It starts with a bill in Congress. That bill must pass each house of Congress with a supermajority. Then the proposed amendment goes before the state legislatures. When three-fourths of the state legislatures ratify the amendment by simple majority, it becomes law.
There's another way involving a constitutional convention called by the states; it's never been used.
It's incredibly hard to amend the United States Constitution, by design.
The people behind Downhill Battle are pushing an agenda. You can't really take anything they say at face-value. You have to question everything they say.
This is no exception. Do not get your facts from Downhill Battle. Get your facts from sources that do not have any motive to distort the facts.
In several legal cases, courts have found that police have no obligation to protect any individual person from harm.
"Copcrimes.com?" Pass, thanks.
WTF is arrogant about knowing that it takes police over ten minutes to respond to a 911 call, while my gun can be in my hand in a matter of seconds?
The part where you jump to the conclusion that you're somehow implicitly as trustworthy as a uniformed law enforcement officer.
If I were planning on a rampage, pre-ban magazines are still available. Just more expensive.
Success!
You asserted a benefit from the existence of such limits.
I didn't assert it; I pointed out that it's self-evident. You were then obstinate, so I elaborated on what is already obvious to all. I'm sorry I didn't pull up as reputable a source as "copcrimes.com" with which to illustrate my point.
The minutes of the constitutional debates were not published for decades; if the doctrine of interpretation by "original intent" was in fact the intent of the founders, those records would have been made available eariler.
Yawn.
Interpretation via "original intent" leads immediately to reductio ad absurdum, since original intent was not the framer's original intent.
Please don't confuse being a colossal dumbass with being clever. You know damn well what's right and reasonable here, and you're just being a shit about it.
I am so utterly disinterested in your opinions at this point.
My right to self-defense is not lessened by the existence of professional police.
No. But the size of your personal arsenal is.
Especially when said police are neither legally required to come to my defense
You might want to look that one up and try again.
nor practically capable of protecting me as well as I can protect myself when armed.
Yeah. That's just the kind of arrogant snotballism that makes me want to hand you the keys to the magazine.
The fact that I am armed not only makes me safer, it makes my neighbors safer also.
We are not talking about the fact that you are armed. We have never been talking about the fact that you are armed. We are talking about the degree to which a legal limit on the size of pistol magazines is reasonable and appropriate. You are the one who decided to spin off into absolutes.
What benefits?
When you finally snap and go on your rampage, you'll be forced to stop and reload more often, giving your intended victims more of a chance to get out of harm's way. I'd call that a benefit.
Please cite evidence that the magazine ban - or the "assault weapon" ban in general - has had any impact on crime.
No. Because we are not talking about those things. We have never been talking about those things. We are talking about legal limits on the size of pistol magazines and that is all.
I suggest you research the meaning of that phrase.
Please try to find a reference to a site that is not obviously pushing an agenda before posting a link, okay? The page you linked is the steamiest, stinkiest crock of horse manure I've seen in a long time.
Hint: one does not interpret the Constitution by pulling out a fucking dictionary. One does so by being as familiar as possible with the intent of the men who wrote the words.
Fucking Internet. Fucking, fucking Internet. Can't even spread a good urban legend any more. Every time you try, the subject of the damn rumor pops up and starts spouting all kinds of unnecessary facts!
I hate the fucking Internet. It's taken all the fun out of a well-crafted lie.
Wow. That argument was completely and utterly without merit. That's quite an accomplishment. I mean, hell, even the worst argument usually has a certain element of reason in it; it usually has some aspect that makes a kind of sense, if you sort of squint and hold your mouth just right. But not this time. This time, there's just nothin' there that a reasonable person can take seriously.
It's crap like this that makes me question my faith in democracy.
No. Legislative power belongs in the hands of the legislature. Our representatives in the House of Representatives are directly elected; they are our direct representatives in Washington. They have the power to make the laws.
The President is not directly elected. He is elected through an Electoral College system. He does not have the power to make laws.
(The Senate is kind of in limbo right now, ever since the 17th amendment was passed. Sooner or later we're going to collectively see the error of our ways and repeal that little item.)
A line-item or partial veto would be grossly unconstitutional, and a really terrible idea to boot.
Personally I don't think they should be able to attach extra, unrelated riders to any bill anyway.
Such an arbitrary restriction could never be enforced. Who decides what's related and what's unrelated?
It's a bit hard to imagine a SOHO that needs a file server and doesn't have an ADSL gateway server/PC
Beg pardon? I've been in this business for a while now, and I'm not even sure what an "ADSL gateway server/PC" is. I'd have to say that it's quite easy to imagine the absence of one, since I've never heard of one.
where to do you backup those 100 or so GB of data when you can't connect a tape drive to the widget?
Google NDMP.
Besides, tape is pretty much dead for these sorts of applications. The cost per gigabyte of disk storage is incredibly cheap compared to the costs in hardware, software, and above all administration costs of some kind of Rube Goldberg tape solution. It's far more cost-effective to just have a backup NAS available somewhere on the Internet. No muss, no fuss.
Okay, you got me. Although I question your ability to do it in 2 minutes. Mounting the drive is not enough; you also have to make it available on the network via AFP, SMB, FTP, et cetera.
But setting that aside, try this trick: do what you just described in an environment like a small office where no server presently exists.
It's already there. It's called an autorelease pool, and it's used extensively throughout Foundation Kit.
Instantiate an object, then send that object an autorelease message. (Or use a factory method to get an object instance; same thing.) When the pointer to that object goes out of scope, like at the end of the calling block, the object is automatically deallocated.
Sure, they CAN do hair - Monsters Inc was the proving ground for that
Several years before Monsters Inc. there was a not-too-successful Disney project called Mighty Joe Young. Most of the shots of the gorilla were animatronic, but there were also many CGI shots.
Go back and watch it. You'll be surprised. Yes, it was all CGI fur, and no, nobody really noticed. It looked that good.
Alas, I can only buy new magazines that hold 10 rounds.
Ain't that just a kick in the head?
See, my dear friend, the thing is that you are not a trained and uniformed member of a law enforcement organization. You are, therefore, not entitled to be as thoroughly armed as those fine citizens. Because we, the vox populi, do not trust you as much as we trust badge-carrying members of our local garrison.
It seems that you've had a run in with a criminal
Guess again.
Sorry, but if it's prudent for police officers to have more than 10 rounds on tap, it's prudent for me to also.
I'm gonna go right ahead and call bullshit on this once again. It's a specious argument, ridiculous on its face. You're not fooling anybody.
This is about one thing and one thing only: your personal desire to pop off a dozen rounds or more on the practice range without having to stop to reload. I, as I explained, do not give a shit about this. The benefits of limiting civilians to ten rounds per magazine outweigh any inconvenience on your part.
The implications of only being allowed to carry 11 rounds in your Glock instead of 14 on the size of your penis, your testosterone level, or your overall fitness as a male specimen are not my problem.
The Constitution calls for a well regulated militia. Welcome to the "well regulated" part of that particular edict.
It was spelled out pretty clear in the beginning by all pro-gun groups (and the President) that they wanted a clean bill.
That's not how things work in a republic. To get a little, you have to get a little. You can't just dictate public policy as if by the divine right of kings.
Go crack a history book sometime. The strength of this nation is that it was founded on compromise. Compromise is the only path to a just government. Without compromise, we're faced with the prospect of suffering under the tyranny of the majority.
And as for your objections to the 10-round limit, let me say this: I do not give two shits. I do not base this opinion on time spent on a rifle range; I have an entirely different and more personal level of experience with the capacity of a weapon's magazine. And I can say with a clear conscience that I honestly could not give a damn about your personal convenience. The fact that you have to stop to reload twice as often while squeezing off practice rounds doesn't matter one bit to me, because the greater good is self-evident.
And don't give me that "it's my constitutional right" bullshit, either. Only the most naive person believes that rights are absolute. If you want to invoke the 2nd amendment, do it in the correct context: a well-armed citizenry is the ultima ratio regum. If you're worried, seriously worried, about the possibility of being pressed into armed revolt against a tyrannical government, then might I humbly suggest that you do something about it, rather than whining about entirely appropriate legal limits on firearm magazine capacities.
Slashdot Mirror
Once you understand this, it's easy to see what the RIAA is doing: They're trying to shut down iTunes.
You're out of your mind. If the RIAA members wanted to shut down iTunes, they would simply withdraw their works from the iTunes catalog.
Instead, the iTunes catalog is growing week by week.
You're completely nuts. You're a paranoid freak with delusions of your own grandeur.
It starts with a bill in Congress. That bill must pass each house of Congress with a supermajority. Then the proposed amendment goes before the state legislatures. When three-fourths of the state legislatures ratify the amendment by simple majority, it becomes law.
There's another way involving a constitutional convention called by the states; it's never been used.
It's incredibly hard to amend the United States Constitution, by design.
The people behind Downhill Battle are pushing an agenda. You can't really take anything they say at face-value. You have to question everything they say.
This is no exception. Do not get your facts from Downhill Battle. Get your facts from sources that do not have any motive to distort the facts.
Plus, they can deliver it to you any way they want: teletype, microfiche, or Morse Code.
No, it has to be machine-readable.
In several legal cases, courts have found that police have no obligation to protect any individual person from harm.
"Copcrimes.com?" Pass, thanks.
WTF is arrogant about knowing that it takes police over ten minutes to respond to a 911 call, while my gun can be in my hand in a matter of seconds?
The part where you jump to the conclusion that you're somehow implicitly as trustworthy as a uniformed law enforcement officer.
If I were planning on a rampage, pre-ban magazines are still available. Just more expensive.
Success!
You asserted a benefit from the existence of such limits.
I didn't assert it; I pointed out that it's self-evident. You were then obstinate, so I elaborated on what is already obvious to all. I'm sorry I didn't pull up as reputable a source as "copcrimes.com" with which to illustrate my point.
The minutes of the constitutional debates were not published for decades; if the doctrine of interpretation by "original intent" was in fact the intent of the founders, those records would have been made available eariler.
Yawn.
Interpretation via "original intent" leads immediately to reductio ad absurdum, since original intent was not the framer's original intent.
Please don't confuse being a colossal dumbass with being clever. You know damn well what's right and reasonable here, and you're just being a shit about it.
I am so utterly disinterested in your opinions at this point.
That is how many times you can burn a static playlist. Don't ask me why.
To make it inconvenient to mass-produce CD's from iTunes.
My right to self-defense is not lessened by the existence of professional police.
No. But the size of your personal arsenal is.
Especially when said police are neither legally required to come to my defense
You might want to look that one up and try again.
nor practically capable of protecting me as well as I can protect myself when armed.
Yeah. That's just the kind of arrogant snotballism that makes me want to hand you the keys to the magazine.
The fact that I am armed not only makes me safer, it makes my neighbors safer also.
We are not talking about the fact that you are armed. We have never been talking about the fact that you are armed. We are talking about the degree to which a legal limit on the size of pistol magazines is reasonable and appropriate. You are the one who decided to spin off into absolutes.
What benefits?
When you finally snap and go on your rampage, you'll be forced to stop and reload more often, giving your intended victims more of a chance to get out of harm's way. I'd call that a benefit.
Please cite evidence that the magazine ban - or the "assault weapon" ban in general - has had any impact on crime.
No. Because we are not talking about those things. We have never been talking about those things. We are talking about legal limits on the size of pistol magazines and that is all.
I suggest you research the meaning of that phrase.
Please try to find a reference to a site that is not obviously pushing an agenda before posting a link, okay? The page you linked is the steamiest, stinkiest crock of horse manure I've seen in a long time.
Hint: one does not interpret the Constitution by pulling out a fucking dictionary. One does so by being as familiar as possible with the intent of the men who wrote the words.
How many uses for a petabyte of ram can anyone really justify in the next 10 years?
That's not the relevant question. The relevant question is, how many uses for 16,384 petabytes of RAM can you think of?
(2^64 = 16,384 * 2^50)
I haven't been keeping track or anything, but I'd say it passed the one million mark a long time ago.
Fucking Internet. Fucking, fucking Internet. Can't even spread a good urban legend any more. Every time you try, the subject of the damn rumor pops up and starts spouting all kinds of unnecessary facts!
I hate the fucking Internet. It's taken all the fun out of a well-crafted lie.
Wow. That argument was completely and utterly without merit. That's quite an accomplishment. I mean, hell, even the worst argument usually has a certain element of reason in it; it usually has some aspect that makes a kind of sense, if you sort of squint and hold your mouth just right. But not this time. This time, there's just nothin' there that a reasonable person can take seriously.
It's crap like this that makes me question my faith in democracy.
Dude, I don't know which "business" is that, but "ADSL gateway server" (or PC if you're short on cash) is described in every ADSL How-To's.
Ah. Well, that explains it then. I tend to stay away from the hobbyist stuff. Pardon me.
Line Item Veto is definately the RIGHT idea.
No. Legislative power belongs in the hands of the legislature. Our representatives in the House of Representatives are directly elected; they are our direct representatives in Washington. They have the power to make the laws.
The President is not directly elected. He is elected through an Electoral College system. He does not have the power to make laws.
(The Senate is kind of in limbo right now, ever since the 17th amendment was passed. Sooner or later we're going to collectively see the error of our ways and repeal that little item.)
A line-item or partial veto would be grossly unconstitutional, and a really terrible idea to boot.
Personally I don't think they should be able to attach extra, unrelated riders to any bill anyway.
Such an arbitrary restriction could never be enforced. Who decides what's related and what's unrelated?
It's a bit hard to imagine a SOHO that needs a file server and doesn't have an ADSL gateway server/PC
Beg pardon? I've been in this business for a while now, and I'm not even sure what an "ADSL gateway server/PC" is. I'd have to say that it's quite easy to imagine the absence of one, since I've never heard of one.
where to do you backup those 100 or so GB of data when you can't connect a tape drive to the widget?
Google NDMP.
Besides, tape is pretty much dead for these sorts of applications. The cost per gigabyte of disk storage is incredibly cheap compared to the costs in hardware, software, and above all administration costs of some kind of Rube Goldberg tape solution. It's far more cost-effective to just have a backup NAS available somewhere on the Internet. No muss, no fuss.
Okay, you got me. Although I question your ability to do it in 2 minutes. Mounting the drive is not enough; you also have to make it available on the network via AFP, SMB, FTP, et cetera.
But setting that aside, try this trick: do what you just described in an environment like a small office where no server presently exists.
Garbage collection for Cocoa?
It's already there. It's called an autorelease pool, and it's used extensively throughout Foundation Kit.
Instantiate an object, then send that object an autorelease message. (Or use a factory method to get an object instance; same thing.) When the pointer to that object goes out of scope, like at the end of the calling block, the object is automatically deallocated.
10.1: free to anybody who had 10.0.
10.2: $129
10.3: $129
Is 2 an odd number?
It takes 5 minutes to setup? Adding a 250GB HDD to existing Windows or Linux server also takes five minutes and it can be done and at a lower price.
How you can pull that off without taking the server down is quite a trick. Care to post details of the procedure?
My time has value to me. If I can build it myself for $1500 and a Saturday or buy it for $2000 (I made that number up), I'll probably just buy it.
I'll bet there are a lot of people like me out there. People who buy instant pancake mix and microwave burritos.
You're thinking of robusta, not robust.
Silly rabbit.
Sure, they CAN do hair - Monsters Inc was the proving ground for that
Several years before Monsters Inc. there was a not-too-successful Disney project called Mighty Joe Young. Most of the shots of the gorilla were animatronic, but there were also many CGI shots.
Go back and watch it. You'll be surprised. Yes, it was all CGI fur, and no, nobody really noticed. It looked that good.
Iraq was a republic. North Korea is a republic. China is a republic.
Wow. That's the worst misuse of a word based on a careless dictionary reading I've ever seen.
There's a little more to a republic than the title of the head of state, my little friend.
Alas, I can only buy new magazines that hold 10 rounds.
Ain't that just a kick in the head?
See, my dear friend, the thing is that you are not a trained and uniformed member of a law enforcement organization. You are, therefore, not entitled to be as thoroughly armed as those fine citizens. Because we, the vox populi, do not trust you as much as we trust badge-carrying members of our local garrison.
It seems that you've had a run in with a criminal
Guess again.
Sorry, but if it's prudent for police officers to have more than 10 rounds on tap, it's prudent for me to also.
I'm gonna go right ahead and call bullshit on this once again. It's a specious argument, ridiculous on its face. You're not fooling anybody.
This is about one thing and one thing only: your personal desire to pop off a dozen rounds or more on the practice range without having to stop to reload. I, as I explained, do not give a shit about this. The benefits of limiting civilians to ten rounds per magazine outweigh any inconvenience on your part.
The implications of only being allowed to carry 11 rounds in your Glock instead of 14 on the size of your penis, your testosterone level, or your overall fitness as a male specimen are not my problem.
The Constitution calls for a well regulated militia. Welcome to the "well regulated" part of that particular edict.
It was spelled out pretty clear in the beginning by all pro-gun groups (and the President) that they wanted a clean bill.
That's not how things work in a republic. To get a little, you have to get a little. You can't just dictate public policy as if by the divine right of kings.
Some things are not worth compromising on.
Bullshit. Worst of all, it's arrogant bullshit.
Go crack a history book sometime. The strength of this nation is that it was founded on compromise. Compromise is the only path to a just government. Without compromise, we're faced with the prospect of suffering under the tyranny of the majority.
And as for your objections to the 10-round limit, let me say this: I do not give two shits. I do not base this opinion on time spent on a rifle range; I have an entirely different and more personal level of experience with the capacity of a weapon's magazine. And I can say with a clear conscience that I honestly could not give a damn about your personal convenience. The fact that you have to stop to reload twice as often while squeezing off practice rounds doesn't matter one bit to me, because the greater good is self-evident.
And don't give me that "it's my constitutional right" bullshit, either. Only the most naive person believes that rights are absolute. If you want to invoke the 2nd amendment, do it in the correct context: a well-armed citizenry is the ultima ratio regum. If you're worried, seriously worried, about the possibility of being pressed into armed revolt against a tyrannical government, then might I humbly suggest that you do something about it, rather than whining about entirely appropriate legal limits on firearm magazine capacities.