and therefore subject to the protections of the Constitution.
The alternatives would be to treat with the Talibanic government of Afghanistan as sovereign equals and demand that the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks be brought to justice by the Afghan government, or to consider those attackers as being a de facto legitimate military force, and therefore subject to the Geneva Convention as any other legitimate soldiers, which would additionally, by definition, make Afghanistan, as a country, a legitimate target for war.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration elected to follow none of these paths.
I forgot to mention that the main problem we are having with our current government (and society, truth to be told) is that the Constitution of the United States isn't being taken by most people as a serious impediment to the expansion of governmental authority or the abuse of that power, so while I believe our Constitution and government to be inherently legitimate (as per the arguments of Barnett), the current administration stands as a shining example of how even a legitimate form of government can harbor illegitimate actors if the principles of that legitimate form are ignored with impunity.
I subscribe to Randy Barnett's theories of governmental (and in particular, Constitutional) legitimacy. The gist of his argument, which is largely based on the similar arguments of Lysander Spooner, is that we can consider a Constitution legitimate, even in light of the fact that no one currently living has either directly or indirectly (through representatives) endorsed said document, except of course for those who by oath or affirmation submitted to the Constitution (Presidential Oath of Office, etc.), if that Constitution embodies a system of law by which the rights of the governed are sufficiently protected against usurpation by the government.
For a more direct explanation, refer to Barnett's books, "The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law" and "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty".
I have to disagree with your assessment of the war in Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan is quite a lot different than the situation in Iraq. In the case of Afghanistan, we are executing a justifiable war against a legitimate foreign government which was entirely complicit in aiding and abetting illegitimate, non-governmental forces which themselves executed not only a direct attack on US soil, but an attack against citizens of many other nations. To add insult to injury, the attack was executed in such a manner as to be completely beyond the pale of legitimate warfare.
How, given these facts, can anyone possibly describe our actions in Afghanistan as a "war of aggession"? A "war of ineptitude", perhaps, but certainly not one of aggression.
We are perfectly within our rights as a sovereign nation to cause the dissolution of a foreign government that has acted in such a manner, by whatever means necessary.
Now, if someone could just explain to me why it is that we haven't wholesale fire-bombed the opium fields which are funding much of the terrorist activities and causing health problems the world over, I'd be a happy man.
Your comment here might imply to certain people that "the threat of overwhelming force", by which I take it you mean the deprivation of life, liberty, or property/the ability to pursue happiness, is in some way illegitimate in the context of governmental powers. Certainly, there are illegitimate uses of this power, but the power of government derives directly from the ability to deny these things to a person. One could argue that the very definition of government is a monopoly on the use of force to accomplish those same ends, and that the legitimacy of any particular government is defined by how it applies that monopoly.
It is important to note that neither the Declaration nor the Constitution refer to "God", per se, except for one brief reference at the very beginning of the Declaration to "Nature's God", which is quite a different thing than any notion of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic "God". The relevant term, when referring to the "Unalienable Rights" clause is "Creator", which has a quite different meaning.
For that reason, i always felt that since it says all men, that these rights should be extended no non-citizens. Not just Americans. Including terrorists (if they're really terrorists, the court will convict them). Sort of an affirmation in our faith in our system.
You may be interested, then, to note that nowhere in the Constitution or its Amendments is the word "Citizen" used to distinguish between the natural rights of "Citizens" as opposed to "People" or "Person" (except, of course, for eligibility for certain offices), which means that the protections of the Constitution are guaranteed to all Persons falling under the jurisdiction of the Constitution, whether by Citizenship or by Location. In fact, the word "Citizen" does not even appear *once* in the Bill of Rights.
You see, the interpretation of the Constitution, in order to be called truly "strict" must rely upon the meanings of the words in the Constitution as they were generally understood at the time of the Framing. The very definition of a "liberal" interpretation is taking the text of the Constitution and applying whatever convenient definition of the words involved suits your purposes.
Note that there is a distinct difference between the ideas of "original meaning" and "original intent", for those of you who pay attention to such things.
What is truly frightening is that not only are there no true strict constructionists on the Supreme Court, there is no one currently appointed to the Court that has any interest in overturning the extremely perverse past decisions of previous Courts that have completely gutted two of the most important Amendments to the Constitution, namely, Amendments IX and X.
If you have not already done so, I highly recommend Randy E. Barnett's books on Constitutional Law, "The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law", and "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty". These are probably the two most cogent books I have ever read on the subject, and should be required reading for every Citizen. I will even go so far as to say that Professor Barnett should be nominated and confirmed for the position of Chief Justice at the earliest opportunity.
Because practically the second they start offering DRM-free music in a format that is of relatively high quality (say 128Kbps MP3 or better--the current standard) and is delivered online (meaning you don't have to rip your CD's, which already are mostly DRM-free), the recording industry will have signed their own death warrant.
Most people I know are already obtaining the majority of their music files via some means other than outright, legitimate purchases--even when they understand that I am a recording musician and that at least part of my livelihood depends upon the ability to sell my recordings. Even some recording musicians I know do the same thing. DRM is the only method by which profit can be extracted from digital media sales, barring other barrier technologies (it's currently time-consuming and/or difficult to transfer CDs and DVDs, and storage requirements and processing power required are still relatively expensive, and bandwidth isn't what it needs to be quite yet for high-quality delivery of large files--however, all of these problems are well on their way to being solved).
Now, you may argue whether or not this is a good thing or not, but for my own part, I believe the end result will be a net detriment to society. Granted, it will break the power of the large studios, but it will also break the profit model entirely for everyone. Technology does not discriminate between a greedy studio exec and an individual musician. You may spare us your ideas on how to make a decent living as a musician sans the sale of recordings unless you yourself are prepared to hit the road and perform night after night. Those of us who have done it already know it doesn't work very well.
Unfortunately, I also believe that in the end, no DRM scheme is workable in the long term, both for technical and ethical reasons, but human nature is what it is, and secrets aren't secrets if two people know them.
You think the state of our musical culture is bad now thanks to the RIAA? Wait until DRM is gone. I guarantee you'll regret it.
Hmm...your post left me wondering whether or not you've ever run QNX on a home desktop machine. QNX for many years made available a fully-functional desktop environment that they called the Internet Access Terminal or IAT (among other names). Somewhere around here, I still have a QNX v6.2.1 CD (I think it's 6.2.1, anyway) with this environment. Had QNX ever bothered to expand upon this concept, we might have a serious contender for the desktop computer market. You should check out QNX more if you haven't; their stuff is really good. I'm actually surprised that QNX hasn't gone further with the concept, or that another company hasn't attempted to purchase QNX and continue development along those lines.
QNX's OS is a microkernel, real-time, multi-threaded, multi-processor, POSIX compliant OS that runs on practically every major line of CPUs. It would make a great basis for a full-featured consumer OS. The only real drawback is that it isn't Free Software, but I think there are situations in which Non-Free software can provide superior functionality to Free software, so I'm not totally against Non-Free software.
I'm not sure, but you may still be able to obtain the QNX development for free to check it out.
Wow. You really have no clue how dangerous such an idea is, do you? Either that, or you are one evil bastard, or possibly you are just a coward. You may even be both.
People have been giving their lives for thousands of years to prevent people who think like you from taking away their freedom.
I honestly hope you learn the error of your ways before your choices infringe upon anyone else's rights.
I recommend that you take everything you ever read by McLuhan, and toss it in the Round File. Yes, technology *does* change how we react to events, and even how we *can* react to events. What it does not do is choose for us whether or not to act.
the fact that the gun is there allows for a form a violence that was not possible before its invention
Wrong, the personal firearm simply allows one to carry out an act in a manner which was only simply for those of relatively high physical strength and social class (add other modifiers as appropriate for specific community). It is possible, and has always been possible, for a strong man to beat another person to death ith his bare limbs. With personal firearms, pratically the weakest among us now has the power to assert our rights in the face of an attacker who would usurp those rights, even when that attacker is vastly better advantaged.
Highways, as a reaction to automobiles, hollowed out most US cities and brought urban blight as communities collapsed.
Wrong again. You really need to study a lot more about late 19th and early 20th century American history, especially in the field of politics, before you will be quailified to make definitive statements on this topic. Political manipulation by the automotive industry, coupled with poor planning enforced by power-mad governmental forces, coupled with plain old stupidity is what caused the automobile-borne flight from our urban centers and the massive waste of resources that has resulted from the suburbanization of the continent.
What you're saying is if the bullets reach the right people for the right reason then guns can be good, but if the slugs hit the wrong person or for the wrong reason then they're bad. (If the right type of rays from a TV hit the right person's eyes than TV is good. If the right bits travel through the IP network and reach the right destination for the right reason the Internet is good.)
The conflation of these two ideas is illogical and unwarranted. Except under conditions that would not normally exist in the real world, light emitted from a television screen is not likely to physically damage a person by direct action, as opposed to the extremely likely result from being struck by a projectile from a firearm. And in any case, to respond to the first part of your statement, in a word, yes.
Doesn't the above sound a bit silly? A technology has an impact regardless of how it's used.
The above does sound silly, but not for the reasons you seem to think. Not all impacts of technology are detrimental, and just because you feel a particular instance of a particular form of impact of a particular technology *is* detrimental doesn't make you argument a valid argument.
First of all, Boot Camp is beta software. You should be happy that Apple will provide a supported version of Boot Camp for those who choose to stick with 10.4, and if $29 is all it takes to get a fully supported version, complaining about it is ridiculous. This is the price you pay for software that isn't Free as in Speech, but Free as in "It Just Fucking Works and Lets You Get Your Job Done".
As for the rest of the vast majority of Apple users, we will be upgrading to 10.5, anyway. Nobody seriously worries about upgrades to Mac OS X, given that the retail version is only $129, and every succeeding version of Mac OS X has gotten demonstrably faster.
GRUB works just fine to boot both Windows XP and Fedora Core 6 on both my MacBook and my iMac. I haven't sucessfully booted Mac OS X directly from GRUB, but that doesn't mean it won't work.
Getting hit by a.50 BMG in the head would probably give you a severe concussion or kill you just from the physical energy of the round alone.
Yes, if I threw it at you as hard as I could.
If I *shot* you in the head with a.50BMG, your head would more than likely be vaporized, or at the very least completely and instantly disintegrated.
To stop said bullet, your helmet would probably have to weigh more than the entire suit...
True, but to stop said bullet, your helmet would need to be constructed of the sort of armor that we tend to put on main battle tanks, and even than would be iffy in some cases.
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I admit, the documentation for RT leaves quite a lot to be desired, but at least there's a O'Reilly book, and once you've figured out the permissions system, it's all good. I'm sure I'm not the only consultant in the world that's figured out how to set up RT, so I would think you wouldn't have any problem locating one.
The great thing about RT, in my opinion, is its flexibility. Unfortunately, that leads to a certain amount of complexity, but you really can do just about anything with it.
What do you mean "outside of the Ham Radio community"? Just another reason to hate poorly made and/or designed fluo's...
73 de K2TIV
That's absolutely true, although I've had clients purchase eMachines boxen, and had them last a very long time (more than 3, and even 5 years, in some cases).
;) These days, most of my Windows and Linux stuff is being done on Apple machines, but I've always had good experiences with the above mentioned products for those purposes, plus some of the other top shelf component manufacturers.
I always advise people to build their own machines, and only use top quality, A-list, components (Antec cases/power supplies only, Intel mobo's only, Intel CPU's only, ATI or nVidia display adapters only, etc, etc). You'll end up paying more up front, but you'll get a better machine in the end. All the OEMs are building to a price point, and will inevitably cut corners somewhere.
That said, I'm still primarily a Mac guy.
Most every time I've called, I've gotten someone with a heavy Indian accent, indicating that the call center is probably somewhere in/around the Subcontinent. Which, of course would explain the "Queen's English" accent for some of more fluent speakers of English, being as most places outside of strong American influence tend to learn their English the old fashioned way, and well, India has a long history with the UK.
In any case, I'd like to point out that there are many more types of XP license keys than a previous poster indicated. There are OEM, Retail, and VLA versions for each form of Windows, plus keys from later SP2 CDs won't work with older CDs. There may even be other issues that I just haven't come across.
I discovered part of this recently while performing a company-wide XP migration of about 50 or so machines. A large group of the machines had been purchased right around the time XP came out, but the company elected to stay with Windows 2000 because it was deemed that XP was too new to be trusted. So, separate licenses for Win2K were obtained, the disks were wiped, and the machines Ghosted. Now, these machines had the recovery image on the original HDD, but the installation company didn't preserve them, and neither IBM or Lenovo would provide restore disks for these machines (either that, or we just couldn't find the right people to talk to at the installation company, IBM, or Lenovo). So, XP Pro SP2 OEM disks were used from a few new machines to re-install.
The license keys on the IBM boxes worked fine for the install, but activation failed for every unit. I spent quite a long time calling the activation number and manually activating all those machines. Fun, fun, fun. Well, at least the Microsoft people don't give you a whole lot more grief over it. That would just be adding insult to injury.
That said, my favorite is when the restore image is on the HDD, but the original HDD fails. Of course, hardly anyone ever bothers to make the restore CDs from the images, but in some cases I've been able to clone the recovery partition and transfer that to a new HDD. In other cases, the bizarre partitioning schemes used by some of the OEMs to do this trickery has gotten in the way in a rather intrusive fashion, causing it to be more work than necessary.
I can't tell you how many people I've converted to Macs after having them watch me recover a machine like this. With a Mac, at least you can generally boot from an external drive and fix the problem, plus there's no stupid registry and SUID issues to deal with. Macs are much, much easier, and far, far less costly to fix.
As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, the vast majority of fluorescent fixtures I have come across in the last decade are horrible polluters of the RF spectrum. I have a recording studio in my house, and I *cannot* run fluorescent fixtures because of this problem. Despite using all balanced connections, there is a marked increase in the volume of the noise floor whenever I replace the incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, or when I use the long-tube traditional types.
Not that I expect California's legislators to worry about this, even though CA probably has the largest concentration of movie, music, video, and television studios in the country, but what are they going to do to force the manufacturers of fluorescent fixtures (who are largely Chinese companies serving the megabox stores of America nowadays) to clean up their emissions?
I would also like to mention that I have been involved in the gaming industry in the past (d8 magazine, in case anyone remembers it), and that your post has not only caused me to start thinking about getting involved again, but has also installed in me the desire to be a play-tester for you, if you need them. I've never really though about board games before, as I'm more of a role-playing type, but now the wheels are turning for that type of idea.
Publishing a board game is a fairly trivial exercise. All you need is a good graphic designer and a good printer. Use the Internet to market your product. Take it on the road to gaming conventions.
Under no circumstances should you consider talking to a large existing corporation. If they decide to steal your idea for themselves, you will likely not be able to mount enough of a legal challenge to stop them.
The thing about games is that the game itself has to be compelling in the long term in order for it to survive. If the game is good enough to do that, why would you want to involve anyone else? If the game is good enough to survive on its own merits, eventually, the world will beat a path to your door.
Interesting though, that you chose not to cite the arguments of the other position.
In any case, in no way does an "original meaning" construction negate the reality that many of the phrases enshried in the Constitution were deliberately chosen for their vagueness, like "unreasonable search and seizure" (not because the meaning of unreasonable might change, but because what is reasonable in one circumstance might be unreasonable in another), because the Framers were quite well aware that they were only human and could not account for future possibilites in every case. Other phrases are deliberately precise, such as "shall not be infringed", because it was recognized that the importance of those phrases needed to be fixed in such a fashion as to eliminate debate of the meaning.
Let's be clear, there is no serious debate as to the "original meaning" of the text of the Constitution. Anyone who tells you such debate exists is doing so disingenously in order to further their own goals. The original meaning (which is quite distinct from the "original intent") is well-documented through other documents of the same historical period, including the writings of the Framers themselves.
This is not to say that the Constitution as it existed then, or as it exists today, is perfect in every way. Fortunately, the Framers accounted for that as well, by providing means to Amend the Constitution, though admittedly this is a process which may take a long time. (See Amedment XVII--more than 202 years passed between its proposal and ratification)
The main problem with this line of argumentation is that the government of Afghanistan did not directly attack the United States via a legitimate, state military force. Had they done so, the Geneva Convention would certainly apply. In this case, however, the best justification we can make for the treatment of any enemy combatants involved is to treat them as if they were common criminals, having committed a crime within US jurisdiction, and therefore subject to the protections of the Constitution.
The alternatives would be to treat with the Talibanic government of Afghanistan as sovereign equals and demand that the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks be brought to justice by the Afghan government, or to consider those attackers as being a de facto legitimate military force, and therefore subject to the Geneva Convention as any other legitimate soldiers, which would additionally, by definition, make Afghanistan, as a country, a legitimate target for war.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration elected to follow none of these paths.
I forgot to mention that the main problem we are having with our current government (and society, truth to be told) is that the Constitution of the United States isn't being taken by most people as a serious impediment to the expansion of governmental authority or the abuse of that power, so while I believe our Constitution and government to be inherently legitimate (as per the arguments of Barnett), the current administration stands as a shining example of how even a legitimate form of government can harbor illegitimate actors if the principles of that legitimate form are ignored with impunity.
I subscribe to Randy Barnett's theories of governmental (and in particular, Constitutional) legitimacy. The gist of his argument, which is largely based on the similar arguments of Lysander Spooner, is that we can consider a Constitution legitimate, even in light of the fact that no one currently living has either directly or indirectly (through representatives) endorsed said document, except of course for those who by oath or affirmation submitted to the Constitution (Presidential Oath of Office, etc.), if that Constitution embodies a system of law by which the rights of the governed are sufficiently protected against usurpation by the government.
For a more direct explanation, refer to Barnett's books, "The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law" and "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty".
I have to disagree with your assessment of the war in Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan is quite a lot different than the situation in Iraq. In the case of Afghanistan, we are executing a justifiable war against a legitimate foreign government which was entirely complicit in aiding and abetting illegitimate, non-governmental forces which themselves executed not only a direct attack on US soil, but an attack against citizens of many other nations. To add insult to injury, the attack was executed in such a manner as to be completely beyond the pale of legitimate warfare.
How, given these facts, can anyone possibly describe our actions in Afghanistan as a "war of aggession"? A "war of ineptitude", perhaps, but certainly not one of aggression.
We are perfectly within our rights as a sovereign nation to cause the dissolution of a foreign government that has acted in such a manner, by whatever means necessary.
Now, if someone could just explain to me why it is that we haven't wholesale fire-bombed the opium fields which are funding much of the terrorist activities and causing health problems the world over, I'd be a happy man.
Your comment here might imply to certain people that "the threat of overwhelming force", by which I take it you mean the deprivation of life, liberty, or property/the ability to pursue happiness, is in some way illegitimate in the context of governmental powers. Certainly, there are illegitimate uses of this power, but the power of government derives directly from the ability to deny these things to a person. One could argue that the very definition of government is a monopoly on the use of force to accomplish those same ends, and that the legitimacy of any particular government is defined by how it applies that monopoly.
It is important to note that neither the Declaration nor the Constitution refer to "God", per se, except for one brief reference at the very beginning of the Declaration to "Nature's God", which is quite a different thing than any notion of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic "God". The relevant term, when referring to the "Unalienable Rights" clause is "Creator", which has a quite different meaning.
For that reason, i always felt that since it says all men, that these rights should be extended no non-citizens. Not just Americans. Including terrorists (if they're really terrorists, the court will convict them). Sort of an affirmation in our faith in our system.
You may be interested, then, to note that nowhere in the Constitution or its Amendments is the word "Citizen" used to distinguish between the natural rights of "Citizens" as opposed to "People" or "Person" (except, of course, for eligibility for certain offices), which means that the protections of the Constitution are guaranteed to all Persons falling under the jurisdiction of the Constitution, whether by Citizenship or by Location. In fact, the word "Citizen" does not even appear *once* in the Bill of Rights.
Yes, including terrorists.
That right, as specifically protected in the 9th amendment, is not disparaged merely by not being listed.
Well then, this ought to scare the living shit out of you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footnote_four
No, actually, they are not.
You see, the interpretation of the Constitution, in order to be called truly "strict" must rely upon the meanings of the words in the Constitution as they were generally understood at the time of the Framing. The very definition of a "liberal" interpretation is taking the text of the Constitution and applying whatever convenient definition of the words involved suits your purposes.
Note that there is a distinct difference between the ideas of "original meaning" and "original intent", for those of you who pay attention to such things.
What is truly frightening is that not only are there no true strict constructionists on the Supreme Court, there is no one currently appointed to the Court that has any interest in overturning the extremely perverse past decisions of previous Courts that have completely gutted two of the most important Amendments to the Constitution, namely, Amendments IX and X.
If you have not already done so, I highly recommend Randy E. Barnett's books on Constitutional Law, "The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law", and "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty". These are probably the two most cogent books I have ever read on the subject, and should be required reading for every Citizen. I will even go so far as to say that Professor Barnett should be nominated and confirmed for the position of Chief Justice at the earliest opportunity.
Because practically the second they start offering DRM-free music in a format that is of relatively high quality (say 128Kbps MP3 or better--the current standard) and is delivered online (meaning you don't have to rip your CD's, which already are mostly DRM-free), the recording industry will have signed their own death warrant.
Most people I know are already obtaining the majority of their music files via some means other than outright, legitimate purchases--even when they understand that I am a recording musician and that at least part of my livelihood depends upon the ability to sell my recordings. Even some recording musicians I know do the same thing. DRM is the only method by which profit can be extracted from digital media sales, barring other barrier technologies (it's currently time-consuming and/or difficult to transfer CDs and DVDs, and storage requirements and processing power required are still relatively expensive, and bandwidth isn't what it needs to be quite yet for high-quality delivery of large files--however, all of these problems are well on their way to being solved).
Now, you may argue whether or not this is a good thing or not, but for my own part, I believe the end result will be a net detriment to society. Granted, it will break the power of the large studios, but it will also break the profit model entirely for everyone. Technology does not discriminate between a greedy studio exec and an individual musician. You may spare us your ideas on how to make a decent living as a musician sans the sale of recordings unless you yourself are prepared to hit the road and perform night after night. Those of us who have done it already know it doesn't work very well.
Unfortunately, I also believe that in the end, no DRM scheme is workable in the long term, both for technical and ethical reasons, but human nature is what it is, and secrets aren't secrets if two people know them.
You think the state of our musical culture is bad now thanks to the RIAA? Wait until DRM is gone. I guarantee you'll regret it.
Hmm...your post left me wondering whether or not you've ever run QNX on a home desktop machine. QNX for many years made available a fully-functional desktop environment that they called the Internet Access Terminal or IAT (among other names). Somewhere around here, I still have a QNX v6.2.1 CD (I think it's 6.2.1, anyway) with this environment. Had QNX ever bothered to expand upon this concept, we might have a serious contender for the desktop computer market. You should check out QNX more if you haven't; their stuff is really good. I'm actually surprised that QNX hasn't gone further with the concept, or that another company hasn't attempted to purchase QNX and continue development along those lines.
QNX's OS is a microkernel, real-time, multi-threaded, multi-processor, POSIX compliant OS that runs on practically every major line of CPUs. It would make a great basis for a full-featured consumer OS. The only real drawback is that it isn't Free Software, but I think there are situations in which Non-Free software can provide superior functionality to Free software, so I'm not totally against Non-Free software.
I'm not sure, but you may still be able to obtain the QNX development for free to check it out.
Some choices people shouldn't be allowed to make.
Wow. You really have no clue how dangerous such an idea is, do you? Either that, or you are one evil bastard, or possibly you are just a coward. You may even be both.
People have been giving their lives for thousands of years to prevent people who think like you from taking away their freedom.
I honestly hope you learn the error of your ways before your choices infringe upon anyone else's rights.
I recommend that you take everything you ever read by McLuhan, and toss it in the Round File. Yes, technology *does* change how we react to events, and even how we *can* react to events. What it does not do is choose for us whether or not to act.
the fact that the gun is there allows for a form a violence that was not possible before its invention
Wrong, the personal firearm simply allows one to carry out an act in a manner which was only simply for those of relatively high physical strength and social class (add other modifiers as appropriate for specific community). It is possible, and has always been possible, for a strong man to beat another person to death ith his bare limbs. With personal firearms, pratically the weakest among us now has the power to assert our rights in the face of an attacker who would usurp those rights, even when that attacker is vastly better advantaged.
Highways, as a reaction to automobiles, hollowed out most US cities and brought urban blight as communities collapsed.
Wrong again. You really need to study a lot more about late 19th and early 20th century American history, especially in the field of politics, before you will be quailified to make definitive statements on this topic. Political manipulation by the automotive industry, coupled with poor planning enforced by power-mad governmental forces, coupled with plain old stupidity is what caused the automobile-borne flight from our urban centers and the massive waste of resources that has resulted from the suburbanization of the continent.
What you're saying is if the bullets reach the right people for the right reason then guns can be good, but if the slugs hit the wrong person or for the wrong reason then they're bad. (If the right type of rays from a TV hit the right person's eyes than TV is good. If the right bits travel through the IP network and reach the right destination for the right reason the Internet is good.)
The conflation of these two ideas is illogical and unwarranted. Except under conditions that would not normally exist in the real world, light emitted from a television screen is not likely to physically damage a person by direct action, as opposed to the extremely likely result from being struck by a projectile from a firearm. And in any case, to respond to the first part of your statement, in a word, yes.
Doesn't the above sound a bit silly? A technology has an impact regardless of how it's used.
The above does sound silly, but not for the reasons you seem to think. Not all impacts of technology are detrimental, and just because you feel a particular instance of a particular form of impact of a particular technology *is* detrimental doesn't make you argument a valid argument.
Just because you have databases doesn't mean you have to make no-fly lists; you could have a list of people who need cancer surgery, instead.
And rest assured that there is a class of person that will find a way to abuse the power that that list would enable, too.
Get over it.
First of all, Boot Camp is beta software. You should be happy that Apple will provide a supported version of Boot Camp for those who choose to stick with 10.4, and if $29 is all it takes to get a fully supported version, complaining about it is ridiculous. This is the price you pay for software that isn't Free as in Speech, but Free as in "It Just Fucking Works and Lets You Get Your Job Done".
As for the rest of the vast majority of Apple users, we will be upgrading to 10.5, anyway. Nobody seriously worries about upgrades to Mac OS X, given that the retail version is only $129, and every succeeding version of Mac OS X has gotten demonstrably faster.
So, stick a sock in, whininistas...
GRUB works just fine to boot both Windows XP and Fedora Core 6 on both my MacBook and my iMac. I haven't sucessfully booted Mac OS X directly from GRUB, but that doesn't mean it won't work.
Getting hit by a .50 BMG in the head would probably give you a severe concussion or kill you just from the physical energy of the round alone.
.50BMG, your head would more than likely be vaporized, or at the very least completely and instantly disintegrated.
Yes, if I threw it at you as hard as I could.
If I *shot* you in the head with a
To stop said bullet, your helmet would probably have to weigh more than the entire suit...
True, but to stop said bullet, your helmet would need to be constructed of the sort of armor that we tend to put on main battle tanks, and even than would be iffy in some cases.