It's not ignorance though. I know exactly what the constitution is. I simply have a different perspective on it, because I wasn't brought up with it as a near-religious relic.
But that's lot logically different from prohibition era people saying you shouldn't drink alcohol because it's the law. The constitution just being a form of law, but with higher hurdles to change. It's just a restatement of the law, it's irrelevant to the debate of whether alcohol SHOULD be available.
The Constitution has lasted a long time (unlike its predecessors and some contemporary constitutions in other nations) because it was designed around fundamental insights into human nature. Insights that in most cases remain true today.
Actually I'd say it's more true to say the nature of US citizens has been moulded by the constitution rather than the other way around. Remember that article a couple of weeks ago that said US citizens are about the worst people to do psychological studies on, because they were so unusual? They tend to be outliers on the bell curve.
Well it occurs to me that a lot of the differences might be explained by the US citizen's almost religious belief in a document that no one else in the world shares. It isn't designed around human nature - it's just become intertwined with the American way of seeing things.
Unless I have been misreading your posts, you have been advocating legislating away the second amendment WITHOUT going through the amendment process, which is colloquially known in our country as "unconstitutional".
I've not done anything like that. Why don't you just read what my posts say rather than trying to fit them into some particular argument you want to have.
Then don't point me to a Wikipedia article that presents various theories about what collection of documents might be considered a constitution. Point me to the actual constitution. The document.
There isn't one.
For sure they talk about constitutional law. But that just means laws, agreements and understandings about how the democracy, the law, the monarchy and such like institutions run. There are no fundamental principles written down anywhere. There's nothing analogous to the US constitution.
Oh, I have no problem with the process for amendment of the constitution. As you say it's a legal document, and there are legal processes to change it.
My post was simply directed at idiots that talk about the constitution as if it were a religious document. As if things should be a particular way BECAUSE it's in the constitution. In reality that's no different from saying a thing should be a particular way because that's the law. In both cases it overlooks the opportunity for change.
No, what should have stopped Adam Lanza is the same thing that should have stopped Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech - recognition of his condition by authority figures, and appropriate action taken therein.
What exactly are you suggesting doing with people with Asperger's Syndrome?
Do you not see the danger of just deciding one day that we no longer need to follow a provision of the constitution?
Given that I come from a country that doesn't have one, and gets along just fine, no. A democracy doesn't need a constitution. If a democracy says that something is right now, than that's more valid than some people in the 1780s thinking something was right for them.
How about recognising that your constitution was not written by God and brought down from the mountain by Moses. Nor is it a universal truth of the physical world discovered by mathematicians or scientists.
What it is is a bunch of rules that a few men in the 1780s thought were good ideas. Written for the experience that they had of the world in the 1780s. (The American Revolution, the emergence from being a colony, primitive policing, and no standing army.)
Times change. Smart people adapt, ignorant people cling on to the past.
We should outlaw everything that has no "purpose" and only dangers. Let's start with extreme sports, there's exactly zero reason why you should freeclimb that mountain because there's a road up there, ya know?
There's a big difference between leisure activities that endanger the person pursuing them, and ones that endanger others.
Oh, and of course not all app types are available from Google Play Store are they? Where are the ad-blockers for example?
Stop trolling, and educate yourself.
It's you that headed down this path. I merely pointed out that your comment about the user always being the flaw which would always let malware in did not apply to iOS or consoles. Rather than just accept that iOS has that advantage, you wandered off into ever more unrealistic scenarios of how iOS could get malware. And then, when Android's malware problem is pointed out you flip the opposite way, and try to minimise that.
Accept that both platforms have pros and cons. And that people quite rationally make different decisions. Your opinion is just opinion, it's not generic wisdom.
Did it not occur to you that retro-gaming covers all this and more? Rebuilding old cabinets, with original boards. Making new cabinets with emulators in them. Emulating old games on other computers. Remaking old games for new platforms. Making new games for old platforms.
Why is making new games for old platforms retro? Because the joy of creating them is working within the old constraints of memory, CPU speed, resolution, colours etc. And the joy of playing them is having a new experience within an old aesthetic.
Hey, don't say I'm a hipster hater, either. In fact, I pity the poor bastards for not having any culture of their own and instead aping previous generations. That must be humiliating.
Quite a lot of us that enjoy the retro gaming scene are of the previous generations, you insensitive clot.
The point is it's obviously been misrepresented. $60K wasn't spent on making this film. There was no expensive set. Just a few cheap costumes from a costume store.
An earlier posts suggests that actually the $60K was spent on creating a production facility. And making this movie was just a byproduct of the training. That sounds more likely. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3576059&cid=43258781
Of course if you're one of those people for whom everything the government does is wrong, you'll choose to believe the worst regardless of the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
See what I mean? Confusing anecdotes with data.
It's not ignorance though. I know exactly what the constitution is. I simply have a different perspective on it, because I wasn't brought up with it as a near-religious relic.
Sorry, but I won't be drinking the OSS Koolaid. It looks every bit as stupid as the Moonies or the Scientologists to me.
Choosing to buy a product of any description is not trading freedom for anything. It's exercising freedom. That's where your religion goes wrong.
OK, so I'm back to saying thank you for presenting a good demonstration of what I'm talking about.
But that's lot logically different from prohibition era people saying you shouldn't drink alcohol because it's the law. The constitution just being a form of law, but with higher hurdles to change. It's just a restatement of the law, it's irrelevant to the debate of whether alcohol SHOULD be available.
You illustrate my point nicely. Thanks.
A man with the username Mycroft ought to be aware that it's measured as a murder rate. And is thus independent of population size.
The Constitution has lasted a long time (unlike its predecessors and some contemporary constitutions in other nations) because it was designed around fundamental insights into human nature. Insights that in most cases remain true today.
Actually I'd say it's more true to say the nature of US citizens has been moulded by the constitution rather than the other way around. Remember that article a couple of weeks ago that said US citizens are about the worst people to do psychological studies on, because they were so unusual? They tend to be outliers on the bell curve.
Well it occurs to me that a lot of the differences might be explained by the US citizen's almost religious belief in a document that no one else in the world shares. It isn't designed around human nature - it's just become intertwined with the American way of seeing things.
Unless I have been misreading your posts, you have been advocating legislating away the second amendment WITHOUT going through the amendment process, which is colloquially known in our country as "unconstitutional".
I've not done anything like that. Why don't you just read what my posts say rather than trying to fit them into some particular argument you want to have.
What country would that be, then?
The UK. And yes I've read your other post. But still the UK has no constitution.
Im equally surprised that you apparently have no qualms in a government violating laws without process simply because it has deemed them "bad".
Strawman.
The UK DOES have a constitution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom
Then don't point me to a Wikipedia article that presents various theories about what collection of documents might be considered a constitution. Point me to the actual constitution. The document.
There isn't one.
For sure they talk about constitutional law. But that just means laws, agreements and understandings about how the democracy, the law, the monarchy and such like institutions run. There are no fundamental principles written down anywhere. There's nothing analogous to the US constitution.
Oh, I have no problem with the process for amendment of the constitution. As you say it's a legal document, and there are legal processes to change it.
My post was simply directed at idiots that talk about the constitution as if it were a religious document. As if things should be a particular way BECAUSE it's in the constitution. In reality that's no different from saying a thing should be a particular way because that's the law. In both cases it overlooks the opportunity for change.
No, what should have stopped Adam Lanza is the same thing that should have stopped Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech - recognition of his condition by authority figures, and appropriate action taken therein.
What exactly are you suggesting doing with people with Asperger's Syndrome?
As long as he's right about it being a safe speed, no problem.
But he's not. He has no statistical information to base it on. Just his gut feel. Like many idiots he believes he knows best. But probably doesn't.
So, the UK has banned handguns, and has no constitution. Yet it gets along just fine. It has a quarter of the murders of the US for a start.
Do you not see the danger of just deciding one day that we no longer need to follow a provision of the constitution?
Given that I come from a country that doesn't have one, and gets along just fine, no. A democracy doesn't need a constitution. If a democracy says that something is right now, than that's more valid than some people in the 1780s thinking something was right for them.
Ask someone who's not American. Your sense of what's acceptable has gone way out of alignment.
Confirming that your stupidity isn't limited to your posts on Slashdot.
How about recognising that your constitution was not written by God and brought down from the mountain by Moses. Nor is it a universal truth of the physical world discovered by mathematicians or scientists.
What it is is a bunch of rules that a few men in the 1780s thought were good ideas. Written for the experience that they had of the world in the 1780s. (The American Revolution, the emergence from being a colony, primitive policing, and no standing army.)
Times change. Smart people adapt, ignorant people cling on to the past.
Did it stop Adam Lanza? No, because he just took his illegally.
What should have stopped Adam Lanza is his mother not being able to buy the weapons in the first place.
We should outlaw everything that has no "purpose" and only dangers. Let's start with extreme sports, there's exactly zero reason why you should freeclimb that mountain because there's a road up there, ya know?
There's a big difference between leisure activities that endanger the person pursuing them, and ones that endanger others.
Find me some in the google play store.
It doesn't seem hard to find.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/more-malware-found-hosted-in-google-android-market/
http://wmpoweruser.com/trend-micro-one-in-ten-google-play-store-apps-is-malware/
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/03/android-malware-emerges-on-google-play-which-installs-a-trojan-on-your-pc-uses-your-microphone-to-record-you/
Oh, and of course not all app types are available from Google Play Store are they? Where are the ad-blockers for example?
Stop trolling, and educate yourself.
It's you that headed down this path. I merely pointed out that your comment about the user always being the flaw which would always let malware in did not apply to iOS or consoles. Rather than just accept that iOS has that advantage, you wandered off into ever more unrealistic scenarios of how iOS could get malware. And then, when Android's malware problem is pointed out you flip the opposite way, and try to minimise that.
Accept that both platforms have pros and cons. And that people quite rationally make different decisions. Your opinion is just opinion, it's not generic wisdom.
Did it not occur to you that retro-gaming covers all this and more?
Rebuilding old cabinets, with original boards.
Making new cabinets with emulators in them.
Emulating old games on other computers.
Remaking old games for new platforms.
Making new games for old platforms.
Why is making new games for old platforms retro? Because the joy of creating them is working within the old constraints of memory, CPU speed, resolution, colours etc. And the joy of playing them is having a new experience within an old aesthetic.
Hey, don't say I'm a hipster hater, either. In fact, I pity the poor bastards for not having any culture of their own and instead aping previous generations. That must be humiliating.
Quite a lot of us that enjoy the retro gaming scene are of the previous generations, you insensitive clot.
So they're making a big deal of cosmetic differences that have no actual impact?
No, they are either mistaken or dishonest, in implying somewhere where the money might have been spent. But it obviously wasn't.
The point is it's obviously been misrepresented. $60K wasn't spent on making this film. There was no expensive set. Just a few cheap costumes from a costume store.
An earlier posts suggests that actually the $60K was spent on creating a production facility. And making this movie was just a byproduct of the training. That sounds more likely.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3576059&cid=43258781
Of course if you're one of those people for whom everything the government does is wrong, you'll choose to believe the worst regardless of the truth.