That's not the reason. The reason is simple: if you cancel service there is no longer any reasonable collateral for the loan on the phone. It is not reasonable for them to have to send someone out to your home to repossess a cell phone. It is very simple for them to turn your service off until you pay your loan. That will be enough stick for most people.
If you've already turned your service off, they have no stick to enforce the loan.
As for this being a contract, it is NOT an annual contract, it is not a contract for phone service. It is a LOAN contract, which you can either accept or not when you get service. You don't have to keep the phone service, and there is no early termination fee for cancelling. YOU have agreed to pay off the phone loan if you cancel your phone service, but you don't have to take a loan to start with, and it seems quite logical and common sense that if you get a phone from someone that you have to pay them for it.
It isn't a metaphor of any kind. It's an analogy. A very appropriate one, if you think the constitution means something.
A small additional one to help reduce the harm you might do to others exercising that right isn't anything new, sinister, or unconstitutional.
That extra cost you are so willing to put upon others will do absolutely NOTHING to make anyone safer from my guns. Zip. It's a fee being applied for the privilege of exercising a right, nothing more, and it is intended as an end-run around the constitution just as poll taxes and literacy tests were.
Personally I think you guys get way too hung up on protecting rights that most of the world doesn't even agree are rights at all,
I care not a whit what "most of the world" thinks about what rights I shouldn't have. I didn't vote for their governments, and they didn't vote for mine, at least they didn't do it legally. They didn't have relatives who died in wars defending the US Constitution, so they can be quite glib in telling others what rights they don't have. Their free opinion about what rights I should have is worth every penny I paid for it. And when I start telling them what rights their governments should take away from them, you can come talk to me about the problem. Until then, a Ugandan saying "you shouldn't have the right to keep and bear arms" to me can keep his opinion to himself.
I'm sick of this unbelievably shitty argument being used. That's like saying that people use stolen cars to commit crimes, so why bother having drivers licenses or registering cars?
No, it is nothing like saying that. Driver's licenses deal with the legal user of the vehicle, as does registration. Neither is intended to stop people from stealing cars and using them in crimes.
It would be like saying that people steal cars and use them to commit crimes so we need a law making low tire pressure illegal. Or since most cars have four wheels and those models are the ones being used to commit crimes then we should make it illegal to own or sell a car with four wheels. Oh, my, God, a SUV was used in a bank robbery! Ban SUVs!
"Will a criminal ignore this" is NEVER a good test of a law, because NO law would EVER pass that test.
That's not the whole story here, and you know it. The test is not just "will a criminal ignore this law", but "is there already a law that is being broken that is being ignored?" If you want to stop people from doing something that is currently legal, then a new law may be appropriate, with consideration of whether what you want to stop really needs to be stopped.
If you want to stop people from doing something that is ALREADY ILLEGAL, and creating a new law will only put limits on law abiding citizens who have a right to do what you want to limit, and you know that the criminals are already ignoring half a dozen laws in the books intended to stop what you want to stop, then absolutely the point that criminals will just ignore this law too is valid. In fact, it should be the death knell for that new law.
The only test of whether a new law should pass is "will this do more harm than good", with "harm" being defined as false-positives, extra regulation, time wasting, side-effects, court costs, bureaucracy, etc., and "good" being "something the public actually wants".
Well, to deal with the last part first, as you already point out, NO law will stop a criminal who is already breaking the law in other ways, so none of these gun control laws will do "what the people want".
The only thing they WILL do is create false positives (for example, a new law about "large clips" will make me a criminal because I own one -- a false positive). They will be extra regulation. They will waste time. They will have side-effects (what if you forget to exempt police from these new laws, and how can turning a granny with a prohibited weapon in her closet into a criminal not be a bad side-effect?) They will increase costs and add bureaucracy.
In other words, every "harm" you list is true, and every "good" you list is non-existent. Thanks for making my point for me.
If everyone were using a digital (VoIP) phone, sure. However, the PSTN is 99% ANALOG. A 5ESS or DMS100 cannot service thousands of lines (i.e. "all of them") all at once.
That 99% analog is the wire from your house to the CO. Once at the CO, it hops the digital bandwagon and only gets back to analog at the destination CO, where it is put on a wire to the recipient.
The fact that a current CO switch could not handle all the pairs connected to at once it does not mean the problem is impossible to solve, only that the current hardware is built at a lower cost and lower capacity. A cost that the telco determines will provide adequate levels of service without wasting money building to 100% use.
I'm sorry. I'm not American. I understand what you're implying, but it just sounds silly.
The short version is, voting is a right and SCOTUS has already ruled that putting a tax or test on the ability to exercise it is unconstitutional, all the way down to the states. The parallel is, of course, putting a tax or fee or mandatory charge on another right (gun ownership) should be just as unconstitutional. It has never been ruled unconstitutional for the exercise of rights to cost money overall. For example, newspapers don't get their newsprint for free, and airtime still needs to be paid for. You still need to buy the gun and the ammunition, but a poll tax on that right would be clearly out of line.
This concept goes as far as, in some states, there is no sales tax on news media (newspapers, magazines, etc) because they are protected by the first amendment.
Here's the statistic that every anti-gun zealot ignores: every incident was committed by someone who broke the existing laws. 100%.
In fact, I'd be safe in saying that every incident was committed by someone who broke at least two laws. I'd go even further and claim without fear of proof to the contrary, that every incident was committed by someone who broke at least three laws.
Now, it would be an extraordinary claim to say that "incidents would be prevented by creating one more law". Do you have proof to back up that extraordinary claim, or should we assume that logic leads us to the reasonable conclusion that "one more law will not change things?"
The POTS (plain old telephone system, for the young whippersnappers) didn't have unlimited capacity to connect calls either. When many calls were in progress in an area, you could pick up the phone and hear the congestion tone right away.
That's in the days of computer phone switches. In the old days of mechanical relays, there were a fixed, limited number of dialtone generators (and first selectors -- the stepper that handled the first digit you dialed), so if local capacity was reached you just didn't get a dialtone right away.
You still hear this today, but usually after you dial. It's the fast busy signal. The fast busy means circuits are busy, try again. The slow busy means the destination line is busy. If you try a fast busy again right away, chances are good you'll get through, and you'll confuse the person who answers if you accuse them of being on the line when you called a minute ago.
Mother's Day was a big holiday for calling, so it was more likely to hear, or not hear, this happening then.
Law failed to stop [incident A] therefore law failed to stop any incidents.
No. Law failed to stop incidents A, B, C, and many others, so law will fail to stop all incidents. Further, law is already being broken so another law will be ignored, too. Quite logical, to everyone except anti-gun zealots.
On top of that: how retarded is the idea that having a gun protects you from some attacker? Obviously he will pull his gun first. And then you are standing hands up, and your gun is pointless.
When I hear you break the window or door to enter my house to steal from me, you will find me with a cell phone in one hand, a 45 in the other. Your chances of being shot are considerably higher than if all I had was a cellphone and a pillow. You will know this before you break and enter and maybe not break and enter my house.
In a more general case, who says you are standing "hands up"? Do you immediately raise your hands in surrender when you hear any gunshot anywhere close? For example, right this moment, if I heard gunshots from down the hall, by the time the shooter got to my office he wouldn't see me. Even though he'd have "pulled his gun first" and I a far distant second, I will be behind cover and able to get off at least one shot before he knows I am there. That is, were I not in a place where it has been determined by others that I'd be safer if I didn't have the option of carrying a weapon of any kind. You know, like a school. Full of innocent defenseless targets.
And where exactly do you think the "dishonest" people get their pot? They get it from the black market, which is fed by the loophole infested legit market. If the legit market is reduced drastically, where exactly will the black market acquire all that pot? Ummm, wait, what "legit market"? I don't think the current medical pot market is where all the people get their pot. It seems there is a black market that finds ways of meeting the demand.
And where exactly do you think the "dishonest" people get their liquor? They get it from the black market, which is fed by the loophole infested legit market. If the legit market is reduced drastically, where exactly will the black market acquire all that pot? Umm, during prohibition, there was no "legit market" to feed the demand, moonshiners and rum runners stepped in, along with bathtub gin makers and organized crime. Prohibited meant "costs more, riskier to get", not actually unavailable.
And where exactly do you think the "dishonest" people get their methamphetamine? They get it from the black market, which is fed by the loophole infested legit market. If the legit market is reduced drastically, where exactly will the black market acquire all that methamphetamine? There is no legit market for meth, it's all from people who have stepped up to fill the demand.
But please don't let history cloud the argument with examples of the failure of prohibition-type laws. Please do believe that simply making one more law will make you safe in your home at night. That's exactly what the criminals want you to think, and they thank you for your support.
In recent memory, there is only one time a shooter wound up in a place that someone could actually legally carry a weapon to defend himself, and that was the shooter in the Clackamas Mall. All the other times they go to places where honest people are prohibited from carrying a gun to defend themselves. Why do you think that is? Why do you want to make it harder for people to defend themselves from the criminals who you cannot stop from getting and using guns?
And, as for the Clackamas shooting, perhaps you'd like to know that Oregon has no gun show loophole, so he wasn't stopped by having "just one more law". Nor was the death of the girl in Oregon City prevented by the lack of a loophole.
Seems reasonable. If you can afford the gun you should be able to afford to secure it.
If you can afford to take part of a day off work and drive to the polling place, you should be able to afford a fee to get a ballot. And, by God, if you're going to be able to read that ballot to select the candidate of your choice (or know the proposals you are voting on), you damn well ought to be able to pass a literacy test to prove you can.
Well regulated is also spelled out in the constitution, but those big words just don't register to a gun nut, do they.
"not infringed" are the words relevant to the right of gun ownership. "well regulated" applies to the militia that is one reason given for the existence of the right.
As a result, the vast majority of gun owners will follow such laws, which means the odds of an event like this would be lower by orders of magnitude.
The vast majority of gun owners already follow the laws. It's the people who have no intention of obeying the law that steal guns from other people who are obeying the law and then go out and kill others.
Killing other people is, like, a really bad felony, like, you know? Owning a clip that holds 11 rounds is like, well, maybe it will be a misdemeanor or something. People already own clips like that. Even 30 rounds. So these law abiding citizens will be immediately turned into criminals, and still have just as low a probability of going out on a killing spree as before any such law is passed. And those who want to go out on killing sprees will still have just as high a probability that they will do so after such a law is created.
As long as your argument is "a person who is going to kill others will stop when they realize it is now illegal to own or use the kind of gun they want to use to kill people", all the rest of us can do is shake our heads in disbelief at how little you understand human nature or the effects of adding new laws.
We should enforce the current ones, although getting rid of the gun show loophole is a good idea.
Right, because getting rid of the "gun show loophole" would have stopped the nut who walked into Clackamas Mall and started shooting people, and saved the life of the girl who was shot in Oregon City just a couple of days ago.
Ummm, wait a minute. Oregon has no "gun show loophole", so I guess closing the gun show loophole didn't really stop anything. Like it wouldn't have stopped the Newtown shooter from stealing guns from someone and killing people.
"Just one more law will keep us safe." Make it a bumper sticker, paste it on your car next to the "World Peace NOW" and "Unicorns live in my garden" stickers. Maybe you can make it come true.
If the world is going to end tomorrow, I want to see that announcement on slashdot, gizmodo, engadget, and every other tech blog.
You win the second place "how much hyperbole can I use in an argument" award. First place was won earlier today by someone who claimed that the level of political correctness had reached a level that made the Spanish Inquisition look preferable.
Chicken and egg. Tech sites get readers because they do tech news. That's how they cater to the desires of their readers. That's the only way they know the desires of their readers.
Moreover, people who focus mostly on tech in their day to day lives will generally have better resources to blog, post or whatever on tech specialty sites. If they instead go to a site they don't normally visit much, because a particular event has happened and that event is being covered there, they don't have those same resources. It's perfectly natural for people to want to post where they already know who at least some of the trolls are, how to do bold face or italics, and where they have an existing ID, or other options such as AC.
This is the "I am going to post off-topic material here because I know how to post here" argument that was (is still?) very common on Usenet. "I'm going to post my question about lisp to this perl newsgroup because I already know the people here and don't know how to get my newsreader to search for any group with the word 'lisp' in it. And I don't want to have to read a whole other newsgroup just to get an answer..."
No, and presumably neither do you. So you're free to go to the political site if wish, and navigate away from a tech site that's trying to cover "politics" (actually breaking events). What's your problem with that?
It's a waste of time for someone to go to a tech site and be presented with off-topic material that can be better found elsewhere. If someone wants that material, there are plenty of places they can go that are better suited for it and it won't get in the way of the purpose of the tech site.
I.e., I came to the tech site for tech info. Getting useless info that isn't tech related is a waste of the user's time.
If anything the people reading the tech sites for breaking events will reduce the load on the political server sites that you want to visit.
I don't care about the load on webservers that I don't want to visit.
This is the "someone else is doing something stupid so we have to do something stupid, too" argument. Sorry, isn't effective.
Makes me wonder what, if any, special expertise they have in covering politics.
And this is the "if they don't understand everything well, they can't understand anything well" argument. I think we all know enough people who are technologically brilliant but social and political morons to ever believe this.
That xkcd does not include instructions on how to make such a bomb. It doesn't mention black powder at all, or ball bearings.
It is also quite incorrect. It claims that a consumer-grade cooker won't go above 2 atm. That's patently absurd. If you block the exit and the safety valve fails, the pressure can easily reach a level that the metal will burst.
But that's if the safety valve fails. Well, the best course of action in any operation is to never assume that the safety valve will work properly and to never push the envelope where it has to work to keep you alive.
Even if the safety valve functions, the hole it opens is limited in size. If the amount of heat being applied creates the pressure more rapidly than it can be released by the safety valve, you still get enough pressure to rupture the vessel. Using black powder as the pressure generation source would most likely create enough pressure fast enough, and if one of those ball bearing happened to block the safety valve hole, you suddenly have no safety valve.
Along with assuming the safety valve functions properly, there is the assumption that the pressure vessel has not been compromised. Stress fractures or damage to the vessel can create a weakness that can rupture.
And that, dear reader, means that the worst that can happen in a normal kitchen is that it can, indeed, explode and kill you.
The idea that tech blogs can cover stories about tech, but should leave coverage of serious political and human issues to the "big boys" of traditional media, is ridiculous.
Right. But the idea that tech blogs should stick to tech stuff isn't. People categorize information because it helps them manage the information overload of their daily lives. I go to tech sites to read about tech things. When I want politics, if ever, I go to a political site. When I want entertainment news, if ever, I go to an entertainment website.
This categorization of information works very well and helps reduce clutter and overload. It also allows specialization in coverage. Tech blog writers have no special credentials for politics or entertainment news, so why should they pretend they are the best source of information about either? And why should a tech website be wasting bandwidth/storage/author time covering something that is being covered better somewhere else where those who want such coverage can easily find it themselves?
It's not like people who read tech blogs are incapable of going to general news sites when they want general news, is it? Do technical people have some limit on how well they can navigate the net?
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that a
land snail lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they
call it a land snail, anyway?!
Do you have any idea what the queers are doing to the soil?
That actually could be done. The test box DOES have a knob that moves the glideslope (and localizer too) from full up to full down and anywhere in between.
You are missing the difference. In DH2 the bad guys moved the ILS APPROACH up and down without changing the slope. YOU are talking about moving the glideslope NEEDLE in the aircraft up and down. Those are two different things. One can be done, the other cannot.
International students indeed pay themselves. They always pay out-of-state rate and cannot qualify for state resident status no matter how many years they lived there.
You have some incorrect information here. When I went to grad school, any grad student who was getting stipend money was considered in-state for tuition costs. The thought was, we're paying them a stipend so they can live while going to school, and if we charge them out of state rates we'll just have to increase the stipend so they can live. It's foolish to charge a higher tuition rate and then just hand them more money to cover it. That may have changed, but it does cancel the claim "they always".
Why does it matter so much where someone was born?
It doesn't.
It matters if they are here legally or not. And if they entered legally, what conditions were put upon the entry permit and/or what legal justification was used for entry.
Example: someone who isn't here now and cannot qualify for immigration/work any other way enters through the H1B visa program. When that visa expires, they need to go home like they agreed to do when they got the visa in the first place. Nobody would argue that Brazil was wrong for trying to throw me out when I gained entry to Brazil on a tourist visa and then overstayed that visa and tried to get a job. Why is it an issue when it happens in the US?
It's questionable whether there would be someone to fill that exact role.
Very few jobs are totally unique and very few employees are irreplaceable. Especially at a salary of $50k. At worst, a short period of OJT would bring anyone skilled in the field up to the specifics.
It's also highly questionable whether said fictional person would be a better role model.
You did not read what I wrote, or did not understand it. I used the phrase "one of them damn foreigners comin' here to take our jobs" to indicate a person who says that, and someone who says that will ALWAYS find a local person to be a better role model than "one of them damn foreigners."
Slashdot Mirror
It costs tMobile money to make no interest loans.
That's not the reason. The reason is simple: if you cancel service there is no longer any reasonable collateral for the loan on the phone. It is not reasonable for them to have to send someone out to your home to repossess a cell phone. It is very simple for them to turn your service off until you pay your loan. That will be enough stick for most people.
If you've already turned your service off, they have no stick to enforce the loan.
As for this being a contract, it is NOT an annual contract, it is not a contract for phone service. It is a LOAN contract, which you can either accept or not when you get service. You don't have to keep the phone service, and there is no early termination fee for cancelling. YOU have agreed to pay off the phone loan if you cancel your phone service, but you don't have to take a loan to start with, and it seems quite logical and common sense that if you get a phone from someone that you have to pay them for it.
So it is a silly metaphor then:
It isn't a metaphor of any kind. It's an analogy. A very appropriate one, if you think the constitution means something.
A small additional one to help reduce the harm you might do to others exercising that right isn't anything new, sinister, or unconstitutional.
That extra cost you are so willing to put upon others will do absolutely NOTHING to make anyone safer from my guns. Zip. It's a fee being applied for the privilege of exercising a right, nothing more, and it is intended as an end-run around the constitution just as poll taxes and literacy tests were.
Personally I think you guys get way too hung up on protecting rights that most of the world doesn't even agree are rights at all,
I care not a whit what "most of the world" thinks about what rights I shouldn't have. I didn't vote for their governments, and they didn't vote for mine, at least they didn't do it legally. They didn't have relatives who died in wars defending the US Constitution, so they can be quite glib in telling others what rights they don't have. Their free opinion about what rights I should have is worth every penny I paid for it. And when I start telling them what rights their governments should take away from them, you can come talk to me about the problem. Until then, a Ugandan saying "you shouldn't have the right to keep and bear arms" to me can keep his opinion to himself.
I'm sick of this unbelievably shitty argument being used. That's like saying that people use stolen cars to commit crimes, so why bother having drivers licenses or registering cars?
No, it is nothing like saying that. Driver's licenses deal with the legal user of the vehicle, as does registration. Neither is intended to stop people from stealing cars and using them in crimes.
It would be like saying that people steal cars and use them to commit crimes so we need a law making low tire pressure illegal. Or since most cars have four wheels and those models are the ones being used to commit crimes then we should make it illegal to own or sell a car with four wheels. Oh, my, God, a SUV was used in a bank robbery! Ban SUVs!
"Will a criminal ignore this" is NEVER a good test of a law, because NO law would EVER pass that test.
That's not the whole story here, and you know it. The test is not just "will a criminal ignore this law", but "is there already a law that is being broken that is being ignored?" If you want to stop people from doing something that is currently legal, then a new law may be appropriate, with consideration of whether what you want to stop really needs to be stopped.
If you want to stop people from doing something that is ALREADY ILLEGAL, and creating a new law will only put limits on law abiding citizens who have a right to do what you want to limit, and you know that the criminals are already ignoring half a dozen laws in the books intended to stop what you want to stop, then absolutely the point that criminals will just ignore this law too is valid. In fact, it should be the death knell for that new law.
The only test of whether a new law should pass is "will this do more harm than good", with "harm" being defined as false-positives, extra regulation, time wasting, side-effects, court costs, bureaucracy, etc., and "good" being "something the public actually wants".
Well, to deal with the last part first, as you already point out, NO law will stop a criminal who is already breaking the law in other ways, so none of these gun control laws will do "what the people want".
The only thing they WILL do is create false positives (for example, a new law about "large clips" will make me a criminal because I own one -- a false positive). They will be extra regulation. They will waste time. They will have side-effects (what if you forget to exempt police from these new laws, and how can turning a granny with a prohibited weapon in her closet into a criminal not be a bad side-effect?) They will increase costs and add bureaucracy.
In other words, every "harm" you list is true, and every "good" you list is non-existent. Thanks for making my point for me.
If everyone were using a digital (VoIP) phone, sure. However, the PSTN is 99% ANALOG. A 5ESS or DMS100 cannot service thousands of lines (i.e. "all of them") all at once.
That 99% analog is the wire from your house to the CO. Once at the CO, it hops the digital bandwagon and only gets back to analog at the destination CO, where it is put on a wire to the recipient.
The fact that a current CO switch could not handle all the pairs connected to at once it does not mean the problem is impossible to solve, only that the current hardware is built at a lower cost and lower capacity. A cost that the telco determines will provide adequate levels of service without wasting money building to 100% use.
I'm sorry. I'm not American. I understand what you're implying, but it just sounds silly.
The short version is, voting is a right and SCOTUS has already ruled that putting a tax or test on the ability to exercise it is unconstitutional, all the way down to the states. The parallel is, of course, putting a tax or fee or mandatory charge on another right (gun ownership) should be just as unconstitutional. It has never been ruled unconstitutional for the exercise of rights to cost money overall. For example, newspapers don't get their newsprint for free, and airtime still needs to be paid for. You still need to buy the gun and the ammunition, but a poll tax on that right would be clearly out of line.
This concept goes as far as, in some states, there is no sales tax on news media (newspapers, magazines, etc) because they are protected by the first amendment.
In fact, I'd be safe in saying that every incident was committed by someone who broke at least two laws. I'd go even further and claim without fear of proof to the contrary, that every incident was committed by someone who broke at least three laws.
Now, it would be an extraordinary claim to say that "incidents would be prevented by creating one more law". Do you have proof to back up that extraordinary claim, or should we assume that logic leads us to the reasonable conclusion that "one more law will not change things?"
The POTS (plain old telephone system, for the young whippersnappers) didn't have unlimited capacity to connect calls either. When many calls were in progress in an area, you could pick up the phone and hear the congestion tone right away.
That's in the days of computer phone switches. In the old days of mechanical relays, there were a fixed, limited number of dialtone generators (and first selectors -- the stepper that handled the first digit you dialed), so if local capacity was reached you just didn't get a dialtone right away.
You still hear this today, but usually after you dial. It's the fast busy signal. The fast busy means circuits are busy, try again. The slow busy means the destination line is busy. If you try a fast busy again right away, chances are good you'll get through, and you'll confuse the person who answers if you accuse them of being on the line when you called a minute ago.
Mother's Day was a big holiday for calling, so it was more likely to hear, or not hear, this happening then.
Law failed to stop [incident A] therefore law failed to stop any incidents.
No. Law failed to stop incidents A, B, C, and many others, so law will fail to stop all incidents. Further, law is already being broken so another law will be ignored, too. Quite logical, to everyone except anti-gun zealots.
If there are strickter gun laws, from whom exactly should that shooter steal a gun?
From someone who owns one. Or two. Or sells them. Or he'd buy one from someone who has stolen one from someone else, just like he can today.
Either the victim has no gun, nothing to steal then, no victim.
Do you mean that all I have to do is get rid of all my guns and nobody will ever come steal anything from me? No gun, nothing to steal, no victim?
Or the gun is in a safe ...
I don't think anyone will be carrying a safe in the back alley gun deals...
I'd like a law saying that unicorns exist. I'd like to be able to see one. All we need is just one more law and the impossible is real.
On top of that: how retarded is the idea that having a gun protects you from some attacker? Obviously he will pull his gun first. And then you are standing hands up, and your gun is pointless.
When I hear you break the window or door to enter my house to steal from me, you will find me with a cell phone in one hand, a 45 in the other. Your chances of being shot are considerably higher than if all I had was a cellphone and a pillow. You will know this before you break and enter and maybe not break and enter my house.
In a more general case, who says you are standing "hands up"? Do you immediately raise your hands in surrender when you hear any gunshot anywhere close? For example, right this moment, if I heard gunshots from down the hall, by the time the shooter got to my office he wouldn't see me. Even though he'd have "pulled his gun first" and I a far distant second, I will be behind cover and able to get off at least one shot before he knows I am there. That is, were I not in a place where it has been determined by others that I'd be safer if I didn't have the option of carrying a weapon of any kind. You know, like a school. Full of innocent defenseless targets.
And where exactly do you think the "dishonest" people get their liquor? They get it from the black market, which is fed by the loophole infested legit market. If the legit market is reduced drastically, where exactly will the black market acquire all that pot? Umm, during prohibition, there was no "legit market" to feed the demand, moonshiners and rum runners stepped in, along with bathtub gin makers and organized crime. Prohibited meant "costs more, riskier to get", not actually unavailable.
And where exactly do you think the "dishonest" people get their methamphetamine? They get it from the black market, which is fed by the loophole infested legit market. If the legit market is reduced drastically, where exactly will the black market acquire all that methamphetamine? There is no legit market for meth, it's all from people who have stepped up to fill the demand.
But please don't let history cloud the argument with examples of the failure of prohibition-type laws. Please do believe that simply making one more law will make you safe in your home at night. That's exactly what the criminals want you to think, and they thank you for your support.
In recent memory, there is only one time a shooter wound up in a place that someone could actually legally carry a weapon to defend himself, and that was the shooter in the Clackamas Mall. All the other times they go to places where honest people are prohibited from carrying a gun to defend themselves. Why do you think that is? Why do you want to make it harder for people to defend themselves from the criminals who you cannot stop from getting and using guns?
And, as for the Clackamas shooting, perhaps you'd like to know that Oregon has no gun show loophole, so he wasn't stopped by having "just one more law". Nor was the death of the girl in Oregon City prevented by the lack of a loophole.
Seems reasonable. If you can afford the gun you should be able to afford to secure it.
If you can afford to take part of a day off work and drive to the polling place, you should be able to afford a fee to get a ballot. And, by God, if you're going to be able to read that ballot to select the candidate of your choice (or know the proposals you are voting on), you damn well ought to be able to pass a literacy test to prove you can.
Well regulated is also spelled out in the constitution, but those big words just don't register to a gun nut, do they.
"not infringed" are the words relevant to the right of gun ownership. "well regulated" applies to the militia that is one reason given for the existence of the right.
As a result, the vast majority of gun owners will follow such laws, which means the odds of an event like this would be lower by orders of magnitude.
The vast majority of gun owners already follow the laws. It's the people who have no intention of obeying the law that steal guns from other people who are obeying the law and then go out and kill others.
Killing other people is, like, a really bad felony, like, you know? Owning a clip that holds 11 rounds is like, well, maybe it will be a misdemeanor or something. People already own clips like that. Even 30 rounds. So these law abiding citizens will be immediately turned into criminals, and still have just as low a probability of going out on a killing spree as before any such law is passed. And those who want to go out on killing sprees will still have just as high a probability that they will do so after such a law is created.
As long as your argument is "a person who is going to kill others will stop when they realize it is now illegal to own or use the kind of gun they want to use to kill people", all the rest of us can do is shake our heads in disbelief at how little you understand human nature or the effects of adding new laws.
We should enforce the current ones, although getting rid of the gun show loophole is a good idea.
Right, because getting rid of the "gun show loophole" would have stopped the nut who walked into Clackamas Mall and started shooting people, and saved the life of the girl who was shot in Oregon City just a couple of days ago.
Ummm, wait a minute. Oregon has no "gun show loophole", so I guess closing the gun show loophole didn't really stop anything. Like it wouldn't have stopped the Newtown shooter from stealing guns from someone and killing people.
"Just one more law will keep us safe." Make it a bumper sticker, paste it on your car next to the "World Peace NOW" and "Unicorns live in my garden" stickers. Maybe you can make it come true.
If the world is going to end tomorrow, I want to see that announcement on slashdot, gizmodo, engadget, and every other tech blog.
You win the second place "how much hyperbole can I use in an argument" award. First place was won earlier today by someone who claimed that the level of political correctness had reached a level that made the Spanish Inquisition look preferable.
Chicken and egg. Tech sites get readers because they do tech news. That's how they cater to the desires of their readers. That's the only way they know the desires of their readers.
Moreover, people who focus mostly on tech in their day to day lives will generally have better resources to blog, post or whatever on tech specialty sites. If they instead go to a site they don't normally visit much, because a particular event has happened and that event is being covered there, they don't have those same resources. It's perfectly natural for people to want to post where they already know who at least some of the trolls are, how to do bold face or italics, and where they have an existing ID, or other options such as AC.
This is the "I am going to post off-topic material here because I know how to post here" argument that was (is still?) very common on Usenet. "I'm going to post my question about lisp to this perl newsgroup because I already know the people here and don't know how to get my newsreader to search for any group with the word 'lisp' in it. And I don't want to have to read a whole other newsgroup just to get an answer..."
Lead balloon.
No, and presumably neither do you. So you're free to go to the political site if wish, and navigate away from a tech site that's trying to cover "politics" (actually breaking events). What's your problem with that?
It's a waste of time for someone to go to a tech site and be presented with off-topic material that can be better found elsewhere. If someone wants that material, there are plenty of places they can go that are better suited for it and it won't get in the way of the purpose of the tech site.
I.e., I came to the tech site for tech info. Getting useless info that isn't tech related is a waste of the user's time.
If anything the people reading the tech sites for breaking events will reduce the load on the political server sites that you want to visit.
I don't care about the load on webservers that I don't want to visit.
"Political and entertainment" sites (e.g. mainstream news outlets) cover tech news,
This is the "someone else is doing something stupid so we have to do something stupid, too" argument. Sorry, isn't effective.
Makes me wonder what, if any, special expertise they have in covering politics.
And this is the "if they don't understand everything well, they can't understand anything well" argument. I think we all know enough people who are technologically brilliant but social and political morons to ever believe this.
It is also quite incorrect. It claims that a consumer-grade cooker won't go above 2 atm. That's patently absurd. If you block the exit and the safety valve fails, the pressure can easily reach a level that the metal will burst.
But that's if the safety valve fails. Well, the best course of action in any operation is to never assume that the safety valve will work properly and to never push the envelope where it has to work to keep you alive.
Even if the safety valve functions, the hole it opens is limited in size. If the amount of heat being applied creates the pressure more rapidly than it can be released by the safety valve, you still get enough pressure to rupture the vessel. Using black powder as the pressure generation source would most likely create enough pressure fast enough, and if one of those ball bearing happened to block the safety valve hole, you suddenly have no safety valve.
Along with assuming the safety valve functions properly, there is the assumption that the pressure vessel has not been compromised. Stress fractures or damage to the vessel can create a weakness that can rupture.
And that, dear reader, means that the worst that can happen in a normal kitchen is that it can, indeed, explode and kill you.
The idea that tech blogs can cover stories about tech, but should leave coverage of serious political and human issues to the "big boys" of traditional media, is ridiculous.
Right. But the idea that tech blogs should stick to tech stuff isn't. People categorize information because it helps them manage the information overload of their daily lives. I go to tech sites to read about tech things. When I want politics, if ever, I go to a political site. When I want entertainment news, if ever, I go to an entertainment website.
This categorization of information works very well and helps reduce clutter and overload. It also allows specialization in coverage. Tech blog writers have no special credentials for politics or entertainment news, so why should they pretend they are the best source of information about either? And why should a tech website be wasting bandwidth/storage/author time covering something that is being covered better somewhere else where those who want such coverage can easily find it themselves?
It's not like people who read tech blogs are incapable of going to general news sites when they want general news, is it? Do technical people have some limit on how well they can navigate the net?
Many snails actually live under water.
Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! Everybody knows that a land snail lives in a hole in the ground! Why the hell do you think they call it a land snail, anyway?!
Do you have any idea what the queers are doing to the soil?
That actually could be done. The test box DOES have a knob that moves the glideslope (and localizer too) from full up to full down and anywhere in between.
You are missing the difference. In DH2 the bad guys moved the ILS APPROACH up and down without changing the slope. YOU are talking about moving the glideslope NEEDLE in the aircraft up and down. Those are two different things. One can be done, the other cannot.
International students indeed pay themselves. They always pay out-of-state rate and cannot qualify for state resident status no matter how many years they lived there.
You have some incorrect information here. When I went to grad school, any grad student who was getting stipend money was considered in-state for tuition costs. The thought was, we're paying them a stipend so they can live while going to school, and if we charge them out of state rates we'll just have to increase the stipend so they can live. It's foolish to charge a higher tuition rate and then just hand them more money to cover it. That may have changed, but it does cancel the claim "they always".
Why does it matter so much where someone was born?
It doesn't.
It matters if they are here legally or not. And if they entered legally, what conditions were put upon the entry permit and/or what legal justification was used for entry.
Example: someone who isn't here now and cannot qualify for immigration/work any other way enters through the H1B visa program. When that visa expires, they need to go home like they agreed to do when they got the visa in the first place. Nobody would argue that Brazil was wrong for trying to throw me out when I gained entry to Brazil on a tourist visa and then overstayed that visa and tried to get a job. Why is it an issue when it happens in the US?
It's questionable whether there would be someone to fill that exact role.
Very few jobs are totally unique and very few employees are irreplaceable. Especially at a salary of $50k. At worst, a short period of OJT would bring anyone skilled in the field up to the specifics.
It's also highly questionable whether said fictional person would be a better role model.
You did not read what I wrote, or did not understand it. I used the phrase "one of them damn foreigners comin' here to take our jobs" to indicate a person who says that, and someone who says that will ALWAYS find a local person to be a better role model than "one of them damn foreigners."