It's a prestigious University. They'll just jack tuition and fees. What, are you gonna go somewhere else? Okay. We've got a waiting list ten miles long.
You're right of course, but that's basically what their attitude is. I highly doubt they'll go broke over this or any other activist investment decision.
Again, it's dumb to want a president who is feared by anyone.
No, it's perfectly logical to want someone that people think has the stones to back up their words. It's telling though that you choose to focus on the lack of fear as a good thing, rather than trying to dispute the fact that nobody (friend or foe) respects him. The Olympic Bid was perfect evidence of that, BHO put the power and prestige of the Presidency behind that bid, and Chicago got bounced in the first round. That may not mean anything to you, but it's hugely symbolic, and was the diplomatic equivalent of a slap in the face.
It's also evidence of BHO's utter failure to properly husband his influence and political capital. A domestic example of this failing would be the flushing away of all the political capital earned from re-election on an effort at gun control that was doomed from the get-go. BHO is supposed to be this cool political operator from Chicago but he's got nobody on staff that could do a whip count? Immigration reform was a casualty of that decision, as were other important issues that got short shrift.
In short, he's a loser, and the least effective President we've had in my lifetime. And I say that as someone that drank the kool aid and went so far as campaigning for him during the primaries against HRC. Boy, I screwed that one up big time....
I was really just going for being a wiseass, but if you want to take it seriously......
but he did in fact save the world economy from being dragged into a depression caused by deregulation of the parasites on Wall Street
By continuing policies instituted by George W. Bush and Hank Paulson. GWB took the political hit on several unpopular decisions (bailouts) rather than leave them to his successor. BHO can't even bring himself to make a decision on Keystone, nor enforce the politically unpopular parts of his sole major legislative achievement. Oh, and guess what? A lot of the aforementioned deregulation was bipartisan. Who was the President who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law?
You probably missed the fact that Obama threatened force, and was able to avoid using it, to get Assad to agree to relinquish his chemical weapons.
Want a list? Here's three of the top of my head: Chicago's first round exit from Olympics voting, Russia's behavior in Ukraine and Assad walking across the "red line" in the first place. BHO neither respected by our friends nor feared by our enemies. The global community laughs at him. BHO's decision to embrace any issue, no matter how seemingly insignificant (Chicago's Olympic bid) is usually the kiss of death. GWB was at least feared, if not respected. His Dad was both feared and respected. So was Bill Clinton. BHO is an embarrassment on the global stage. So is the current Secretary of State, while we're on the subject.
I really wish the Democratic Primary electorate had given us Hillary instead of BHO. It was their turn, the GOP was going to lose no matter what, the least they could have done was found someone that the rest of the world would have respected. Love her or hate her, Hillary would have been taken seriously overseas.
P.S., I don't really like the Republican Party either, so best of luck with your forthcoming attempt to dismiss me as a Teabagger, Right-winger, Rethuglican, or any other straw men you're cooking up.
My country produces porn? Wow, I had no idea, I source most of mine from Europe. Oh, you mean those videos with laughably large cocks and not a single non-augmented breast?
American porn sucks. How it manages to survive in a competitive marketplace is beyond me. Thank god for the internet....
A liberal administration isnt going to crack down on porn
Liberals aren't anti-porn? Seriously? You really wanna go there?
Earlier this month, 42 senators signed a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder to step up enforcement of federal obscenity laws. Among the cast of mostly Republican signers, one name stood out: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a staunch liberal from California, the de-facto porn capital of America. (Feinstein wasn’t available to comment for this story.)
She wasn’t alone: five other Senate Democrats, including Minnesota’s left-wing warrior, Amy Klobuchar, also signed the letter, and they were applauded by feminists, leftist lawyers, and liberal academics. Together, this increasingly vocal segment of progressives is making the case that hardcore porn flies in the face of cherished liberal causes—and that Democrats should be leading the charge to take down its distributors.
“To be anti-porn is a progressive principle.”
Liberals have no problem going after porn. They just frame it differently than Conservatives. They're upholding women's rights (except of course for the right of women to consent to star in pornography) rather than Christian morals.
If anything the Liberal position is more hypocritical than the Conservative one.
Unless you have one of those Obama as Hitler posters in your basement.
Obama could never be mistaken for Adolf Hitler. Hitler could rally crowds and command respect/fear on the global stage. Poor Mr. Hapless no longer seems able to do the former and was never able to do the latter.
But if you have children how would you juggle keeping a gun accessible enough to actually use in self defence but not accessible enough for your children to easily access it?
Any one of the dozens of handgun combination safes on the market would do the job. I can open mine in about three seconds.
Of course, the most important thing is education, not gun locks/safes. In fact, you should be teaching your kids gun safety even if you don't own any firearms, because guess what? One or more of their friend's parents do.
He already shot two burglars - which choice exactly does the 3rd one have?
I think you'll find it's rather impossible to plead self-defense when you were engaged in the commission of a felony in any of the 50 United States. What choice did he have? Did you seriously ask that question? Here's a notion: Try not breaking into houses.
A magazine safety isn't for "gun grab" protection. It's to prevent a supposedly unloaded weapon from firing when there's still a round in the chamber.
It also negates your ability to do a tactical reload while keeping the firearm functional, which is why no sane police department issues firearms with magazine safeties. Nor should any civilian shopping for a self-defense firearm consider one. On a range or hunting toy it's not a big deal, but there's no place for a magazine safety on a self defense weapon. The action of checking the chamber is not rocket science and no amount of technology is going to make up for poor gun handling.
When Col. Dave Hackworth was working on the Army's project to replace the 1911A1, he discovered that, over the Army's history of that weapon, it had killed more US troops through accidents than enemy.
I'm calling bullshit on that unless you have a citation. The M1911 went through two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and is still used by a handful of military units today. It went through all that but has claimed more accidental deaths than enemy KIAs? That strains credibility. More to the point, the M9 is no safer than the M1911 with regards to negligent discharges. Both have manual safeties. Both go boom if you disengage that safety and squeeze the trigger.
Sidearms are carried by troops who don't plan to use them.
They were used plenty in the aforementioned conflicts. In WW1 they were the preferred weapon when clearing enemy trenches. Which would you prefer when clearing a trench? A semi-automatic pistol that's easy to handle in tight quarters or a large bolt action rifle? A shotgun would be the ideal weapon of course, and we did use them, but they weren't issued as widely as the M1911.
Pistols are primarily a sidearm in this day and age, particularly as carbines have become the weapon of choice (pistols aren't even standard issue in most of the military these days, not even for most officers) but they still have a place on the battlefield. And at home for that matter, police and civilian CCW'ers find it rather hard to tote an AR-15 around with the same ease as a service pistol.
Encouraging people to move is not "claiming moral superiority", it's telling people that maybe they'd be happier someplace where people think more like them.
Would you deem it acceptable to apply the same idea to other civil rights? Maybe African-Americans should have just left the South instead of using the Federal Government to compel their home states to honor their civil rights?
Love it or hate it, the 2nd Amendment is incorporated against the States. Actions taken with an eye towards restricting that right will not be looked kindly upon by the Federal Courts or Congress.
I like the implied conclusion that robbers are afraid of people with phones but not afraid of people with guns because they can easily disarm and kill the untrained civilian. Hint: If they can take a gun from you with ease they can probably get the phone out of your hands before you complete the call. Your whole argument annoys me, because it comes across as exceedingly condescending towards people that have made the choice to defend themselves with something a tad bit more effective than 911.
"911: When seconds count, help is only minutes away."
If I want to unplugged I'll put the phone into airplane mode or just plain ignore the calls. I want "unplugged" to be my choice, not something compelled upon me because my carrier has an inferior network.:)
The standards haven't exactly converged, IS-95/IS-2000 (better known as CDMA to lay-people, though that's the air interface, not the standard) remains incompatible with most of the GSM family (GSM, WCDMA). LTE does support IS-95/IS-2000, with seamless handover, though this matters less than you'd think it would because most phones only support a handful of LTE bands and won't find a usable LTE signal out of their home country. That said, all of the higher end phones these days are multi mode, my Moto X will do GSM, WCDMA, LTE, and IS-95/IS-2000 (CDMA), so I can take it almost anywhere on Earth and use it. It's the same with the flagship Samsung and iPhones that Verizon sells.
To answer this question:
So I'm also a bit confused as to why Verizon and T-Mobile are still sticking so vehemently to their old market segmentation strategy now that the technical playing field is supposedly more level.
That segmentation wasn't because of technological limitations, it has to do with the respective financial resources of the two companies. T-Mobile just doesn't have the money to build a network to match Verizon, nor do they regard it as a priority to do so. T-Mobile is the "good enough" carrier, as reflected by their prices.
You fail to understand either of those cases. Cruikshank was a reference to natural law rights, "neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence". Further, limiting the applicability of the 2nd Amendment the Federal Government was a direct violation of the 14th Amendment, one which the McDonald ruling later rectified.
Miller doesn't mean what you think it means either. More to the point, it was incorrectly decided, because the weapons in question (short barrel shotguns) were in common use by the military of the day, which was the criteria that SCOTUS used to determine whether or not a particular type of weapon could be regulated. If you're opposed to the right to keep and bear arms you should be leery of citing that precedent, because applying it today would undermine the so-called assault weapon bans so desired by the anti-rights crowd. Common military use? Check. Useful to the militia? Check.
You also fail to acknowledge the political reality of the United States, where gun rights remain popular, and all of the enthusiasm is on the pro-RKBA side of the fence. Few people will base their vote on gun control, but millions regularly base it on gun rights. You couldn't even get UBCs through the United States Senate, because nobody trusts the motivation of the people (Feinstein, Schemer, et. al) who were pushing them, with good reason if you look at what their political allies have done in their home states.
When the AT&T / T-Mo merger failed, AT&T gave T-mo a bunch of spectrum
They've had spectrum around these parts since the Voicestream days. They just don't bother to build it out. Or if they do they restrict 3G and 4G services to the cities and use GSM/EDGE to fill in the gaps. My hometown gets EDGE service along the highway and nothing once you're a few miles away, until you get sufficiently far enough away from T-Mo's native network to be allowed to connect to AT&T.
The last bit was particularly infuriating when I was a T-Mobile customer. They used to (and I think still do, based on their maps) restrict where you could use AT&T roaming, so that people couldn't force their phones to AT&T in an area that ostensibly had T-Mobile coverage. Only problem is the location area codes on AT&T's network don't neatly align with T-Mobile's dead zones, so you end up with an island of awesome T-Mobile signal, surrounded by nothing, further surrounded by AT&T roaming.
Nothing infuriated me more than doing a network scan, seeing "Cingular", but having to deal with 10-20 miles of no service (except 911) until I entered that part of the AT&T network I was allowed to use.
That's actually another point in favor of Verizon, come to think of it. Verizon is the only big carrier that doesn't care how much roaming you do. The others will cut you off after a certain threshold of roaming data or minutes, because they don't want to pay for it. Verizon doesn't care if 100% of your usage is on partner networks. Heck, they'll even let you change your service address to partner areas where they have no native coverage at all.
But she's got a non standard IS95 derived vagina that doesn't fit a standard GSM derived penis.
You're behind the times, Verizon's phones all take SIM cards now. All of the flagship phones (iPhone, Galaxy S4/S5, the Moto X) are global phones that will work virtually anywhere (except Japan and China). My X supports GSM, UMTS, IS-95/IS-2000, and LTE on Bands 4 and 13.
Besides, IS-95 was arguably superior to GSM in the voice department. Higher spectral efficiency, better voice quality, and most importantly it was interoperable with the old AMPS network. That means nothing today, but it was huge when digital voice was rolling out and the carriers had huge legacy AMPS networks they needed seamless handoffs with. GSM's TDMA air interface was already obsolete in the 90s and it's telling that UMTS did away with it in favor of a CDMA based air interface.
We're also being fleeced for voice contracts, on both our land-line and mobile, because the phone companies prefer to continue charging a 1970's service charge for something that modern networks deliver practically for free.
It's only "practically for free" if you discount the monies required to keep that ancient outside plant up and running. That's one of the reasons why Verizon got out of the dry loop DSL business. It simply doesn't pay the bills to hook someone up with just DSL. Better to let the plant sit there and rot than to service unprofitable customers.
Talk to somebody who works in the business about the maintenance overhead of all that ancient copper wiring. The only thing that's worse is the expense of trying to replace it all with modern technology.
Different business, but this is part of the reason why cable internet costs keep going up. They see the writing on the wall for TV and phone service. The former will eventually be delivered over the internet, the latter is being slaughtered by wireless. Meanwhile the expenses to maintain the HFC network remain constant. If you can't sell triple plays to meet those expenses you're going to make up the margin elsewhere.
Actually it's a T-Mobile created problem. Nothing stopped them from bidding in the 700mhz auction, except for the part where they blew all their money (billions in fact) on the earlier 1700/2100mhz AWS auction. Nobody forced T-Mobile to do that. A lot of industry watchers scratched their head at that move, wondering why T-Mobile was buying high frequency spectrum to build out a last generation UMTS network when LTE and the 700mhz auction were already on the horizon.
More to the point, there are whole swathes of the United States where they hold valid PCS licenses that they've never used. It's not a spectrum limitation in these markets, it's an unwillingness to invest the required monies to service them. T-Mobile will never match Verizon or AT&T's footprint. One they don't have the money, two they're on record saying they don't believe that sort of coverage is important to their customers. On that last point they may be right, there's certainly room in the market for a value oriented competitor to the big boys, but so long as they have grossly inferior coverage they'll never really be in a position to dethrone Verizon or AT&T.
Verizon and AT&T are often condemned for the behaviors of their wireline divisions, wherein they seemingly cherry pick the most profitable markets for FiOS and uVerse, leaving the rest to rot on last generation DSL service. The irony is that T-Mobile does the exact same thing with wireless but is rarely condemned out for such business decisions.
That's because no amount of creative pricing and sexy marketing (random musing: CZJ was way better than pink motorcycle lady with annoying voice) can hide the fact that T-Mobile has a 1990s network in 2014. Seriously, it's pathetic unless you live in a major city, and even then you'll have to deal with inferior indoor coverage as compared to carriers with 850mhz licenses.
Here in Upstate NY your options as soon as you leave the city limits range from EDGE to "roaming on AT&T" (if T-Mo allows it where you're at, they don't in all areas) to "no service at all". I experimented with T-Mobile back in 2007-2008 when I couldn't afford to pay Verizon's premium prices and had to deal with zero coverage for the last ten minutes of my thirty minute daily commute. They've not really improved all that much since then, at least if their coverage maps are any indication.
The analogy that I've long used is that Verizon is the hottest girl at the prom, and worse, she knows it.
I don't think you understand the criminal mindset. You're not dealing with a United States Navy Seal. You're dealing with an untrained lowlife scumbag who's looking for the easiest mark he can find. The vast majority of defensive gun uses end with a simple display, not the actual use of deadly force.
More to the point, any competent self-defense instructor will teach you how to avoid being disarmed. If you think you're getting my firearm away from me you're in for a rude surprise.
That's not true, most places you'd still need to show that you had a reasonable fear for your life, otherwise you could be prosecuted
The fact that they're in your dwelling uninvited is usually sufficient to meet the reasonable person standard for fearing for your life. More to the point, most states (including very blue ones, like New York) specifically outline burglary as a justification for the use of deadly force. From New York's Article 35:
A person in possession or control of, or licensed or privileged to be in, a dwelling or an occupied building, who reasonably believes that another person is committing or attempting to commit a burglary of such dwelling or building, may use deadly physical force upon such other person when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to prevent or terminate the commission or attempted commission of such burglary.
New York State's duty to retreat does not apply in this scenario either, you can stand your ground inside your dwelling or place of business.
Keep in mind that I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of such a decision. It depends on the totality of the circumstances. As a matter of personal morality I would always regard shooting someone as the last resort. If you can flee you should do so, if for no other reason than to spare yourself the emotional torment that comes with the ending of a human life. In my personal circumstance I live in a 2nd floor apartment with no means of escape other than the front door, so if you come in here I've really got nowhere to go. I sleep with a loaded 1911 in my nightstand, and I will use it if push comes to shove. You have to be alive to feel guilty about shooting the person who was trying to kill you....
The Supreme Court does not have the right to amend the Constitution (removing the militia clause)
The militia clause is a prefatory clause, not a limiting clause. The Amendment clearly states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, not the right of the people serving in a militia.
Your desired interpretation of the 2nd Amendment has never been upheld by any Federal Court, pre or post Heller. If you dislike the 2nd Amendment you'll have to use Article V to get rid of it. Best of luck with that undertaking.
but the interpretation you take as obviously incorrect was settled law for 70 years.
Actually, it wasn't, the Supreme Court had never ruled on it before. More to the point, if you look at the more than two hundred years of precedent in lower Courts (State and Federal), the State level 2nd Amendment equivalents written around the same time, and the writings of the Framers it's clear as day that the Amendment always referred to an individual right. The 'militia' argument is a losing one and we both know it.
A couple more reactionaries retiring or dying and being replaced by moderates or liberals will likely cause the court to return to the old interpretation
Be careful rooting against stare decisis for I think you'll find that Roe is in a lot more danger than Heller, and Roe is near and dear to the hearts of most of the anti-gun crowd.
You also might consider the political reality of the United States, where even traditionally blue States remain staunchly pro-gun. In fact, I can name only five States that are openly hostile towards guns (New York, Hawaii, New Jersey, California, and Maryland) and even in those States you'll find a solid consistency that's pro-gun (all of Upstate New York for example). In fact, I live in one of those States (New York) and have an unrestricted pistol license that allows me to carry a concealed firearm almost anywhere I deem it appropriate.
Best of luck with your dream of doing away with the 2nd Amendment when you can't even win the issue here in New York.
Slashdot Mirror
Will you be able to use the Force after installation?
No, otherwise Darth Vader would have been able to use Sith Lightning.
Money can't buy you lungs that convert CO2 to oxygen
If only nature had figured out this problem a few billion years ago.
It's a prestigious University. They'll just jack tuition and fees. What, are you gonna go somewhere else? Okay. We've got a waiting list ten miles long.
You're right of course, but that's basically what their attitude is. I highly doubt they'll go broke over this or any other activist investment decision.
Again, it's dumb to want a president who is feared by anyone.
No, it's perfectly logical to want someone that people think has the stones to back up their words. It's telling though that you choose to focus on the lack of fear as a good thing, rather than trying to dispute the fact that nobody (friend or foe) respects him. The Olympic Bid was perfect evidence of that, BHO put the power and prestige of the Presidency behind that bid, and Chicago got bounced in the first round. That may not mean anything to you, but it's hugely symbolic, and was the diplomatic equivalent of a slap in the face.
It's also evidence of BHO's utter failure to properly husband his influence and political capital. A domestic example of this failing would be the flushing away of all the political capital earned from re-election on an effort at gun control that was doomed from the get-go. BHO is supposed to be this cool political operator from Chicago but he's got nobody on staff that could do a whip count? Immigration reform was a casualty of that decision, as were other important issues that got short shrift.
In short, he's a loser, and the least effective President we've had in my lifetime. And I say that as someone that drank the kool aid and went so far as campaigning for him during the primaries against HRC. Boy, I screwed that one up big time....
I was really just going for being a wiseass, but if you want to take it seriously......
but he did in fact save the world economy from being dragged into a depression caused by deregulation of the parasites on Wall Street
By continuing policies instituted by George W. Bush and Hank Paulson. GWB took the political hit on several unpopular decisions (bailouts) rather than leave them to his successor. BHO can't even bring himself to make a decision on Keystone, nor enforce the politically unpopular parts of his sole major legislative achievement. Oh, and guess what? A lot of the aforementioned deregulation was bipartisan. Who was the President who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law?
You probably missed the fact that Obama threatened force, and was able to avoid using it, to get Assad to agree to relinquish his chemical weapons.
Want a list? Here's three of the top of my head: Chicago's first round exit from Olympics voting, Russia's behavior in Ukraine and Assad walking across the "red line" in the first place. BHO neither respected by our friends nor feared by our enemies. The global community laughs at him. BHO's decision to embrace any issue, no matter how seemingly insignificant (Chicago's Olympic bid) is usually the kiss of death. GWB was at least feared, if not respected. His Dad was both feared and respected. So was Bill Clinton. BHO is an embarrassment on the global stage. So is the current Secretary of State, while we're on the subject.
I really wish the Democratic Primary electorate had given us Hillary instead of BHO. It was their turn, the GOP was going to lose no matter what, the least they could have done was found someone that the rest of the world would have respected. Love her or hate her, Hillary would have been taken seriously overseas.
P.S., I don't really like the Republican Party either, so best of luck with your forthcoming attempt to dismiss me as a Teabagger, Right-winger, Rethuglican, or any other straw men you're cooking up.
My country produces porn? Wow, I had no idea, I source most of mine from Europe. Oh, you mean those videos with laughably large cocks and not a single non-augmented breast?
American porn sucks. How it manages to survive in a competitive marketplace is beyond me. Thank god for the internet....
A liberal administration isnt going to crack down on porn
Liberals aren't anti-porn? Seriously? You really wanna go there?
Earlier this month, 42 senators signed a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder to step up enforcement of federal obscenity laws. Among the cast of mostly Republican signers, one name stood out: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a staunch liberal from California, the de-facto porn capital of America. (Feinstein wasn’t available to comment for this story.)
She wasn’t alone: five other Senate Democrats, including Minnesota’s left-wing warrior, Amy Klobuchar, also signed the letter, and they were applauded by feminists, leftist lawyers, and liberal academics. Together, this increasingly vocal segment of progressives is making the case that hardcore porn flies in the face of cherished liberal causes—and that Democrats should be leading the charge to take down its distributors.
“To be anti-porn is a progressive principle.”
Liberals have no problem going after porn. They just frame it differently than Conservatives. They're upholding women's rights (except of course for the right of women to consent to star in pornography) rather than Christian morals.
If anything the Liberal position is more hypocritical than the Conservative one.
Unless you have one of those Obama as Hitler posters in your basement.
Obama could never be mistaken for Adolf Hitler. Hitler could rally crowds and command respect/fear on the global stage. Poor Mr. Hapless no longer seems able to do the former and was never able to do the latter.
But if you have children how would you juggle keeping a gun accessible enough to actually use in self defence but not accessible enough for your children to easily access it?
Any one of the dozens of handgun combination safes on the market would do the job. I can open mine in about three seconds.
Of course, the most important thing is education, not gun locks/safes. In fact, you should be teaching your kids gun safety even if you don't own any firearms, because guess what? One or more of their friend's parents do.
He already shot two burglars - which choice exactly does the 3rd one have?
I think you'll find it's rather impossible to plead self-defense when you were engaged in the commission of a felony in any of the 50 United States. What choice did he have? Did you seriously ask that question? Here's a notion: Try not breaking into houses.
A magazine safety isn't for "gun grab" protection. It's to prevent a supposedly unloaded weapon from firing when there's still a round in the chamber.
It also negates your ability to do a tactical reload while keeping the firearm functional, which is why no sane police department issues firearms with magazine safeties. Nor should any civilian shopping for a self-defense firearm consider one. On a range or hunting toy it's not a big deal, but there's no place for a magazine safety on a self defense weapon. The action of checking the chamber is not rocket science and no amount of technology is going to make up for poor gun handling.
When Col. Dave Hackworth was working on the Army's project to replace the 1911A1, he discovered that, over the Army's history of that weapon, it had killed more US troops through accidents than enemy.
I'm calling bullshit on that unless you have a citation. The M1911 went through two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and is still used by a handful of military units today. It went through all that but has claimed more accidental deaths than enemy KIAs? That strains credibility. More to the point, the M9 is no safer than the M1911 with regards to negligent discharges. Both have manual safeties. Both go boom if you disengage that safety and squeeze the trigger.
Sidearms are carried by troops who don't plan to use them.
They were used plenty in the aforementioned conflicts. In WW1 they were the preferred weapon when clearing enemy trenches. Which would you prefer when clearing a trench? A semi-automatic pistol that's easy to handle in tight quarters or a large bolt action rifle? A shotgun would be the ideal weapon of course, and we did use them, but they weren't issued as widely as the M1911.
Pistols are primarily a sidearm in this day and age, particularly as carbines have become the weapon of choice (pistols aren't even standard issue in most of the military these days, not even for most officers) but they still have a place on the battlefield. And at home for that matter, police and civilian CCW'ers find it rather hard to tote an AR-15 around with the same ease as a service pistol.
Encouraging people to move is not "claiming moral superiority", it's telling people that maybe they'd be happier someplace where people think more like them.
Would you deem it acceptable to apply the same idea to other civil rights? Maybe African-Americans should have just left the South instead of using the Federal Government to compel their home states to honor their civil rights?
Love it or hate it, the 2nd Amendment is incorporated against the States. Actions taken with an eye towards restricting that right will not be looked kindly upon by the Federal Courts or Congress.
I like the implied conclusion that robbers are afraid of people with phones but not afraid of people with guns because they can easily disarm and kill the untrained civilian. Hint: If they can take a gun from you with ease they can probably get the phone out of your hands before you complete the call. Your whole argument annoys me, because it comes across as exceedingly condescending towards people that have made the choice to defend themselves with something a tad bit more effective than 911.
"911: When seconds count, help is only minutes away."
If I want to unplugged I'll put the phone into airplane mode or just plain ignore the calls. I want "unplugged" to be my choice, not something compelled upon me because my carrier has an inferior network. :)
The standards haven't exactly converged, IS-95/IS-2000 (better known as CDMA to lay-people, though that's the air interface, not the standard) remains incompatible with most of the GSM family (GSM, WCDMA). LTE does support IS-95/IS-2000, with seamless handover, though this matters less than you'd think it would because most phones only support a handful of LTE bands and won't find a usable LTE signal out of their home country. That said, all of the higher end phones these days are multi mode, my Moto X will do GSM, WCDMA, LTE, and IS-95/IS-2000 (CDMA), so I can take it almost anywhere on Earth and use it. It's the same with the flagship Samsung and iPhones that Verizon sells.
To answer this question:
So I'm also a bit confused as to why Verizon and T-Mobile are still sticking so vehemently to their old market segmentation strategy now that the technical playing field is supposedly more level.
That segmentation wasn't because of technological limitations, it has to do with the respective financial resources of the two companies. T-Mobile just doesn't have the money to build a network to match Verizon, nor do they regard it as a priority to do so. T-Mobile is the "good enough" carrier, as reflected by their prices.
You fail to understand either of those cases. Cruikshank was a reference to natural law rights, "neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence". Further, limiting the applicability of the 2nd Amendment the Federal Government was a direct violation of the 14th Amendment, one which the McDonald ruling later rectified.
Miller doesn't mean what you think it means either. More to the point, it was incorrectly decided, because the weapons in question (short barrel shotguns) were in common use by the military of the day, which was the criteria that SCOTUS used to determine whether or not a particular type of weapon could be regulated. If you're opposed to the right to keep and bear arms you should be leery of citing that precedent, because applying it today would undermine the so-called assault weapon bans so desired by the anti-rights crowd. Common military use? Check. Useful to the militia? Check.
You also fail to acknowledge the political reality of the United States, where gun rights remain popular, and all of the enthusiasm is on the pro-RKBA side of the fence. Few people will base their vote on gun control, but millions regularly base it on gun rights. You couldn't even get UBCs through the United States Senate, because nobody trusts the motivation of the people (Feinstein, Schemer, et. al) who were pushing them, with good reason if you look at what their political allies have done in their home states.
When the AT&T / T-Mo merger failed, AT&T gave T-mo a bunch of spectrum
They've had spectrum around these parts since the Voicestream days. They just don't bother to build it out. Or if they do they restrict 3G and 4G services to the cities and use GSM/EDGE to fill in the gaps. My hometown gets EDGE service along the highway and nothing once you're a few miles away, until you get sufficiently far enough away from T-Mo's native network to be allowed to connect to AT&T.
The last bit was particularly infuriating when I was a T-Mobile customer. They used to (and I think still do, based on their maps) restrict where you could use AT&T roaming, so that people couldn't force their phones to AT&T in an area that ostensibly had T-Mobile coverage. Only problem is the location area codes on AT&T's network don't neatly align with T-Mobile's dead zones, so you end up with an island of awesome T-Mobile signal, surrounded by nothing, further surrounded by AT&T roaming.
Nothing infuriated me more than doing a network scan, seeing "Cingular", but having to deal with 10-20 miles of no service (except 911) until I entered that part of the AT&T network I was allowed to use.
That's actually another point in favor of Verizon, come to think of it. Verizon is the only big carrier that doesn't care how much roaming you do. The others will cut you off after a certain threshold of roaming data or minutes, because they don't want to pay for it. Verizon doesn't care if 100% of your usage is on partner networks. Heck, they'll even let you change your service address to partner areas where they have no native coverage at all.
But she's got a non standard IS95 derived vagina that doesn't fit a standard GSM derived penis.
You're behind the times, Verizon's phones all take SIM cards now. All of the flagship phones (iPhone, Galaxy S4/S5, the Moto X) are global phones that will work virtually anywhere (except Japan and China). My X supports GSM, UMTS, IS-95/IS-2000, and LTE on Bands 4 and 13.
Besides, IS-95 was arguably superior to GSM in the voice department. Higher spectral efficiency, better voice quality, and most importantly it was interoperable with the old AMPS network. That means nothing today, but it was huge when digital voice was rolling out and the carriers had huge legacy AMPS networks they needed seamless handoffs with. GSM's TDMA air interface was already obsolete in the 90s and it's telling that UMTS did away with it in favor of a CDMA based air interface.
We're also being fleeced for voice contracts, on both our land-line and mobile, because the phone companies prefer to continue charging a 1970's service charge for something that modern networks deliver practically for free.
It's only "practically for free" if you discount the monies required to keep that ancient outside plant up and running. That's one of the reasons why Verizon got out of the dry loop DSL business. It simply doesn't pay the bills to hook someone up with just DSL. Better to let the plant sit there and rot than to service unprofitable customers.
Talk to somebody who works in the business about the maintenance overhead of all that ancient copper wiring. The only thing that's worse is the expense of trying to replace it all with modern technology.
Different business, but this is part of the reason why cable internet costs keep going up. They see the writing on the wall for TV and phone service. The former will eventually be delivered over the internet, the latter is being slaughtered by wireless. Meanwhile the expenses to maintain the HFC network remain constant. If you can't sell triple plays to meet those expenses you're going to make up the margin elsewhere.
Actually it's a T-Mobile created problem. Nothing stopped them from bidding in the 700mhz auction, except for the part where they blew all their money (billions in fact) on the earlier 1700/2100mhz AWS auction. Nobody forced T-Mobile to do that. A lot of industry watchers scratched their head at that move, wondering why T-Mobile was buying high frequency spectrum to build out a last generation UMTS network when LTE and the 700mhz auction were already on the horizon.
More to the point, there are whole swathes of the United States where they hold valid PCS licenses that they've never used. It's not a spectrum limitation in these markets, it's an unwillingness to invest the required monies to service them. T-Mobile will never match Verizon or AT&T's footprint. One they don't have the money, two they're on record saying they don't believe that sort of coverage is important to their customers. On that last point they may be right, there's certainly room in the market for a value oriented competitor to the big boys, but so long as they have grossly inferior coverage they'll never really be in a position to dethrone Verizon or AT&T.
Verizon and AT&T are often condemned for the behaviors of their wireline divisions, wherein they seemingly cherry pick the most profitable markets for FiOS and uVerse, leaving the rest to rot on last generation DSL service. The irony is that T-Mobile does the exact same thing with wireless but is rarely condemned out for such business decisions.
That's because no amount of creative pricing and sexy marketing (random musing: CZJ was way better than pink motorcycle lady with annoying voice) can hide the fact that T-Mobile has a 1990s network in 2014. Seriously, it's pathetic unless you live in a major city, and even then you'll have to deal with inferior indoor coverage as compared to carriers with 850mhz licenses.
Here in Upstate NY your options as soon as you leave the city limits range from EDGE to "roaming on AT&T" (if T-Mo allows it where you're at, they don't in all areas) to "no service at all". I experimented with T-Mobile back in 2007-2008 when I couldn't afford to pay Verizon's premium prices and had to deal with zero coverage for the last ten minutes of my thirty minute daily commute. They've not really improved all that much since then, at least if their coverage maps are any indication.
The analogy that I've long used is that Verizon is the hottest girl at the prom, and worse, she knows it.
If I can't fight them, they'll take my gun away.
I don't think you understand the criminal mindset. You're not dealing with a United States Navy Seal. You're dealing with an untrained lowlife scumbag who's looking for the easiest mark he can find. The vast majority of defensive gun uses end with a simple display, not the actual use of deadly force.
More to the point, any competent self-defense instructor will teach you how to avoid being disarmed. If you think you're getting my firearm away from me you're in for a rude surprise.
That's not true, most places you'd still need to show that you had a reasonable fear for your life, otherwise you could be prosecuted
The fact that they're in your dwelling uninvited is usually sufficient to meet the reasonable person standard for fearing for your life. More to the point, most states (including very blue ones, like New York) specifically outline burglary as a justification for the use of deadly force. From New York's Article 35:
A person in possession or control of, or licensed or privileged to be in, a dwelling or an occupied building, who reasonably believes that another person is committing or attempting to commit a burglary of such dwelling or building, may use deadly physical force upon such other person when he or she reasonably believes such to be necessary to prevent or terminate the commission or attempted commission of such burglary.
New York State's duty to retreat does not apply in this scenario either, you can stand your ground inside your dwelling or place of business.
Keep in mind that I make no comment on the wisdom or lack thereof of such a decision. It depends on the totality of the circumstances. As a matter of personal morality I would always regard shooting someone as the last resort. If you can flee you should do so, if for no other reason than to spare yourself the emotional torment that comes with the ending of a human life. In my personal circumstance I live in a 2nd floor apartment with no means of escape other than the front door, so if you come in here I've really got nowhere to go. I sleep with a loaded 1911 in my nightstand, and I will use it if push comes to shove. You have to be alive to feel guilty about shooting the person who was trying to kill you....
The Supreme Court does not have the right to amend the Constitution (removing the militia clause)
The militia clause is a prefatory clause, not a limiting clause. The Amendment clearly states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, not the right of the people serving in a militia.
Your desired interpretation of the 2nd Amendment has never been upheld by any Federal Court, pre or post Heller. If you dislike the 2nd Amendment you'll have to use Article V to get rid of it. Best of luck with that undertaking.
but the interpretation you take as obviously incorrect was settled law for 70 years.
Actually, it wasn't, the Supreme Court had never ruled on it before. More to the point, if you look at the more than two hundred years of precedent in lower Courts (State and Federal), the State level 2nd Amendment equivalents written around the same time, and the writings of the Framers it's clear as day that the Amendment always referred to an individual right. The 'militia' argument is a losing one and we both know it.
A couple more reactionaries retiring or dying and being replaced by moderates or liberals will likely cause the court to return to the old interpretation
Be careful rooting against stare decisis for I think you'll find that Roe is in a lot more danger than Heller, and Roe is near and dear to the hearts of most of the anti-gun crowd.
You also might consider the political reality of the United States, where even traditionally blue States remain staunchly pro-gun. In fact, I can name only five States that are openly hostile towards guns (New York, Hawaii, New Jersey, California, and Maryland) and even in those States you'll find a solid consistency that's pro-gun (all of Upstate New York for example). In fact, I live in one of those States (New York) and have an unrestricted pistol license that allows me to carry a concealed firearm almost anywhere I deem it appropriate.
Best of luck with your dream of doing away with the 2nd Amendment when you can't even win the issue here in New York.
There has always been overlap between nerd culture and love of guns.
That's because firearms are a pretty awesome piece of technology, when you strip away the politics.