Nothing's wrong with professors, be they right or be they left. When you have a problem is when said professor(s) begin to make up their own facts, such as not taking into account the actual meaning of the words "militia" and "well regulated" at the time the document was penned.
You are very confused. "Militia" meant every citizen, in every state, of fighting age (18-45.) Not "state organization." See the Militia act(s) of 1792.
Also, while we're talking about the 2nd amendment, "well regulated" meant uniformly supplied and equipped. It didn't mean made orderly by legislation.
The 2nd can only be meaningfully read with these understandings; further, it breaks neatly into two sections, the first being informational: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" and the second consisting of a limit on government action: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Consequently, if you run into a law that infringes on your right to keep or carry arms in any way, shape or form, you've found an unconstitutional law. Concealed carry laws, license laws, "can't carry a knife or nunchuk" laws, chemical glassware laws, etc., etc. All thoroughly unconstitutional.
The problem we have is, our government has been ignoring the constitution for decades at its convenience. Executive, legislative, and judiciary have all been complicit in this. The citizens have, for the most part, not reacted. So the reality of our current situation is that we're not operating as a constitutional republic: We're a de facto corporate oligarchy. So the fact that the government ignores and otherwise violates the constitution seems to be in line with the public's... apathy and ignorance, if nothing else. But it may be something more profound than that. It may be that this change in governance is actually where we want to go. In which case, all talk of revolution will be by a tiny majority, and it will never come to pass. Just as an aside, that's how I'm betting. Your average American wants cheeseburgers and episodes of "Lost." And that's about the end of it.
War is driven by political and judicial will. War is expensive.
Deploying heavy weapons means deploying heavy supply lines. While the former may be nearly invulnerable, the latter are rather the opposite unless defended; if defended, the weight of firepower available for actual combat is reduced.
Politicians and so-called justices would have to go into hiding. If their side loses, they might have to stay there.
Law enforcement would be trivially overwhelmed anywhere they didn't side with the rebels and military support was not immediately available.
The winning side gets to set conditions: no slavery, taxes on cotton, right to vote, etc.
War can provide significant leverage for change. War can cut through the legal tangle when a government has gone rogue. War can reset a sick society. War can bring down evil leaders (Hitler, etc.) War can end evil policies (slavery, etc.)
War is pretty much always a horror. But not a draw.
For those of you unwilling to click through, that's a custom auroral-photography / astro-photography condition reporting system. Even the graphics are generated by Python. It not only lets me look at current conditions, it texts me in case I'm not paying attention when conditions are right for auroral photography. Which leads to photos like these.
On the one hand, with Perl, you can't even create and use a multi dimensional array without barely comprehensible hacks. On the other, the language itself leans too sharply towards gibberish instead of natural language. But it's powerful, and mostly (excepting a few outliers like multi-dim arrays) complete.
I speculate that the only reason that it's as popular as it is, is because people stick with what they know, especially if what they know is complex, functional, and esoteric doesn't hurt either -- it's rather like a form of job security. And a lot of people know Perl.
For myself, I learned Perl first, but was still interested in languages, and so continued with Python, PHP, Java, and so on. For a scripting language, I settled with Python, and feel that it is far superior to Perl in just about every way imaginable (and yeah, I'm a fan of the indentation, too, though I can see that if that's not similar to how you formatted your code in the first place, you'd not be likely to appreciate it. Me, I come from a C background where indentation far more formal than the K&R style was required.)
Anyway, if you're not a language bug, it may well be that one (or two) languages is quite enough. I don't expect long term Perl users to be looking to change, and that's why, I suspect, Perl is still so popular.
It is notable that you can surf porn like crazy with Apple's own tool: Safari.
Apple is not my mother. I already have a mother. She's already told me what she thinks, advised me, and set me loose within the world. Apple has no legitimate place in that hierarchy of trust and guidance. It belongs entirely to me.
Most valuable program(s) ever. From day one, and still today. Hands down. Best positioned language in terms of "to-the-metal", changes from tool to uber-tool in the hands of anyone who masters assembler and arrives at learning C with that under their belt, can create extremely fast executables if the CPU is really taken into account, or can be extremely simple to implement if a CPU is treated simplistically -- yet your code will still work fine, if a bit more slowly. Made portability something achievable instead of just desired. C is so well positioned that implementing the language's constructs on top of [some random] CPU is a relatively simple exercise, and then you have immediate access to oodles of goodness.
Also the source of a lot of whining and bad programming from poor programmers. But hey, a fine carpentry set doesn't make you a great carpenter, either.
Also a nod out to standard libraries -- also a boon to portability and more.
C++, oC, C#... also worthy of nods, but C is the king.
I'm waiting for ultracap overlords. Even hybrid ones.
All-electric car, enough UC capacity to run you around for, say, 15 minutes, and an IC engine that can charge the thing on board. No wasted idling energy (unless you spend it on AC or heat, etc., in which case it isn't wasted), all the great benefits of 4wd, regen, huge torque at any speed...
Of course, if you had a higher efficiency source of power (like nuclear... of course I'm dreaming now), that'd be super, but for now, gas/diesel is it.
I collect mineral specimens (primarily crystal-populated geodes) from the eastern portions of Fort Peck Lake, working my way along the shoreline. I also find, and collect, interesting invertebrate fossils such as crabs, clams and so forth. Vertebrate fossil collection is, as far as I know, illegal for the average citizen under any circumstances on public land, so I leave them where I find them.
The reason I collect at the shoreline is because the rapid erosion from the lake's waves constantly expose new specimens. However, I've also observed that the same processes wash specimens out into the lake itself, where they are beaten up against rocks and lost in the waters.
Clearly, these specimen losses are caused by the "do not collect vertebrates" laws, a (presumably) unintended consequence.
Would you support a modification to the "do not collect vertebrates" laws at the shoreline in order to preserve these specimens, even if, Darwin forbid, they ended up in a private collection?
So. Does this make a crime of not paying taxes out of a situation where it was not a crime?
If so, it would seem to be ex post facto:
1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action.
2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed.
3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
4th. Every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense, in order to convict the offender.
Seems to me they should just not pay, because there's no legal way to punish them for not paying.
Not that the supreme court has actually paid that much attention to ex post facto violations on either the federal or state level... real bunch of pants-shittingly stupid people in SCOTUS lately...
Talk about what might be possible, not what is certain.
No. Not what "might" be possible. What is possible. Again, you confuse fantasy with science fiction.
Otherwise, if you or others try to insist because an idea appears in science fiction, it must be achievable
Achievability involves a lot more than science. Political will; funding; a market; etc. What we insist is that it is possible based upon the science of the day. Hydrogen ramscoop? Possible. Star Trek style warp drive? Not possible. Robot? Possible. God? Not possible. Ray guns? Possible. Light sabers? Not possible. Fusion? Possible. Zero point energy? Not possible. And so it goes.
If it was well founded on accepted theories and experiences, it would be in actual science
Now you're confusing technology with science. Very few works indeed deal with science, per se; almost all SF finds its storyline or backdrop in the exposition of technology. The point being, the technology is possible, based upon the science of the day. Drop that ball, and you're writing fantasy.
SF uses science to set the stage for a story. Technologies that appear in SF are either already extant, or rely on theory current at the time of writing. Anything else - anything - is fantasy. WRT your "no true scotsman" silliness, this definition comes to us from the Milford SFWA conferences around the middle of the last century, courtesy of Del Ray, Clarke, Asimov, Blish, Knight, Pohl, Merrill, Kidd, Laumer, Heinlein, Lafferty, etc. They knew what they were talking about. They knew what they were writing when they wrote it; most were happy to exercise both forms, but they weren't inclined to confuse them.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying fantasy isn't a worthy form, I'm just saying it is distinct from SF and in a very specific way. What is unworthy is fantasy masquerading as SF; those that engage in such nonsense, from writers to bookstores to directors who make spacecraft go "whoosh", are charlatans — or incompetents.
You might turn it around and ask yourself this: If a story with fantasy elements is SF, then what defines a story as a fantasy? For if we don't draw the line at nonsensical hand waving — which is really what this is all about — then either fantasy ceases to exist, or SF does. Clearly, that's not happening nor is there any reason to expect it to happen.
Arguably "privacy" does not mean what it might have forty years ago
Argues: No. Privacy means exactly what it used to mean. What's confusing you is that you have a lot less of it now, and that a lot of people -- perhaps including you -- are unaware of what they've lost.
I think we'll need much higher resolution VR glasses for this to be of any use
FTFY: We'll need a no-glasses 3D display and high quality haptic feedback for this to be of any use. All this is right now is eye candy that reduces system functionality and ease of use.
Real SF -- not this fantasy crap -- uses science to talk about what's possible. That's where the idea for geostationary sats came from, as well as a number of other things.
Your problem (and a lot of other people's) is that you don't understand what SF is.
Your post assumes the premise that you can own information. This is incorrect.
No, it most certainly is not. I have information I am not going to make available to you -- just as one example, how and where I store my wealth -- and I assure you, there is no way for you to get that information except from me, as I am its exclusive custodian. I am not, in fact, going to make it available to you in any form. I own that information; you have no right to it; and you're not going to get it. Should you try to get it, I would make a concerted effort to see to it that you suffered for your attempt.
Your argument is no more than an attempt to tin-plate the child's whine of "but I want it!" It's quite pitiful, really.
like all those assholes on the underground railroad, right?
No. Those "assholes" on the underground railroad (including my ancestors) were dealing with a different issue entirely: involuntary slavery. This has no relevant connection to any theory of ownership of information or other non-sentient material.
And in the 1930s airplanes had motors that burned gasoline and used wings to generate lift. Do you see how information processing and the physical world have different limits?
And today, we have vehicles that utilize electricity generated from atomic decay, use EM fields to generate lift, and transport more, and heavier goods than 1930's aircraft... at higher speeds. Do you see how paradigm shifts work?
... want information to be free, even information that other people spent my tax money creating.
It's not that simple. These attacks go after information in the private sector. The basic idea is, no one -- self-styled activist or not -- has the right to mess with other people's property. If you do such a thing, it's a perfectly justified response if you get punched in the mouth, dragged off to jail, or otherwise fucked with in return.
Do not fuck with other people's shit. Break that rule, and you've lost the argument and all your moral and ethical cover, all at once.
Stay on the high road. It's the only one that dependably leads anywhere.
You're right. The real way to change a broken system is to participate in juvenile one-upmanship on Slashdot. That'll show 'em.
Nothing will "show them" but large infusions of cash. That's the way it's worked for decades now, and it shows absolutely no sign of changing. Any remarks in the nature of "write your congress-critter" are coming from the deluded or the intentionally deceptive. It has nothing to do with one-upsmanship, and everything to do with a government wildly out of control. We have fully transitioned from a nominal constitutional republic to a corporate oligarchy and there are now exactly zero "write-in" channels open from the citizens to those in power.
It's bread and circuses all the way down. We see everything from the clueless "write a letter" to the bewildered "in a democracy, such and such..." presentations from those people who seriously have no clue what is going on around them even as sophisticated than what might arise from passing a 7th grade civics class.
Our constitution is in tatters; our "representatives" don't; our laws treat liberty as a disease and our courts dispense rigid, classist authoritarian retribution in lieu of anything even remotely resembling justice. Our police range from jackbooted thugs to a blue conspiracy to hide malfeasance; our privacy and security, even our ability to travel, are up for grabs by an alphabet soup of three latter agencies. Our society is flaming out.
I have no patience with some nitwit thinking that "write your congress-critter" is a meaningful act. When I said it was naive, I was being kind.
It should be filed under "heinous government fuckery."
Unfortunately, in the US government, it's filed under "we'll do whatever we want, to whomever we want, and if you complain, we've got a list we'll put you on."
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing's wrong with professors, be they right or be they left. When you have a problem is when said professor(s) begin to make up their own facts, such as not taking into account the actual meaning of the words "militia" and "well regulated" at the time the document was penned.
You are very confused. "Militia" meant every citizen, in every state, of fighting age (18-45.) Not "state organization." See the Militia act(s) of 1792.
Also, while we're talking about the 2nd amendment, "well regulated" meant uniformly supplied and equipped. It didn't mean made orderly by legislation.
The 2nd can only be meaningfully read with these understandings; further, it breaks neatly into two sections, the first being informational: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" and the second consisting of a limit on government action: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Consequently, if you run into a law that infringes on your right to keep or carry arms in any way, shape or form, you've found an unconstitutional law. Concealed carry laws, license laws, "can't carry a knife or nunchuk" laws, chemical glassware laws, etc., etc. All thoroughly unconstitutional.
The problem we have is, our government has been ignoring the constitution for decades at its convenience. Executive, legislative, and judiciary have all been complicit in this. The citizens have, for the most part, not reacted. So the reality of our current situation is that we're not operating as a constitutional republic: We're a de facto corporate oligarchy. So the fact that the government ignores and otherwise violates the constitution seems to be in line with the public's... apathy and ignorance, if nothing else. But it may be something more profound than that. It may be that this change in governance is actually where we want to go. In which case, all talk of revolution will be by a tiny majority, and it will never come to pass. Just as an aside, that's how I'm betting. Your average American wants cheeseburgers and episodes of "Lost." And that's about the end of it.
More on the 2nd here.
No, there's more to it than that.
War is driven by political and judicial will. War is expensive.
Deploying heavy weapons means deploying heavy supply lines. While the former may be nearly invulnerable, the latter are rather the opposite unless defended; if defended, the weight of firepower available for actual combat is reduced.
Politicians and so-called justices would have to go into hiding. If their side loses, they might have to stay there.
Law enforcement would be trivially overwhelmed anywhere they didn't side with the rebels and military support was not immediately available.
The winning side gets to set conditions: no slavery, taxes on cotton, right to vote, etc.
War can provide significant leverage for change. War can cut through the legal tangle when a government has gone rogue. War can reset a sick society. War can bring down evil leaders (Hitler, etc.) War can end evil policies (slavery, etc.)
War is pretty much always a horror. But not a draw.
...darn near anything in Python. :)
For those of you unwilling to click through, that's a custom auroral-photography / astro-photography condition reporting system. Even the graphics are generated by Python. It not only lets me look at current conditions, it texts me in case I'm not paying attention when conditions are right for auroral photography. Which leads to photos like these.
On the one hand, with Perl, you can't even create and use a multi dimensional array without barely comprehensible hacks. On the other, the language itself leans too sharply towards gibberish instead of natural language. But it's powerful, and mostly (excepting a few outliers like multi-dim arrays) complete.
I speculate that the only reason that it's as popular as it is, is because people stick with what they know, especially if what they know is complex, functional, and esoteric doesn't hurt either -- it's rather like a form of job security. And a lot of people know Perl.
For myself, I learned Perl first, but was still interested in languages, and so continued with Python, PHP, Java, and so on. For a scripting language, I settled with Python, and feel that it is far superior to Perl in just about every way imaginable (and yeah, I'm a fan of the indentation, too, though I can see that if that's not similar to how you formatted your code in the first place, you'd not be likely to appreciate it. Me, I come from a C background where indentation far more formal than the K&R style was required.)
Anyway, if you're not a language bug, it may well be that one (or two) languages is quite enough. I don't expect long term Perl users to be looking to change, and that's why, I suspect, Perl is still so popular.
it's not like you should have anything unprotected by a firewall.
It is notable that you can surf porn like crazy with Apple's own tool: Safari.
Apple is not my mother. I already have a mother. She's already told me what she thinks, advised me, and set me loose within the world. Apple has no legitimate place in that hierarchy of trust and guidance. It belongs entirely to me.
Paper tape -- or perhaps piano rolls -- as the first reel software storage method.
Most valuable program(s) ever. From day one, and still today. Hands down. Best positioned language in terms of "to-the-metal", changes from tool to uber-tool in the hands of anyone who masters assembler and arrives at learning C with that under their belt, can create extremely fast executables if the CPU is really taken into account, or can be extremely simple to implement if a CPU is treated simplistically -- yet your code will still work fine, if a bit more slowly. Made portability something achievable instead of just desired. C is so well positioned that implementing the language's constructs on top of [some random] CPU is a relatively simple exercise, and then you have immediate access to oodles of goodness.
Also the source of a lot of whining and bad programming from poor programmers. But hey, a fine carpentry set doesn't make you a great carpenter, either.
Also a nod out to standard libraries -- also a boon to portability and more.
C++, oC, C#... also worthy of nods, but C is the king.
I'm waiting for ultracap overlords. Even hybrid ones.
All-electric car, enough UC capacity to run you around for, say, 15 minutes, and an IC engine that can charge the thing on board. No wasted idling energy (unless you spend it on AC or heat, etc., in which case it isn't wasted), all the great benefits of 4wd, regen, huge torque at any speed...
Of course, if you had a higher efficiency source of power (like nuclear... of course I'm dreaming now), that'd be super, but for now, gas/diesel is it.
I collect mineral specimens (primarily crystal-populated geodes) from the eastern portions of Fort Peck Lake, working my way along the shoreline. I also find, and collect, interesting invertebrate fossils such as crabs, clams and so forth. Vertebrate fossil collection is, as far as I know, illegal for the average citizen under any circumstances on public land, so I leave them where I find them.
The reason I collect at the shoreline is because the rapid erosion from the lake's waves constantly expose new specimens. However, I've also observed that the same processes wash specimens out into the lake itself, where they are beaten up against rocks and lost in the waters.
Clearly, these specimen losses are caused by the "do not collect vertebrates" laws, a (presumably) unintended consequence.
Would you support a modification to the "do not collect vertebrates" laws at the shoreline in order to preserve these specimens, even if, Darwin forbid, they ended up in a private collection?
So. Does this make a crime of not paying taxes out of a situation where it was not a crime?
If so, it would seem to be ex post facto:
Seems to me they should just not pay, because there's no legal way to punish them for not paying.
Not that the supreme court has actually paid that much attention to ex post facto violations on either the federal or state level... real bunch of pants-shittingly stupid people in SCOTUS lately...
It's the drunken approach congress, the executive and the judiciary take to unconstitutional legislation.
ok, those were both really fowl.
No. Not what "might" be possible. What is possible. Again, you confuse fantasy with science fiction.
Achievability involves a lot more than science. Political will; funding; a market; etc. What we insist is that it is possible based upon the science of the day. Hydrogen ramscoop? Possible. Star Trek style warp drive? Not possible. Robot? Possible. God? Not possible. Ray guns? Possible. Light sabers? Not possible. Fusion? Possible. Zero point energy? Not possible. And so it goes.
Now you're confusing technology with science. Very few works indeed deal with science, per se; almost all SF finds its storyline or backdrop in the exposition of technology. The point being, the technology is possible, based upon the science of the day. Drop that ball, and you're writing fantasy.
SF uses science to set the stage for a story. Technologies that appear in SF are either already extant, or rely on theory current at the time of writing. Anything else - anything - is fantasy. WRT your "no true scotsman" silliness, this definition comes to us from the Milford SFWA conferences around the middle of the last century, courtesy of Del Ray, Clarke, Asimov, Blish, Knight, Pohl, Merrill, Kidd, Laumer, Heinlein, Lafferty, etc. They knew what they were talking about. They knew what they were writing when they wrote it; most were happy to exercise both forms, but they weren't inclined to confuse them.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying fantasy isn't a worthy form, I'm just saying it is distinct from SF and in a very specific way. What is unworthy is fantasy masquerading as SF; those that engage in such nonsense, from writers to bookstores to directors who make spacecraft go "whoosh", are charlatans — or incompetents.
You might turn it around and ask yourself this: If a story with fantasy elements is SF, then what defines a story as a fantasy? For if we don't draw the line at nonsensical hand waving — which is really what this is all about — then either fantasy ceases to exist, or SF does. Clearly, that's not happening nor is there any reason to expect it to happen.
Argues: No. Privacy means exactly what it used to mean. What's confusing you is that you have a lot less of it now, and that a lot of people -- perhaps including you -- are unaware of what they've lost.
FTFY: We'll need a no-glasses 3D display and high quality haptic feedback for this to be of any use. All this is right now is eye candy that reduces system functionality and ease of use.
Real SF -- not this fantasy crap -- uses science to talk about what's possible. That's where the idea for geostationary sats came from, as well as a number of other things.
Your problem (and a lot of other people's) is that you don't understand what SF is.
No, it most certainly is not. I have information I am not going to make available to you -- just as one example, how and where I store my wealth -- and I assure you, there is no way for you to get that information except from me, as I am its exclusive custodian. I am not, in fact, going to make it available to you in any form. I own that information; you have no right to it; and you're not going to get it. Should you try to get it, I would make a concerted effort to see to it that you suffered for your attempt.
Your argument is no more than an attempt to tin-plate the child's whine of "but I want it!" It's quite pitiful, really.
No. Those "assholes" on the underground railroad (including my ancestors) were dealing with a different issue entirely: involuntary slavery. This has no relevant connection to any theory of ownership of information or other non-sentient material.
And today, we have vehicles that utilize electricity generated from atomic decay, use EM fields to generate lift, and transport more, and heavier goods than 1930's aircraft... at higher speeds. Do you see how paradigm shifts work?
It's not that simple. These attacks go after information in the private sector. The basic idea is, no one -- self-styled activist or not -- has the right to mess with other people's property. If you do such a thing, it's a perfectly justified response if you get punched in the mouth, dragged off to jail, or otherwise fucked with in return.
Do not fuck with other people's shit. Break that rule, and you've lost the argument and all your moral and ethical cover, all at once.
Stay on the high road. It's the only one that dependably leads anywhere.
Nothing will "show them" but large infusions of cash. That's the way it's worked for decades now, and it shows absolutely no sign of changing. Any remarks in the nature of "write your congress-critter" are coming from the deluded or the intentionally deceptive. It has nothing to do with one-upsmanship, and everything to do with a government wildly out of control. We have fully transitioned from a nominal constitutional republic to a corporate oligarchy and there are now exactly zero "write-in" channels open from the citizens to those in power.
It's bread and circuses all the way down. We see everything from the clueless "write a letter" to the bewildered "in a democracy, such and such..." presentations from those people who seriously have no clue what is going on around them even as sophisticated than what might arise from passing a 7th grade civics class.
Our constitution is in tatters; our "representatives" don't; our laws treat liberty as a disease and our courts dispense rigid, classist authoritarian retribution in lieu of anything even remotely resembling justice. Our police range from jackbooted thugs to a blue conspiracy to hide malfeasance; our privacy and security, even our ability to travel, are up for grabs by an alphabet soup of three latter agencies. Our society is flaming out.
I have no patience with some nitwit thinking that "write your congress-critter" is a meaningful act. When I said it was naive, I was being kind.
It should be filed under "heinous government fuckery."
Unfortunately, in the US government, it's filed under "we'll do whatever we want, to whomever we want, and if you complain, we've got a list we'll put you on."
Please. That's so naive.