only people with lots of money stand a decent chance of walking away free, either innocent or guilty.
Source?
In the U.S. system, there are many checks before someone is even charged with a capital crime. In other words, by the time you're charged, they already have a lot of evidence against you. It's no surprise that most of those people are found guilty at trial. The alternative is to drag every suspect through an expensive trial, and that makes no sense (but would result in many acquittals, which seems to be your goal).
The ACLU position (and that of many others) is that the 2nd amendment was a guarantee against federal regulation that would take the ability to maintain an armed militia away from the states and thereby jeopardize the security and independence of the states.
I think you have confused the 1st and 2nd. The 1st specifically applies to Congress, while the 2nd applies to "the people". Even if you take the ridiculous position that "the people" means "the states", the 14th extends that right to individuals, as well. If the 14th transfers rights (like speech) to the people, clearly it must transfer the right to keep and bear arms.
However, handling integrity checks within the database will be significantly faster (and more reliable)
As I said in my post, for some constraints that's true, for some not.
For example, let's say you have an application that stores historic data about classes. It finds a class from the source, and adds the name, time, and teacher of the class in one table, and the students that took the class in another table referencing the first table. The application can submit entire classes in one transaction, easily ensuring that every student entered will match to an existing class. However, if you do a foreign key check, you will have to examine each student entered and search the class table to make sure there's an entry. This is because the database isn't smart enough to prove that because you're submitting the entire set of changes in one transaction, and all the students you enter match with the class you enter, the constraint can't be violated.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but in some situations, if you constrain the data within the application it can be more efficient. When it's more efficient to do in the database, that's a bonus. I try to avoid the speed argument because intelligent developers can make a lot of valid arguments when it comes to performance. But from an engineering standpoint, the central constraint-checking location is more robust.
You also have to consider that CPU time on an application server is often much cheaper than CPU time on a database server.
While the database does the check more quickly than an attached application, it's not for the reason you cite.
For some things this is true, others not.
Database features like constraints and the relational model are not there for speed. They are there because: (1) They abstract the physical data storage from the logical access of the data (2) They allow application developers catch errors very early, rather than waiting until the database is corrupt and trying to backtrack
The maintenance costs are higher if there are constraints in the database, because it is duplication
The maintenance costs are usually lower, and the reason for that is *when* you catch the error. If the database enforces some simple constraints, you catch the error *before* it goes into your database, and you know exactly which application tried to insert bad data. It's the best kind of error report a programmer can see.
If you do everything at the application level, any kind of bug can result in bad data being inserted. When a later point in your app finds the bad data, you have no idea where it came from. Good luck tracking that down. The part that inserted the bad data might not have even been written by you, maybe it can't be replaced by you, and maybe you don't even have the source to it. Maybe it's due to a security flaw.
Not only that, but some constraints are nearly impossible to enforce from the application without going way overboard on locking. UNIQUE constraints are a good example.
The "duplication" argument is just not true. The constraints offer your application an API in a way: it shows the app developer the nature of the data they can get from the database, and the nature of the information you can add to your database. In an application, almost all non-static functions do some sanity checking on their inputs, and by your definition that would be "duplication". However, it might be almost impossible for the caller to know it would cause an error, and there are so many callers that, if you don't do sanity checking, it would be impossible to trace the error backwards. It's exactly the same with a database, unless your application is so simple that tracing backwards is possible (i.e. only a couple of points can modify data). How would you like it if API calls didn't return errors? After all, it's just duplicating code, since you should check the data first anyway. And comments are the ultimate in "duplication"; I'm sure you don't write any of those, right?
Errors from constraint violations are a part of normal operating procedure for databases; a database error does not necessarily indicate an application bug.
But I'd really like to read an article or few that describe the $10-$20k increase.
It's obviously going to matter a lot what project you help, and the quality of your work. There are no exact numbers.
Keep in mind I said when you're starting your career. After that it's probably not going to make much difference. However, when all you have is a BS and maybe an entry level job beforehand, the community work you've done will matter a LOT.
How many opportunities do employers have to actually look into how you work? If you work with the community, they see you in action. Of course, I guess if you don't know what you're doing that can be bad.
I can guarantee you will change your perception of addiction.
A gambling problem can be very bad. But if you can physically die or suffer permanent damage from withdrawl, like with alcohol, it's in a different league all together.
If calling a problem an addiction helps you to solve it, more power to you.
Developers enjoy writing the new features. Not many people enjoy fixing bugs.
I don't necessarily think that's true. Often, bugs are just simple errors in corner cases. If you break out gdb and your favorite editor, you can often fix bugs in a matter of minutes, which is instantly satisfying. It really isn't even hard. You don't have to be a great programmer.
I think the most important thing is a good community that gives you feedback quickly. If you submit a bug report or a patch, and it gets ignored, that's not a good feeling. I had a bad experience with the single bug report I issued to PHP.
However, there are a lot of great projects where submitting patches can be satisfying. Also, you get to know the code better, and get on the good side of the community (which is nice when you have questions you need a good answer to). Not to mention that, but if you get patches into an important project, that looks great on a resume. If you're starting out a career, and you have several bug fixes accepted into any big project, you can easily ask for $10-20k more per year. That's a lot of money for a few hours' work here and there.
The internet just happens to be what they latch on to. Some people delve into alcohol, some into gambling,
Comparing internet and gambling addiction to alcohol addictions destroys the meaning of the word "addiction". If someone is "addicted" to the internet, or gambling, and you lock them in a room, they may get bored, anxious, etc.
However, do the same thing to someone addicted to alcohol, and they might die. That's real addiction.
These new kinds of "addictions" are really just habits, and not much more. "Habit" used to be a word, and the word was even applied to users of hard drugs in some cases, but now it's disappeared because it's not scary enough to get attention. Every habit has been elevated to the same level as addiction to attract research funds, shift blame away from people who make poor choices, and make better headlines.
We're slowly killing ourselves in our own pollution.
Huh?
So, then there must be numbers showing that people in cities die younger from lung problems and cancer (after controlling for cigarette smoking), right? Show us.
Actuall the USA Constitution is a limit on government.
We have two ways of saying the same thing. People don't think of the Constitution as a limit on democracy because democracy is good, and everything else is evil. However, a limit on democracy is a limit on government. The founders knew that, in a more pure democracy, the majority would, for example, silence the minority through speech laws. So, the founders wrote "Congress shall pass no law...". That's a direct limit on democracy, and a limit on government.
The problem that I see with legalizing firearm ownership with something like an open carry law is that for the first few years, the streets would be a war zone... even more so than they are right now.
Why do you say that? I don't have enough data to dispute it conclusively, but that just doesn't make sense. The locals are already "heavily armed" and I assume you're not talking about law-abiding citizens. So how would responsible gun ownership be a negative?
"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."
Read it. Read it carefully. And most importantly, read it all.
I have. Many times. And I still fail to see how you can arrive at that conclusion objectively.
Clearly, it's saying that someone's right to bear arms shouldn't be infringed. The only possible "someones" are the federal government, the state, or the people. The militia is not a separate level; it's at whatever level that controls the militia. And the only way the 2nd Amendment would have ANY MEANING AT ALL is if the "someone" is the people of the US.
So, what do you think the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is? For whom is it listing the right to keep and bear arms? From whom does this right need to be protected? I argue that it must mean exactly as it says: "the people" are the ones with the right, and it is protecting this right from infringement by the state and federal governments.
Its important to read not just the words, but consider the context: the Constitution is entirely about the federal government, it only concerns other things when it says it does.
And here, it says "the people". The Constitution either assigns powers to a part of the federal government, or reserves them for the people. Anything else is left for the States. In this case, it reserves the right to the people, with 100% clarity.
Your only example that includes the word "people" is the 5th.
Slashdot have a non-violent means of doing this every few years by voting.
Voting is not perfect. Democracy tends to be a bunch of politicians buying votes with other people's money. It's the best we have, but it's far from perfect. The Constitution is actually a limit on democracy more than anything else.
A civil war in any technological society is likely to be decided by which side the majority of the military takes
Don't think about it in terms of winning and losing, think about it in terms of incentives, odds, and game theory. If only a select group has effective weapons, they don't really care about oppressing other groups. If there's a civil war, they'll still be on top after they quell the uprising.
If everyone is armed, probably nobody will win. But the government busybodies know that it's really a toss up who ends up in which position at the end. In all likelihood, they'll be shot, the dissidents will be shot, and some faction or another will take over. The trick is that nobody knows whether they will be a part of the winning side or not.
And ultimately, it's more of a bargaining chip. Citizen-owned weapons are kind of like the MAD of the cold war. If it's one-sided (i.e. only the government has guns), there's no reason for them to not exercise their power.
1. Safety from fellow citizens, and
2. Safety from the government.
Neither of those are, at their heart, rights, nor are either of those the basis for a right. Both of those are still empirical questions, and nothing more. Does freedom of speech increase or decrease the incidence of spontaneous combustion? It doesn't matter, freedom of speech is a right.
The basis for the right to bear arms is the right to defend yourself. If you depend on the government for all of your safety, then the rest of your rights are meaningless. Consider this: if the government doesn't like you, and you depend on the government for your safety, all they have to do is stop making you safe from people that can harm you. They may release people from prison, or not put someone in prison that they should. Or they just might make it a well-known fact that they will not protect you, and wait for non-governmental citizens to have their way with you.
Think if you're a black person in the deep south a few decades ago. Perhaps everyone knows that the government won't arrest someone for hurting or stealing from black people. It's a form of passive punishment, and it's very real. It's happened in a million forms throughout history, and the founders knew that. It's a way of passing the buck saying "we didn't kill him" when they just didn't provide the protections necessary such that he wouldn't be killed.
You can't stop all forms of passive punishment by governments, but allowing citizens to defend themselves closes an important loophole.
It's just a reason, and a right. The reason says "well regulated militia", but the right says "the people". "Regulated" probably meant closer to "organized", as in, people organizing themselves, not the government organizing people.
More importantly, even if it is interpreted as an individual right, it still is only a limit on the power of the federal government to infringe the right,
Absolutely false. It says the "right of the people". You're thinking of the first, which says "Congress shall make no law...".
If you need further proof, the 10th clearly states that:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The 2nd amendment prohibits the powers to deny citizens the right to keep and bear arms from the federal and state governments, so therefore it is reserved for the people.
ironically, the same people that are most likely to argue that the 14th Amendment should not be read to apply the full force of the first amendment (particularly the religion clauses)
Umm, proof? Don't argue against a point not made. Many people who value the Constitution value all of the Amendments, interpreted according to the English language as English existed at that time. That means I think it's a violation for Congress to establish religion. I basically think religion should be viewed as any other opinion or belief is by the government (because anything else establishes religion in our laws).
I don't agree that the constitution gives the sweeping endorsement it once did.
So the Second Amendment is saying something different now than when it was written? I wasn't aware that it had been amended.
If you arbitrarily dilute the power of the Second Amendment, leaving it entirely malleable in the hands of judges, then we have lost every other right in the Constitution as well.
If you really want it to mean something else, pass an Amendment. I'd rather that happened than lose all my other rights as well.
That's the big problem with the gun debate. There are very few people involved capable of a rational argument. They know what side they are on, and emotionally, irrationally argue in support of their position, summarily dismissing any information that does not help their cause, while seizing on any bit that seems to support it, no matter how flawed.
There are two issues: A. Does a government restriction on gun ownership, trade, etc. reduce violence? B. Is the ability to own, carry, trade, manufacture, modify, and transport firearms an important right?
Not surprisingly, this makes for 3 types of people: (1) People who don't care much about (A), and want government bans or restrictions. (2) People who don't care much about (A), and don't want government bans or restrictions. (3) People who can be swayed by (A).
I am the second type of person. I think these rights are important, and I am willing to pay the costs in terms of risk, if increased risk exists.
However, I am rational enough to realize that question (A) is an empirical one, and the answer is different in different situations. I personally think that in the U.S., (A) is false overall. However, even if results show that (A) is true, I would not support bans or restrictions.
I also don't buy for a second the idea that the Second Amendment is meant for anyone other than private citizens. The Second Amendment says "the right of the people" not "the right of the militia". The Constitution is very important, and if you value the other rights listed, you will not dilute the Second Amendment right. If you feel strongly against it, the only way to change it without destroying the Constitution is to Amend the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment. I'd rather that happened than giving judges the power to re-interpret the Constitution to say whatever they want it to say.
The Second Amendment is actually written more strongly than the First. The First Amendment merely prohibits Congress, and only with the 14th does it really have as much power as it does.
I didn't say "shortest" I said "shorter". And people do it every day in a few seconds of mentally mapping out your destinations, and visiting destinations in groups.
You could say the same things about a 15-table join. The database can't determine the most efficient join order in an efficient way, but in a very short time it can figure out a more efficient join order than a random order. Hence PostgreSQL's GEnetic Query Optimizer (GEQO), which determines a better join order with a genetic algorithm.
My argument is that spending a short time planning to devise a better algorithm is often actually faster at runtime.
Name one, and make sure it's one that's disallowed NULLs completely. Date, Darwen and Pascal's fear of recording states of ignorance is ill-founded in real-world conditions. Codifying that fear isn't even well-founded in last
CJ Date actually tried to generalize the concept of NULLs into "special values" in a domain. He argued that NULLs cause confusion in 3VL because NULL can mean different things. Sometimes it means "unknown", other times it means "not applicable". And in an outer join, it's not clear at all what the value NULL is supposed to represent. At least in my reading of his work, there is nothing precluding you from having a special value called "NULL" and being able to magically add it to an existing domain with simple syntax. He wanted other special values to be allowed, so that NULL was not so ambiguous. Perhaps I misunderstood, I don't have the book nearby.
I really enjoyed Date's work because he clearly explained points of confusing terminology, and suggested possibly less-confusing approaches.
SQL is far from perfect. If nothing else just the syntax is bad, and it has a lot of reserved words and key words. But one thing we have to remember is that no pure relational language is appropriate for a database. For instance, relations are unordered, by definition. Yet, it's important for a database system to be able to ORDER BY.
So, really, I think what we want is a language that facilitates all the relational operations, and at a level above that also allow non-relational operations like ORDER BY.
Slashdot Mirror
only people with lots of money stand a decent chance of walking away free, either innocent or guilty.
Source?
In the U.S. system, there are many checks before someone is even charged with a capital crime. In other words, by the time you're charged, they already have a lot of evidence against you. It's no surprise that most of those people are found guilty at trial. The alternative is to drag every suspect through an expensive trial, and that makes no sense (but would result in many acquittals, which seems to be your goal).
No actually you cant sue for that in 99% of the cases. The prosecutor has to blatantly ignore facts that would obviously clear you as the culprit.
So, does the Duke rape case fall in the 1%?
Why must it make that right applicable against the states?
So, according to this logic, the first Constitution doesn't prevent a state from establishing religion, correct?
The ACLU position (and that of many others) is that the 2nd amendment was a guarantee against federal regulation that would take the ability to maintain an armed militia away from the states and thereby jeopardize the security and independence of the states.
I think you have confused the 1st and 2nd. The 1st specifically applies to Congress, while the 2nd applies to "the people". Even if you take the ridiculous position that "the people" means "the states", the 14th extends that right to individuals, as well. If the 14th transfers rights (like speech) to the people, clearly it must transfer the right to keep and bear arms.
However, handling integrity checks within the database will be significantly faster (and more reliable)
As I said in my post, for some constraints that's true, for some not.
For example, let's say you have an application that stores historic data about classes. It finds a class from the source, and adds the name, time, and teacher of the class in one table, and the students that took the class in another table referencing the first table. The application can submit entire classes in one transaction, easily ensuring that every student entered will match to an existing class. However, if you do a foreign key check, you will have to examine each student entered and search the class table to make sure there's an entry. This is because the database isn't smart enough to prove that because you're submitting the entire set of changes in one transaction, and all the students you enter match with the class you enter, the constraint can't be violated.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but in some situations, if you constrain the data within the application it can be more efficient. When it's more efficient to do in the database, that's a bonus. I try to avoid the speed argument because intelligent developers can make a lot of valid arguments when it comes to performance. But from an engineering standpoint, the central constraint-checking location is more robust.
You also have to consider that CPU time on an application server is often much cheaper than CPU time on a database server.
While the database does the check more quickly than an attached application, it's not for the reason you cite.
For some things this is true, others not.
Database features like constraints and the relational model are not there for speed. They are there because:
(1) They abstract the physical data storage from the logical access of the data
(2) They allow application developers catch errors very early, rather than waiting until the database is corrupt and trying to backtrack
The maintenance costs are higher if there are constraints in the database, because it is duplication
The maintenance costs are usually lower, and the reason for that is *when* you catch the error. If the database enforces some simple constraints, you catch the error *before* it goes into your database, and you know exactly which application tried to insert bad data. It's the best kind of error report a programmer can see.
If you do everything at the application level, any kind of bug can result in bad data being inserted. When a later point in your app finds the bad data, you have no idea where it came from. Good luck tracking that down. The part that inserted the bad data might not have even been written by you, maybe it can't be replaced by you, and maybe you don't even have the source to it. Maybe it's due to a security flaw.
Not only that, but some constraints are nearly impossible to enforce from the application without going way overboard on locking. UNIQUE constraints are a good example.
The "duplication" argument is just not true. The constraints offer your application an API in a way: it shows the app developer the nature of the data they can get from the database, and the nature of the information you can add to your database. In an application, almost all non-static functions do some sanity checking on their inputs, and by your definition that would be "duplication". However, it might be almost impossible for the caller to know it would cause an error, and there are so many callers that, if you don't do sanity checking, it would be impossible to trace the error backwards. It's exactly the same with a database, unless your application is so simple that tracing backwards is possible (i.e. only a couple of points can modify data). How would you like it if API calls didn't return errors? After all, it's just duplicating code, since you should check the data first anyway. And comments are the ultimate in "duplication"; I'm sure you don't write any of those, right?
Errors from constraint violations are a part of normal operating procedure for databases; a database error does not necessarily indicate an application bug.
But I'd really like to read an article or few that describe the $10-$20k increase.
It's obviously going to matter a lot what project you help, and the quality of your work. There are no exact numbers.
Keep in mind I said when you're starting your career. After that it's probably not going to make much difference. However, when all you have is a BS and maybe an entry level job beforehand, the community work you've done will matter a LOT.
How many opportunities do employers have to actually look into how you work? If you work with the community, they see you in action. Of course, I guess if you don't know what you're doing that can be bad.
I can guarantee you will change your perception of addiction.
A gambling problem can be very bad. But if you can physically die or suffer permanent damage from withdrawl, like with alcohol, it's in a different league all together.
If calling a problem an addiction helps you to solve it, more power to you.
Developers enjoy writing the new features. Not many people enjoy fixing bugs.
I don't necessarily think that's true. Often, bugs are just simple errors in corner cases. If you break out gdb and your favorite editor, you can often fix bugs in a matter of minutes, which is instantly satisfying. It really isn't even hard. You don't have to be a great programmer.
I think the most important thing is a good community that gives you feedback quickly. If you submit a bug report or a patch, and it gets ignored, that's not a good feeling. I had a bad experience with the single bug report I issued to PHP.
However, there are a lot of great projects where submitting patches can be satisfying. Also, you get to know the code better, and get on the good side of the community (which is nice when you have questions you need a good answer to). Not to mention that, but if you get patches into an important project, that looks great on a resume. If you're starting out a career, and you have several bug fixes accepted into any big project, you can easily ask for $10-20k more per year. That's a lot of money for a few hours' work here and there.
The internet just happens to be what they latch on to. Some people delve into alcohol, some into gambling,
Comparing internet and gambling addiction to alcohol addictions destroys the meaning of the word "addiction". If someone is "addicted" to the internet, or gambling, and you lock them in a room, they may get bored, anxious, etc.
However, do the same thing to someone addicted to alcohol, and they might die. That's real addiction.
These new kinds of "addictions" are really just habits, and not much more. "Habit" used to be a word, and the word was even applied to users of hard drugs in some cases, but now it's disappeared because it's not scary enough to get attention. Every habit has been elevated to the same level as addiction to attract research funds, shift blame away from people who make poor choices, and make better headlines.
We're slowly killing ourselves in our own pollution.
Huh?
So, then there must be numbers showing that people in cities die younger from lung problems and cancer (after controlling for cigarette smoking), right? Show us.
Actuall the USA Constitution is a limit on government.
We have two ways of saying the same thing. People don't think of the Constitution as a limit on democracy because democracy is good, and everything else is evil. However, a limit on democracy is a limit on government. The founders knew that, in a more pure democracy, the majority would, for example, silence the minority through speech laws. So, the founders wrote "Congress shall pass no law...". That's a direct limit on democracy, and a limit on government.
The problem that I see with legalizing firearm ownership with something like an open carry law is that for the first few years, the streets would be a war zone... even more so than they are right now.
Why do you say that? I don't have enough data to dispute it conclusively, but that just doesn't make sense. The locals are already "heavily armed" and I assume you're not talking about law-abiding citizens. So how would responsible gun ownership be a negative?
I have. Many times. And I still fail to see how you can arrive at that conclusion objectively.
Clearly, it's saying that someone's right to bear arms shouldn't be infringed. The only possible "someones" are the federal government, the state, or the people. The militia is not a separate level; it's at whatever level that controls the militia. And the only way the 2nd Amendment would have ANY MEANING AT ALL is if the "someone" is the people of the US.
So, what do you think the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is? For whom is it listing the right to keep and bear arms? From whom does this right need to be protected? I argue that it must mean exactly as it says: "the people" are the ones with the right, and it is protecting this right from infringement by the state and federal governments.
Its important to read not just the words, but consider the context: the Constitution is entirely about the federal government, it only concerns other things when it says it does.
And here, it says "the people". The Constitution either assigns powers to a part of the federal government, or reserves them for the people. Anything else is left for the States. In this case, it reserves the right to the people, with 100% clarity.
Your only example that includes the word "people" is the 5th.
Slashdot have a non-violent means of doing this every few years by voting.
Voting is not perfect. Democracy tends to be a bunch of politicians buying votes with other people's money. It's the best we have, but it's far from perfect. The Constitution is actually a limit on democracy more than anything else.
A civil war in any technological society is likely to be decided by which side the majority of the military takes
Don't think about it in terms of winning and losing, think about it in terms of incentives, odds, and game theory. If only a select group has effective weapons, they don't really care about oppressing other groups. If there's a civil war, they'll still be on top after they quell the uprising.
If everyone is armed, probably nobody will win. But the government busybodies know that it's really a toss up who ends up in which position at the end. In all likelihood, they'll be shot, the dissidents will be shot, and some faction or another will take over. The trick is that nobody knows whether they will be a part of the winning side or not.
And ultimately, it's more of a bargaining chip. Citizen-owned weapons are kind of like the MAD of the cold war. If it's one-sided (i.e. only the government has guns), there's no reason for them to not exercise their power.
In my mind, this safety means:
1. Safety from fellow citizens, and
2. Safety from the government.
Neither of those are, at their heart, rights, nor are either of those the basis for a right. Both of those are still empirical questions, and nothing more. Does freedom of speech increase or decrease the incidence of spontaneous combustion? It doesn't matter, freedom of speech is a right.
The basis for the right to bear arms is the right to defend yourself. If you depend on the government for all of your safety, then the rest of your rights are meaningless. Consider this: if the government doesn't like you, and you depend on the government for your safety, all they have to do is stop making you safe from people that can harm you. They may release people from prison, or not put someone in prison that they should. Or they just might make it a well-known fact that they will not protect you, and wait for non-governmental citizens to have their way with you.
Think if you're a black person in the deep south a few decades ago. Perhaps everyone knows that the government won't arrest someone for hurting or stealing from black people. It's a form of passive punishment, and it's very real. It's happened in a million forms throughout history, and the founders knew that. It's a way of passing the buck saying "we didn't kill him" when they just didn't provide the protections necessary such that he wouldn't be killed.
You can't stop all forms of passive punishment by governments, but allowing citizens to defend themselves closes an important loophole.
It's just a reason, and a right. The reason says "well regulated militia", but the right says "the people". "Regulated" probably meant closer to "organized", as in, people organizing themselves, not the government organizing people.
Absolutely false. It says the "right of the people". You're thinking of the first, which says "Congress shall make no law...".
If you need further proof, the 10th clearly states that:
The 2nd amendment prohibits the powers to deny citizens the right to keep and bear arms from the federal and state governments, so therefore it is reserved for the people.
ironically, the same people that are most likely to argue that the 14th Amendment should not be read to apply the full force of the first amendment (particularly the religion clauses)
Umm, proof? Don't argue against a point not made. Many people who value the Constitution value all of the Amendments, interpreted according to the English language as English existed at that time. That means I think it's a violation for Congress to establish religion. I basically think religion should be viewed as any other opinion or belief is by the government (because anything else establishes religion in our laws).
I don't agree that the constitution gives the sweeping endorsement it once did.
So the Second Amendment is saying something different now than when it was written? I wasn't aware that it had been amended.
If you arbitrarily dilute the power of the Second Amendment, leaving it entirely malleable in the hands of judges, then we have lost every other right in the Constitution as well.
If you really want it to mean something else, pass an Amendment. I'd rather that happened than lose all my other rights as well.
That's the big problem with the gun debate. There are very few people involved capable of a rational argument. They know what side they are on, and emotionally, irrationally argue in support of their position, summarily dismissing any information that does not help their cause, while seizing on any bit that seems to support it, no matter how flawed.
There are two issues:
A. Does a government restriction on gun ownership, trade, etc. reduce violence?
B. Is the ability to own, carry, trade, manufacture, modify, and transport firearms an important right?
Not surprisingly, this makes for 3 types of people:
(1) People who don't care much about (A), and want government bans or restrictions.
(2) People who don't care much about (A), and don't want government bans or restrictions.
(3) People who can be swayed by (A).
I am the second type of person. I think these rights are important, and I am willing to pay the costs in terms of risk, if increased risk exists.
However, I am rational enough to realize that question (A) is an empirical one, and the answer is different in different situations. I personally think that in the U.S., (A) is false overall. However, even if results show that (A) is true, I would not support bans or restrictions.
I also don't buy for a second the idea that the Second Amendment is meant for anyone other than private citizens. The Second Amendment says "the right of the people" not "the right of the militia". The Constitution is very important, and if you value the other rights listed, you will not dilute the Second Amendment right. If you feel strongly against it, the only way to change it without destroying the Constitution is to Amend the Constitution to repeal the Second Amendment. I'd rather that happened than giving judges the power to re-interpret the Constitution to say whatever they want it to say.
The Second Amendment is actually written more strongly than the First. The First Amendment merely prohibits Congress, and only with the 14th does it really have as much power as it does.
I didn't say "shortest" I said "shorter". And people do it every day in a few seconds of mentally mapping out your destinations, and visiting destinations in groups.
You could say the same things about a 15-table join. The database can't determine the most efficient join order in an efficient way, but in a very short time it can figure out a more efficient join order than a random order. Hence PostgreSQL's GEnetic Query Optimizer (GEQO), which determines a better join order with a genetic algorithm.
My argument is that spending a short time planning to devise a better algorithm is often actually faster at runtime.
CJ Date actually tried to generalize the concept of NULLs into "special values" in a domain. He argued that NULLs cause confusion in 3VL because NULL can mean different things. Sometimes it means "unknown", other times it means "not applicable". And in an outer join, it's not clear at all what the value NULL is supposed to represent. At least in my reading of his work, there is nothing precluding you from having a special value called "NULL" and being able to magically add it to an existing domain with simple syntax. He wanted other special values to be allowed, so that NULL was not so ambiguous. Perhaps I misunderstood, I don't have the book nearby.
I really enjoyed Date's work because he clearly explained points of confusing terminology, and suggested possibly less-confusing approaches.
SQL is far from perfect. If nothing else just the syntax is bad, and it has a lot of reserved words and key words. But one thing we have to remember is that no pure relational language is appropriate for a database. For instance, relations are unordered, by definition. Yet, it's important for a database system to be able to ORDER BY.
So, really, I think what we want is a language that facilitates all the relational operations, and at a level above that also allow non-relational operations like ORDER BY.
What are the fundamental differences between InnoDB and PostgreSQL's MVCC?