Except with Kleptomania you go back to the fallacy of equating real goods with I.P..
And compound it with all the issues involved in throwing in mental illness.
One: a bussiness model is not a law. Two: robbed implies theft, no theft is occuring (infringement yes, theft no).
Mycroft
Re:Economic balance of freedom software cost.
on
Being Free is Hard to Do
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Just curious, but why not change the old function to simply eliminate the problem, or even just simply be an alias of the new function?
I could only assume the new function needed data not suplied in calls to the old function.
If it's used just to sell the movie,story,breakfast cereal, whatever, I would agree with you.
But almost all works of fiction in a sense start with what-if? and explore the possible results of answering that question.
The point of most stories isn't "can this really happen" but rather to tell a story based on "what if this did happen".
Every like a sf show with ftl travel? that's as much magic as gandalf or the force based on our current understanding. I strongly suspect it's the trappings of the genre involved rather than the 'fantasy' aspects that you don't like.
Personally I sometimes find it harder to watch more 'realistic' movies because they frequently don't fact check thier history or science, yet part of thier 'what if' depends on some thier facts and science which are presented as matching the real world, and don't.
Actually it was Obi Wan who was 'trained by Yoda' in the first trillogy, but in the prequals was trained by Quai Con.
It's these little inconsistancies that bug me. Possibly more than Jar Jar, who if kept as a minor part for the occasional sight gag would have worked fine. Jar Jar had the potential to be the C3PO character of prequals, and that may have been the intent, but they blew it and made him way to important and campy.
That makes no sense. Just because he did the original trillogy as well doesn't mean the prequals can't be be a disgrace. A person can easily disgrace themselves or thier prior works of art.
I wouldn't say he's completely disgraced StarWars, but he has cheapened them.
Not because the prequals are so bad, thier o.k.ish middling fare. But when seen in light of the original masterpieces, thier mediocracy becomes rubbish and looks really bad by contrast. If we had never had the original trillogy the prequals would have just been another also ran bunch of sf summer big budget sfx movies, possibly worth going to see, but thats about it.
A 'noob' should be able to just install the drivers, or almost anything else for that matter.
This is why linux isn't trully ready for primetime yet.
Yes a lot of people do and can run without major problems. But for the most part if you have to dig into some text fille and make cryptic setting, update half the lib on your system, the update everything that breaks, then find out somethings CAN'T be updated. It's pointless if you have to roll your distro almost to install anything that didn't come on the cd's or directly from your distro's website (and sometimes even stuff from your distro's website requires significant overhall to the sytem).
The problem is that computers (and esp. thier os's) have cultural aspects. The kind of people that hang out in certain places will tend to use certain os if they use computers.
Would you expect computer/os use in a liberal arts college to be representative of all personal computer use. How about if just goto biker bars, or starbucks, or an engineering school?
Most of people insisting Mac's way outnumber linux boxes cite places that seem to fit in with the 'mac crowd' so to speak. People on the other side are probably also useing selective data. The simple truth is that without hard numbers it's all anectedotes and guesswork suiting personal bias or belief.
The sad fact is windows still dominates the game market. It's one the main reasons I still run xp on my main box. Actual the generalized reason is much of the software I want to use is mostly on windows. There are some substitutes for some of them on both Mac and linux, indeed in many cases the 'substitutes' are singificantly superior, but not for everything. One Day I may have all three, but not till I have enough cash to own all three and the software I want.
I just a movie trailer for a movie about some animals in a zoo, including three penguins that were not quite right in the head(One of the other animals said "the penguins are psycotic").
I'm not shure if that would be the best movie to have a linux box product placement, but it shure would be funny.
I know I got some odd stares when I had to stiffle a laugh becuase my mind kept associating penguines and linux. It was really bad at two points, the first when the main penguin said to the other two "remember, think cute and cuddly" or something like that, and especially the 'pyscotic' remark.
But marketing could make a huge difference.
Most of your points are accurate, number 2 is very good summation of a point I was trying to make.
I do dissagree with #1 in that with copying the original owner still has what he had to begin with, so at least he can sell that. Nothing is actually removed from him as would be the case with actual theft. Though because of number #2 he may be forced to reduce his price unless the demand is high enough that the 'bogus' copies can't significantly reduce his market.
#6 I dissagree with, it's certainly not an accurate conclusion from the preceding. Comparing copyright infringement to actual theft of real objects is largely an apples to oranges comparison. They are two different activities with two different negative consequences. There is some limited simularity in that both CAN involve money and who has ligitimate right to make money off of a particular work or item. This is most true when dealing with the mass copiers who sell illeagle copies of some work.
I would also point out that thieves and illeagle copiers alike do have a (self inflicted) burden of a sort in that they do place themselves at risk for criminal charges, fines, and arrest. Thier fault though. The original owner of the physical item or holder of the copyright wasn't really given a choice.
Also in regard to the footnote (1). While accurate, there is a somewhat credible argument that mass p2p sharing may to some degree act as advertising for the original owner (like radio effectively does for music). Though whether or not this offsets the unknown percentage of people who would have bought if they hadn't gotten it free is impossible to say without some research into the matter. Not that this is a justification, just hopefully something positive amidst the negatives.
One thing I would make clear is that I was NOT justifying eigther activity or endorsing it at all.
But if you want people to listen to you when tell them something is a bad idea, then eigther lie outright (as in the 'war on drugs'), or try to propagandize them as the *AA try to do by linking copyright infringement with actual theft, all you can do is lose credibility. How much credence would you give someone who eigther lied/missled your, or showed a demonstably false understanding.
The biggest group of copyright infringers (outside of criminal organizations) are likely young people, college age on down, who have a built in suspicion of authority. False arguments and the like only confirm thier suspicions that 'the man' is out to get them or simply out to lunch. They then feel justified in not only ignoring, but outright defying, said authority.
Sorry I just spent my mod points, or I'd try and correct a couple mod's complete lack of humor.
Admittedly it wasn't very clever, and I could see not finding it funny. But it obviously was an attempt at humor, and close enough to make the off-topic mod debate-able at best.
Since I've spent my mod points I'll just leave this off-topic post instead.
Oh that's a simple one to answer, they don't mention certain big p2p apps and other big sources because they don't wan't THIER sources of free stuff targetted by *AA's.
While I agree his attitude and maners are rather poor, he is right about the prices of dvd's and cd's. Thier labled price hasn't significantly changed, however the value of a dollar HAS. the only way prices could ACTUALY be the same is if no inflation (or deflation for that matter) had occured in the last 20 years or so.
When cd pretty much locked at about $16 the minimum wage was around $3.75/hr and gas cost less than $1.0. Currently the cost of gas is around $1.7 and min wage is now $5.15/hr.
Though I don't fully buy the theory that competition with free (unlawfully copied and distributed) versions is completely responsible for this effective price drop, it could be small factor. Unlike the flawed anolgy to shoplifting where something actually is stolen, depriving the original owner the ability to sell it, the owner of the original still has it and can sell it. Only now he in part has to keep the price low enough so the tradoff of money for legit copy with extras is higher than free but slightly risky lower quality copy. This is in part why thier sueing the crap out of the downloaders. In an attempt to lower the value of the 'free' copies enough to justify higher prices.
Admittedly there are other factors in the reduced price. Such as maturity of the process by wich the studio recording becomes that shiny plastic disc in your local wal-mart. That is probably a bigger factor than value shift the mp3/p2p explosion, but I doubt it totaly swamps it.
Do you honestly think the execs DON'T consider that a raise in pricing will likely shift some percentage of thier paying customer base to p2p and such avenues? Again the lawsuit frenzy is likely in part designed to create the mindset in those who don't do the file trading that p2p=expensive lawsuit so as to prevent just that.
Actually they weren't that expensive (the players for laserdisc). Certainly not much more if any more expensive than early dvd player.
We paid less for ours than we had for our vhs machine only two years before. Though admitedly the vhs machine was pretty high end for it's time (you could remove the recorder from the tuner and run it on batteries attached to fairly high end sub-pro to pro vid cams) and the laser disc player was pretty much middle of the pack.
What kept them such a niche market is part the lack of serious industry backing. Oh they put out movies on the things, but thier bulk and size compared to vhs/beta was just too much to ever be popular without very serious backing (marketing) by the industry.
DVD's also faced serious issues as vhs was so heavily ingrained that only the major push by industry got them accepted so fast.
However your main point, prices were high because they were low demand, has some value though I suspect there were other significant factors involved.
I've avoided WMA and other microsoft only formats as much as possible for this reason.
Quite some time ago I downloaded something in wma (don't even remember what, been a couple years IIRC) and when I went to look at it later it refused to play and said something like 'cannot play xyzxyz.wma, site www.examaple.com unreachable' and IE had poped up trying to load the same site. This rather anoyed me as I was (and still am) stuck with dial-up and had waited about 30min for the file to download, and did not recognize the web adress which had no clear connection to the file I had dowloaded.
I was already concerned about windows media player's 'auto downloading' of codecs, but this was the nail in coffing for me. I DO NOT expect a video to open webpages and contact websites without so much as a warning till it fails because I'm offline.
On the RARE case I must view a wma or simular I do it OFFLINE after first running the usuall anti-virus and anti-spyware utils on it, and then again when I'm done.
Playing a wma should be treated like running an executable, if you don't trust the source, don't trust the file.
Considering how many other formats, many of them open standards (though some are encumbered with patents and such crap) and are known not to have any unexpected 'features'.
When the hell is Microsoft going to learn to stop putting obviously exploitable crap like this in as a 'feature' and enableing it by default, often with no way to turn it off, or to know it's there till suddenly you got a couple dozen unwanted open ie windows, or your isp wants to know why your sending out a couple hundred e-mail s a minute, or mysterious phone charges to some 1-900 number or worse.
The sad truth is that it really is that easy. That's why I don't really see the point of going nuts with the patriot act, and other crap they want to do to 'protect' us.
You really do lose both and desrve neighter when you sacrife freedoms for security and safety.
Only the most draconian lockdown imaginable could significantly limit what a few determined individuals with a little knowledge and willingness/madness could do before hundreds were at risk and likely harmed/dead.
Actually just tinfoil wouldn't be so bad, but cut the foil in the right length (1/4 wavelength of the radar system IIRC) and you have more serious problems.
I know there are some methods now for dealing with chaff, but how effective they are, what they are, and whether airport radar uses them is questionable.
Bassically what chaff is, is lots of metal confetti in the air of just the right lenght(s) to really screw up the outgoing and returning radar signals.
Also I believe some(all comercial?) planes have thier own radar systems that could be susceptable.
So what happens when the atc tower suddlenly see's hundreds of phantom images or static and a bunch of planes suddenly have thier radar warning that thier about to be hit by a dozen other planes at once. could be bad.
possible small glitch with your scenario. "even though the plane may be going at an very high speed, it will be virtually still since it's coming right at me."
Personaly I wouldn't want a 747 with a blind pilot comming right at me.
Of course your joking, but your sorta right to. it does say "arms" and Jefferson when asked what 'arms' meant wrote "any sword of the soldier, however terrible".
The reason I say sorta is because lasers aren't directly a soldier's weapon, yet.
And yeah, I'm not entirely serious eighter, just easily amused.:)
It's a reason why the right is explicitly protected. Not the reason why the right is granted.
Notice also it is a protection, not a grant. The founding fathers believed those rights and other existed <I>independant</I> of the government and thier placeing specific protection of some of them was a matter of recognition and protection. Some were even afraid that by listing some of our inherent rights in such a list might be mistaken to mean the list was inclusive, thus the bit about just that later in the bill of rights.
So in short it matters not whether the one given reason makes sense to any particular person. The fact that we have that right exists irregardless. It is not dependent on understanding that reason, or even that one reason's validity.
I hadn't considered that line of reasoning for extending the second to the states so directly, however it's moot as a later amendment outright places states as bound by the amendments as the federal government.
At least that's what my memory tells me, though it doesn't seem to tell me which one (post civil war though). So if I'm off kilter someone refresh my memory.
Also the well regulated part refers to training and capability, NOT laws and restrictions. The use of regulated at that time was meant in a mechanical/functional sense, as in 'a well regulated clock keeps good time'.
And by militia they pretty much meant every male citizen over peuberty and before senility who was of sound mind and body. They even put that down as one of our first laws under the constitution.
Anyone trying to use the 'well regulated militia' part to justify ANY infringement on the owning and bearing of arms (not just guns here, but to quote Jefferson "Any arm of the soldier, however terrible") is eigther being deliberately false/misleading, or simply doesn't know what they're talking about.
And excessive regulation would make it an expensive toy subject to fickle beauracrats. Post haste and 'government agency' don't go together very often.
Somtimes regulation to prevent monopoly or abuse is necessary. But don't expect it to mandate quality or reliability anywhere near what market forces can eventually do. The problem right now is more people want broadband than can get it in many areas meaning no matter how bad thier terms are they KNOW they can sell more than they can provide. When an area reaches the point where supply is no longer outstripped by demand and they actually have to compete for customers you'll see customers taken more seriously and treated better.
So right now the best 'regulation' or 'government intervention' would be to help spread availability as much as possible while preventing monopolies and other anti-competitive situations.
Though to some degree the market will spread itself because up to a point each broadband marketer is going to try and be first in a potentially lucrative area so as to have inertia going for them once other choices arive and supply has caught up to demand. It's those in the fringe area's, where it's iffy profit wise to provide broadband, that are going to suffer the most short term, though long term those areas will move farther and farther out as the tech and rolling it out get cheaper.
My point was relying ONLY on 911 is foolish. Yes there are times when self reliance won't cut it.
But in several of your examples a five minute automatic on-hold means your dead and that's it.
And sometimes there is nothing you can do at all.
As I said 911 is not a substitute, I did not say it was useless, In fact I said it's better than what came before: call operator, ask for police/fire/ambulance/whatever, then give them directions and description.
So yeah somtimes you only have 911 and somtimes not even that (lots of places where cell phones don't work, even in not-so rural areas), but I hope no-one is in eigther situation and one way to avoid that is to at least have some other options.
Slashdot Mirror
Except with Kleptomania you go back to the fallacy of equating real goods with I.P..
And compound it with all the issues involved in throwing in mental illness.
Mycroft
One: a bussiness model is not a law.
Two: robbed implies theft, no theft is occuring (infringement yes, theft no).
Mycroft
Just curious, but why not change the old function to simply eliminate the problem, or even just simply be an alias of the new function?
I could only assume the new function needed data not suplied in calls to the old function.
Mycroft
You can order them in bulk, directly from the maker of Lego (Matel?).
Try www.lego.com or shop.lego.com IIRC.
Mycroft
If it's used just to sell the movie,story,breakfast cereal, whatever, I would agree with you.
But almost all works of fiction in a sense start with what-if? and explore the possible results of answering that question.
The point of most stories isn't "can this really happen" but rather to tell a story based on "what if this did happen".
Every like a sf show with ftl travel? that's as much magic as gandalf or the force based on our current understanding. I strongly suspect it's the trappings of the genre involved rather than the 'fantasy' aspects that you don't like.
Personally I sometimes find it harder to watch more 'realistic' movies because they frequently don't fact check thier history or science, yet part of thier 'what if' depends on some thier facts and science which are presented as matching the real world, and don't.
Mycroft
Actually it was Obi Wan who was 'trained by Yoda' in the first trillogy, but in the prequals was trained by Quai Con.
It's these little inconsistancies that bug me. Possibly more than Jar Jar, who if kept as a minor part for the occasional sight gag would have worked fine. Jar Jar had the potential to be the C3PO character of prequals, and that may have been the intent, but they blew it and made him way to important and campy.
Mycroft
That makes no sense. Just because he did the original trillogy as well doesn't mean the prequals can't be be a disgrace. A person can easily disgrace themselves or thier prior works of art.
I wouldn't say he's completely disgraced StarWars, but he has cheapened them.
Not because the prequals are so bad, thier o.k.ish middling fare. But when seen in light of the original masterpieces, thier mediocracy becomes rubbish and looks really bad by contrast. If we had never had the original trillogy the prequals would have just been another also ran bunch of sf summer big budget sfx movies, possibly worth going to see, but thats about it.
Mycroft
Being ABLE to exert that level of controll is indeed nice and, imho, should be there. Being REQUIRED to exert that level of controll is a BAD idea.
Mycroft
A 'noob' should be able to just install the drivers, or almost anything else for that matter.
This is why linux isn't trully ready for primetime yet.
Yes a lot of people do and can run without major problems. But for the most part if you have to dig into some text fille and make cryptic setting, update half the lib on your system, the update everything that breaks, then find out somethings CAN'T be updated. It's pointless if you have to roll your distro almost to install anything that didn't come on the cd's or directly from your distro's website (and sometimes even stuff from your distro's website requires significant overhall to the sytem).
Mycroft
The problem is that computers (and esp. thier os's) have cultural aspects. The kind of people that hang out in certain places will tend to use certain os if they use computers.
Would you expect computer/os use in a liberal arts college to be representative of all personal computer use. How about if just goto biker bars, or starbucks, or an engineering school?
Most of people insisting Mac's way outnumber linux boxes cite places that seem to fit in with the 'mac crowd' so to speak. People on the other side are probably also useing selective data. The simple truth is that without hard numbers it's all anectedotes and guesswork suiting personal bias or belief.
The sad fact is windows still dominates the game market. It's one the main reasons I still run xp on my main box. Actual the generalized reason is much of the software I want to use is mostly on windows. There are some substitutes for some of them on both Mac and linux, indeed in many cases the 'substitutes' are singificantly superior, but not for everything. One Day I may have all three, but not till I have enough cash to own all three and the software I want.
Mycroft
I just a movie trailer for a movie about some animals in a zoo, including three penguins that were not quite right in the head(One of the other animals said "the penguins are psycotic").
I'm not shure if that would be the best movie to have a linux box product placement, but it shure would be funny.
I know I got some odd stares when I had to stiffle a laugh becuase my mind kept associating penguines and linux. It was really bad at two points, the first when the main penguin said to the other two "remember, think cute and cuddly" or something like that, and especially the 'pyscotic' remark.
But marketing could make a huge difference.
Mycroft
Most of your points are accurate, number 2 is very good summation of a point I was trying to make.
I do dissagree with #1 in that with copying the original owner still has what he had to begin with, so at least he can sell that. Nothing is actually removed from him as would be the case with actual theft. Though because of number #2 he may be forced to reduce his price unless the demand is high enough that the 'bogus' copies can't significantly reduce his market.
#6 I dissagree with, it's certainly not an accurate conclusion from the preceding. Comparing copyright infringement to actual theft of real objects is largely an apples to oranges comparison. They are two different activities with two different negative consequences. There is some limited simularity in that both CAN involve money and who has ligitimate right to make money off of a particular work or item. This is most true when dealing with the mass copiers who sell illeagle copies of some work.
I would also point out that thieves and illeagle copiers alike do have a (self inflicted) burden of a sort in that they do place themselves at risk for criminal charges, fines, and arrest. Thier fault though. The original owner of the physical item or holder of the copyright wasn't really given a choice.
Also in regard to the footnote (1). While accurate, there is a somewhat credible argument that mass p2p sharing may to some degree act as advertising for the original owner (like radio effectively does for music). Though whether or not this offsets the unknown percentage of people who would have bought if they hadn't gotten it free is impossible to say without some research into the matter. Not that this is a justification, just hopefully something positive amidst the negatives.
One thing I would make clear is that I was NOT justifying eigther activity or endorsing it at all.
But if you want people to listen to you when tell them something is a bad idea, then eigther lie outright (as in the 'war on drugs'), or try to propagandize them as the *AA try to do by linking copyright infringement with actual theft, all you can do is lose credibility. How much credence would you give someone who eigther lied/missled your, or showed a demonstably false understanding.
The biggest group of copyright infringers (outside of criminal organizations) are likely young people, college age on down, who have a built in suspicion of authority. False arguments and the like only confirm thier suspicions that 'the man' is out to get them or simply out to lunch. They then feel justified in not only ignoring, but outright defying, said authority.
Mycroft
Sorry I just spent my mod points, or I'd try and correct a couple mod's complete lack of humor.
Admittedly it wasn't very clever, and I could see not finding it funny. But it obviously was an attempt at humor, and close enough to make the off-topic mod debate-able at best.
Since I've spent my mod points I'll just leave this off-topic post instead.
Mycroft
Oh that's a simple one to answer, they don't mention certain big p2p apps and other big sources because they don't wan't THIER sources of free stuff targetted by *AA's.
Mycroft
While I agree his attitude and maners are rather poor, he is right about the prices of dvd's and cd's. Thier labled price hasn't significantly changed, however the value of a dollar HAS. the only way prices could ACTUALY be the same is if no inflation (or deflation for that matter) had occured in the last 20 years or so.
When cd pretty much locked at about $16 the minimum wage was around $3.75/hr and gas cost less than $1.0. Currently the cost of gas is around $1.7 and min wage is now $5.15/hr.
Though I don't fully buy the theory that competition with free (unlawfully copied and distributed) versions is completely responsible for this effective price drop, it could be small factor. Unlike the flawed anolgy to shoplifting where something actually is stolen, depriving the original owner the ability to sell it, the owner of the original still has it and can sell it. Only now he in part has to keep the price low enough so the tradoff of money for legit copy with extras is higher than free but slightly risky lower quality copy. This is in part why thier sueing the crap out of the downloaders. In an attempt to lower the value of the 'free' copies enough to justify higher prices.
Admittedly there are other factors in the reduced price. Such as maturity of the process by wich the studio recording becomes that shiny plastic disc in your local wal-mart. That is probably a bigger factor than value shift the mp3/p2p explosion, but I doubt it totaly swamps it.
Do you honestly think the execs DON'T consider that a raise in pricing will likely shift some percentage of thier paying customer base to p2p and such avenues? Again the lawsuit frenzy is likely in part designed to create the mindset in those who don't do the file trading that p2p=expensive lawsuit so as to prevent just that.
Mycroft
Actually they weren't that expensive (the players for laserdisc). Certainly not much more if any more expensive than early dvd player.
We paid less for ours than we had for our vhs machine only two years before. Though admitedly the vhs machine was pretty high end for it's time (you could remove the recorder from the tuner and run it on batteries attached to fairly high end sub-pro to pro vid cams) and the laser disc player was pretty much middle of the pack.
What kept them such a niche market is part the lack of serious industry backing. Oh they put out movies on the things, but thier bulk and size compared to vhs/beta was just too much to ever be popular without very serious backing (marketing) by the industry.
DVD's also faced serious issues as vhs was so heavily ingrained that only the major push by industry got them accepted so fast.
However your main point, prices were high because they were low demand, has some value though I suspect there were other significant factors involved.
Mycroft
I've avoided WMA and other microsoft only formats as much as possible for this reason.
Quite some time ago I downloaded something in wma (don't even remember what, been a couple years IIRC) and when I went to look at it later it refused to play and said something like 'cannot play xyzxyz.wma, site www.examaple.com unreachable' and IE had poped up trying to load the same site. This rather anoyed me as I was (and still am) stuck with dial-up and had waited about 30min for the file to download, and did not recognize the web adress which had no clear connection to the file I had dowloaded.
I was already concerned about windows media player's 'auto downloading' of codecs, but this was the nail in coffing for me. I DO NOT expect a video to open webpages and contact websites without so much as a warning till it fails because I'm offline.
On the RARE case I must view a wma or simular I do it OFFLINE after first running the usuall anti-virus and anti-spyware utils on it, and then again when I'm done.
Playing a wma should be treated like running an executable, if you don't trust the source, don't trust the file.
Considering how many other formats, many of them open standards (though some are encumbered with patents and such crap) and are known not to have any unexpected 'features'.
When the hell is Microsoft going to learn to stop putting obviously exploitable crap like this in as a 'feature' and enableing it by default, often with no way to turn it off, or to know it's there till suddenly you got a couple dozen unwanted open ie windows, or your isp wants to know why your sending out a couple hundred e-mail s a minute, or mysterious phone charges to some 1-900 number or worse.
Mycroft
Mycroft
The sad truth is that it really is that easy.
That's why I don't really see the point of going nuts with the patriot act, and other crap they want to do to 'protect' us.
You really do lose both and desrve neighter when you sacrife freedoms for security and safety.
Only the most draconian lockdown imaginable could significantly limit what a few determined individuals with a little knowledge and willingness/madness could do before hundreds were at risk and likely harmed/dead.
Mycroft
Actually just tinfoil wouldn't be so bad, but cut the foil in the right length (1/4 wavelength of the radar system IIRC) and you have more serious problems.
I know there are some methods now for dealing with chaff, but how effective they are, what they are, and whether airport radar uses them is questionable.
Bassically what chaff is, is lots of metal confetti in the air of just the right lenght(s) to really screw up the outgoing and returning radar signals.
Also I believe some(all comercial?) planes have thier own radar systems that could be susceptable.
So what happens when the atc tower suddlenly see's hundreds of phantom images or static and a bunch of planes suddenly have thier radar warning that thier about to be hit by a dozen other planes at once. could be bad.
Mycroft
possible small glitch with your scenario.
"even though the plane may be going at an very high speed, it will be virtually still since it's coming right at me."
Personaly I wouldn't want a 747 with a blind pilot comming right at me.
Mycroft
Of course your joking, but your sorta right to. :)
it does say "arms" and Jefferson when asked what 'arms' meant wrote "any sword of the soldier, however terrible".
The reason I say sorta is because lasers aren't directly a soldier's weapon, yet.
And yeah, I'm not entirely serious eighter, just easily amused.
Mycroft
It's a reason why the right is explicitly protected. Not the reason why the right is granted.
Notice also it is a protection, not a grant. The founding fathers believed those rights and other existed <I>independant</I> of the government and thier placeing specific protection of some of them was a matter of recognition and protection. Some were even afraid that by listing some of our inherent rights in such a list might be mistaken to mean the list was inclusive, thus the bit about just that later in the bill of rights.
So in short it matters not whether the one given reason makes sense to any particular person. The fact that we have that right exists irregardless. It is not dependent on understanding that reason, or even that one reason's validity.
Mycroft
I hadn't considered that line of reasoning for extending the second to the states so directly, however it's moot as a later amendment outright places states as bound by the amendments as the federal government.
At least that's what my memory tells me, though it doesn't seem to tell me which one (post civil war though). So if I'm off kilter someone refresh my memory.
Also the well regulated part refers to training and capability, NOT laws and restrictions. The use of regulated at that time was meant in a mechanical/functional sense, as in 'a well regulated clock keeps good time'.
And by militia they pretty much meant every male citizen over peuberty and before senility who was of sound mind and body. They even put that down as one of our first laws under the constitution.
Anyone trying to use the 'well regulated militia' part to justify ANY infringement on the owning and bearing of arms (not just guns here, but to quote Jefferson "Any arm of the soldier, however terrible") is eigther being deliberately false/misleading, or simply doesn't know what they're talking about.
Mycroft
And excessive regulation would make it an expensive toy subject to fickle beauracrats. Post haste and 'government agency' don't go together very often.
Somtimes regulation to prevent monopoly or abuse is necessary. But don't expect it to mandate quality or reliability anywhere near what market forces can eventually do. The problem right now is more people want broadband than can get it in many areas meaning no matter how bad thier terms are they KNOW they can sell more than they can provide. When an area reaches the point where supply is no longer outstripped by demand and they actually have to compete for customers you'll see customers taken more seriously and treated better.
So right now the best 'regulation' or 'government intervention' would be to help spread availability as much as possible while preventing monopolies and other anti-competitive situations.
Though to some degree the market will spread itself because up to a point each broadband marketer is going to try and be first in a potentially lucrative area so as to have inertia going for them once other choices arive and supply has caught up to demand. It's those in the fringe area's, where it's iffy profit wise to provide broadband, that are going to suffer the most short term, though long term those areas will move farther and farther out as the tech and rolling it out get cheaper.
Mycroft
My point was relying ONLY on 911 is foolish.
Yes there are times when self reliance won't cut it.
But in several of your examples a five minute automatic on-hold means your dead and that's it.
And sometimes there is nothing you can do at all.
As I said 911 is not a substitute, I did not say it was useless, In fact I said it's better than what came before: call operator, ask for police/fire/ambulance/whatever, then give them directions and description.
So yeah somtimes you only have 911 and somtimes not even that (lots of places where cell phones don't work, even in not-so rural areas), but I hope no-one is in eigther situation and one way to avoid that is to at least have some other options.
Mycroft