The issue is that they CLAIMED they had broken into her computer. They confessed to a crime. They can backpedal and claim that they did not actually break into her computer, but rather claimed that they had committed a crime in order to intimidate the victim... but that really doesn't make their case look much better. It is in the victims best interest to take their confession at face value and assume that they actually did commit the crime that they confessed and let them dig their own hole with the judge as they try to defend either the commission of the crime or the false representation of the commission of the crime.
If I say "I just killed your Father, John Doe, and now I shall kill you if you don't do what I want." and your father is actually missing, then I am in a pretty bad legal position even if I didn't actually kill your father.
I make it known to friends and relatives I will set up their new computers in exchange for taking their old ones off their hands... I transfer the data over, make sure it's configured, etc... then take my new cluster node home.:) I get some pretty nice systems this way, since running XP on less than 1 Ghz/512 MB ram is pretty painful nowdays people upgrade in droves.
I see benefit indirect benefit from nearly all non-malevolent acts in society. None of the perpetrators of those acts, save the government, send me a bill for those benefits. I believe strongly that if there isn't extremely strong evidence of a neccissary, or nearly so, benefit that cannot be had otherwise without extreme difficulty (fire protection, police protection, roads) then compulsory support of the act is immoral.
I do some very interesting research work that is beneficial to society. I could really use some new computers. Perhaps I should threaten you with the loss of liberty if you don't buy me some? I didn't think so. It's not moral regardless of the benefit to society.
Fire, police, roads, military... they fit into the moral neccessity end. Libraries I think used to, but don't in their current, obsolete form. perhaps another incarnation. Schools do, but I think they are a miserable failure in their current form. No way in hell do sports arenas fit into that category.. let the market decide how big of an arena we need, not the government. Hell, the movie industry isn't collapsing because the government doesn't pay for movie production, and if it was then it shouldn't be an industry because not enough people care.
That $5 that goes to improve the economy by padding the restaraunt and hotel chains downtown through indirect arena benefit is the same $5 that could have been spent improving my local latte stand's wallet, or my childs mind and the company whose product I choose, or some Katrina hurricane victim should I send it too them. That "indirect benefit" is simply wealth distribution from the burbs to a failing downtown area. There is a net loss to me because of the opportunity cost involved in the "benefit". There is always a net loss in taxation to the individual taxed unless that individual becomes "unfortunate" (read victim of fire, crime, invasion, disaster) and because of that should be kept at a minimum. Hell, even stashing money in giant piles in a savings account gives at least as much benefit as government spending due to the private sectors access to freer loan monies.
So, neither you nor myself will benefit from this project. I would bet you won't be benefiting from the light rail either. I can be reasonably assured of this because the amount of people who would benefit is the vast minority. Compare this to a system that adds roads. This capitalizes on 2 existing infrastructures, both automobiles and busses. So, by putting in more road instead of specialized track, we benefit the flexible mass transit system used by the vast majority (the automobile network) in addition to the less flexible and pre-existing mass transit system (busses)... not only that, we also give a nice boost to the commercial transportation sector. Everyone wins with that plan, and we aren't betting on a lifestyle change in order to make it work. In addition, the number one area of technological research for transportation is in vehicles compatible with existing roads, so we get the biggest kickbacks in the future too. I don't care how great of a pet technology you throw at the arguement... solutions that are highly compatible with existing infrastructure are the ones where your going to get the most bang for your buck. Soltions that benefit a small majority with the cool technology of the moment and little opportunity for future benefit shouldn't even be on the political drawing board (they belong in the research room and the politicians should remain blissfully ignorant of them lest they start writing checks).
Let's put the money into tech that is compatible, proven, and obviously needed. for instance, pulling traffic off the bridges by making 522 a high capacity freeway... bringing 509 to an interchange so that people actually use it... refurbishing and upgrading the capacity of 99... I'll bet any one of those 3 projects would cost less than any transit proposal being played around with (at the cost of hundreds of millions in research and preperations) and have more impact on *my* traffic issues, commercial traffic issues AND mass transit issues than all of the proposals put together. With the money saved we could expand the metro system for that minority that uses public transportation.
Hell, what say we talk real crazy like and open the bus tunnel we already bought? Or how about another 520 bridge so we can run 4 lanes either way like we did to 90 a few years back... Or highway 605 to take all the commercial through traffic out of the Seattle Metro area AND service the poor far-east siders whose traffic is REALLY bad. 605 has been on the drawing board for 20 years now but always loses out funding-wise to the hairbrained projects.
I have lived in Seattle for 20 years. Never once have I ever had to travel from Ballard to West Seattle or back;) Even if I did, I could make it in 20 minutes without external factors like you mention.
I have a car. It goes anywhere I want, flexibly, efficiently, and with no tight schedules. I can even get back home at 3am if I need to. Design me a transit system that can do that and we will talk. Until then it's just you asking me to pay you for something I will never use, that you cannot afford on your own. It's great that you want to increase your quality of life... what sucks is that you wish to do it at the expense of mine.
The monorail (and light rail) is not suitable "something" being done regardless of the load. The fact of the matter is, it is too "outside the box." Cars aren't going anywhere. I will always have a car and I will almost always prefer that to any other transportation because it efficiently gets me to where I need to go. I am in the majority. In the last couple weeks, what are my main routes?
1) 520 to Redmond 2) 5 to 90 to 405 to 169 to Maple Valley 3) 5 to 16 to 319 to Key Penninsula 4) 5 to Mount Vernon 5) 5 to 90 to 169 to 410 to 121 to Yakima
NONE of these routes can be serviced by anything on the books. For inter-city travel, the bus system is Awesome in Seattle. In addition, it requires little infrastructure changes over car traffic, so it lives nicely along side. However, the bus tunnel (the last massive transit spending project we are paying off still) is CLOSED?!? WTF? The monorail or light rail will only continue to service those routes already well serviced by busses. Do you honestly think that a large proportion of people opting to take busses will suddenly jump on a new system with LESS flexibility? How about, since cars aren't going anywhere we do something sane, like:
1) Repair/upgrade 99 to make it safe and increase the flow. Try extending it over Mercer's route as a controlled access freeway to meet up with 5 at the 520 junction.
2) Build 605, which has been on the drawing board for 20 years and would both draw the commercial traffic off 5 and 405 and service the truely bad traffic areas you don't hear about (Duvall, Maple Valley, North Bend, etc...) as well as giving an alternate N-S route for Bothell, Woodinville, Redmond, Everett. Seattle traffic is actually pretty good in Seattle proper... try commuting through Kirkland if you want to see bad traffic.
3) Extend 509. The best kept commuter secret in Seattle. Here we have a freeway the size of 405 that no one uses because it has no major interchanges. Extend over Queen Anne as part of the 99 refurbish and run it to 5 up in Kingston.
4) Finish the 16 bridge. That's a done deal and although not Seattle proper, will severely help the Pennensula-Seattle routes.
5) Make 522 a freeway. Come on, the hardest routes are across the water. We have a bridgeless beauty of a route that can handle almost no capacity in it's current incarnation... Lets make it bigger.
I live in Seattle. It's my tax dollars. On the above list, Yes, I use roads, yes I enjoy police protection (Seattle police needs a hell of alot of work, but that's another discussion), yes I want prisons and a judicial system, and fire. These are all wonderful things where my taxes do their part to better the community.
Public Education? The School system is abyssmal here. My tax dollars could be spent WAY better. I'd rather keep the tax money and fund my children's education myself.
Sporting events?!? Are you kidding? I should have my paycheck taken away and used to subsidize 50 million dollar salaries to play games? That was a joke right? My kids could use a new computer and educational software, but no... I think that money should be spent on the government sanctioned entertainment systems.
Public Museums and Libraries? Museums you might make a case for with me, but I doubt we would reach agreement. Libraries? Come on... waste of my money. There was a time when large collections of paper were useful... now we have the internet. Besides, the public library system can't hold a candle to a trip down to Suzallo/Allen here where they actually have books and periodicals you can't get on the internet or at a book store. Libraries are quickly becoming a thing of the past. However, a case might be made for the new no-book libraries that are springing up in the King-county system (there's one in Crossroads mall, Bellevue).
Taxes are used to first pay for things for the neccissary benefit of the community. The problem is they don't stop there. They keep raising them to pay for things that are progressively less neccissary and less beneficial. The end result being that I pay a hell of alot of money for the priviledge of not watching football and potentially a train that goes no where I want to go.
We seem to agree on nearly all points, with only minor variations on the theme. Your last paragraph is a rational discussion of why you believe that firearms are less of a factor of controling rights, but overall, it's a giant step backwards from your original post of "Oh God, another crazy on about MEN WITH GUNS forcing him to do things AT GUNPOINT by POINTING THEIR GUNS AT HIM. Oddly, these crazy people are usually very insistent on their own right to "defend" themselves with LETHAL FORCE" Now we both seem to agree that it is the threat of violence that gives government any power at all, and I hope you see that I, nor most of the crazies on my side of the arguement think that that is neccissarily a bad thing as it does counter the potential force of criminals and corporations. Personally I feel corporations are a bit easier to control than you probably do, but that's par for course as corps aren't imprisoning us just yet;) I just wanted to throw some rational debate from this side of the fence as it sounded like you hadn't seen any in a while:)
Just to give you a better scenario as to where I come from on the gun ownership debate, it really doesn't have to do much with personal protection (although that's not a bad side effect). Nor is it really a "rise up against the governemnt" thing, so I'll quote an older post of mine.
Of course no one is going to directly attack the US government with handguns. Of course that is silly.
The purpose of the armed populace is as a deterrent. [With an armed populace,] the government cannot suppress the population by force without armed conflict. Armed conflict causes dissent amongst the military, splitting it and leading to greater conflicts and eventually overthrowing the government by it's own military since militia siding with the oppressive government face hostile evironments even without direct conflict whereas the populaces militia is supplied and reinforced at every turn. Because this is such a stupid position for a government to get itself into, it would never do so as long as the populace remains armed. So the point of ownership is not to fight the US military head to head, but to ensure you never have to.
If you want a look at a true modern regime change [and see that they are not unheard of in modern times], look at the fall of the Soviet Union.
Anyway, I like to think that I'm not crazy... well, when it comes to my politics anyway.
I'd have to challenge your use of the Iraq war as an example here. This is a Republic, not a Democracy, therefore the polls vs. policy arguement is not supposed to work at all;) The fact that the government can and does do unpopular things is actually built into the system and not an example of it's breakdown.
I'd also have to disagree with your statement that the government grows larger because "the power elite rewards their own failures." On the contrary, I think the government grows larger because the populace, sickened by the failure of government, hands more power over to government in an attempt to help it not fail next time. Our political system has massice checks against government grabbing up more power, but when the populace starts handing it over voluntarily the problems begin.
I think you missed his point *COMPLETELY*. There is absolutely nothing wrong with *MEN WITH GUNS*. As you say yourself, compulsory law must be enforced. At the basis of that "enforcement" lies the only way, when you get right down to it, that you can enforce anything, and that is through the threat of violence, AKA guns. The issue is not with the fact that government has or even uses guns, as if they had no threat of force they would simply be a powerless entity amidst an anarchial society. His point is not that private corporations would have greater success given the ability to enforce compulsory behavior, but rather quite the contrary. Corporations have NO power to enforce anything. That is a good thing. Government has all the power it needs to enforce anything on the other hand, regardless of how silly it is. If the government says you can't eat chocolate on Sunday, they can MAKE you not eat chocolate on Sunday through the use of force. If Microsoft says you need to use Windows however, feel free to ignore them. Hence, his point is, do not empower the governmental side of things too much in order to "seve yourself" from the corporate side. A corporation weilding massive amounts of power is still fairly benign in it's abilities to affect your rights, whereas a government overly empowered when it gets a chip on it's shoulder is a very dangerous thing.
Defending myself with lethal force is another discussion entirely, but rather than being crazy, fits more into the principle of the individual being the smallest arm of government in a democratic republic, and is just another balancing factor in the large check-and-balance system we have to make sure everyone keeps their head screwed on straight. Like you said, laws are rarely enforced at gunpoint, but the threat must be maintained for the law to have any force, similarly individual freedom is rarely enforced at gunpoint, but removing the threat of force means that individual freedom becomes only a priviledge, not a right.
I love sane Canadians;) Down here the socialists look to Canada as a utopia. Not that Canada's a bad place or anything, but more people should be looking to our northerly neighbors with an eye on mistakes NOT to make. I heard the other day Alberta is polling 45% in favor of secession even... If we picked them up that would make our nice streamlined maps have this big wart on their back! We simply can't have that! So good luck to you guys and your politics, and here's to 1812.
OK, so you admit freely that George Bush knows more about what is in your best interest than you do. You hereby give up all your decision making power to politicians which will make the decisions for you because they are "for your own good".
Your viewpoint sickitates me. I sure hope you don't vote.
Voting is a right given to the populace through the threat of force. Force is the only mechanism by which to counter an external force. Without a force continuing to protect the rights of voting then voting becomes a temporary privilege allouwed the populace until it becomes inconvienient to the holders of the greatest force. This is the reason for the second amendment... to ensure that you can vote in the future. Unfortunately, many are willing to sacrifice rights for a small measure of safety and the possibility of voting in the future is uncertain if the trend continues.
In a situation where there is no "normal" authority, you have 2 choices: 1) Anarchy 2) You become the "normal" authority. If you are a citizen of the US, there are many laws (posse, militia, etc.) that allow you to do so, including ones to remove the local police from authority if they get in your way. If the established authority is either not in existance, or is operating illegally I would claim it is your duty to usurp such authority or non-existence of authority if you have the means and support to do so.
There are a few instances in NO where civilians armed themselves and set up temporary law and civil order to protect, feed and water their members. I would have to say that I SERIOUSLY admire such initiative over the typical victim mentality of whining about the non-existant governement at the time not supplying them with the neccessities of life. During a time of complete government breakdown, if a "normal" authority such as NO police walked into one of those encampments and ordered them to disarm or face resistance rather than working with an organized civilian group to further reestablish control, I'd rather they shoot the cop and keep doing what they are doing because the cop is in the wrong there. In such a situation the top authority is the group who is acting lawfully and has the greatest means to enforce such law.
:) I assumed C++. If your programming in C, then the "handle errors at the bottom" style is acceptable because you don't have classes and try...catch. I see *ALOT* of C++ written that way though, and it's a big no-no because destructors are a much cleaner and less error prone mechanism to make sure things get cleaned up properly and in the right order.
I would still question teaching goto in an introductory game. Even though goto is semantically simple, it's and extremely advanced concept and rarely ever used. I'd rather give them "for", "if..then..else" and a "gosub" type construct and let them use the basics to figure things out.
I'm introducing my 11 year old daughter to the concepts because she is very interested and I just threw scheme at her via the book "the little schemer" and she is having a wonderful time learning. They don't even give her "for" so she has to recur with function calls. With such a limited set to work with I think she may become better at functional deconstruction than I am because she is learning to use the stack exclusively rather than using branching as a crutch like I always have.
All branches in code are "just jumps". All branches in code are just goto in another form. Goto isn't inherently evil... it simply is too general and therefore allows you to do both "good" and "evil" branching practices. All the well accepted "good" branching practices have their own names, so therefore goto is in almost all cases bad if it is covering up for a branch structure that cannot be performed by it's simpler brethren (while, do...while, for, if...then...else, switch, throw...catch, break, continue, throw, virtual, and function_call...return), therefore the concept that goto is evil, because you are very likely using a poor practice when resorting to it. I have never run into a branch structure that does not fit into one of the standard branching instructions. I've THOUGHT I did before, but after reflection I always found a better way to structure the loop.
As for your example, I don't get it:// This would be clearer if I threw in a bunch of goto's if(-1 == f(s)) log(s);
or are you doing the old cleanup at the bottom of the function madness instead of a couple guard classes and logging in the catch like your supposed to?
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Stupid that you got troll for that. I smiled :)
Except for etc-update.... I live in fear of etc-update.
The issue is that they CLAIMED they had broken into her computer. They confessed to a crime. They can backpedal and claim that they did not actually break into her computer, but rather claimed that they had committed a crime in order to intimidate the victim... but that really doesn't make their case look much better. It is in the victims best interest to take their confession at face value and assume that they actually did commit the crime that they confessed and let them dig their own hole with the judge as they try to defend either the commission of the crime or the false representation of the commission of the crime.
If I say "I just killed your Father, John Doe, and now I shall kill you if you don't do what I want." and your father is actually missing, then I am in a pretty bad legal position even if I didn't actually kill your father.
I make it known to friends and relatives I will set up their new computers in exchange for taking their old ones off their hands... I transfer the data over, make sure it's configured, etc... then take my new cluster node home. :) I get some pretty nice systems this way, since running XP on less than 1 Ghz/512 MB ram is pretty painful nowdays people upgrade in droves.
I believe they spawn near or at the surface... which is where most of the scientific "hunters" have tried to catch glimpses.
I see benefit indirect benefit from nearly all non-malevolent acts in society. None of the perpetrators of those acts, save the government, send me a bill for those benefits. I believe strongly that if there isn't extremely strong evidence of a neccissary, or nearly so, benefit that cannot be had otherwise without extreme difficulty (fire protection, police protection, roads) then compulsory support of the act is immoral.
I do some very interesting research work that is beneficial to society. I could really use some new computers. Perhaps I should threaten you with the loss of liberty if you don't buy me some? I didn't think so. It's not moral regardless of the benefit to society.
Fire, police, roads, military... they fit into the moral neccessity end. Libraries I think used to, but don't in their current, obsolete form. perhaps another incarnation. Schools do, but I think they are a miserable failure in their current form. No way in hell do sports arenas fit into that category.. let the market decide how big of an arena we need, not the government. Hell, the movie industry isn't collapsing because the government doesn't pay for movie production, and if it was then it shouldn't be an industry because not enough people care.
That $5 that goes to improve the economy by padding the restaraunt and hotel chains downtown through indirect arena benefit is the same $5 that could have been spent improving my local latte stand's wallet, or my childs mind and the company whose product I choose, or some Katrina hurricane victim should I send it too them. That "indirect benefit" is simply wealth distribution from the burbs to a failing downtown area. There is a net loss to me because of the opportunity cost involved in the "benefit". There is always a net loss in taxation to the individual taxed unless that individual becomes "unfortunate" (read victim of fire, crime, invasion, disaster) and because of that should be kept at a minimum. Hell, even stashing money in giant piles in a savings account gives at least as much benefit as government spending due to the private sectors access to freer loan monies.
So, neither you nor myself will benefit from this project. I would bet you won't be benefiting from the light rail either. I can be reasonably assured of this because the amount of people who would benefit is the vast minority. Compare this to a system that adds roads. This capitalizes on 2 existing infrastructures, both automobiles and busses. So, by putting in more road instead of specialized track, we benefit the flexible mass transit system used by the vast majority (the automobile network) in addition to the less flexible and pre-existing mass transit system (busses)... not only that, we also give a nice boost to the commercial transportation sector. Everyone wins with that plan, and we aren't betting on a lifestyle change in order to make it work. In addition, the number one area of technological research for transportation is in vehicles compatible with existing roads, so we get the biggest kickbacks in the future too. I don't care how great of a pet technology you throw at the arguement... solutions that are highly compatible with existing infrastructure are the ones where your going to get the most bang for your buck. Soltions that benefit a small majority with the cool technology of the moment and little opportunity for future benefit shouldn't even be on the political drawing board (they belong in the research room and the politicians should remain blissfully ignorant of them lest they start writing checks).
Let's put the money into tech that is compatible, proven, and obviously needed. for instance, pulling traffic off the bridges by making 522 a high capacity freeway... bringing 509 to an interchange so that people actually use it... refurbishing and upgrading the capacity of 99... I'll bet any one of those 3 projects would cost less than any transit proposal being played around with (at the cost of hundreds of millions in research and preperations) and have more impact on *my* traffic issues, commercial traffic issues AND mass transit issues than all of the proposals put together. With the money saved we could expand the metro system for that minority that uses public transportation.
Hell, what say we talk real crazy like and open the bus tunnel we already bought?
Or how about another 520 bridge so we can run 4 lanes either way like we did to 90 a few years back... Or highway 605 to take all the commercial through traffic out of the Seattle Metro area AND service the poor far-east siders whose traffic is REALLY bad. 605 has been on the drawing board for 20 years now but always loses out funding-wise to the hairbrained projects.
I have lived in Seattle for 20 years. Never once have I ever had to travel from Ballard to West Seattle or back ;) Even if I did, I could make it in 20 minutes without external factors like you mention.
I have a car. It goes anywhere I want, flexibly, efficiently, and with no tight schedules. I can even get back home at 3am if I need to. Design me a transit system that can do that and we will talk. Until then it's just you asking me to pay you for something I will never use, that you cannot afford on your own. It's great that you want to increase your quality of life... what sucks is that you wish to do it at the expense of mine.
If they were serious about the traffic across the water they could make 522 a major route.
The monorail (and light rail) is not suitable "something" being done regardless of the load. The fact of the matter is, it is too "outside the box." Cars aren't going anywhere. I will always have a car and I will almost always prefer that to any other transportation because it efficiently gets me to where I need to go. I am in the majority. In the last couple weeks, what are my main routes?
1) 520 to Redmond
2) 5 to 90 to 405 to 169 to Maple Valley
3) 5 to 16 to 319 to Key Penninsula
4) 5 to Mount Vernon
5) 5 to 90 to 169 to 410 to 121 to Yakima
NONE of these routes can be serviced by anything on the books. For inter-city travel, the bus system is Awesome in Seattle. In addition, it requires little infrastructure changes over car traffic, so it lives nicely along side. However, the bus tunnel (the last massive transit spending project we are paying off still) is CLOSED?!? WTF? The monorail or light rail will only continue to service those routes already well serviced by busses. Do you honestly think that a large proportion of people opting to take busses will suddenly jump on a new system with LESS flexibility? How about, since cars aren't going anywhere we do something sane, like:
1) Repair/upgrade 99 to make it safe and increase the flow. Try extending it over Mercer's route as a controlled access freeway to meet up with 5 at the 520 junction.
2) Build 605, which has been on the drawing board for 20 years and would both draw the commercial traffic off 5 and 405 and service the truely bad traffic areas you don't hear about (Duvall, Maple Valley, North Bend, etc...) as well as giving an alternate N-S route for Bothell, Woodinville, Redmond, Everett. Seattle traffic is actually pretty good in Seattle proper... try commuting through Kirkland if you want to see bad traffic.
3) Extend 509. The best kept commuter secret in Seattle. Here we have a freeway the size of 405 that no one uses because it has no major interchanges. Extend over Queen Anne as part of the 99 refurbish and run it to 5 up in Kingston.
4) Finish the 16 bridge. That's a done deal and although not Seattle proper, will severely help the Pennensula-Seattle routes.
5) Make 522 a freeway. Come on, the hardest routes are across the water. We have a bridgeless beauty of a route that can handle almost no capacity in it's current incarnation... Lets make it bigger.
I live in Seattle. It's my tax dollars. On the above list, Yes, I use roads, yes I enjoy police protection (Seattle police needs a hell of alot of work, but that's another discussion), yes I want prisons and a judicial system, and fire. These are all wonderful things where my taxes do their part to better the community.
Public Education? The School system is abyssmal here. My tax dollars could be spent WAY better. I'd rather keep the tax money and fund my children's education myself.
Sporting events?!? Are you kidding? I should have my paycheck taken away and used to subsidize 50 million dollar salaries to play games? That was a joke right? My kids could use a new computer and educational software, but no... I think that money should be spent on the government sanctioned entertainment systems.
Public Museums and Libraries? Museums you might make a case for with me, but I doubt we would reach agreement. Libraries? Come on... waste of my money. There was a time when large collections of paper were useful... now we have the internet. Besides, the public library system can't hold a candle to a trip down to Suzallo/Allen here where they actually have books and periodicals you can't get on the internet or at a book store. Libraries are quickly becoming a thing of the past. However, a case might be made for the new no-book libraries that are springing up in the King-county system (there's one in Crossroads mall, Bellevue).
Taxes are used to first pay for things for the neccissary benefit of the community. The problem is they don't stop there. They keep raising them to pay for things that are progressively less neccissary and less beneficial. The end result being that I pay a hell of alot of money for the priviledge of not watching football and potentially a train that goes no where I want to go.
We seem to agree on nearly all points, with only minor variations on the theme. Your last paragraph is a rational discussion of why you believe that firearms are less of a factor of controling rights, but overall, it's a giant step backwards from your original post of "Oh God, another crazy on about MEN WITH GUNS forcing him to do things AT GUNPOINT by POINTING THEIR GUNS AT HIM. Oddly, these crazy people are usually very insistent on their own right to "defend" themselves with LETHAL FORCE" Now we both seem to agree that it is the threat of violence that gives government any power at all, and I hope you see that I, nor most of the crazies on my side of the arguement think that that is neccissarily a bad thing as it does counter the potential force of criminals and corporations. Personally I feel corporations are a bit easier to control than you probably do, but that's par for course as corps aren't imprisoning us just yet ;) I just wanted to throw some rational debate from this side of the fence as it sounded like you hadn't seen any in a while :)
Just to give you a better scenario as to where I come from on the gun ownership debate, it really doesn't have to do much with personal protection (although that's not a bad side effect). Nor is it really a "rise up against the governemnt" thing, so I'll quote an older post of mine.
Of course no one is going to directly attack the US government with handguns. Of course that is silly.
The purpose of the armed populace is as a deterrent. [With an armed populace,] the government cannot suppress the population by force without armed conflict. Armed conflict causes dissent amongst the military, splitting it and leading to greater conflicts and eventually overthrowing the government by it's own military since militia siding with the oppressive government face hostile evironments even without direct conflict whereas the populaces militia is supplied and reinforced at every turn. Because this is such a stupid position for a government to get itself into, it would never do so as long as the populace remains armed. So the point of ownership is not to fight the US military head to head, but to ensure you never have to.
If you want a look at a true modern regime change [and see that they are not unheard of in modern times], look at the fall of the Soviet Union.
Anyway, I like to think that I'm not crazy... well, when it comes to my politics anyway.
They all know what's best for us. That's their job!
Would people just stop quoting that stupid document! The Supreme Court ruled that thing irrelevant YEARS ago!
Go back to doing something that worked for hundreds of years? That's CRAZY TALK!
I'd have to challenge your use of the Iraq war as an example here. This is a Republic, not a Democracy, therefore the polls vs. policy arguement is not supposed to work at all ;) The fact that the government can and does do unpopular things is actually built into the system and not an example of it's breakdown.
I'd also have to disagree with your statement that the government grows larger because "the power elite rewards their own failures." On the contrary, I think the government grows larger because the populace, sickened by the failure of government, hands more power over to government in an attempt to help it not fail next time. Our political system has massice checks against government grabbing up more power, but when the populace starts handing it over voluntarily the problems begin.
I think you missed his point *COMPLETELY*. There is absolutely nothing wrong with *MEN WITH GUNS*. As you say yourself, compulsory law must be enforced. At the basis of that "enforcement" lies the only way, when you get right down to it, that you can enforce anything, and that is through the threat of violence, AKA guns. The issue is not with the fact that government has or even uses guns, as if they had no threat of force they would simply be a powerless entity amidst an anarchial society. His point is not that private corporations would have greater success given the ability to enforce compulsory behavior, but rather quite the contrary. Corporations have NO power to enforce anything. That is a good thing. Government has all the power it needs to enforce anything on the other hand, regardless of how silly it is. If the government says you can't eat chocolate on Sunday, they can MAKE you not eat chocolate on Sunday through the use of force. If Microsoft says you need to use Windows however, feel free to ignore them. Hence, his point is, do not empower the governmental side of things too much in order to "seve yourself" from the corporate side. A corporation weilding massive amounts of power is still fairly benign in it's abilities to affect your rights, whereas a government overly empowered when it gets a chip on it's shoulder is a very dangerous thing.
Defending myself with lethal force is another discussion entirely, but rather than being crazy, fits more into the principle of the individual being the smallest arm of government in a democratic republic, and is just another balancing factor in the large check-and-balance system we have to make sure everyone keeps their head screwed on straight. Like you said, laws are rarely enforced at gunpoint, but the threat must be maintained for the law to have any force, similarly individual freedom is rarely enforced at gunpoint, but removing the threat of force means that individual freedom becomes only a priviledge, not a right.
Haven't they burned that thing and outlawed the mention of it in polite society yet? That paper was so inconvienient. Glad to be rid of it!
/sarcasm
I love sane Canadians ;) Down here the socialists look to Canada as a utopia. Not that Canada's a bad place or anything, but more people should be looking to our northerly neighbors with an eye on mistakes NOT to make. I heard the other day Alberta is polling 45% in favor of secession even... If we picked them up that would make our nice streamlined maps have this big wart on their back! We simply can't have that! So good luck to you guys and your politics, and here's to 1812.
OK, so you admit freely that George Bush knows more about what is in your best interest than you do. You hereby give up all your decision making power to politicians which will make the decisions for you because they are "for your own good".
Your viewpoint sickitates me. I sure hope you don't vote.
Voting is a right given to the populace through the threat of force. Force is the only mechanism by which to counter an external force. Without a force continuing to protect the rights of voting then voting becomes a temporary privilege allouwed the populace until it becomes inconvienient to the holders of the greatest force. This is the reason for the second amendment... to ensure that you can vote in the future. Unfortunately, many are willing to sacrifice rights for a small measure of safety and the possibility of voting in the future is uncertain if the trend continues.
In a situation where there is no "normal" authority, you have 2 choices: 1) Anarchy 2) You become the "normal" authority. If you are a citizen of the US, there are many laws (posse, militia, etc.) that allow you to do so, including ones to remove the local police from authority if they get in your way. If the established authority is either not in existance, or is operating illegally I would claim it is your duty to usurp such authority or non-existence of authority if you have the means and support to do so.
There are a few instances in NO where civilians armed themselves and set up temporary law and civil order to protect, feed and water their members. I would have to say that I SERIOUSLY admire such initiative over the typical victim mentality of whining about the non-existant governement at the time not supplying them with the neccessities of life. During a time of complete government breakdown, if a "normal" authority such as NO police walked into one of those encampments and ordered them to disarm or face resistance rather than working with an organized civilian group to further reestablish control, I'd rather they shoot the cop and keep doing what they are doing because the cop is in the wrong there. In such a situation the top authority is the group who is acting lawfully and has the greatest means to enforce such law.
:) I assumed C++. If your programming in C, then the "handle errors at the bottom" style is acceptable because you don't have classes and try...catch. I see *ALOT* of C++ written that way though, and it's a big no-no because destructors are a much cleaner and less error prone mechanism to make sure things get cleaned up properly and in the right order.
I would still question teaching goto in an introductory game. Even though goto is semantically simple, it's and extremely advanced concept and rarely ever used. I'd rather give them "for", "if..then..else" and a "gosub" type construct and let them use the basics to figure things out.
I'm introducing my 11 year old daughter to the concepts because she is very interested and I just threw scheme at her via the book "the little schemer" and she is having a wonderful time learning. They don't even give her "for" so she has to recur with function calls. With such a limited set to work with I think she may become better at functional deconstruction than I am because she is learning to use the stack exclusively rather than using branching as a crutch like I always have.
All branches in code are "just jumps". All branches in code are just goto in another form. Goto isn't inherently evil... it simply is too general and therefore allows you to do both "good" and "evil" branching practices. All the well accepted "good" branching practices have their own names, so therefore goto is in almost all cases bad if it is covering up for a branch structure that cannot be performed by it's simpler brethren (while, do...while, for, if...then...else, switch, throw...catch, break, continue, throw, virtual, and function_call...return), therefore the concept that goto is evil, because you are very likely using a poor practice when resorting to it. I have never run into a branch structure that does not fit into one of the standard branching instructions. I've THOUGHT I did before, but after reflection I always found a better way to structure the loop.
// This would be clearer if I threw in a bunch of goto's
As for your example, I don't get it:
if(-1 == f(s)) log(s);
or are you doing the old cleanup at the bottom of the function madness instead of a couple guard classes and logging in the catch like your supposed to?