The point is that you already had the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution strictly defines and restricts what government is allowed to do and in what areas. All other "unmentioned" rights are assumed to belong to the people.
The Bill of Rights enumerates a few of the rights that some of the framers thought were important enough to specifically enshrine in the Constitution. Others argued against this, basically saying that some moron down the road would look at the Bill of Rights and say those are the only rights people have. Which, sadly, many moronic judges and many others have been doing ever since.
Sorry, how exactly was the Soviet Union not an Evil Empire? Gulags, secret police, mass killing of millions of it's own citizens. I never understood why anyone had a problem with Reagan calling a spade a spade.
Yep, no major problems. 30-years war, Napoleonic wars, Franco-Prussian war, WW I and II, enslavement of eastern europe by the Soviets. Dozens of other conflicts.
Hard to imagine a more peaceful time, really. Damn good thing those troublemakers left though, so they could come back and save your asses twice and hold off the Soviets for 50 years.
The act of sending unsolicited bulk E-mail is legal.
However, raping open relays and open proxies, while selling fraudulent or illegal products, is not. Forging someone else's E-mail address to avoid complaints and bounces is also fraudulent.
So I'm hard-pressed to see anything in my spam folder that is not breaking at least one law at this time.
You're not free if you have to break multiple laws every day just to live your life the way you want to. It just takes one bureaucrat to take one small dislike to you and suddenly you can be doing serious time for doing things that never hurt anyone and never could, things that everyone does but for which there is little enforcement except for when convenient.
The US has more forest cover now that it had 100 years ago. Trees are kind of funny that way, you plant a seed and, somehow, 20-40 years later you have a perfectly good tree back ready to cut down again. Forest companies and governments both plant a lot of trees, usually more than they cut down.
Anyone who thinks that either Canada or the US is running out of trees, or will EVER run out of trees, has clearly never stepped outside their local concrete urban neighborhood and seen how truly immensely huge and relatively unpopulated North America is.
Now we are running out of old-growth forest, and destroying some unique ecosystems in the process, and that is a problem. But we are certainly not running out of trees.
I do some contract work for a local ISP, handling abuse issues. What we do is:
1) Proactively scan our network for open relays (and soon open proxies). If we find one we notify the customer. We continue to nag them every week or two until it gets fixed.
2) At the very first complaint, whether or not the customer had been notified, we firewall outbound traffic to prevent further abuse.
3) The customer quickly closes their open relay.
Proactive scanning identifies about 80% of new open relays before spammers find them. We find this causes a lot less work answering complaints.
That may be, but both Stalingrad and Kursk happened after the US joined the war... and at Kursk certainly the Russians used a lot of war material supplied by the US.
So while I agree the Russians suffered the brunt of the European fighting, and after Kursk would have won the war without the allies opening a western front, I don't think you can say the Russians would have won the war without Allied help. And Western Europe would have suffered the same fate as Eastern Europe after the war, so you might want to thank the Americans for preventing that as well.
Not to mention that _everyone_ except maybe FDR knew that Stalin was going to be a major pain in the ass after the war, and it couldn't hurt to have a trump card around.
Well if you want to nitpick you could start counting in Europe when the Germans invaded Austria (oh, sorry, when the people of Austria rose up and demanded to join the Fatherland, lol), and in Asia when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. So, 1936 or 1933 depending who you think counts.
ie. people were dying for years before England and France got involved too.
For an American, it is correct to say their WWII started in 1941... but then again they should recall their WWI started in 1917, not 1914.
No, because dealing with crimes where there are actual victims takes a lot fewer resources than trying to track down adults who have chosen to deal with each other in a way they both perceive to be beneficial.
Ie, it's hard to enforce drug laws, because there is no victim to complain about the breaking of the law and perform as a witness. The authorities have to entrap, spy upon, and engage in criminal activities themselves to catch anyone.
As for gun laws, they're a joke, unless you think it is actually difficult for a criminal to get a gun as a result of the laws. Hell, they aren't even enforced, because to do so would require an effort as large as the drug war and still wouldn't accomplish anything except to make more people who haven't hurt anyone into convicted criminals.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that you already had the right to keep and bear arms. The Constitution strictly defines and restricts what government is allowed to do and in what areas. All other "unmentioned" rights are assumed to belong to the people.
The Bill of Rights enumerates a few of the rights that some of the framers thought were important enough to specifically enshrine in the Constitution. Others argued against this, basically saying that some moron down the road would look at the Bill of Rights and say those are the only rights people have. Which, sadly, many moronic judges and many others have been doing ever since.
Sorry, how exactly was the Soviet Union not an Evil Empire? Gulags, secret police, mass killing of millions of it's own citizens. I never understood why anyone had a problem with Reagan calling a spade a spade.
Yes, accepting the nanny-state is easy if you grow up in it.
I wear my seatbelt too, because, well, it's stupid not to, but I despise the law that says I have to.
run the services on different ports. geez. Even MS MUA's allow you to connect to different ports.
nah, they just want IBM to buy them out to shut them up, preferably before they go bankrupt.
http://www.serendipity.li/waco.html
Although I wouldn't want to see the Chinese as a serious superpower, Americans need to wake the hell up as to what their government is becoming.
Yep, no major problems. 30-years war, Napoleonic wars, Franco-Prussian war, WW I and II, enslavement of eastern europe by the Soviets. Dozens of other conflicts.
Hard to imagine a more peaceful time, really. Damn good thing those troublemakers left though, so they could come back and save your asses twice and hold off the Soviets for 50 years.
The act of sending unsolicited bulk E-mail is legal.
However, raping open relays and open proxies, while selling fraudulent or illegal products, is not. Forging someone else's E-mail address to avoid complaints and bounces is also fraudulent.
So I'm hard-pressed to see anything in my spam folder that is not breaking at least one law at this time.
A substantial portion of the fees you pay to your ISP are to cover mail server capacity and bandwidth devoted to receiving spam.
Nova.
Hey I've experienced temperatures almost that low. You can survive them a lot longer than you can survive without air.
You're not free if you have to break multiple laws every day just to live your life the way you want to. It just takes one bureaucrat to take one small dislike to you and suddenly you can be doing serious time for doing things that never hurt anyone and never could, things that everyone does but for which there is little enforcement except for when convenient.
The US has more forest cover now that it had 100 years ago. Trees are kind of funny that way, you plant a seed and, somehow, 20-40 years later you have a perfectly good tree back ready to cut down again. Forest companies and governments both plant a lot of trees, usually more than they cut down.
Anyone who thinks that either Canada or the US is running out of trees, or will EVER run out of trees, has clearly never stepped outside their local concrete urban neighborhood and seen how truly immensely huge and relatively unpopulated North America is.
Now we are running out of old-growth forest, and destroying some unique ecosystems in the process, and that is a problem. But we are certainly not running out of trees.
aye, "20 years away" in engineer-speak means "we still have no idea how to do it"
Ya but Blade Runner is still a classic, and one of the best SF films ever made. I agree the director's cut was much better though.
I do some contract work for a local ISP, handling abuse issues. What we do is:
1) Proactively scan our network for open relays (and soon open proxies). If we find one we notify the customer. We continue to nag them every week or two until it gets fixed.
2) At the very first complaint, whether or not the customer had been notified, we firewall outbound traffic to prevent further abuse.
3) The customer quickly closes their open relay.
Proactive scanning identifies about 80% of new open relays before spammers find them. We find this causes a lot less work answering complaints.
That may be, but both Stalingrad and Kursk happened after the US joined the war ... and at Kursk certainly the Russians used a lot of war material supplied by the US.
So while I agree the Russians suffered the brunt of the European fighting, and after Kursk would have won the war without the allies opening a western front, I don't think you can say the Russians would have won the war without Allied help. And Western Europe would have suffered the same fate as Eastern Europe after the war, so you might want to thank the Americans for preventing that as well.
Not to mention that _everyone_ except maybe FDR knew that Stalin was going to be a major pain in the ass after the war, and it couldn't hurt to have a trump card around.
Well if you want to nitpick you could start counting in Europe when the Germans invaded Austria (oh, sorry, when the people of Austria rose up and demanded to join the Fatherland, lol), and in Asia when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. So, 1936 or 1933 depending who you think counts.
... but then again they should recall their WWI started in 1917, not 1914.
ie. people were dying for years before England and France got involved too.
For an American, it is correct to say their WWII started in 1941
Well, believing in socialism is easy. You just have to believe you can force everyone else to work extra hard to make up for your laziness.
:P
The fact that it doesn't work is irrelevant
It wasn't. They didn't have enough fuel to manoeuvre into a polar orbit.
The Russians returned moon rocks with an unmanned probe I believe, possibly more than once.
And Microsoft would be welcome to use it. They just wouldn't be able to modify it and then sell the lot back to you without source code.
No, because dealing with crimes where there are actual victims takes a lot fewer resources than trying to track down adults who have chosen to deal with each other in a way they both perceive to be beneficial.
Ie, it's hard to enforce drug laws, because there is no victim to complain about the breaking of the law and perform as a witness. The authorities have to entrap, spy upon, and engage in criminal activities themselves to catch anyone.
As for gun laws, they're a joke, unless you think it is actually difficult for a criminal to get a gun as a result of the laws. Hell, they aren't even enforced, because to do so would require an effort as large as the drug war and still wouldn't accomplish anything except to make more people who haven't hurt anyone into convicted criminals.
It's not that strange. Chretien hasn't actually done anything since he got into power, so there's nothing really to vote against.