While it's not exactly what you want, you could get SideTrack, an alternative driver for the trackpad that allows for scrolling (on trackpads without it) and allows you to assign seperate functions to the button, a tap on the trackpad, and the corners of the trackpad as well.
because two buttons on a trackpad is obnoxiously uncomfortable, and because the keyboard is right there next to the trackpad so it's perfectly reasonable to use the modifier keys and the mouse at the same time.
But if it's really killing you, there's also sidetrack.
Most of the buttons are supported natively in OS X, as for the actual back and forward functions, you may need extra drivers for that, but if the mouse didn't come with any drivers for OS X, you can always use USB overdrive:
Because anyone who can afford $500 photo editing software and a $3000 computer can afford to pony up the $12 for their own mouse. Infact, I've found that once you get to that point as far as users go, they NEVER use the stock mice that come with any computer, they always by their own that they're used to.
The problem is, since the majority of Mac users won't upgrade a perfectly working mouse, many 3rd party softwares won't take advantage of it.
You might get mouse wheel functionality, maybe it will be consistent maybe it won't. If all Mac users had a multi-button mouse, there would be more uniformity in the way they work. Sure, Windows apps don't all do the same thing, but for 99% of the time when you right-click something it brings up a menu of operations you can do on the current mouse target.
What the hell? Do you even know what you're talking about? It's built into the system, that if you click the second mouse button on a mac, it's a ctrl-click, and hence brings up the contextual menu. And the mouse wheel is always a third button, though it may not have specific funtionality, and the scrolling works the same way every time.
I like a simple mouse. Two buttons, and the mouse scroll wheel in the middle, which doubles as the middle mouse button. I don't like the web browsing crap or anything. But one button is just frustrating.
It's only frustrating in a system designed for more than one button. Since OS X is designed with a single button in mind, it's not frustrating for the users because everything is accesable with one or two clicks.
As far as the notebook thing, I don't personally have any trouble working a multi-button mouse on one. And I like the scroll zones on the touchpads, and I prefer tapping over using a button. I rarely right-click on notebook as it's not comfortable to do so, and you never HAVE to not even in Windows.
So you do have a problem with multibutton mice on your laptops. You just said it isn't comfortable to use them, so you avoid the buttons alltogether and use the trackpad tap. That's exactly what i'm talking about. Two buttons on a tack pad make them uncomfortable.
I found the Macintosh laptops to be a big disappointment. First of all, there were hardware problems: one died within a few weeks, the replacement didn't play DVDs properly.
Sounds like you got some bad hardware. Unfortunate but not representative of the whole.
The processor is pretty slow, too: even in its heyday, a G4 wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and today it is really not competitive anymore.
Slow for what? It's well maintained that most home users will have a hard time maxing a 1 ghz processor let alone anything faster. I've not come across anything yet where I felt the processor was the bottle neck and not say the hard drive.
And it's not true that the thing never crashes; it's not bad, but the GUI will hang on occasion, and I have had it crash, too.
I don't think I've ever had the GUI hang. Invidual applications, yes, but not the entire GUI. I suspect that's what happened to you as well. As for crashing the system, unless the last time you played with this was sometime arround 10.1 or 10.2 on an old G3, crashing the whole system has been in my experience someting very difficult you use, and usualy involving mucking with something like AFS.
Then, your only real choice for an office suite is Microsoft Office. If you want a laptop just to run Microsoft Office, I suppose it is better than a Windows laptop. OpenOffice has too many limitations on the Mac (among other things, forget about using it for presentations) and it requires you to fiddle with X11, which isn't well integrated (and also needs to be installed).
Well, really your only real choice for an office suite anywhere is MS Office. As much as I hate to say it, they are the standard. However, there's also NeoOffice (OO without X11).
iWork isn't a serious academic or business tool either: no spreadsheet, no math, limited drawing.
No it's not. Not yet anyway. Though keynote does fine for presentations.
The iLife applications are useless toys: iPhoto doesn't let you fix even gross problems with images, iMovie has limitations on what you can important and export (looks like they are deliberate). You probably need to upgrade to expensive commercial packages if you want anything that's more than a toy.
They're hardly useless, but it looks like you're looking for something more akin to the GIMP or something like that.
If that's the case, you can get the GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
Or you can get a nice little app I found called PhotoLine
And most macs should still come with graphic converter, which while not GIMP or Photoshop does more than iPhoto does. iPhoto is more management than editing although that has supposedly changed considerably with the new version. But iPhoto was never meant to be an editor.
iMovie is purposefuly restricted on import and exports that's true. It's designed for the purpose of pulling video from your DV Camcorder and doing home movie editing and then exporting. If you're looking for Professional level editing, is it really a suprise that you need professional level programs?
I thought there were going to be a bunch of nice outliners and brainstorming tools for Macintosh--lots of them are advertised with great fanfare and colorful ads, but they were pretty much a disappointment, too: proprietary formats, complex UIs, and limited functionality. There are better open source tools available than that.
What exactly where you trying to do that OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner didn't handle? And as a further question, did you search to see if your favorite apps had been ported yet?
Fink is supposed to be the way to install more of a real UNIX/Linux environment on Macintosh, but I had no end of trouble. Worse, for many packages, there are two versions of it: the Fink version and a non-Fink version. Some Mac applications assume one, some the other, and if you install both, you run into conflicts. Cygwin
For one, full mouse functionality is not an addon. Having replaced many a one button mouse with multi button mice, I can tell you it's fully supported.
That said, while I prefer a multibutton mouse on the desktop I DESPISE multi buttons or scroll "zones" on laptops. It gets in the way more than it's useful and since on a laptop my keyboard is right there next to the trackpad, using a modfier key is not an issue at all.
Actualy, it does suck to have two buttons on a track pad, especialy if you commonly hit them with your thumb. I can't tell you how many times using a PC I've hit both buttons because I clicked in the middle (the logical position). And even more obnoxious is having to shift my hand so that my RIGHT thumb reaches the LEFT side of the buttons to hit the one I use most often.
One button track pads are in my opinion superior to multi button track pads. But if you're anal about it, there's always Side Track which can give me a 6 button track pad.
A one button mouse is easier to switch hands. No software change nessesary, just move the mouse, and use your right hand on the modifer keys on the right side of the keyboard.
But are there really that many people out there who mouse left handed? I never did and all the other left handed people I've met don't either.
Well, given that I've never met a person that centers the keyboard rater than the main part of the keyboard, I'd say it isn't a problem. And I speak on this as a member of the left handed minority.
As I left handed person, I can say this has never been a problem for me. It may have something to do with the fact that I learned to mouse with my right hand (I never even considered switching sides when I learned) and now it's cumbersome and even detrimental to productivity for me to mouse with my left hand, but that aside, given that I always keep a hand on the keyboard, shifting my right hand down one row does not in any way impede on my abilities to properly modify mouse commands.
I agree fully with LTFA, my main purpose was to demonstrate that no law is free from "enforcing a set of beleifs" on people. They're all moral judgements.
Well if we concider single incidents, obviously the man slaughtering children. However, when you consider that a man using a legaly obtained firearm to slaughter 10 children would statisticaly account for less than.1% of gun crimes, vs man on man ween sucking accounting for much more in the terms of sexual "crimes" it would be easy to argue that man on man ween sucking is the worse of the evils because it's more prevalent.
The real question is, is the legal ownership of the gun a crime or is the slaughter? Does owning a gun have a victim? If not, why is it ok to ban ownership, but not ween sucking?
What if it isn't in my interests? What if I want a violent and criminal poverty class? What if I enjoy that sort of life? Don't ever mistake the common good for anything more than a value judgement.
I know I'm opening up this topic to an irrational 2nd amendment flame war, but I can't let this go unchallenged. Gun laws aren't about morality, they're a public safety issue. I am far less safe if my neighbour has a handgun, because:
This should be fun
He may come home drunk one night, start waving the gun around and discharge it in my direction
This is illegal.
His kids may get hold of the gun, and shoot it at me, or my kids
This is also illegal
A robber breaking into his house may get the gun, so by the time he gets to my house he's an armed robber
Again, illegal
The robber is more likely to come armed anyway if he thinks the occupier is armed
Ilegal, irellevant and mostly untrue. 40% will not enter if they think the owner is armed, 60% will not enter if they know the owner is armed, this from FBI statistics.
So what exactly about your neighbor owning a gun is endangering your life? So far the things that endanger your life are illegal acts. And it seems to me that if someone is comitting an illegal act, making it illegal to own a gun isn't going to stop them. For reference, the columbine killers violated ~20 gun control laws. A lot of good those 20 laws did.
Even Libertarians agree that it is proper to outlaw activities that harm others, and your ownership of a gun puts me in great danger. That is why in a free society gun ownership must be very seriously curtailed.
No, libertarians agree that it is proper to outlaw activities which infringe on the rights of others. My ownership of a gun does not infringe on your right to life. My waving it in your direction does.
In a free society, responsible gun ownership should be a freely chosen enterprise and should be highly encouraged.
Those who would beat their swords into plowshares will be forced to plow for those that would not.
In each of these cases (welfare, gun control, drinking age), the government is attempting to protect (albeit, IMO poorly) their legitimate compelling interests. The drinking age is supposed to make our roads safer (the fact that they keep increasing it is proof that it doesn't work, though), gun control is supposed to provide reasonable mechanisms for tracking and controlling supplies of firearms.
And regulation of the porn industry is to protect society from it's inner desires which much like killing are base and vile to the sensible. Pornography does create fairly strong addictions in it's consumers and can lead to changes in the attitudes of people towards the sacredness of sex (i.e. search google for "rape porn"). Consider also the abundance of porn models changes glamour models which in turn presents unhealthy stereotypes of beauty on society. Try telling annorexiscs and bullemics that porn never hurt anyone.
Since when can't you own a gun to protect your family? What sort of firearm are you looking for? An M-16 or a grenade launcher? Maybe a howitzer? Certainly handguns at least in the US are reasonable available.
Ignoring for a moment that an M-16 is a rather low powered rifle, please examine gun laws in NYC, and Washington DC, two places where a gun for protection should be mandatory and two places where it's near impossible to obtain. And these are just two such examples.
As for welfare. The whole point of welfare is to help prevent people from starving, or living on the streets because they have hit hard times. I would rather have a poor person stay on welfare than live on the streets. If you disagree, I think we should offer your front-yard as a tent city for the homeless;-)
But why is it the government's responsibility and why should the government take MY money to pay for it? Instead of money, why don't governents just possess sections of your house to house the homeless?
Welfare, at least in the US suffers corruption which, though subtle, is quite severe. The fact that it is mismanaged for the benefit of certain corporate interests is indicated in the fact that the most common health problem among those under the poverty level in this country is... obesity. Why? Because they eat mass-market junk food crap as their primary staples! But that is to the benefit of plenty of junk food manufacturers, is it not?
Welfare is always missmanaged. There has never been a succesful welfare state. And to create laws to take my money to further create problems (you yourself said it the big problem is obecity, which I pay for two fold now, once to feed them and once to treat them.
Lets see. First of all, watching porn doesn't hurt anyone.
Actualy, watching porn produces a series of changes in the activities of a human brain that in the wrong individuals could lead to undesireable consequences, as well as generaly speaking producing an addiction in the watcher.
Furthermore, the demand for a pornography market generate demand for certain aspects of models, these models become prevalent in all aspects of society, not just the pornography industry, and lead to the false images of beauty which create so many eating disorders in young women today.
Add to that that porn arguably objectifies women leading to unhealthy relationships overall, and many people in the porn intdustry are and have been exploited. And lets not get into child porn.
Being unable to buy food does.
But that isn't my concern. I am not keeping you from buying food, I am not responsible for your life. Get a job, get some firends or find a charity.
Secondly, the wellfare of the state is dependant on the wellfare of it's citizens. Wellfare isn't a purely moral endeavour, it's there to provide the population with bread and circuses so that they will be content and do not rise up against the government.
And yet in every historical example of a goverment that sought to provide "welfare" for it's citizens rather than allowing citizens to freely exist as they choose or are able, the end result has been corruption in the government and welfare and the people rising up against the government, or even worse, living collectively in opression.
The right to health and security is harmed by lack of food or overabundance of guns.
Guns don't kill people, and people don't need guns to kill eachother. Violence is about resources period. Not about the weapons.
Gun laws aren't meant to prohibit gun ownership. They are meant to regulate gun ownership, just like cars can't be driven in public roads by anyone or medecine practised by anyone, guns shouldn't be allowed in everybody's hand. It's a matter of public safety.
Unfortunately, licesning cars is the worst example you can give. Given that of all unatural fatalities, the fact that 50% are motor vehicle related suggests to me that the licensing isn't working and everyone is getting it any way.
In fact, the very fact that raleigh NC shut down and had nearly 50 accidents because of.6 inches of snow last week should demonstrate that a license in no way proves one is capable of the responsibilities of owning something.
Lumping gun laws in with obscenity laws is absurd. Guns injure and kill, pictures of genitalia don't.
Unless said pictures of genitalia are of children.
Or unless said pictures create undesireable changes in a person.
It is indeed my money. Money is a comodity, much like labor, food, cloth. Money was developed to even trade. As such, any money I have is just as much mine as a chicken would be if I worked for food.
Why do I need guns? Why do you need a car? Guns allow me to defend myself far more efficiently and safely than a kife does. It allows me to hunt more efficiently than a knife does and it provides me with a pastime of target shooting. Yes the primary purpose of a gun is to kill. So it the primary purpose of bows and arrows and most long blades. You can't possibly be suggesting the banning of bows/arrows and any long blade not licensed as a kitchen knife are you?
And what purpose does pornography serve? It has no normal usae. If you want to have sexual gratification, go out and find a mate and blah blah if you can't find one, you should deal with it just like animals do.
In the end, you're still making a moral decision and a law because my ownership of a gun does not infringe on your rights.
You completely missed the point. The point wasn't which computer has more toys, the point was that in this day and age, on the mac, and now on the PC, PCI slots are fast becoming useless. Remember 7 or 8 years ago, when having less than 5 PCI slots was stupid? That was because motherboards didn't come with good equipment on them, on board sound sucked, video sucked worse (and for the most part still does), on board NICs were hit or miss and the only ports on board were PS/2 and legacy.
These days, you could reasonably get by with 3 PCI slots or 2 + 1 AGP. And most people who would buy a mini or a $500 computer could get by with 0-1 PCI slots.
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While it's not exactly what you want, you could get SideTrack, an alternative driver for the trackpad that allows for scrolling (on trackpads without it) and allows you to assign seperate functions to the button, a tap on the trackpad, and the corners of the trackpad as well.
Get SideTrack then, and turn your Apple tackpad into a 6 button tackpad or any number of other configurations.
because two buttons on a trackpad is obnoxiously uncomfortable, and because the keyboard is right there next to the trackpad so it's perfectly reasonable to use the modifier keys and the mouse at the same time.
But if it's really killing you, there's also sidetrack.
Most of the buttons are supported natively in OS X, as for the actual back and forward functions, you may need extra drivers for that, but if the mouse didn't come with any drivers for OS X, you can always use USB overdrive:
http://www.usboverdrive.com/info.html
Because anyone who can afford $500 photo editing software and a $3000 computer can afford to pony up the $12 for their own mouse. Infact, I've found that once you get to that point as far as users go, they NEVER use the stock mice that come with any computer, they always by their own that they're used to.
The problem is, since the majority of Mac users won't upgrade a perfectly working mouse, many 3rd party softwares won't take advantage of it.
You might get mouse wheel functionality, maybe it will be consistent maybe it won't. If all Mac users had a multi-button mouse, there would be more uniformity in the way they work. Sure, Windows apps don't all do the same thing, but for 99% of the time when you right-click something it brings up a menu of operations you can do on the current mouse target.
What the hell? Do you even know what you're talking about? It's built into the system, that if you click the second mouse button on a mac, it's a ctrl-click, and hence brings up the contextual menu. And the mouse wheel is always a third button, though it may not have specific funtionality, and the scrolling works the same way every time.
I like a simple mouse. Two buttons, and the mouse scroll wheel in the middle, which doubles as the middle mouse button. I don't like the web browsing crap or anything. But one button is just frustrating.
It's only frustrating in a system designed for more than one button. Since OS X is designed with a single button in mind, it's not frustrating for the users because everything is accesable with one or two clicks.
As far as the notebook thing, I don't personally have any trouble working a multi-button mouse on one. And I like the scroll zones on the touchpads, and I prefer tapping over using a button. I rarely right-click on notebook as it's not comfortable to do so, and you never HAVE to not even in Windows.
So you do have a problem with multibutton mice on your laptops. You just said it isn't comfortable to use them, so you avoid the buttons alltogether and use the trackpad tap. That's exactly what i'm talking about. Two buttons on a tack pad make them uncomfortable.
I found the Macintosh laptops to be a big disappointment. First of all, there were hardware problems: one died within a few weeks, the replacement didn't play DVDs properly.
Sounds like you got some bad hardware. Unfortunate but not representative of the whole.
The processor is pretty slow, too: even in its heyday, a G4 wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and today it is really not competitive anymore.
Slow for what? It's well maintained that most home users will have a hard time maxing a 1 ghz processor let alone anything faster. I've not come across anything yet where I felt the processor was the bottle neck and not say the hard drive.
And it's not true that the thing never crashes; it's not bad, but the GUI will hang on occasion, and I have had it crash, too.
I don't think I've ever had the GUI hang. Invidual applications, yes, but not the entire GUI. I suspect that's what happened to you as well. As for crashing the system, unless the last time you played with this was sometime arround 10.1 or 10.2 on an old G3, crashing the whole system has been in my experience someting very difficult you use, and usualy involving mucking with something like AFS.
Then, your only real choice for an office suite is Microsoft Office. If you want a laptop just to run Microsoft Office, I suppose it is better than a Windows laptop. OpenOffice has too many limitations on the Mac (among other things, forget about using it for presentations) and it requires you to fiddle with X11, which isn't well integrated (and also needs to be installed).
Well, really your only real choice for an office suite anywhere is MS Office. As much as I hate to say it, they are the standard. However, there's also NeoOffice (OO without X11).
iWork isn't a serious academic or business tool either: no spreadsheet, no math, limited drawing.
No it's not. Not yet anyway. Though keynote does fine for presentations.
The iLife applications are useless toys: iPhoto doesn't let you fix even gross problems with images, iMovie has limitations on what you can important and export (looks like they are deliberate). You probably need to upgrade to expensive commercial packages if you want anything that's more than a toy.
They're hardly useless, but it looks like you're looking for something more akin to the GIMP or something like that.
If that's the case, you can get the GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
Or you can get a nice little app I found called PhotoLine
And most macs should still come with graphic converter, which while not GIMP or Photoshop does more than iPhoto does. iPhoto is more management than editing although that has supposedly changed considerably with the new version. But iPhoto was never meant to be an editor.
iMovie is purposefuly restricted on import and exports that's true. It's designed for the purpose of pulling video from your DV Camcorder and doing home movie editing and then exporting. If you're looking for Professional level editing, is it really a suprise that you need professional level programs?
I thought there were going to be a bunch of nice outliners and brainstorming tools for Macintosh--lots of them are advertised with great fanfare and colorful ads, but they were pretty much a disappointment, too: proprietary formats, complex UIs, and limited functionality. There are better open source tools available than that.
What exactly where you trying to do that OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner didn't handle? And as a further question, did you search to see if your favorite apps had been ported yet?
Fink is supposed to be the way to install more of a real UNIX/Linux environment on Macintosh, but I had no end of trouble. Worse, for many packages, there are two versions of it: the Fink version and a non-Fink version. Some Mac applications assume one, some the other, and if you install both, you run into conflicts. Cygwin
Unless Apple is running a deal. When I got my powerbook, Apple was running a double your RAM for $40 deal. I think 1 Gig of memory for $40 was a steal
For one, full mouse functionality is not an addon. Having replaced many a one button mouse with multi button mice, I can tell you it's fully supported.
That said, while I prefer a multibutton mouse on the desktop I DESPISE multi buttons or scroll "zones" on laptops. It gets in the way more than it's useful and since on a laptop my keyboard is right there next to the trackpad, using a modfier key is not an issue at all.
Kid published NDA information obtained by violation of an NDA contract.
Register looked at publicly accessable source.
Actualy, it does suck to have two buttons on a track pad, especialy if you commonly hit them with your thumb. I can't tell you how many times using a PC I've hit both buttons because I clicked in the middle (the logical position). And even more obnoxious is having to shift my hand so that my RIGHT thumb reaches the LEFT side of the buttons to hit the one I use most often.
One button track pads are in my opinion superior to multi button track pads. But if you're anal about it, there's always Side Track which can give me a 6 button track pad.
A one button mouse is easier to switch hands. No software change nessesary, just move the mouse, and use your right hand on the modifer keys on the right side of the keyboard.
But are there really that many people out there who mouse left handed? I never did and all the other left handed people I've met don't either.
Well, given that I've never met a person that centers the keyboard rater than the main part of the keyboard, I'd say it isn't a problem. And I speak on this as a member of the left handed minority.
As I left handed person, I can say this has never been a problem for me. It may have something to do with the fact that I learned to mouse with my right hand (I never even considered switching sides when I learned) and now it's cumbersome and even detrimental to productivity for me to mouse with my left hand, but that aside, given that I always keep a hand on the keyboard, shifting my right hand down one row does not in any way impede on my abilities to properly modify mouse commands.
Small enough as it is? What PC laptops are you using? My powerbook tackpad is the largest trackpad I've used in years.
Just so you know, you can add bluetooth, airport and memory after the fact. You just better be sure not to break anything while you do it.
Celeron at 1.3 Ghz compared to G4 at 1.25.
If anything is much faster, it's the G4
I agree fully with LTFA, my main purpose was to demonstrate that no law is free from "enforcing a set of beleifs" on people. They're all moral judgements.
Well if we concider single incidents, obviously the man slaughtering children. However, when you consider that a man using a legaly obtained firearm to slaughter 10 children would statisticaly account for less than .1% of gun crimes, vs man on man ween sucking accounting for much more in the terms of sexual "crimes" it would be easy to argue that man on man ween sucking is the worse of the evils because it's more prevalent.
The real question is, is the legal ownership of the gun a crime or is the slaughter? Does owning a gun have a victim? If not, why is it ok to ban ownership, but not ween sucking?
What if it isn't in my interests? What if I want a violent and criminal poverty class? What if I enjoy that sort of life? Don't ever mistake the common good for anything more than a value judgement.
I know I'm opening up this topic to an irrational 2nd amendment flame war, but I can't let this go unchallenged. Gun laws aren't about morality, they're a public safety issue. I am far less safe if my neighbour has a handgun, because:
This should be fun
He may come home drunk one night, start waving the gun around and discharge it in my direction
This is illegal.
His kids may get hold of the gun, and shoot it at me, or my kids
This is also illegal
A robber breaking into his house may get the gun, so by the time he gets to my house he's an armed robber
Again, illegal
The robber is more likely to come armed anyway if he thinks the occupier is armed
Ilegal, irellevant and mostly untrue. 40% will not enter if they think the owner is armed, 60% will not enter if they know the owner is armed, this from FBI statistics.
So what exactly about your neighbor owning a gun is endangering your life? So far the things that endanger your life are illegal acts. And it seems to me that if someone is comitting an illegal act, making it illegal to own a gun isn't going to stop them. For reference, the columbine killers violated ~20 gun control laws. A lot of good those 20 laws did.
Even Libertarians agree that it is proper to outlaw activities that harm others, and your ownership of a gun puts me in great danger. That is why in a free society gun ownership must be very seriously curtailed.
No, libertarians agree that it is proper to outlaw activities which infringe on the rights of others. My ownership of a gun does not infringe on your right to life. My waving it in your direction does.
In a free society, responsible gun ownership should be a freely chosen enterprise and should be highly encouraged.
Those who would beat their swords into plowshares will be forced to plow for those that would not.
In each of these cases (welfare, gun control, drinking age), the government is attempting to protect (albeit, IMO poorly) their legitimate compelling interests. The drinking age is supposed to make our roads safer (the fact that they keep increasing it is proof that it doesn't work, though), gun control is supposed to provide reasonable mechanisms for tracking and controlling supplies of firearms.
;-)
And regulation of the porn industry is to protect society from it's inner desires which much like killing are base and vile to the sensible. Pornography does create fairly strong addictions in it's consumers and can lead to changes in the attitudes of people towards the sacredness of sex (i.e. search google for "rape porn"). Consider also the abundance of porn models changes glamour models which in turn presents unhealthy stereotypes of beauty on society. Try telling annorexiscs and bullemics that porn never hurt anyone.
Since when can't you own a gun to protect your family? What sort of firearm are you looking for? An M-16 or a grenade launcher? Maybe a howitzer? Certainly handguns at least in the US are reasonable available.
Ignoring for a moment that an M-16 is a rather low powered rifle, please examine gun laws in NYC, and Washington DC, two places where a gun for protection should be mandatory and two places where it's near impossible to obtain. And these are just two such examples.
As for welfare. The whole point of welfare is to help prevent people from starving, or living on the streets because they have hit hard times. I would rather have a poor person stay on welfare than live on the streets. If you disagree, I think we should offer your front-yard as a tent city for the homeless
But why is it the government's responsibility and why should the government take MY money to pay for it? Instead of money, why don't governents just possess sections of your house to house the homeless?
Welfare, at least in the US suffers corruption which, though subtle, is quite severe. The fact that it is mismanaged for the benefit of certain corporate interests is indicated in the fact that the most common health problem among those under the poverty level in this country is... obesity. Why? Because they eat mass-market junk food crap as their primary staples! But that is to the benefit of plenty of junk food manufacturers, is it not?
Welfare is always missmanaged. There has never been a succesful welfare state. And to create laws to take my money to further create problems (you yourself said it the big problem is obecity, which I pay for two fold now, once to feed them and once to treat them.
Lets see. First of all, watching porn doesn't hurt anyone.
.6 inches of snow last week should demonstrate that a license in no way proves one is capable of the responsibilities of owning something.
Actualy, watching porn produces a series of changes in the activities of a human brain that in the wrong individuals could lead to undesireable consequences, as well as generaly speaking producing an addiction in the watcher.
Furthermore, the demand for a pornography market generate demand for certain aspects of models, these models become prevalent in all aspects of society, not just the pornography industry, and lead to the false images of beauty which create so many eating disorders in young women today.
Add to that that porn arguably objectifies women leading to unhealthy relationships overall, and many people in the porn intdustry are and have been exploited. And lets not get into child porn.
Being unable to buy food does.
But that isn't my concern. I am not keeping you from buying food, I am not responsible for your life. Get a job, get some firends or find a charity.
Secondly, the wellfare of the state is dependant on the wellfare of it's citizens. Wellfare isn't a purely moral endeavour, it's there to provide the population with bread and circuses so that they will be content and do not rise up against the government.
And yet in every historical example of a goverment that sought to provide "welfare" for it's citizens rather than allowing citizens to freely exist as they choose or are able, the end result has been corruption in the government and welfare and the people rising up against the government, or even worse, living collectively in opression.
The right to health and security is harmed by lack of food or overabundance of guns.
Guns don't kill people, and people don't need guns to kill eachother. Violence is about resources period. Not about the weapons.
Gun laws aren't meant to prohibit gun ownership. They are meant to regulate gun ownership, just like cars can't be driven in public roads by anyone or medecine practised by anyone, guns shouldn't be allowed in everybody's hand. It's a matter of public safety.
Unfortunately, licesning cars is the worst example you can give. Given that of all unatural fatalities, the fact that 50% are motor vehicle related suggests to me that the licensing isn't working and everyone is getting it any way.
In fact, the very fact that raleigh NC shut down and had nearly 50 accidents because of
Lumping gun laws in with obscenity laws is absurd. Guns injure and kill, pictures of genitalia don't.
Unless said pictures of genitalia are of children.
Or unless said pictures create undesireable changes in a person.
see above about porn.
It is indeed my money. Money is a comodity, much like labor, food, cloth. Money was developed to even trade. As such, any money I have is just as much mine as a chicken would be if I worked for food.
Why do I need guns? Why do you need a car? Guns allow me to defend myself far more efficiently and safely than a kife does. It allows me to hunt more efficiently than a knife does and it provides me with a pastime of target shooting. Yes the primary purpose of a gun is to kill. So it the primary purpose of bows and arrows and most long blades. You can't possibly be suggesting the banning of bows/arrows and any long blade not licensed as a kitchen knife are you?
And what purpose does pornography serve? It has no normal usae. If you want to have sexual gratification, go out and find a mate and blah blah if you can't find one, you should deal with it just like animals do.
In the end, you're still making a moral decision and a law because my ownership of a gun does not infringe on your rights.
You completely missed the point. The point wasn't which computer has more toys, the point was that in this day and age, on the mac, and now on the PC, PCI slots are fast becoming useless. Remember 7 or 8 years ago, when having less than 5 PCI slots was stupid? That was because motherboards didn't come with good equipment on them, on board sound sucked, video sucked worse (and for the most part still does), on board NICs were hit or miss and the only ports on board were PS/2 and legacy.
These days, you could reasonably get by with 3 PCI slots or 2 + 1 AGP. And most people who would buy a mini or a $500 computer could get by with 0-1 PCI slots.