No, the city would lay fibre and then rent it out to service providers with a non-discriminatory policy to recoup costs
When have you ever known a Government to do anything in a non-discriminatory manner? Let me make a prediction: The company that knows the right people on the city council/city engineer's office/mayor's office/etc will be the one that gets the cheapest rate to access that fiber.
You don't need every company digging up the roads and disrupting everything
Who cares about digging up roads? If some company wants to dig up roads to run fiber to my house I'd be out on the front lawn offering coffee to the workers. They are bringing me a useful service and will repave those roads after they are done -- why should I care?
Who do you think would make all of your computer bits, toys and clothes cheaply if you offend china..
Umm, China doesn't have a global monopoly on cheap labor. The plastic stamped toys and cheap clothes could be made almost anywhere -- Latin/South America, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc, etc.
The new administration may or may not, but we know we can't believe the current one on anything.
I stopped believing the words that come out of Obama's mouth when he voted for the FISA bill that contained telecom immunity. He's just another politician -- one with some pretty impressive gifts and one that I think will probably do more good than bad -- but I still don't believe anything that comes out of his mouth.
No you wouldn't, because you can only have sex so many times in a given day. The rest of the day you'd have to put up with female whining -- which is bad enough when it's just coming from one of them.
it's a parody of people who accuse Bush of being devious, mad and incompetent and then claim that Axis of Evil countries won't do anything crazy because it is not in their long term best interests.
Ah. Glad I'm not the only one that noticed that irony;)
During a simulation, the operators do not receive the blocked popups prompting them to acknowledge the exercise, and upon seeing 'multiple targets' on their inbound radar, they instigate a return strike against the 'enemy'. And so it begins...
That's totally unrealistic. No self-respecting Geek would use a GUI to control nuclear weapons. He'd have a command line interface and some shell scripts to automate the more tedious processes.
In reality the governments of Iran and North Korea are made up of rational people who will always act in their countries' long term best interests despite their rhetoric.
What part of North Korea's long term interests are best served by devoting a quarter of the gross domestic product (for comparison, the US spends around 4%) to the military while the population starves to death for lack of food?
They are totally unlike the US government which will screw up and start wars because of the sort term interest of the ruling class and/or a miscalculation and plunge the world into chaos
Are you trolling to trying to be funny? I can't tell.....
I'd rather see them licensed with extreme punitive measures for those who don't comply.
They already are licensed with extreme punitive measures for those who don't comply. That's what you folks in the gun-control crowd don't understand. That NFL player who just shot himself is looking at 3.5 years in prison for the simple act of carrying an unlicensed firearm. That isn't sufficient deterrence for you?
If guns were for keeping the government in line, which is the contention of many pro second amendment activists
Who gives a shit about the contention of second amendment activists? The language in the amendment is pretty clear. SCOTUS has ruled that individuals have a right to possess firearms. That really should be the end of debate about this issue.
Rulings by the Supreme court are routinely ignored by executive power that is essentially above their rule.
What's your point? Because the Executive ignores court rulings we can take away the right to keep and bear arms? Can we also take away the right to free speech? It would solve that pesky racism problem overnight ya know.....
What's your point? Any SCOTUS ruling that isn't 9-0 is somehow not the law of the land? In that case, I guess we can get rid of Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona and Lawrence v. Texas.
Grow up. Freedom and justice for all unless (at the time of signing) you were a slave. It's a piece of paper revered for perceived national pride. There is no reason it can't be changed. But that's a different argument.
If you want to change it then go ahead. I'll make you a deal: If you can get 39 of the states to ratify an amendment that negates the 2nd amendment then I'll shut up about gun rights. In the absence of such an amendment it's not simply not defensible to regulate a constitutionally protected right into the ground.
That's not what I'm saying. If the only way to obtain something is illegal and difficult, the chances are, whoever owns one is going to use it on someone who has also got an illegally obtained weapon.
Yeah, because criminals never use guns on citizens during the course of their "careers"
The second amendment was intended to allow a new country to quickly raise a militia from the populace by allowing them to keep their own weapons, not create a nation where everyone is afraid of everyone else because everyone's armed. Anyway, it's "Bear arms". You could outlaw guns while keeping swords legal and it'd still be valid.
So I'm assuming you'd have preferred a prolonged shootout with innocent people being hit by "law abiding citizens". Because that's what happens.
By that logic we shouldn't let law enforcement officers have guns either.
You're missing the point entirely. If nobody has guns then no-one gets shot by them.
No, your missing the point entirely. A) You can't ban guns unless you want to gut the Constitution. B) What part of the 'War on Drugs' makes you think the Government can declare something illegal and all of a sudden it's impossible to obtain said illegal item?
In the US you had ~3000 deaths by one terror attack, on a population of ~300 mio, while annually ~14000 people get killed with the hand-guns that you think are so useful to prevent these Mumbai attacks.
And in 2006 we had ~42,000 people die in car accidents. Clearly cars are three times more dangerous than handguns and should be heavily regulated. At least with cars it'll pass constitutional muster -- I'm not aware of any section of the Bill of Rights that says you have the right to keep automobiles. And don't even get me started about those dangerous big macs.....
There you go. One strawman argument for another. You still haven't explained how you are going to take away a constitutionally protected right. Think you can find 38 of 50 states to to ratify an amendment that repeals the 2nd amendment? That'd be a neat trick since 39 of the 50 states have decided to let nearly any law-abiding citizen who isn't mentally ill carry a concealed weapon.
Your argument is flawed in that all guns purchased in both cases were done so legally. As straw purchases, granted, but they were purchased legally
Straw purchases aren't legal in my state. Don't know about yours. If they are then maybe you should be writing your state legislators and trying to get that loophole closed?
Without the ability to purchase weapons the likelihood that either incident would have happened is reduced to almost zero
If we took away the ability to purchase cars I bet that highway fatalities would be close to zero too. And how are you gonna do that anyway? I assume that you are familiar with the 2nd amendment, right?
Making guns "normal" makes the use of deadly force "acceptable".
No, unjustified deadly force is no more acceptable in the eyes of the law with a firearm than it would be with a knife or a baseball bat.
Of course the anti-gunners will go into their spew about how "Now there is a gun fight in the hallways and more innocent people will get hurt!!!".
Yeah that's always struck me as a bullshit argument. What about all of the innocent people that died because they couldn't defend themselves with anything more effective than pleas for their life?
Nevermind the fact that their solution is to wait for the cops
Have fun waiting. Even if you live in an area with a fast response time it's still going to take them a few minutes to get there. Meanwhile you are cowering under a desk with no way to defend yourself besides praying that the psycho asshole outside decides to kill the people in the next room instead of the people in your room.
who are quite likely to have less firearms experience and practice than a CCW Permit holder
That's the sad reality of the situation. In a lot of states it takes more training to get a CCW permit than it does for a law enforcement officer to quality with his service weapon. I know some cops that dread when they have to re-qualify because they are really that bad at shooting.
I notice that "carrying" didn't stop the Oklahoma bombing, the JFK assassination, Columbine, or Virginia tech massacre.
The VA tech massacre happened specifically because the student population wasn't allowed to carry. All they could do was cower in the lecture halls and wait to be murdered. One law-abiding student with a carry permit could have ended that massacre and maybe saved some lives. Columbine is another matter -- even the most staunchest supporter of the 2nd amendment wouldn't condone giving high schoolers carry permits -- but I'd be interested to hear how taking guns away from law-abiding citizens would have stopped Columbine.
And it will never happen again. See Flight 93. 9/11 happened because the people on the first three planes thought they were going to be ransomed for some political cause. Once it became apparent what the goals of the terrorists were the people on the last plane put a stop to it.
And guns are useless against stealth (Madrid, London, Bali).
And that's relevant to my point about the Mumbai attacks how exactly? Are you one of those that thinks if we take guns away from law abiding citizens that will somehow make it harder for terrorists and criminals to get their hands on them?
Sure it would. I've never bought the argument that the military having bigger guns is justification for taking away the 2nd amendment. The framers didn't buy that argument either. Granted, they didn't have F-22s and tanks -- but the big guns in those days were warships and those weren't exactly accessible to John Q. Public either (from a cost standpoint if nothing else). They still believed in the 2nd amendment.
If the shit hit the fan that badly I'd like to believe that most of our military would upload their oath to the Constitution. Remember that the US armed forces swear an oath to uphold the Constitution -- not to follow the orders of POTUS.
You yanks have it all covered as far as guns are concerned, from cradle to grave...
Yep. Which is why you'll never see something as brazen as the Mumbai attacks happen in this country. Too many Americans carry. Imagine if that photographer who got the only good picture of one of the attackers had a gun instead of a camera. Maybe he could have saved some lives. I think the guy himself even said this.
What are you going to do when they try that in your country? Will your unarmed cops and citizenry blow whistles at the terrorists and ask them to please stop killing people? Let me know how that works out for you.
But I'd be willing to bet that if those folks on flight 93 did manage to subdue the terrorists, they wouldn't have slit their throats while their hands and feet were bound.
Granted, although I don't think anybody (dumbass AC's don't count) was advocating slitting the throat of someone who had already been subdued. I'm just saying that keeping the SOBs alive wouldn't have been my main objective if I was fighting for my life.
Same reason that cops generally don't shoot to wound. If you are in a situation where the other guy is trying to take your life your last concern is going to be keeping him alive. If he manages to survive your attack then great -- he'll get his day in court and his due process -- if not, well better him than me.
Because some people are a bit more civilized than the those who would attempt kill random strangers?
I dunno. You might not be so civilized in the presence of someone who was in the process of trying to kill you. I wouldn't kill someone that was on the ground and under control but I can't say as I would be trying to keep them alive if they were in the process of trying to kill me. I'd be looking to remove them as a threat in the quickest manner possible.
Do you think the passengers on Flight 93 were trying to wound the hijackers?
Who wants to join me in starting a Terrorist Insurance business? Sounds like we'd make tons of free money.
Either way it's a win win. We sell a lot of policies that we think will never have to pay claims on. Then when we have to pay claims we realize that we have no capital with which to pay them and we get a bailout from Washington.
So that's why JD Power & Associates came out and condemned the Great Satan that is America. I always suspected they had a sampling issue with that particular study;)
Slashdot Mirror
No, the city would lay fibre and then rent it out to service providers with a non-discriminatory policy to recoup costs
When have you ever known a Government to do anything in a non-discriminatory manner? Let me make a prediction: The company that knows the right people on the city council/city engineer's office/mayor's office/etc will be the one that gets the cheapest rate to access that fiber.
You don't need every company digging up the roads and disrupting everything
Who cares about digging up roads? If some company wants to dig up roads to run fiber to my house I'd be out on the front lawn offering coffee to the workers. They are bringing me a useful service and will repave those roads after they are done -- why should I care?
That was just a libertarian media sound byte and you've been hooked by it.
No, the only sound bite I was "hooked" by was this one:
"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
Who do you think would make all of your computer bits, toys and clothes cheaply if you offend china..
Umm, China doesn't have a global monopoly on cheap labor. The plastic stamped toys and cheap clothes could be made almost anywhere -- Latin/South America, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc, etc.
The new administration may or may not, but we know we can't believe the current one on anything.
I stopped believing the words that come out of Obama's mouth when he voted for the FISA bill that contained telecom immunity. He's just another politician -- one with some pretty impressive gifts and one that I think will probably do more good than bad -- but I still don't believe anything that comes out of his mouth.
I could be happy in a place like that.
No you wouldn't, because you can only have sex so many times in a given day. The rest of the day you'd have to put up with female whining -- which is bad enough when it's just coming from one of them.
it's a parody of people who accuse Bush of being devious, mad and incompetent and then claim that Axis of Evil countries won't do anything crazy because it is not in their long term best interests.
Ah. Glad I'm not the only one that noticed that irony ;)
During a simulation, the operators do not receive the blocked popups prompting them to acknowledge the exercise, and upon seeing 'multiple targets' on their inbound radar, they instigate a return strike against the 'enemy'. And so it begins...
That's totally unrealistic. No self-respecting Geek would use a GUI to control nuclear weapons. He'd have a command line interface and some shell scripts to automate the more tedious processes.
In reality the governments of Iran and North Korea are made up of rational people who will always act in their countries' long term best interests despite their rhetoric.
What part of North Korea's long term interests are best served by devoting a quarter of the gross domestic product (for comparison, the US spends around 4%) to the military while the population starves to death for lack of food?
They are totally unlike the US government which will screw up and start wars because of the sort term interest of the ruling class and/or a miscalculation and plunge the world into chaos
Are you trolling to trying to be funny? I can't tell.....
Yah, but the males that are left have 2x better odds. <sings>TWOOOOO GIRLS FOR EVERY GUY</sings>
If you think that actually means you'll get chicks then I suggest you remember where it is that you are posting ;)
I'd rather see them licensed with extreme punitive measures for those who don't comply.
They already are licensed with extreme punitive measures for those who don't comply. That's what you folks in the gun-control crowd don't understand. That NFL player who just shot himself is looking at 3.5 years in prison for the simple act of carrying an unlicensed firearm. That isn't sufficient deterrence for you?
If guns were for keeping the government in line, which is the contention of many pro second amendment activists
Who gives a shit about the contention of second amendment activists? The language in the amendment is pretty clear. SCOTUS has ruled that individuals have a right to possess firearms. That really should be the end of debate about this issue.
Rulings by the Supreme court are routinely ignored by executive power that is essentially above their rule.
What's your point? Because the Executive ignores court rulings we can take away the right to keep and bear arms? Can we also take away the right to free speech? It would solve that pesky racism problem overnight ya know.....
They disagree with each other. [wikipedia.org]
What's your point? Any SCOTUS ruling that isn't 9-0 is somehow not the law of the land? In that case, I guess we can get rid of Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona and Lawrence v. Texas.
Grow up. Freedom and justice for all unless (at the time of signing) you were a slave. It's a piece of paper revered for perceived national pride. There is no reason it can't be changed. But that's a different argument.
If you want to change it then go ahead. I'll make you a deal: If you can get 39 of the states to ratify an amendment that negates the 2nd amendment then I'll shut up about gun rights. In the absence of such an amendment it's not simply not defensible to regulate a constitutionally protected right into the ground.
That's not what I'm saying. If the only way to obtain something is illegal and difficult, the chances are, whoever owns one is going to use it on someone who has also got an illegally obtained weapon.
Yeah, because criminals never use guns on citizens during the course of their "careers"
The second amendment was intended to allow a new country to quickly raise a militia from the populace by allowing them to keep their own weapons, not create a nation where everyone is afraid of everyone else because everyone's armed. Anyway, it's "Bear arms". You could outlaw guns while keeping swords legal and it'd still be valid.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you.
So I'm assuming you'd have preferred a prolonged shootout with innocent people being hit by "law abiding citizens". Because that's what happens.
By that logic we shouldn't let law enforcement officers have guns either.
You're missing the point entirely. If nobody has guns then no-one gets shot by them.
No, your missing the point entirely. A) You can't ban guns unless you want to gut the Constitution. B) What part of the 'War on Drugs' makes you think the Government can declare something illegal and all of a sudden it's impossible to obtain said illegal item?
In the US you had ~3000 deaths by one terror attack, on a population of ~300 mio, while annually ~14000 people get killed with the hand-guns that you think are so useful to prevent these Mumbai attacks.
And in 2006 we had ~42,000 people die in car accidents. Clearly cars are three times more dangerous than handguns and should be heavily regulated. At least with cars it'll pass constitutional muster -- I'm not aware of any section of the Bill of Rights that says you have the right to keep automobiles. And don't even get me started about those dangerous big macs.....
There you go. One strawman argument for another. You still haven't explained how you are going to take away a constitutionally protected right. Think you can find 38 of 50 states to to ratify an amendment that repeals the 2nd amendment? That'd be a neat trick since 39 of the 50 states have decided to let nearly any law-abiding citizen who isn't mentally ill carry a concealed weapon.
Your argument is flawed in that all guns purchased in both cases were done so legally. As straw purchases, granted, but they were purchased legally
Straw purchases aren't legal in my state. Don't know about yours. If they are then maybe you should be writing your state legislators and trying to get that loophole closed?
Without the ability to purchase weapons the likelihood that either incident would have happened is reduced to almost zero
If we took away the ability to purchase cars I bet that highway fatalities would be close to zero too. And how are you gonna do that anyway? I assume that you are familiar with the 2nd amendment, right?
Making guns "normal" makes the use of deadly force "acceptable".
No, unjustified deadly force is no more acceptable in the eyes of the law with a firearm than it would be with a knife or a baseball bat.
Of course the anti-gunners will go into their spew about how "Now there is a gun fight in the hallways and more innocent people will get hurt!!!".
Yeah that's always struck me as a bullshit argument. What about all of the innocent people that died because they couldn't defend themselves with anything more effective than pleas for their life?
Nevermind the fact that their solution is to wait for the cops
Have fun waiting. Even if you live in an area with a fast response time it's still going to take them a few minutes to get there. Meanwhile you are cowering under a desk with no way to defend yourself besides praying that the psycho asshole outside decides to kill the people in the next room instead of the people in your room.
who are quite likely to have less firearms experience and practice than a CCW Permit holder
That's the sad reality of the situation. In a lot of states it takes more training to get a CCW permit than it does for a law enforcement officer to quality with his service weapon. I know some cops that dread when they have to re-qualify because they are really that bad at shooting.
I notice that "carrying" didn't stop the Oklahoma bombing, the JFK assassination, Columbine, or Virginia tech massacre.
The VA tech massacre happened specifically because the student population wasn't allowed to carry. All they could do was cower in the lecture halls and wait to be murdered. One law-abiding student with a carry permit could have ended that massacre and maybe saved some lives. Columbine is another matter -- even the most staunchest supporter of the 2nd amendment wouldn't condone giving high schoolers carry permits -- but I'd be interested to hear how taking guns away from law-abiding citizens would have stopped Columbine.
9/11 was pretty brazen
And it will never happen again. See Flight 93. 9/11 happened because the people on the first three planes thought they were going to be ransomed for some political cause. Once it became apparent what the goals of the terrorists were the people on the last plane put a stop to it.
And guns are useless against stealth (Madrid, London, Bali).
And that's relevant to my point about the Mumbai attacks how exactly? Are you one of those that thinks if we take guns away from law abiding citizens that will somehow make it harder for terrorists and criminals to get their hands on them?
Wish I had some mod points to send your way.
Whether it would still work now is debatable
Sure it would. I've never bought the argument that the military having bigger guns is justification for taking away the 2nd amendment. The framers didn't buy that argument either. Granted, they didn't have F-22s and tanks -- but the big guns in those days were warships and those weren't exactly accessible to John Q. Public either (from a cost standpoint if nothing else). They still believed in the 2nd amendment.
If the shit hit the fan that badly I'd like to believe that most of our military would upload their oath to the Constitution. Remember that the US armed forces swear an oath to uphold the Constitution -- not to follow the orders of POTUS.
You yanks have it all covered as far as guns are concerned, from cradle to grave...
Yep. Which is why you'll never see something as brazen as the Mumbai attacks happen in this country. Too many Americans carry. Imagine if that photographer who got the only good picture of one of the attackers had a gun instead of a camera. Maybe he could have saved some lives. I think the guy himself even said this.
What are you going to do when they try that in your country? Will your unarmed cops and citizenry blow whistles at the terrorists and ask them to please stop killing people? Let me know how that works out for you.
But I'd be willing to bet that if those folks on flight 93 did manage to subdue the terrorists, they wouldn't have slit their throats while their hands and feet were bound.
Granted, although I don't think anybody (dumbass AC's don't count) was advocating slitting the throat of someone who had already been subdued. I'm just saying that keeping the SOBs alive wouldn't have been my main objective if I was fighting for my life.
Same reason that cops generally don't shoot to wound. If you are in a situation where the other guy is trying to take your life your last concern is going to be keeping him alive. If he manages to survive your attack then great -- he'll get his day in court and his due process -- if not, well better him than me.
Because some people are a bit more civilized than the those who would attempt kill random strangers?
I dunno. You might not be so civilized in the presence of someone who was in the process of trying to kill you. I wouldn't kill someone that was on the ground and under control but I can't say as I would be trying to keep them alive if they were in the process of trying to kill me. I'd be looking to remove them as a threat in the quickest manner possible.
Do you think the passengers on Flight 93 were trying to wound the hijackers?
Who wants to join me in starting a Terrorist Insurance business? Sounds like we'd make tons of free money.
Either way it's a win win. We sell a lot of policies that we think will never have to pay claims on. Then when we have to pay claims we realize that we have no capital with which to pay them and we get a bailout from Washington.
Didn't you know? GITMO = focus group.
So that's why JD Power & Associates came out and condemned the Great Satan that is America. I always suspected they had a sampling issue with that particular study ;)
It's just too bad freedom can cost up to $4 a gallon in the summer time...
Well, like the country song says, "Freedom isn't free".