The original "limited" design of the U.S. government was rather unique in its day
Designed by a people who had a fairly recent experience with an oppressive government. Hmm, perhaps they knew something that we've allowed ourselves to forget?
It's not the problem just with the governments, but with people at large.
I agree. Which is why we need to limit the amount of damage the mob can do to our country. I would start by repealing the 17th amendment and the Reynolds v. Sims ruling. Get back to our Republican roots and make Government more accountable to the principles of our Constitution and less accountable to the mob mentality and mass media.
Obscure stuff - rhodium, indium, platinum, etc. Stuff we just don't have here. Yes, you can trade for it, but the bad news is that you need to be able to resort to force in order to get trade.
We have to resort to force to trade with Canada and South Africa?
I never lied about anything that you said. If your selective reading skills were tuned a little bit better you would have noted my previous remarks:
Where did I claim you said it would be "better"? All I said was that you started debates with premises that weren't realistic, such as "If we could get rid of all guns there would be zero gun violence". I never claimed you actually believe that nonsense, only that you used such premises as arguing points
It should be obvious to even you that I was summarizing your arguing points, namely that "no guns = no gun violence" and your agreement with "no pre-martial sex = no STDs or babies born out of wedlock".
Keep calling me a liar though. I wonder if you act this childish in the real world where there might be repercussions beyond looking like someone who has run out of legitimate arguing points?
and did not think i was putting words in your mouth
You said I should know that mandatory insurance is not protecting me from jobless bums and I was smoking crack if I think they did
But, you are doing it again! I said "If you think that then I'd ask what you are smoking and if I can have some?", then you claimed I said "I was smoking crack if I think they did". I never said you were smoking crack and was in fact implying that you were smoking weed;)
Some states like PA and NJ have a "no-fault" policy which is a little close to what you suggest.
Wrong again. I worked in the insurance business for a number of years. No fault isn't designed to protect you against un/under-insured drivers. It's designed to reduce the number of personal injury lawsuits stemming from automobile accidents and hopefully provide for your medical payments without the expense of a lawsuit. Un/under-insured coverage is entirely different and covers what no-fault would not if the other driver was at fault but lacks sufficient coverage to pay for your damages.
Point being that I would rather have the ability to purchase that type of coverage everywhere (I can in NYS but not in some other states) then rely on some governmental mandate and the ability of my neighbor to comply with said mandate. All the governmental mandate accomplishes is to provide the insurance companies with a captive market and little incentive to compete on price.
The sad thing is that it isn't even really enforceable. Even here in New York where the DMV gets electronically notified if your insurance lapses and suspends your registration there are still uninsured motorists on the roadways. So I'll come back to my original point about you smoking something if you think the mandate is actually protecting you.
There are those selective reading skills of yours again. Could you teach them to me? I'd love to be able to stick my head in the sand and ignore what people say as well as you can.
its all about impression of speed. most modern cars dont 'feel' fast at a ton (100mph) where as 1970's level tech is shaking itself to bits at that speed. and certainly not comfortable to maintain that speed for any distance
That's why I always drive under IFR, eyes glued to the speedometer and not on the roadway;)
I was very surprised that I even got the money back to be honest with you. I wrote that letter out of principle and expected to get a form letter back at best. Few weeks later I got a check in the mail.
Funny thing was that I specifically requested that they only refund the direct donations I had made. I had also purchased a number of items of merchandise (bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc) and didn't seek a refund for those items, figuring that I had gotten tangible items for my money. They refunded that money as well.
Then you should tell him that they need to update their website, because their website specifically says that they don't consider the regulation of gun ownership to be a "civil rights issue". I find it hypocritical that they consider the regulation of free speech to be a civil rights issue but not the regulation of gun ownership.
The excuse that there are other "well funded organizations" doesn't hold water with me. There are lots of well funded organizations working to end the death penalty, why does the ACLU get involved in that issue?
If you are waiting for an apology while simultaneously hurling insults like "liar", "bitter, pettly little fool", "closed minded bigot" and "idiot" you are going to be disappointed.
Did I miss your apology for all of those? Hmm.....
(Reposted, because apparently I'm an idiot and clicked the 'post anonymously' option)
I guess in your world, nothing is better than $50K
I guess in your world you are prone to drawing conclusions that aren't supported by the statements of person you are talking to. I never said nothing was better. All I said was that mandatory insurance doesn't solve the problem you are worrying about.
Personally, I think it would be better if all auto insurance came with a 'un/under-insured motorist' coverage (we have this in NYS) that would cover your damages in the event you get hit by someone without enough (or any) insurance. This puts the control in your hands and doesn't rely on the foresight of the person who rear-ends you. I think this would be better than a blanket governmental mandate that doesn't really solve anything but what do I know?
I personally have $250K and an umbrella for $2 million. I hopefully will never need it but looking at the cost of the additional coverage compared to the risk, it is worth it too me.
Kudos for you. I guess you are one of the better off people that I was talking about. Still doesn't address the original problem but why bother doing that when you can put words in my mouth?
I don't think that even with a gun you can 100% guarantee your ability to come out alive, but I can 100% guarantee that your odds of coming out alive are massively increased.
Oh I agree. I was just looking to debate the merits of your "I'll try to wound him first" position. If you think you can actually hit his arms or shoulders then go for it I guess, but funny things happen to your fine motor skills under stress and I wouldn't bank on my ability to pull it off. I'll be shooting center of mass until he goes down or the slide locks back.
Either way though, yeah, you are much better off with the gun than without. If he's smart he'll get the hell out of dodge. If he isn't then I guess you get to find out how effective of a man-stopper your chosen caliber really is.
I made a bit of money by selling those lessons on floppy disk at school too
You amateur. Real geeks made that money by setting up a BBS and charging for access;) If you were getting stuffed into the locker you could also find a bigger guy than the one doing the stuffing and give him a free account. Worked every time. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything;)
Playing devil's advocate here, have the Swiss ever had anything worth flying planes into
The Swiss would probably say they do;) The point I was trying to make is that they don't generally piss people off enough to fly airplanes into their buildings because they don't stick their noses into other peoples business.
Say, that reads like idealism. Mighty dangerous thinking. I agree with what you're saying, but would you really ever trust the government not to find some other way of spending the money it just saved by not funding the military-industrial complex?
The whole concept of idealism. I don't trust the Government one damn bit but my theory was that if the populace ever changed enough to want to end our interventionism that maybe they've also changed enough to want to cut the Government down to size. Yeah, I'm dreaming, but it's nice to dream sometimes isn't it?
Sorry, no sympathy from me. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Vehicle crashes in the US kill more people monthly than all of the September 11th attacks combined.
And pray tell, what does that have to do with speed traps? And I really wish people would stop repeating this "driving is a privilege" mantra. We aren't children waiting for our parents to dole out "privileges".
I am all for EVERYONE having auto insurance. I don't want you rear ending me and destroying my car and possibly hurting me and my family and then have to pay for everything myself because you are a jobless bum.
What makes you think mandatory insurance accomplishes this? Here in New York the mandatory minimum amount of insurance is $50,000. Poor people have zero incentive to buy more insurance because A) They can't afford it, B) They don't have any assets to lose if they exhaust it and can just file bankruptcy.
Better off people will buy it because they do have assets to protect but if your main concern is "jobless bums" you should know that mandatory insurance isn't really protecting you from them. Unless you think $50,000 is enough to cover all your medical bills if you get seriously injured. If you think that then I'd ask what you are smoking and if I can have some?
retirement account paying for your bills.
Actually, getting off-topic here, but your retirement account is almost always exempt from seizure or forfeiture. Buddy of mine went through bankruptcy and even though he had four or five times what he owed in his 401(k) the creditors couldn't touch it.
Quite the roundabout way to agree with me, but yeah, I share your same sentiment. When I first thought of it I wasn't so much thinking of the 2nd amendment (although that's obviously a huge part of it) as I was of thinking of ways to reduce the size and scope of our Government and ways to reduce the ill will that our interventionist policies have generated.
I would advocate for a complete return to our non-interventionist roots. Not isolationism, as we should still trade with the rest of the world, just non-interventionism. Our security would rest on our nuclear deterrent and an armed population. The Swiss have managed to retain their independence with just the latter for hundreds of years so I see no reason why it wouldn't work for us (particularly when combined with the nuclear deterrent). You can also note how nobody is flying airplanes into Swiss buildings or kidnapping Swiss citizens who travel aboard.
It would also allow us to wind down most of the military-industrial complex and return the monies spent on it to our citizenry where it would be put to more productive uses.
I don't give two shits what my contract says. Here is what the penal law of the State of New York says:
A person is guilty of eavesdropping when he unlawfully engages in wiretapping, mechanical overhearing of a conversation, or intercepting or accessing of an electronic communication.
My service provider doesn't have the right to monitor my traffic.
1996 28.8k became the norm. 10 megs an hour (after 14.4k we rarely ever got full speed connection over the modem)
That wasn't my experience. Living in town with a fairly decent outside plant I had full speed connections most of the time on my v.34+ (33.6k) USR Courier modem. Occasionally it would connect at 31.2 but that was rare. Even when we lived out in the sticks I always got at least 26.4 but usually 28.8 or 31.2.
On the other hand, v.90 was a joke. Even in town with the good phone lines I rarely got connections faster than 45k and they seemed to deteriorate to <28k as time went on. I actually had better luck with the old school banks of analog v.34+ modems vs the digital trunk lines/v.90 setup. Particularly when downloading compressible data -- I can recall a few times that the speed of the serial port became the bottleneck.
Ah, those were the days. My first IT job was working for the small town ISP. Before the digital trunks came in we literally had banks and banks of USR Couriers plugged into actual phone lines. At one point we had almost 700 pairs of copper coming into our building and represented >40% of the installed phone lines at the local CO.
I've run a SSH server for over a year now along with a simple website for my IP address. I've never heard any complaints, any e-mails, etc. The most I would expect is for them to tell me to upgrade to a business account if I want to run services like that.
I wouldn't try to run a website on my residential connection but I've run SSH for years and never heard any complaints. Of course I keep it firewalled off and only open it up using port knocking, so unless they are illegally wiretapping my connection they have no way to know that I'm running it anyway.
And to all you EuroTrash: you are welcome you are not speaking German now. (Well, except Germany).
Actually they'd probably be speaking Russian now, because the Germans bit off a bit more than they could chew with that one. Point still stands though.
Slashdot Mirror
I view that combination at about the same threat level as the redneck with the high powered rifle and the 12 pack of horse piss.
Fixed that for you.
First we hobble Adam, Jamie and Grant (who can be the control). Then we inject them all with deadly spider venom.
As long as nobody hurts Kari. *drool*
but nerve regrowth is rare in the spine because spinal fluids prohibit it.
Guess our intelligent designer needs to go back to the drawing board if (s)he built in a design flaw like that ;)
The original "limited" design of the U.S. government was rather unique in its day
Designed by a people who had a fairly recent experience with an oppressive government. Hmm, perhaps they knew something that we've allowed ourselves to forget?
It's not the problem just with the governments, but with people at large.
I agree. Which is why we need to limit the amount of damage the mob can do to our country. I would start by repealing the 17th amendment and the Reynolds v. Sims ruling. Get back to our Republican roots and make Government more accountable to the principles of our Constitution and less accountable to the mob mentality and mass media.
Obscure stuff - rhodium, indium, platinum, etc. Stuff we just don't have here. Yes, you can trade for it, but the bad news is that you need to be able to resort to force in order to get trade.
We have to resort to force to trade with Canada and South Africa?
I never lied about anything that you said. If your selective reading skills were tuned a little bit better you would have noted my previous remarks:
Where did I claim you said it would be "better"? All I said was that you started debates with premises that weren't realistic, such as "If we could get rid of all guns there would be zero gun violence". I never claimed you actually believe that nonsense, only that you used such premises as arguing points
It should be obvious to even you that I was summarizing your arguing points, namely that "no guns = no gun violence" and your agreement with "no pre-martial sex = no STDs or babies born out of wedlock".
Keep calling me a liar though. I wonder if you act this childish in the real world where there might be repercussions beyond looking like someone who has run out of legitimate arguing points?
and did not think i was putting words in your mouth
You said I should know that mandatory insurance is not protecting me from jobless bums and I was smoking crack if I think they did
But, you are doing it again! I said "If you think that then I'd ask what you are smoking and if I can have some?", then you claimed I said "I was smoking crack if I think they did". I never said you were smoking crack and was in fact implying that you were smoking weed ;)
Some states like PA and NJ have a "no-fault" policy which is a little close to what you suggest.
Wrong again. I worked in the insurance business for a number of years. No fault isn't designed to protect you against un/under-insured drivers. It's designed to reduce the number of personal injury lawsuits stemming from automobile accidents and hopefully provide for your medical payments without the expense of a lawsuit. Un/under-insured coverage is entirely different and covers what no-fault would not if the other driver was at fault but lacks sufficient coverage to pay for your damages.
Point being that I would rather have the ability to purchase that type of coverage everywhere (I can in NYS but not in some other states) then rely on some governmental mandate and the ability of my neighbor to comply with said mandate. All the governmental mandate accomplishes is to provide the insurance companies with a captive market and little incentive to compete on price.
The sad thing is that it isn't even really enforceable. Even here in New York where the DMV gets electronically notified if your insurance lapses and suspends your registration there are still uninsured motorists on the roadways. So I'll come back to my original point about you smoking something if you think the mandate is actually protecting you.
There are those selective reading skills of yours again. Could you teach them to me? I'd love to be able to stick my head in the sand and ignore what people say as well as you can.
its all about impression of speed. most modern cars dont 'feel' fast at a ton (100mph) where as 1970's level tech is shaking itself to bits at that speed. and certainly not comfortable to maintain that speed for any distance
That's why I always drive under IFR, eyes glued to the speedometer and not on the roadway ;)
A small aircraft is just as safe as a large one
Really? So a four-engine 747 has the some odds of going down as a single-engine Cessna?
I was very surprised that I even got the money back to be honest with you. I wrote that letter out of principle and expected to get a form letter back at best. Few weeks later I got a check in the mail.
Funny thing was that I specifically requested that they only refund the direct donations I had made. I had also purchased a number of items of merchandise (bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc) and didn't seek a refund for those items, figuring that I had gotten tangible items for my money. They refunded that money as well.
Then you should tell him that they need to update their website, because their website specifically says that they don't consider the regulation of gun ownership to be a "civil rights issue". I find it hypocritical that they consider the regulation of free speech to be a civil rights issue but not the regulation of gun ownership.
The excuse that there are other "well funded organizations" doesn't hold water with me. There are lots of well funded organizations working to end the death penalty, why does the ACLU get involved in that issue?
If you are waiting for an apology while simultaneously hurling insults like "liar", "bitter, pettly little fool", "closed minded bigot" and "idiot" you are going to be disappointed.
Did I miss your apology for all of those? Hmm.....
Oh wow, I have 6,257 comments posted? I need a life.....
Ditto on it sucking if they turn that off.
(Reposted, because apparently I'm an idiot and clicked the 'post anonymously' option)
I guess in your world, nothing is better than $50K
I guess in your world you are prone to drawing conclusions that aren't supported by the statements of person you are talking to. I never said nothing was better. All I said was that mandatory insurance doesn't solve the problem you are worrying about.
Personally, I think it would be better if all auto insurance came with a 'un/under-insured motorist' coverage (we have this in NYS) that would cover your damages in the event you get hit by someone without enough (or any) insurance. This puts the control in your hands and doesn't rely on the foresight of the person who rear-ends you. I think this would be better than a blanket governmental mandate that doesn't really solve anything but what do I know?
I personally have $250K and an umbrella for $2 million. I hopefully will never need it but looking at the cost of the additional coverage compared to the risk, it is worth it too me.
Kudos for you. I guess you are one of the better off people that I was talking about. Still doesn't address the original problem but why bother doing that when you can put words in my mouth?
I don't think that even with a gun you can 100% guarantee your ability to come out alive, but I can 100% guarantee that your odds of coming out alive are massively increased.
Oh I agree. I was just looking to debate the merits of your "I'll try to wound him first" position. If you think you can actually hit his arms or shoulders then go for it I guess, but funny things happen to your fine motor skills under stress and I wouldn't bank on my ability to pull it off. I'll be shooting center of mass until he goes down or the slide locks back.
Either way though, yeah, you are much better off with the gun than without. If he's smart he'll get the hell out of dodge. If he isn't then I guess you get to find out how effective of a man-stopper your chosen caliber really is.
I made a bit of money by selling those lessons on floppy disk at school too
You amateur. Real geeks made that money by setting up a BBS and charging for access ;) If you were getting stuffed into the locker you could also find a bigger guy than the one doing the stuffing and give him a free account. Worked every time. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything ;)
Playing devil's advocate here, have the Swiss ever had anything worth flying planes into
The Swiss would probably say they do ;) The point I was trying to make is that they don't generally piss people off enough to fly airplanes into their buildings because they don't stick their noses into other peoples business.
Say, that reads like idealism. Mighty dangerous thinking. I agree with what you're saying, but would you really ever trust the government not to find some other way of spending the money it just saved by not funding the military-industrial complex?
The whole concept of idealism. I don't trust the Government one damn bit but my theory was that if the populace ever changed enough to want to end our interventionism that maybe they've also changed enough to want to cut the Government down to size. Yeah, I'm dreaming, but it's nice to dream sometimes isn't it?
Sorry, no sympathy from me. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Vehicle crashes in the US kill more people monthly than all of the September 11th attacks combined.
And pray tell, what does that have to do with speed traps? And I really wish people would stop repeating this "driving is a privilege" mantra. We aren't children waiting for our parents to dole out "privileges".
I am all for EVERYONE having auto insurance. I don't want you rear ending me and destroying my car and possibly hurting me and my family and then have to pay for everything myself because you are a jobless bum.
What makes you think mandatory insurance accomplishes this? Here in New York the mandatory minimum amount of insurance is $50,000. Poor people have zero incentive to buy more insurance because A) They can't afford it, B) They don't have any assets to lose if they exhaust it and can just file bankruptcy.
Better off people will buy it because they do have assets to protect but if your main concern is "jobless bums" you should know that mandatory insurance isn't really protecting you from them. Unless you think $50,000 is enough to cover all your medical bills if you get seriously injured. If you think that then I'd ask what you are smoking and if I can have some?
retirement account paying for your bills.
Actually, getting off-topic here, but your retirement account is almost always exempt from seizure or forfeiture. Buddy of mine went through bankruptcy and even though he had four or five times what he owed in his 401(k) the creditors couldn't touch it.
Quite the roundabout way to agree with me, but yeah, I share your same sentiment. When I first thought of it I wasn't so much thinking of the 2nd amendment (although that's obviously a huge part of it) as I was of thinking of ways to reduce the size and scope of our Government and ways to reduce the ill will that our interventionist policies have generated.
I would advocate for a complete return to our non-interventionist roots. Not isolationism, as we should still trade with the rest of the world, just non-interventionism. Our security would rest on our nuclear deterrent and an armed population. The Swiss have managed to retain their independence with just the latter for hundreds of years so I see no reason why it wouldn't work for us (particularly when combined with the nuclear deterrent). You can also note how nobody is flying airplanes into Swiss buildings or kidnapping Swiss citizens who travel aboard.
It would also allow us to wind down most of the military-industrial complex and return the monies spent on it to our citizenry where it would be put to more productive uses.
I don't give two shits what my contract says. Here is what the penal law of the State of New York says:
A person is guilty of eavesdropping when he unlawfully engages in wiretapping, mechanical overhearing of a conversation, or intercepting or accessing of an electronic communication.
My service provider doesn't have the right to monitor my traffic.
1996 28.8k became the norm. 10 megs an hour (after 14.4k we rarely ever got full speed connection over the modem)
That wasn't my experience. Living in town with a fairly decent outside plant I had full speed connections most of the time on my v.34+ (33.6k) USR Courier modem. Occasionally it would connect at 31.2 but that was rare. Even when we lived out in the sticks I always got at least 26.4 but usually 28.8 or 31.2.
On the other hand, v.90 was a joke. Even in town with the good phone lines I rarely got connections faster than 45k and they seemed to deteriorate to <28k as time went on. I actually had better luck with the old school banks of analog v.34+ modems vs the digital trunk lines/v.90 setup. Particularly when downloading compressible data -- I can recall a few times that the speed of the serial port became the bottleneck.
Ah, those were the days. My first IT job was working for the small town ISP. Before the digital trunks came in we literally had banks and banks of USR Couriers plugged into actual phone lines. At one point we had almost 700 pairs of copper coming into our building and represented >40% of the installed phone lines at the local CO.
I've run a SSH server for over a year now along with a simple website for my IP address. I've never heard any complaints, any e-mails, etc. The most I would expect is for them to tell me to upgrade to a business account if I want to run services like that.
I wouldn't try to run a website on my residential connection but I've run SSH for years and never heard any complaints. Of course I keep it firewalled off and only open it up using port knocking, so unless they are illegally wiretapping my connection they have no way to know that I'm running it anyway.
And to all you EuroTrash: you are welcome you are not speaking German now. (Well, except Germany).
Actually they'd probably be speaking Russian now, because the Germans bit off a bit more than they could chew with that one. Point still stands though.