I don't know about "a lot more effective", although that depends on what you're trying to achieve, but I certainly agree that it couldn't be much worse. Naturally you'd prefer to give the money to those you sympathize with, just as those engineering the bailout did.
My comment wasn't meant as an endorsement of the bailout. The point was that if you're going to pay people for jobs that don't produce anything you might as well just hand them the money outright. One could at least try to find some real, productive work—or perhaps get rid of the current price floors (in wages, benefits, and unnecessary overhead) which keep many able workers involuntarily unemployed.
Or you could just cut out the middleman, and legalize theft.
The digging and filling of holes serve no useful function in your scheme; that's nothing but wasted effort. All the "benefit" comes from the paychecks, which you create by either devaluing everyone's currency or taking it outright via taxes. You would achieve the same effect, with much less overhead, by simply looking the other way while those without jobs counterfeit or steal the same amount on their own.
Jesus was a socialist and communist (sell all you have and give it to the poor and follow me).
How is that in any way socialist or communist? Giving away one's own property is perfectly consistent with capitalism / private ownership. He never said to ignore other peoples' property rights—to seize other peoples' property and give it to the poor—which is the core of the socialist and communist ideologies.
In practice, very few people (of any ideology) choose to give away all they have; however, it is a documented fact that voluntary donations are more common among supporters of strong private property rights.
What code is being provided here? They were rather vague, but it sounded to me like this "license" supposedly covers some sort of web API (the ShoutCAST Radio online directory), not the code used to access it, which was presumably written specifically for VLC under an OSS license.
For this reason alone, we immediately recognize that comprehensive, unrestricted encoding of arbitrary name(s) is mathematically impossible.
Actually, if you start with the assumption that names are either 2D visual images or sounds, both within the range of human perception, then it is possible to define a format capable of representing any single name as a finite-length bitstring. For example, the first bit could represent the type of name (visual or auditory), after which visual names could be encoded as SVG while auditory names are represented by an MP3 (or FLAC or WAV, etc., if MP3 is too lossy).
Anything that uses the term "free market" without qualification is pretty much flamebait anyway. The term is so overloaded as to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean these days, from strict anarcho-capitalism to just shy of a self-acknowledged command economy.
As the term is used by "the right wing"—by which I refer to the anarcho-capitalists in particular, as most others on the "right wing" have no coherent economic principles—any regulation which is not limited to recognizing and enforcing the anarcho-capitalist system of property rights does violate the principles of the free market; this includes (enforced) net neutrality. Whether a completely free market is somehow "optimal" doesn't factor into the equation; among other reasons, not everyone believe it is possible to determine whether a given state is "optimal" unless this system is already in place. Also, even if the result could be shown to somehow be sub-optimal from a material-wealth standpoint, most individuals in this category would place a higher value on maintaining the system itself, on principle, than in achieving an "optimal" state.
On the other hand, of course, you have a lot of people, "left" and "right", who believe they can determine whether an arbitrary allocation of goods is objectively "better" or "worse" on their own—based, on doubt, on their own subjective preferences, which they consider both obvious and universal—without any need for others to demonstrate their actual preferences through voluntary trade. To these individuals a "free market" is one where trade is permitted only so long as it fits their preferred pattern: a command economy in all but name. Whenever that trade deviates from the pattern they've established they cry "market failure!" and take aggressive action to change the result.
Insider trading isn't really about possessing or using private knowledge to beat the market. That is to be expected. The problem is when you possess such knowledge or special influence over the company being traded due to a privileged agent/principal relationship, and attempt to use that knowledge or the position itself for private gain at the expense of your principal(s) (generally the board of directors and/or the company's shareholders). An example would be trading based on how one's own future actions are likely to affect the company's share price.
If you're required to do something to keep a job, courts may decide it isn't voluntary.
They may rule however they like, but term already has a precise meaning independent of any court ruling or legislation. Ruling that a plainly voluntary action is actually involuntary has about the same effect as passing laws defining pi to be exactly 3; it can only undermine what little legitimacy the legal system has left.
If you're forced to do something that you don't want to do, in order to avoid adverse consequences, I don't call that voluntary.
If you're forced to do anything then you're doing it involuntarily by definition; the question is, were you forced?
For a store to withhold goods is an "adverse consequence" in exactly the same way that withholding employment would be, but it's not considered coercion for the store to require payment; if it were otherwise then trade would be impossible. Moreover, whether an action is voluntary or not depends only on the circumstances, not the action itself. If a required monetary payment would be voluntary then a required polygraph test must also be voluntary, given the same circumstances. The consequences are the same either way, and in either case you can walk away without harm.
On the other hand, if "adverse consequences" are defined as violation of one's existing rights in one's person or property—the traditional definition of coercion—then I would agree with your statement in full. However, in that case being denied a job (present or potential) would not be considered an "adverse consequence", since it just leaves you right where you started.
The other thing I would point out was that the NSC in the video required its employees or applicants to sign a statement that their test was "voluntary." That was a lie. It was coerced. If you didn't take the test, you wouldn't get the job.
And that makes it involuntary how, exactly? The entire application for the job is voluntary. You don't have to jump through any hoops (including a polygraph), just as they don't have to give you the job. Simply put, if you can walk away at any time without suffering any harm (or threat of harm) to your property or person then you are not being coerced.
Polygraphs are useless for actually determining whether someone is lying, and I wouldn't recommend working for any organization that required them, but to say that the test is "coerced" just because it's a condition for getting a job is like saying that you are "coerced" into paying for items at the store (because they won't give you their goods otherwise), or "coerced" into working for your employer (because you'll lose your job if you don't). Others are under no obligation to give you what you want, and setting terms (any terms) on doing so is not coercion.
The right to privacy obviously exists. Aside for a few narrow powers granted to the federal government in connection with a warrant, no one can compel you to share private information with anyone. To exercise your right to privacy, just keep the information private.
What the Supreme Court created wasn't a right to privacy at all, but rather a "right" to veto others' actions when they concern certain information you wish you had kept private but didn't. This "right" infringes on the previously recognized right to liberty—to act as one chooses with oneself and one's property, subject to the same rights of others. You cannot have both. If "privacy" prevails then liberty is limited; if liberty reigns then "privacy" (in the twisted sense used by the Court) cannot be enforced. The 9th amendment is not a license to nullify or limit explicit, foundational rights in favor of others to be invented or inferred at a later time. The fact that the Court ruled contrary to existing legal tradition is what makes the ruling "judicial activism".
The Court's intentions in Roe vs. Wade, where the "right to privacy" argument was first advanced, were good on the whole—but their legal justification was lousy. The case really had little to do with privacy in either sense, but instead of simply ruling the abortion to be legal (or illegal, depending on the law rather than their personal preferences) they jumped through hoops find some basis to throw out the anti-abortion side of the case, and the "right to privacy" was the result.
The North may not have started the process of secession, but they definitely caused the war by refusing to allow the southern states to secede. The South did not fight a war of aggression; unlike the North, they did not attempt to force any other states to join them in leaving. If the North had simply allowed those states to leave that wished to do so there never would have been a war.
Slavery would have ended even without the war—political issues aside, it was becoming economically impractical, even for agriculture. Unfortunately, due to the Union's victory in the Civil War we ended up replacing one kind of slavery with another, one less personal but more insidious, and harder to escape.
I agree with what you said, but please note that your use of "a 'strict interpretation' of the Constitution" to refer to the concept of enumerated rights is unconventional and confusing. I think you would agree that the interpretation should be strict with respect to the powers of the federal government (the usual sense), and permissive regarding state and (especially) individual rights.
Between the 3/5ths counting of slaves in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College there was a carefully counted balance reached for pro-slavery power and for pro-slavery votes.
Yes, a balance which gave the pro-slavery faction less power and votes than they would have had were slaves counted as full persons. (Slaves don't get to vote, remember? Their "votes" would have been controlled by the pro-slavery free population in their respective states.)
One could wish that they had simply banned slavery outright, but then there would have been no possibility of consensus. There are good arguments either way. Slavery was on its way out, anyway—before long slave labor wouldn't even be suitable for agriculture, due to certain technological advancements, much less the new manufacturing industry which was slowly taking over. These new jobs required educated, motivated, and above all voluntary workers. Brute force wouldn't cut it.
That's only with regard to population metrics, specifically those used to determine political influence in the House of Representatives. What, you would have preferred for the pro-slavery states to be able to count their slave populations in their favor when voting on national policy? The 3/5 Compromise undermined the practice of slavery; it wasn't meant to belittle slaves at all.
Lincoln's overriding concern was holding the Union together
That's kind of the point. The South's reason for secession may have been the preservation of slavery, but the North's reason for fighting them was to prevent the secession, not to end slavery, at least in the beginning. Obviously "fighting to end slavery" made for much better PR later in the war, and both sides tried to put the best spin they could on the matter. I'm not trying to say that South was guiltless, by any means. But the North should have let them secede, treating their escaped slaves as political refugees and working through diplomatic and economic channels to fix their internal policies. Or at least acknowledge that the "Civil War" was really a war of conquest and subjugation rather than downplaying it as internal politics.
BTW, I speak as a Northerner; none of my family (so far as I know) is from any former Confederate state.
Or perhaps the southern states, with their higher (enslaved) populations, would have succeeded in making slavery the rule in the northern states as well. The effect of the 3/5 Compromise was to reduce the political influence of the southern states, after all. It wasn't designed to belittle the slaves.
Usually, the start of a sentence has something to do with its ending, so it's natural that people would think there is some connection between a "well-regulated militia" and the "right to bear arms".
There is a connection: the first clause provides the reason for the second clause, explaining why the right shall not be infringed. However, it doesn't modify the second clause in any way. This is the plain meaning given the way the amendment is worded; it takes some rather impressive linguistic contortions to interpret it any other way. The language hasn't changed that much in the last couple hundred years.
I think they'd not include nukes. Partly because I doubt they could imagine city-destroying weapons.
I think that, given some time to consider it, at least some of them would include nukes. However, unless you can prove to everyone that your nuke is safely inert—that you are perfectly sane, and that the nuke can't be activated by anyone else and won't go off on its own—then simply by having one you put everyone around you in a state of "imminent threat of irreversible harm" and they would be perfectly justified to react in self-defense. Smaller weapons don't pose that kind of imminent threat simply by existing, at least not in isolation. You might run into a similar problem if you wanted to store copious amounts of explosives in a residential area, though.
To the best of my understanding, many whose signature was solicited for the Bill of Rights considered it superfluous and perhaps even harmful, specifically because it did not prohibit anything which would have otherwise been permitted under the original Constitution. Some wanted it as an additional guarantee against later reinterpretation or undiscovered loopholes, but—as others feared—it has more often been taken as a license to do anything not explicitly prohibited, contrary to their design.
So the original version did include those protections; it just didn't state them explicitly, because it didn't need to. Even before the amendments were passed, the Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to violate anything in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was more a statement of intent than an actual change in the nature of the Constitution.
the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit.
Obviously and demonstrably true. Of course, if you (as a person or group with significant ownership and decision-making power within the business) know that the business could make more (monetary) profit, but instead choose to pursue other goals, then effectively the business is making a profit; you're just spending that profit toward your own non-financial ends. It would be more straightforward to simply accept the money and then spend it on charitable programs of your choice, particularly since you would then know that there is a surplus to be spent rather than simply guessing, but that's nothing but a minor procedural difference. The effect is the same.
If you could not bring in enough profit to cover your opportunity costs—if you truly do not make an economic profit—then you are wasting resources better spent elsewhere. In this the GP is entirely correct; an unprofitable business serves no one.
If you don't get this, keep thinking about it. Maybe someday you will understand that there is nothing cynical or unfair about expecting a company—any endeavor, really—to earn a profit.
He has the same rights there as he has here. Enforcement is a separate issue. The US Constitution doesn't grant rights, it simply states that the government is required to respect them in exchange for receiving whatever appearance of legitimacy the Constitution can provide. The rights themselves exist independent of the Constitution, and predate the Constitution.
If rights only existed to the extent they could be enforced then it would be impossible to violate anyone's rights; the moment they were violated they would disappear. That would render the concept meaningless.
Anyway, we are speaking of U.S. citizens and agents of the U.S. government. Regardless of what may occur in other countries, they must adhere to U.S. law in every respect to maintain their legal status. The U.S. government obviously cannot authorize them to act contrary to U.S. law, and if they do so on their own they can be held accountable for it within the victim's jurisdiction.
Impact deceleration against a hard surface is way more than 4g. That said, normal shock tolerance for HDDs in non-operating mode is more like 250g—more than enough to handle a drop from any reasonable carrying height. Just remember to run the "conveyance" S.M.A.R.T. self-test as soon as you reconnect the drive, to scan for possible damage and remap any bad sectors.
Soft rubber or silicone cases (like these) can help, too, by spreading out the impact and thus reducing the deceleration.
You have to BE here to be receive your guaranteed rights
No, you have your rights no matter where you are. That's why they're called "natural rights"; everyone has them. More to the point, to the extent that someone is acting as an agent of the US government under the authority of the US Constitution their authority is limited to that actually granted by the Constitution. The Constitution does not grant the US government or its agents the authority to perform any search or seizure without a warrant. If anyone were to perform such a search or seizure without a warrant then said search or seizure would be an illegal act under US law, lacking any Constitutional "legitimacy", regardless of where the act takes place.
Whether you can enforce your rights is a different matter, of course. Clearly the US government isn't going to help, but there are other options one can try.
When you are at the border you are no longer "in" the US. You are "between" countries. You have no rights.
It makes no difference whatsoever where you are, geographically, legally or politically. You are a citizen of the US. The border guards are acting on behalf of the US government. Interactions between US citizens and the US government are governed by the US Constitution. Even regarding non-citizens, the US government, and by extension the border guards, have no authority other than that granted by the US Constitution, which does not grant them any authority to perform warrantless searches or seizures (against anyone, anywhere).
Anyway, the jurisdiction argument doesn't hold water. If you were truly "between" countries and outside of any national jurisdiction then you could legally get away with killing the guard. After all, it happened in unclaimed territory, right? There can be no extradition. Of course, you'd be arrested and tried as soon as you attempted to re-enter the US. In the same way, the border guard could claim that they were acting on their own authority outside US jurisdiction, but then they would be charged with a number of crimes upon reentry; lack of a warrant would be the least of their problems. If you can be held responsible for crimes committed outside the US, then so can they—and without the "legitimacy" of the US Constitution to back them up, what the border guards are doing is simply crime: extortion, theft, assault, kidnapping, and more.
Simply put, US border guards need the authority of the US Constitution to perform any search or seizure without committing a crime under US law, but they can only get that authority through a warrant issued in accordance with the Constitution.
Because most societies have determined that fraud is a crime; people also have a right to make informed decisions about where they spend their money. Fraudsters deliberately misinform people in order to separate them from their money.
People also have a right to make uninformed decisions. Whether they are "informed enough" is their own business, and none of yours. Misinformation is another matter; if fraud is involved then, by all means, feel free to seek the return of any money paid along with compensation for any other damage resulting from the fraud.
Besides, "buyer beware" really isn't a very strong mantra for freedom.
It is when the alternative is "you aren't allowed to do this even though you know what you're getting yourself into." If the problem is lack of information, or even misinformation, then the solution is to inform people, not control them.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about "a lot more effective", although that depends on what you're trying to achieve, but I certainly agree that it couldn't be much worse. Naturally you'd prefer to give the money to those you sympathize with, just as those engineering the bailout did.
My comment wasn't meant as an endorsement of the bailout. The point was that if you're going to pay people for jobs that don't produce anything you might as well just hand them the money outright. One could at least try to find some real, productive work—or perhaps get rid of the current price floors (in wages, benefits, and unnecessary overhead) which keep many able workers involuntarily unemployed.
Or you could just cut out the middleman, and legalize theft.
The digging and filling of holes serve no useful function in your scheme; that's nothing but wasted effort. All the "benefit" comes from the paychecks, which you create by either devaluing everyone's currency or taking it outright via taxes. You would achieve the same effect, with much less overhead, by simply looking the other way while those without jobs counterfeit or steal the same amount on their own.
Jesus was a socialist and communist (sell all you have and give it to the poor and follow me).
How is that in any way socialist or communist? Giving away one's own property is perfectly consistent with capitalism / private ownership. He never said to ignore other peoples' property rights—to seize other peoples' property and give it to the poor—which is the core of the socialist and communist ideologies.
In practice, very few people (of any ideology) choose to give away all they have; however, it is a documented fact that voluntary donations are more common among supporters of strong private property rights.
What code is being provided here? They were rather vague, but it sounded to me like this "license" supposedly covers some sort of web API (the ShoutCAST Radio online directory), not the code used to access it, which was presumably written specifically for VLC under an OSS license.
For this reason alone, we immediately recognize that comprehensive, unrestricted encoding of arbitrary name(s) is mathematically impossible.
Actually, if you start with the assumption that names are either 2D visual images or sounds, both within the range of human perception, then it is possible to define a format capable of representing any single name as a finite-length bitstring. For example, the first bit could represent the type of name (visual or auditory), after which visual names could be encoded as SVG while auditory names are represented by an MP3 (or FLAC or WAV, etc., if MP3 is too lossy).
Anything that uses the term "free market" without qualification is pretty much flamebait anyway. The term is so overloaded as to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean these days, from strict anarcho-capitalism to just shy of a self-acknowledged command economy.
As the term is used by "the right wing"—by which I refer to the anarcho-capitalists in particular, as most others on the "right wing" have no coherent economic principles—any regulation which is not limited to recognizing and enforcing the anarcho-capitalist system of property rights does violate the principles of the free market; this includes (enforced) net neutrality. Whether a completely free market is somehow "optimal" doesn't factor into the equation; among other reasons, not everyone believe it is possible to determine whether a given state is "optimal" unless this system is already in place. Also, even if the result could be shown to somehow be sub-optimal from a material-wealth standpoint, most individuals in this category would place a higher value on maintaining the system itself, on principle, than in achieving an "optimal" state.
On the other hand, of course, you have a lot of people, "left" and "right", who believe they can determine whether an arbitrary allocation of goods is objectively "better" or "worse" on their own—based, on doubt, on their own subjective preferences, which they consider both obvious and universal—without any need for others to demonstrate their actual preferences through voluntary trade. To these individuals a "free market" is one where trade is permitted only so long as it fits their preferred pattern: a command economy in all but name. Whenever that trade deviates from the pattern they've established they cry "market failure!" and take aggressive action to change the result.
Insider trading isn't really about possessing or using private knowledge to beat the market. That is to be expected. The problem is when you possess such knowledge or special influence over the company being traded due to a privileged agent/principal relationship, and attempt to use that knowledge or the position itself for private gain at the expense of your principal(s) (generally the board of directors and/or the company's shareholders). An example would be trading based on how one's own future actions are likely to affect the company's share price.
If you're required to do something to keep a job, courts may decide it isn't voluntary.
They may rule however they like, but term already has a precise meaning independent of any court ruling or legislation. Ruling that a plainly voluntary action is actually involuntary has about the same effect as passing laws defining pi to be exactly 3; it can only undermine what little legitimacy the legal system has left.
If you're forced to do something that you don't want to do, in order to avoid adverse consequences, I don't call that voluntary.
If you're forced to do anything then you're doing it involuntarily by definition; the question is, were you forced?
For a store to withhold goods is an "adverse consequence" in exactly the same way that withholding employment would be, but it's not considered coercion for the store to require payment; if it were otherwise then trade would be impossible. Moreover, whether an action is voluntary or not depends only on the circumstances, not the action itself. If a required monetary payment would be voluntary then a required polygraph test must also be voluntary, given the same circumstances. The consequences are the same either way, and in either case you can walk away without harm.
On the other hand, if "adverse consequences" are defined as violation of one's existing rights in one's person or property—the traditional definition of coercion—then I would agree with your statement in full. However, in that case being denied a job (present or potential) would not be considered an "adverse consequence", since it just leaves you right where you started.
The other thing I would point out was that the NSC in the video required its employees or applicants to sign a statement that their test was "voluntary." That was a lie. It was coerced. If you didn't take the test, you wouldn't get the job.
And that makes it involuntary how, exactly? The entire application for the job is voluntary. You don't have to jump through any hoops (including a polygraph), just as they don't have to give you the job. Simply put, if you can walk away at any time without suffering any harm (or threat of harm) to your property or person then you are not being coerced.
Polygraphs are useless for actually determining whether someone is lying, and I wouldn't recommend working for any organization that required them, but to say that the test is "coerced" just because it's a condition for getting a job is like saying that you are "coerced" into paying for items at the store (because they won't give you their goods otherwise), or "coerced" into working for your employer (because you'll lose your job if you don't). Others are under no obligation to give you what you want, and setting terms (any terms) on doing so is not coercion.
The right to privacy obviously exists. Aside for a few narrow powers granted to the federal government in connection with a warrant, no one can compel you to share private information with anyone. To exercise your right to privacy, just keep the information private.
What the Supreme Court created wasn't a right to privacy at all, but rather a "right" to veto others' actions when they concern certain information you wish you had kept private but didn't. This "right" infringes on the previously recognized right to liberty—to act as one chooses with oneself and one's property, subject to the same rights of others. You cannot have both. If "privacy" prevails then liberty is limited; if liberty reigns then "privacy" (in the twisted sense used by the Court) cannot be enforced. The 9th amendment is not a license to nullify or limit explicit, foundational rights in favor of others to be invented or inferred at a later time. The fact that the Court ruled contrary to existing legal tradition is what makes the ruling "judicial activism".
The Court's intentions in Roe vs. Wade, where the "right to privacy" argument was first advanced, were good on the whole—but their legal justification was lousy. The case really had little to do with privacy in either sense, but instead of simply ruling the abortion to be legal (or illegal, depending on the law rather than their personal preferences) they jumped through hoops find some basis to throw out the anti-abortion side of the case, and the "right to privacy" was the result.
The North may not have started the process of secession, but they definitely caused the war by refusing to allow the southern states to secede. The South did not fight a war of aggression; unlike the North, they did not attempt to force any other states to join them in leaving. If the North had simply allowed those states to leave that wished to do so there never would have been a war.
Slavery would have ended even without the war—political issues aside, it was becoming economically impractical, even for agriculture. Unfortunately, due to the Union's victory in the Civil War we ended up replacing one kind of slavery with another, one less personal but more insidious, and harder to escape.
I agree with what you said, but please note that your use of "a 'strict interpretation' of the Constitution" to refer to the concept of enumerated rights is unconventional and confusing. I think you would agree that the interpretation should be strict with respect to the powers of the federal government (the usual sense), and permissive regarding state and (especially) individual rights.
Between the 3/5ths counting of slaves in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College there was a carefully counted balance reached for pro-slavery power and for pro-slavery votes.
Yes, a balance which gave the pro-slavery faction less power and votes than they would have had were slaves counted as full persons. (Slaves don't get to vote, remember? Their "votes" would have been controlled by the pro-slavery free population in their respective states.)
One could wish that they had simply banned slavery outright, but then there would have been no possibility of consensus. There are good arguments either way. Slavery was on its way out, anyway—before long slave labor wouldn't even be suitable for agriculture, due to certain technological advancements, much less the new manufacturing industry which was slowly taking over. These new jobs required educated, motivated, and above all voluntary workers. Brute force wouldn't cut it.
That's only with regard to population metrics, specifically those used to determine political influence in the House of Representatives. What, you would have preferred for the pro-slavery states to be able to count their slave populations in their favor when voting on national policy? The 3/5 Compromise undermined the practice of slavery; it wasn't meant to belittle slaves at all.
Lincoln's overriding concern was holding the Union together
That's kind of the point. The South's reason for secession may have been the preservation of slavery, but the North's reason for fighting them was to prevent the secession, not to end slavery, at least in the beginning. Obviously "fighting to end slavery" made for much better PR later in the war, and both sides tried to put the best spin they could on the matter. I'm not trying to say that South was guiltless, by any means. But the North should have let them secede, treating their escaped slaves as political refugees and working through diplomatic and economic channels to fix their internal policies. Or at least acknowledge that the "Civil War" was really a war of conquest and subjugation rather than downplaying it as internal politics.
BTW, I speak as a Northerner; none of my family (so far as I know) is from any former Confederate state.
Or perhaps the southern states, with their higher (enslaved) populations, would have succeeded in making slavery the rule in the northern states as well. The effect of the 3/5 Compromise was to reduce the political influence of the southern states, after all. It wasn't designed to belittle the slaves.
Usually, the start of a sentence has something to do with its ending, so it's natural that people would think there is some connection between a "well-regulated militia" and the "right to bear arms".
There is a connection: the first clause provides the reason for the second clause, explaining why the right shall not be infringed. However, it doesn't modify the second clause in any way. This is the plain meaning given the way the amendment is worded; it takes some rather impressive linguistic contortions to interpret it any other way. The language hasn't changed that much in the last couple hundred years.
I think they'd not include nukes. Partly because I doubt they could imagine city-destroying weapons.
I think that, given some time to consider it, at least some of them would include nukes. However, unless you can prove to everyone that your nuke is safely inert—that you are perfectly sane, and that the nuke can't be activated by anyone else and won't go off on its own—then simply by having one you put everyone around you in a state of "imminent threat of irreversible harm" and they would be perfectly justified to react in self-defense. Smaller weapons don't pose that kind of imminent threat simply by existing, at least not in isolation. You might run into a similar problem if you wanted to store copious amounts of explosives in a residential area, though.
To the best of my understanding, many whose signature was solicited for the Bill of Rights considered it superfluous and perhaps even harmful, specifically because it did not prohibit anything which would have otherwise been permitted under the original Constitution. Some wanted it as an additional guarantee against later reinterpretation or undiscovered loopholes, but—as others feared—it has more often been taken as a license to do anything not explicitly prohibited, contrary to their design.
So the original version did include those protections; it just didn't state them explicitly, because it didn't need to. Even before the amendments were passed, the Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to violate anything in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was more a statement of intent than an actual change in the nature of the Constitution.
the only way you would know that your business is serving people is if it makes a profit.
Obviously and demonstrably true. Of course, if you (as a person or group with significant ownership and decision-making power within the business) know that the business could make more (monetary) profit, but instead choose to pursue other goals, then effectively the business is making a profit; you're just spending that profit toward your own non-financial ends. It would be more straightforward to simply accept the money and then spend it on charitable programs of your choice, particularly since you would then know that there is a surplus to be spent rather than simply guessing, but that's nothing but a minor procedural difference. The effect is the same.
If you could not bring in enough profit to cover your opportunity costs—if you truly do not make an economic profit—then you are wasting resources better spent elsewhere. In this the GP is entirely correct; an unprofitable business serves no one.
If you don't get this, keep thinking about it. Maybe someday you will understand that there is nothing cynical or unfair about expecting a company—any endeavor, really—to earn a profit.
He has the same rights there as he has here. Enforcement is a separate issue. The US Constitution doesn't grant rights, it simply states that the government is required to respect them in exchange for receiving whatever appearance of legitimacy the Constitution can provide. The rights themselves exist independent of the Constitution, and predate the Constitution.
If rights only existed to the extent they could be enforced then it would be impossible to violate anyone's rights; the moment they were violated they would disappear. That would render the concept meaningless.
Anyway, we are speaking of U.S. citizens and agents of the U.S. government. Regardless of what may occur in other countries, they must adhere to U.S. law in every respect to maintain their legal status. The U.S. government obviously cannot authorize them to act contrary to U.S. law, and if they do so on their own they can be held accountable for it within the victim's jurisdiction.
Impact deceleration against a hard surface is way more than 4g. That said, normal shock tolerance for HDDs in non-operating mode is more like 250g—more than enough to handle a drop from any reasonable carrying height. Just remember to run the "conveyance" S.M.A.R.T. self-test as soon as you reconnect the drive, to scan for possible damage and remap any bad sectors.
Soft rubber or silicone cases (like these) can help, too, by spreading out the impact and thus reducing the deceleration.
You have to BE here to be receive your guaranteed rights
No, you have your rights no matter where you are. That's why they're called "natural rights"; everyone has them. More to the point, to the extent that someone is acting as an agent of the US government under the authority of the US Constitution their authority is limited to that actually granted by the Constitution. The Constitution does not grant the US government or its agents the authority to perform any search or seizure without a warrant. If anyone were to perform such a search or seizure without a warrant then said search or seizure would be an illegal act under US law, lacking any Constitutional "legitimacy", regardless of where the act takes place.
Whether you can enforce your rights is a different matter, of course. Clearly the US government isn't going to help, but there are other options one can try.
When you are at the border you are no longer "in" the US. You are "between" countries. You have no rights.
It makes no difference whatsoever where you are, geographically, legally or politically. You are a citizen of the US. The border guards are acting on behalf of the US government. Interactions between US citizens and the US government are governed by the US Constitution. Even regarding non-citizens, the US government, and by extension the border guards, have no authority other than that granted by the US Constitution, which does not grant them any authority to perform warrantless searches or seizures (against anyone, anywhere).
Anyway, the jurisdiction argument doesn't hold water. If you were truly "between" countries and outside of any national jurisdiction then you could legally get away with killing the guard. After all, it happened in unclaimed territory, right? There can be no extradition. Of course, you'd be arrested and tried as soon as you attempted to re-enter the US. In the same way, the border guard could claim that they were acting on their own authority outside US jurisdiction, but then they would be charged with a number of crimes upon reentry; lack of a warrant would be the least of their problems. If you can be held responsible for crimes committed outside the US, then so can they—and without the "legitimacy" of the US Constitution to back them up, what the border guards are doing is simply crime: extortion, theft, assault, kidnapping, and more.
Simply put, US border guards need the authority of the US Constitution to perform any search or seizure without committing a crime under US law, but they can only get that authority through a warrant issued in accordance with the Constitution.
Because most societies have determined that fraud is a crime; people also have a right to make informed decisions about where they spend their money. Fraudsters deliberately misinform people in order to separate them from their money.
People also have a right to make uninformed decisions. Whether they are "informed enough" is their own business, and none of yours. Misinformation is another matter; if fraud is involved then, by all means, feel free to seek the return of any money paid along with compensation for any other damage resulting from the fraud.
Besides, "buyer beware" really isn't a very strong mantra for freedom.
It is when the alternative is "you aren't allowed to do this even though you know what you're getting yourself into." If the problem is lack of information, or even misinformation, then the solution is to inform people, not control them.