Why is the 2nd amendment more important than the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th let alone them combined? It isn't. Now let me ask you, why is the 2nd amendment any less important than the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, etc?
Your handguns aren't really going to allow you to compete with the US military, and every idiot cannot be trusted with a tank, so any forced overthrow argument is crap No disrespect, but that logic does not hold up when you consider situations like Iraq... History has proven that guerrilla warfare is quite efficient when dealing with a larger and superior military force.
Let me throw this out here for the "we don't need the 2nd amendment" and "guns are evil" crowd: Murder is illegal yet people still kill one another. I'm going to argue that the weapon someone decides to use to kill another human being, be it a knife or gun or IED, is not what makes the decision to kill. It is the human using the weapon that decides to take another's life. If you took away every gun, knife, rock, sharp stick, people would still be killing each other with their bare hands. If the "war on drugs" has taught us anything at all it is that even if you went to the home of every registered gun owner in America and forcibly relieved them of their firearms, these weapons would still find their way onto the black market and into the hands of criminals. I will agree that it is much easier to kill someone with a gun than with a rock or your bare hands but either way, people are going to kill each other. So why would you want to take away a constitutional right to own a particular type of weapon simply because an incredibly small minority of LEGAL gun owners abuse it?
That said, there are many restrictions already in place that, if properly enforced, would help reduce some of the potential for abuse. I will not deny that there is always room for improvement but I just think we should try enforcing some of the regulations we already have before we start removing constitutional rights and passing more laws. Just my two cents, but as a legally registered gun owner I might be a little biased. On that note, I'm looking forward to having my arguments ripped to shreds and being modded into oblivion
I actually just purchased a T61 with Linux. I gave SUSE a try but in the end I went with Ubuntu instead. The process was flawless and I didn't have to hunt down any drivers or install NDISwrapper or anything.
Straight out of college I was hired as the "manager" of technical support at a small company (2 owners + 3 employees) that wrote a web based inventory/financial/point-of-sale software in ASP for furniture companies. We had a Chinese guy who did all the programming, a high turnover sales position, and the two owners (now married) also handled sales.
First of all, I was a "manager" in name only. I was the only tech support person there. I was given the title of manager so the owners could avoid paying me overtime. I worked a lot of overtime helping my boss's father, who owned a furniture store next door to our office, with the software. I was promised to be paid for all the overtime I put in but I never saw a dime. The hours were from 10 am to 7 pm. After hours the office phones were forwarded to a company cell phone which I was supposed to have with me at all times. All day I would do nothing but answer phones and have furniture store owners call screaming obscenities at me. I also had to answer the phone while I was on my lunch break. One Saturday I got a call from our hosting facility (Vericenter) informing me that the hard drive on our database server had crashed and that they didn't know when it would be back up. My weekend was ruined as I spent the next two days answering calls from hostile customers who had been told we took nightly backups and had co-location. There were supposed to be backups, but the co-location was a complete lie that my bosses would use to help sell the software to people. My bosses refused to help me deal with the customers, even though they were the ones who lied.
I had angry people calling me on New Years Eve, during Christmas, etc, only to have me tell them that our one and only programmer was on vacation and that there was nothing I could do. I was genuinely trying to help these people solve their problems, and I sympathized with them because I knew they were being lied to. But what choice did I have? I spent any free time I had looking for jobs and arranging interviews. I started studying for my A+ cert at night (which really only helped my self confidence). I ended up being overweight and stressed out. I remember calling in sick to work one day only to have my boss tell me I would just have to answer the phone from home. I became so desperate that I almost joined the Army just to get the hell out of there. I began to really hate people and just kept wishing for an opportunity to escape. I finally got my chance, and I have never been happier. The last time I communicated with anyone from that job was when I emailed the programmer to tell him the login was vulnerable to SQL injection attacks.
I have to re-enter my WPA password every time I boot I had to do this with Gnome's default network manager in 7.10. I got around it by installing wicd.
The problem is that the vast majority of idiots in the US shape their political beliefs and attach themselves to a party the same way they attach themselves to their favorite (American) football team. They don't care about the issues. All they care about is winning, and that if you're not with them then you're against them.
It sucks that you were treated like that. However, I have some anecdotal evidence to counter yours. I am from Houston TX, and back in 2000 my aunt took me to France after my high school graduation. I was attacked one night while I was walking on the beach. A group of kids, probably around my age at the time, decided they wanted to steal my hat. One of ran up from behind me and stole my hat while another immediately punched me in the face. When I turned around to confront them I was stabbed by someone with a switchblade. I walked into a restaurant nearby to call for help, but the manager threw me out because I was bleeding and attracting too much attention. Luckily my aunt is a doctor and the wound was minor.
I went back to my hotel to call the police. The manager told me to go somewhere else because they did not want the police in their hotel. I actually ran into some US Marines who, after denying my request to have the shit beaten out of these thieves, took me back to their command to call the police. The police basically said something along the lines of "They're kids. What do you want us to do about it?". The next day, I saw the same people beating the shit out of a German tourist. One of them was wearing my hat
Go somewhere more enlightened and liberal, like the Mid-Atlantic, New England, or California (Chicago's nice too... just don't stray very far). DO tell those you know to avoid backwater hick areas with an ingrained culture of intolerance. One could also tell people to avoid areas with pretentious assholes who make uninformed generalizations about an entire population of people just so they can feel superior.
I don't know, having your cell phone jammed into your god damn eye socket seems like it would be a pretty big safety concern to me. Then again, if they did allow this, I would just have to pack some noise canceling headphones to block out the sound of my own voice as I sing as loudly and as off key as possible.
I live in Houston TX, which is the 4th most populated city in the country. We don't have Verizon FiOS, and we never will. Instead we have AT&T and their shitty U-Verse, or Comcast. Also, I think that some shitty shared 50 Mbps residential cable internet by 2010 is pathetic. Especially when millions of people in other countries have had faster and cheaper internet for years.
... English is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn; it is an order of magnitude less regular and its working vocabulary is far larger than the Romance languages... Really?
They explain this right in the commentary. The first movie was for the dedicated fans and the rest will be less complex. I see a lot of people bitching about this here. Honestly I'm a little surprised by how many highly modded "it sucked because it wasn't exactly like the show" comments I've read. The movie does pretty much follow the same formula. I have this funny feeling though, like if they had made Bender's Big Score into something as complex as a regular episode stretched into an hour, you people would just be bitching about the lack of depth and how you didn't get to see some favorite character of yours. Heaven forbid they slightly alienate some of their fringe viewers in order to please the most devoted of their fans. Damned if you do I guess...
piracy is a more serious offense than robbery.
Huh? And this guy makes how much money every year?
One already faces harsher penalties for downloading a CD (civil) than for shoplifting it (criminal). However, robbery technically involves using some amount of force or intimidation to relieve the victim of their property whereas shoplifting is probably closer to burglary.
1) a gaming PC is substantially more expensive than a console
Not for what you get. A console does not provide any real functionality outside of being a DVD player. PCs offer a very high level of functionality outside of gaming.
You're assuming that people actually care about that extra functionality. There is a point where the price difference outweighs all the extras. Especially for someone looking for a dedicated gaming PC. A mobile home has a lot of advantages over a Honda Civic, depending on your point of view.
2) you frequently have driver and other compatibility problems
I am never sure what prompts people to say this. I've not had any sort of driver and or compatibility problems for years now. Are there some people that are still running MS DOS and trying to game out there?
I don't have any recent anecdotal evidence to discredit yours. Just check out the support forum for any major game after it is released.
3) a number of PC games are launched in a rather buggy state
Ok, this is a fair point. But thanks to the fact that they are PC games vs console games they are typically patched up quickly if they are a game of any real note.
I tend to agree with you on this one.
4) the overall performance level of consoles has improved a lot in the latest generation
Huh? They always improve, when was the last time that consoles did not improve when they were bumped up a gen. Not even sure what your tying to say here. It's not like PCs hardware is standing still either.
I think that what the parent meant was that consoles have finally reached a point where the games are within 90% of what most PCs gaming ability. The gap has been closing steadily over the years and its finally getting small enough for some of the old die hard PC gamer fans to jump across. Consoles are really nothing more than specialized PCs anyway. We're already starting to see gaming consoles preloaded with a few basic PC features (web browsing, multimedia, etc). Some people want a machine that can play games well and has a limited interface for surfing and email. Some people want a machine that they can use for work. Some people want something in between.
Limit the number of terms one is allowed to serve in Congress. Just as coal miner's risk of cancer or a respiratory ailment increases proportionally to the time they spend in an underground mine, the longer someone is a politician the more likely they are to be overcome by greed and corruption. It has always been my understanding that career politicians are dangerous. Eventually the job becomes more focused on the power, money, favors, etc than the people you initially wanted to help. I think the temptation becomes too great for most people.
Just wait for Heroes to come back. Only major show I still watch.
FYI, Heroes isn't coming back until next season. I found the second season to be thoroughly mediocre, mostly following the exact same formula from season one but without any of the originality. You know, Peter is all powerful yet whines like a little girl the entire season just before Nathan finally decides to do the right thing and supposedly dies in the process.
Personally, I'm waiting for Eureka to come back on. I have loved that show since I tuned in during the middle of "Dr. Nobel". Chuck has also turned out to be one of my new favorites.
Right now, I could call up Verizon and get FiOS. In about 6 months I'll be able to call up Verizon and get FiOS TV. Hell, theyre currently installing FiOS in my parents tiny village of about 5000.
Meanwhile, I live in the 4th most populated city in the US and my only real choices are Comcast and AT&T.
Apologies for replying to my own post, but I just wanted to point out that I was wrong and that the original article does have pictures and a video. I browse with Firefox and NoScript so I did not see the images until I temporarily allowed scripts from gawker.
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Let me throw this out here for the "we don't need the 2nd amendment" and "guns are evil" crowd: Murder is illegal yet people still kill one another. I'm going to argue that the weapon someone decides to use to kill another human being, be it a knife or gun or IED, is not what makes the decision to kill. It is the human using the weapon that decides to take another's life. If you took away every gun, knife, rock, sharp stick, people would still be killing each other with their bare hands. If the "war on drugs" has taught us anything at all it is that even if you went to the home of every registered gun owner in America and forcibly relieved them of their firearms, these weapons would still find their way onto the black market and into the hands of criminals. I will agree that it is much easier to kill someone with a gun than with a rock or your bare hands but either way, people are going to kill each other. So why would you want to take away a constitutional right to own a particular type of weapon simply because an incredibly small minority of LEGAL gun owners abuse it?
That said, there are many restrictions already in place that, if properly enforced, would help reduce some of the potential for abuse. I will not deny that there is always room for improvement but I just think we should try enforcing some of the regulations we already have before we start removing constitutional rights and passing more laws. Just my two cents, but as a legally registered gun owner I might be a little biased. On that note, I'm looking forward to having my arguments ripped to shreds and being modded into oblivion
I actually just purchased a T61 with Linux. I gave SUSE a try but in the end I went with Ubuntu instead. The process was flawless and I didn't have to hunt down any drivers or install NDISwrapper or anything.
Your lucky. At my previous job, they never even told me I was fired! They just kept moving my desk around the building...
Straight out of college I was hired as the "manager" of technical support at a small company (2 owners + 3 employees) that wrote a web based inventory/financial/point-of-sale software in ASP for furniture companies. We had a Chinese guy who did all the programming, a high turnover sales position, and the two owners (now married) also handled sales.
First of all, I was a "manager" in name only. I was the only tech support person there. I was given the title of manager so the owners could avoid paying me overtime. I worked a lot of overtime helping my boss's father, who owned a furniture store next door to our office, with the software. I was promised to be paid for all the overtime I put in but I never saw a dime. The hours were from 10 am to 7 pm. After hours the office phones were forwarded to a company cell phone which I was supposed to have with me at all times. All day I would do nothing but answer phones and have furniture store owners call screaming obscenities at me. I also had to answer the phone while I was on my lunch break. One Saturday I got a call from our hosting facility (Vericenter) informing me that the hard drive on our database server had crashed and that they didn't know when it would be back up. My weekend was ruined as I spent the next two days answering calls from hostile customers who had been told we took nightly backups and had co-location. There were supposed to be backups, but the co-location was a complete lie that my bosses would use to help sell the software to people. My bosses refused to help me deal with the customers, even though they were the ones who lied.
I had angry people calling me on New Years Eve, during Christmas, etc, only to have me tell them that our one and only programmer was on vacation and that there was nothing I could do. I was genuinely trying to help these people solve their problems, and I sympathized with them because I knew they were being lied to. But what choice did I have? I spent any free time I had looking for jobs and arranging interviews. I started studying for my A+ cert at night (which really only helped my self confidence). I ended up being overweight and stressed out. I remember calling in sick to work one day only to have my boss tell me I would just have to answer the phone from home. I became so desperate that I almost joined the Army just to get the hell out of there. I began to really hate people and just kept wishing for an opportunity to escape. I finally got my chance, and I have never been happier. The last time I communicated with anyone from that job was when I emailed the programmer to tell him the login was vulnerable to SQL injection attacks.
The problem is that the vast majority of idiots in the US shape their political beliefs and attach themselves to a party the same way they attach themselves to their favorite (American) football team. They don't care about the issues. All they care about is winning, and that if you're not with them then you're against them.
It sucks that you were treated like that. However, I have some anecdotal evidence to counter yours. I am from Houston TX, and back in 2000 my aunt took me to France after my high school graduation. I was attacked one night while I was walking on the beach. A group of kids, probably around my age at the time, decided they wanted to steal my hat. One of ran up from behind me and stole my hat while another immediately punched me in the face. When I turned around to confront them I was stabbed by someone with a switchblade. I walked into a restaurant nearby to call for help, but the manager threw me out because I was bleeding and attracting too much attention. Luckily my aunt is a doctor and the wound was minor.
I went back to my hotel to call the police. The manager told me to go somewhere else because they did not want the police in their hotel. I actually ran into some US Marines who, after denying my request to have the shit beaten out of these thieves, took me back to their command to call the police. The police basically said something along the lines of "They're kids. What do you want us to do about it?". The next day, I saw the same people beating the shit out of a German tourist. One of them was wearing my hat
I will not be going back any time soon.
I don't know, having your cell phone jammed into your god damn eye socket seems like it would be a pretty big safety concern to me. Then again, if they did allow this, I would just have to pack some noise canceling headphones to block out the sound of my own voice as I sing as loudly and as off key as possible.
I live in Houston TX, which is the 4th most populated city in the country. We don't have Verizon FiOS, and we never will. Instead we have AT&T and their shitty U-Verse, or Comcast. Also, I think that some shitty shared 50 Mbps residential cable internet by 2010 is pathetic. Especially when millions of people in other countries have had faster and cheaper internet for years.
... English is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn; it is an order of magnitude less regular and its working vocabulary is far larger than the Romance languages... Really?Just like how we can get iTunes on Linux. Oh, wait...
They explain this right in the commentary. The first movie was for the dedicated fans and the rest will be less complex. I see a lot of people bitching about this here. Honestly I'm a little surprised by how many highly modded "it sucked because it wasn't exactly like the show" comments I've read. The movie does pretty much follow the same formula. I have this funny feeling though, like if they had made Bender's Big Score into something as complex as a regular episode stretched into an hour, you people would just be bitching about the lack of depth and how you didn't get to see some favorite character of yours. Heaven forbid they slightly alienate some of their fringe viewers in order to please the most devoted of their fans. Damned if you do I guess...
One already faces harsher penalties for downloading a CD (civil) than for shoplifting it (criminal). However, robbery technically involves using some amount of force or intimidation to relieve the victim of their property whereas shoplifting is probably closer to burglary.
1) a gaming PC is substantially more expensive than a console
Not for what you get. A console does not provide any real functionality outside of being a DVD player. PCs offer a very high level of functionality outside of gaming.
You're assuming that people actually care about that extra functionality. There is a point where the price difference outweighs all the extras. Especially for someone looking for a dedicated gaming PC. A mobile home has a lot of advantages over a Honda Civic, depending on your point of view.
2) you frequently have driver and other compatibility problems
I am never sure what prompts people to say this. I've not had any sort of driver and or compatibility problems for years now. Are there some people that are still running MS DOS and trying to game out there?
I don't have any recent anecdotal evidence to discredit yours. Just check out the support forum for any major game after it is released.
3) a number of PC games are launched in a rather buggy state
Ok, this is a fair point. But thanks to the fact that they are PC games vs console games they are typically patched up quickly if they are a game of any real note.
I tend to agree with you on this one.
4) the overall performance level of consoles has improved a lot in the latest generation
Huh? They always improve, when was the last time that consoles did not improve when they were bumped up a gen. Not even sure what your tying to say here. It's not like PCs hardware is standing still either.
I think that what the parent meant was that consoles have finally reached a point where the games are within 90% of what most PCs gaming ability. The gap has been closing steadily over the years and its finally getting small enough for some of the old die hard PC gamer fans to jump across. Consoles are really nothing more than specialized PCs anyway. We're already starting to see gaming consoles preloaded with a few basic PC features (web browsing, multimedia, etc). Some people want a machine that can play games well and has a limited interface for surfing and email. Some people want a machine that they can use for work. Some people want something in between.
They call it an exit row. I call it "first class".
Who gives a shit about a few inches of extra leg room when your seat cannot recline?
Limit the number of terms one is allowed to serve in Congress. Just as coal miner's risk of cancer or a respiratory ailment increases proportionally to the time they spend in an underground mine, the longer someone is a politician the more likely they are to be overcome by greed and corruption. It has always been my understanding that career politicians are dangerous. Eventually the job becomes more focused on the power, money, favors, etc than the people you initially wanted to help. I think the temptation becomes too great for most people.
Just wait for Heroes to come back. Only major show I still watch.
FYI, Heroes isn't coming back until next season. I found the second season to be thoroughly mediocre, mostly following the exact same formula from season one but without any of the originality. You know, Peter is all powerful yet whines like a little girl the entire season just before Nathan finally decides to do the right thing and supposedly dies in the process.
Personally, I'm waiting for Eureka to come back on. I have loved that show since I tuned in during the middle of "Dr. Nobel". Chuck has also turned out to be one of my new favorites.
Right now, I could call up Verizon and get FiOS. In about 6 months I'll be able to call up Verizon and get FiOS TV. Hell, theyre currently installing FiOS in my parents tiny village of about 5000.
Meanwhile, I live in the 4th most populated city in the US and my only real choices are Comcast and AT&T.
I named mine "Virus Server". Strangely enough, no one even attempts to connect...
Apologies for replying to my own post, but I just wanted to point out that I was wrong and that the original article does have pictures and a video. I browse with Firefox and NoScript so I did not see the images until I temporarily allowed scripts from gawker.
My bad, I use NoScript and I didn't realize you had to allow scripts to run from 5 different sites to get the pictures/video to load...
since the linked article doesn't have one... here
I wonder what various religions would have to say about this. We already know that the Space Pope does not approve.