And what exactly do you mean by *good* camera stuff? I mean, not everyone needs (or wants) 12 megapixel full-frame sensors. For the vast majority of (not-professional) shooting, the sensors in DSLRs these days are overkill.
Personally, I'd rather have a point and shoot in my pocket (meaning I can actually use it) versus a super-expensive DSLR that always gets left at home due to bulk or concerns about damage.
Well, of course the iPhone is just perfect and there are no problems with it ever. Anyone saying otherwise is simply in the vast anti-Apple conspiracy being paid off by Microsoft.
AT&T does have an international data roaming package, but the problem is that people don't know that they need it if they're going to be using the iPhone outside the country. I think the problem is that the data rate for foreign calls is buried in the fine print of the contract, so people don't realize how much they're getting charged for all that Google Maps use until they get home and open up the bill.
If AT&T made it more clear that international data was not covered by the standard iPhone plan, I think there would be far fewer complaints about horribly large cell phone bills.
Even if Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were to come to an agreement about common online elements tomorrow, it'd still be nontrivial to merge all the player data, handle duplicate usernames, handle comparisons of records between different platforms and the such. Even if we disregard the political aspects, the technical aspects are daunting, and likely to grow even more so as these services continue to grow independently of one another.
Sure, OSX may be completely innocent in dropping PalmOS support for age reasons. The article also comes across as dramatic. But as a curious bystander it still looks a little funny.
Why? As has been pointed out above, Palm itself dropped OSX support years ago. Why should Apple support Palm's products for it?
Apple isn't using its clout in the MP3 player market to drive other MP3 player manufacturers out of business. Creative, iRiver, SanDisk, and host of other manufacturers (even Microsoft) share the market along with Apple. Same thing with iTunes. Its hardly the only music management software out there. You're free to use Windows Media Player, WinAmp, or whatever you want to manage your music library.
Now, if Apple started giving away MP3 players to try and push the other market players out of business, that'd be a different matter. In that case, I'm sure the Justice Department would be fairly quick to intervene.
Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of the operating systems market and, therefore, cannot drive competitors out of business through sheer price/compatibility pressure alone. The DoJ went after Microsoft because its monopoly over the operating systems market allowed it to distort the market in web browsers to its own advantage. That was illegal. Now, unless you can show that Apple's market power is sufficient to distort the market in PDAs/smartphones, then Apple hasn't done anything illegal.
The Web page will provide everything a plugged-in investigator would have, including activity on my frequent flier, credit card, and ATM accounts â" if Iâ(TM)m foolish enough to use them.
I'm pretty sure he knows enough about tracking to not use credit cards.
These public officials are members of a drug-related unit, whose work entail some pretty nasty, violent shit to be dealt (like homicide and sex crime units). And you do not think that secrecy of movement for these units is necessary to reduce the risk of loss of life?
If the need for secrecy is as self-evident as you claim it is, then why isn't the woman being charged appropriately (like with obstruction of justice)? In dealing with the government as citizens our default perspective must lean towards openness and lack of secrecy, not closed minded thinking and classification of information. Otherwise, agents of the government gain legislative and judicial cover for abuse of people's rights.
And how can you justify that this woman published a man's address, with pictures and all (even if that information is available should you pursue a process of discovery), in light that this is a LEO, and that as such is at risk, always at risk, for enforcing the law? As the article notes, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or interference with an officer of the law. This implies that the police department did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws.
If they did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws, then they don't have enough evidence to charge her with any crime, in my opinion. The law against identifying police officers with intent to harass is far too broadly worded and can cover all sorts of legitimate activities. According to a strict interpretation of that statute, even filming officers in the line of duty could be construed as identifying officers with intent to harass. It makes illegal all sorts of activities that serve as legitimate checks against abuses of power by the police.
Lets not forget that officers aren't exactly helpless. They have the right to use force, even deadly force if they are threatened or if they feel that someone else is being threatened. With that right comes the responsibility to submit to examination by the populace. Otherwise, there is very little stopping widespread abuse of power.
I don't agree with what this lady was doing. However, I agree with the law even less. The blogger's activities in this case were the lesser of two evils, and the law being used to charge her is the greater.
US Citizens don't have the right to go on military bases, and top secret facilities and publish pictures and information about what they see and the personnel.
That I agree with, but, the blogger wasn't going onto secret military facilities or compromising classified information. She was following public officials around as they executed their duties. As the article notes, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or interference with an officer of the law. This implies that the police department did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws. The fact that they had to rely on such a broadly worded statute to make their case highlights the weakness of their position.
She was not just writing a blog about police activities. She was putting DEA agents at risk by disclosing their operations and locations.
Again, if there was any evidence of that, the police department would have charged with obstruction of justice, not "identifying a police officer with intent to harass".
That would make sense if she was charged with obstruction of justice or interference with the duties of a police officer. However, she wasn't charged with any of those statutes. She was charged with a very vaguely worded law that makes it illegal to even publicly identify a police officer.
Yes, what she did wasn't exactly ethical. But, in this case, the law is even less ethical.
If rigidity is so good, I assume all of these companies are moving over to Ada?
Well, if they aren't, they should.:-)
More seriously, though, there have been quite a few studies that show that software written in Ada has fewer bugs than software written in looser, more "modern" languages. The reasoning is, as I and the great-grandparent have pointed out, the strict enforcement of type constraints ensures that errors are caught at compile-time, rather than becoming bugs at run time. It is for this reason that safety critical systems are often written in Ada, or other "rigid" languages like Eiffel. The rigidity of these languages also makes it easy to perform static analysis on them, which is another reason they're so prevalent in safety-critical systems.
Languages that are less restrictive than Java result in a smaller source code and more loosely-coupled functions which makes for code that is more easily altered. This makes refactoring easier than in Java.
While I understand your first and third points, I'm not sure I get this one. Java makes it relatively easy to enforce loose coupling with its "private" keyword. Imperative languages that are looser about types (like Python for example) don't do as much to enforce coupling constraints at compile-time. Doesn't this make it more difficult to enforce loose coupling?
Of course, I understand that functional languages like Lisp and Clojure are better for enforcing loose coupling due to the fact that they make it more difficult to make functions with side-effects.
There are refactoring tools for Python, but it's true that they are not as comprehensive as the ones for Java. However, refactoring in a dynamic language like Python or Ruby is, in my experience, less important than it is in Java.
Well, I disagree with that. Its easy to write unmaintainable code in any language. Unfortunately, as the grandparent points out, in languages that aren't as rigid as Java, its more difficult to fix unmaintainable code, since so much about the program is inferred at runtime. This makes static analysis for bugs and common refactoring patterns almost impossible, since each file of the source code is much less independent of other files.
Of course, the easiest way to fix unmaintainable code is to not write it in the first place - a solution that is equally easy (or difficult, as the case may be) to apply across languages.
Erm, what? The USA is one of the most miserly countries in the world when it comes to foreign aid. Out of the G-8 industrialized nations, we spend the least on foreign aid, as a percentage of our national income. Arguably, we need to start spending a hell of a lot more, or we'll have to start conducting even more interventions to root out terrorists, like we're doing right now in Afghanistan.
As the noted counterinsurgency expert Col. David Kilcullen states, "Insurgency is not a military contest. It is a governance contest." Right now, insurgents the world over are doing a much better job bringing stability and order to the bottom billion than forces sponsored by the West. Unless we do much more to bring peace, liberty, and basic goods to those people, the West could soon find itself besieged by an increasingly hostile crowd who feels it has been shut out from the tools of wealth creation. Given that many resource constraints (e.g. water, oil, arable land) will be even more acute in the future than they are today, it won't take much to spark terrorist assaults and even use of chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Leaders who have nothing to lose and everything to gain are much more likely to resort to those desperate measures.
Foreign aid, in that respect, is like preventive medicine or scheduled maintenance. It only looks expensive until you consider the alternative. If, at the end of the Cold War, we'd spent a few billion dollars and helped the anti-Soviet guerrillas transform themselves into a proper government, think of how many more billions we'd have saved today, not to mention all the lives lost on September 11, 2001.
Scrimping on foreign aid helped get us into this mess. Scrimping further isn't going to help us get out.
I'm not sure you understand the fact that scientists have a different meaning for the word 'theory' than average people. In science, a theory is a system of interrelated laws. For example, the theory of evolution encompasses the laws of natural selection and transmission of traits through genetic means. The interaction of these two laws describes how species change and branch into new species.
Another example is the theory of quantum mechanics. It consists of the laws governing the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and electricity and magnetism. The interaction of these laws explains and governs the motion of particles at the atomic and subatomic levels. One of the great open problems in physics today is integrating gravity into this framework, so all the fundamental laws can be encompassed by a single theory.
In everyday language, a theory is something that is less certain than a law - something unproven. In science, however, theories are greater than individual laws. Theories are frameworks that show how phenomena in the natural world arise from the interaction of distinct laws. It is this difference between everyday language and scientific language that is responsible for the confusion of many people regarding evolution. Yes, evolution is a theory. So are relativity and quantum mechanics. Yet, no one ever charges relativity with being "just a theory", despite the fact that relativity (in many important respects) has less supporting evidence than evolution.
You would if you were willing to let others run detailed tests on your machine.
The reason many people complain about "prejudices" or "scientific conspiracies" with regard to "revolutionary" inventions like cars that run on water or perpetual motion is that they're not willing to let independent scientists evaluate their inventions. If these folks were as altruistic as they claim to be, they'd be willing to give away their invention for independent testing.
First, let's call this "intelligent force" what everyone else calls it: God. Now, the problem with stating that God designed the universe is that its impossible to get into the mind of God. What I say is a "random" event, you could say is part of God's greater plan. In other words, there is no way to disprove your theory.
Does that Act still apply even if the contract contains a clause allowing one party to change the contract at will? In other words, what if the contract contains language allowing for its own mutability.
You don't have to give away the source code with every copy to comply with the GPL. You have to make the source available. This could be as simple as putting up a tarball of the source code on your web site and including a note with the binary notifying users that they can download the source code from your site if they wish to do so.
One would assume that if the shit ever hit the fan to the point that rebellion had the support of a majority of the American people that the military (or at least parts of it) would side with the population.
Yeah, but as you point out, if things ever get that bad, the Constitution is worth little more than toilet paper anyway.
I might argue the issue in the other direction too. Does the military really need to be as large as it currently is? For most of American history the military was an extremely small professional force that mainly existed as a counter-insurgency force (the actions out West) and training force for the militia that would be called up in the event of serious hostilities. It remained this way until WW2 -- in the 1930s the US Army was ranked below Portugal of all places.
Oh yeah, I fully agree, but I'd replace size with sophistication. There are plenty of countries (even in Europe) that have militaries larger than ours in strictly numerical terms (especially those countries with mandatory military service). However, those countries could not effectively engage the US military because of the lack of sophistication in their equipment.
The Founding Fathers tended to believe that large standing armies were a threat to liberty. Given the corruption of Congress at the behest of the military-industrial complex I'd tend to think that they were correct. Obviously the 21st century is a little bit different than the 18th century but I see no reason why we couldn't get by with a small Army modeled on what we had during the beginning of the Republic. The Air Force and Navy could be kept larger -- it takes time to build/train them, they are our first line of defense and don't pose the same threat to liberty that a large Army does -- but the Army should mainly be focused on training and the defense of our overseas possessions.
Fully agree. Frankly, I'd like to have the navy restructured as well - moving away from large, expensive, difficult to defend carriers and towards a force of smaller ships better structured to defend America's merchant shipping (but that's definitely another discussion).
The problem with looking at the Second Amendment from the perspective of the Founders is that the Founders never anticipated the modern military-industrial complex. In their time armies were large collections of men wielding the same weapons available to individuals. Today, that is no longer the case - the weapons available to the US Army are far more sophisticated and powerful than the weapons available to individuals.
There are two ways of correcting such a disparity. On one hand, we could reduce the capability of our armed forces - e.g. force them to give up many of the sophisticated elements of artillery and air-power they currently possess. This has the disadvantage of making it much more difficult for the US Army to defend the homeland. After all, the reason no armed power ever considers attacking the US homeland proper is because the US has complete air and naval superiority over itself and over its neighboring countries too.
On the other hand, we could upgrade the level of armaments available to private citizens. Its pretty hard to hold off a despotic regime with small arms alone, but if one has light mortars, RPGs, and access to surplus explosives, one can set up quite an insurgency (as the Iraqis and Afghans have demonstrated). However, this would have the effect of making society more violent. Already, narco-gangs are able to challenge the police in some inner cities. If they had access to heavy armaments, they might attempt an outright takeover - essentially trying to overthrow the government and set up a narco-dictatorship in its place.
Given that these are the two most obvious options when one considers how to "modernize" the Second Amendment for the twenty-first century, its difficult to conclude that the Second Amendment is any more relevant to our daily life than the Third.
Slashdot Mirror
How does an electric field line just stop somewhere?
And what exactly do you mean by *good* camera stuff? I mean, not everyone needs (or wants) 12 megapixel full-frame sensors. For the vast majority of (not-professional) shooting, the sensors in DSLRs these days are overkill.
Personally, I'd rather have a point and shoot in my pocket (meaning I can actually use it) versus a super-expensive DSLR that always gets left at home due to bulk or concerns about damage.
Well, of course the iPhone is just perfect and there are no problems with it ever. Anyone saying otherwise is simply in the vast anti-Apple conspiracy being paid off by Microsoft.
See, I can make sweeping generalizations too!
And, knowing Congress, when the expected improvements in infrastructure don't materialize, no penalties will be assessed.
AT&T does have an international data roaming package, but the problem is that people don't know that they need it if they're going to be using the iPhone outside the country. I think the problem is that the data rate for foreign calls is buried in the fine print of the contract, so people don't realize how much they're getting charged for all that Google Maps use until they get home and open up the bill.
If AT&T made it more clear that international data was not covered by the standard iPhone plan, I think there would be far fewer complaints about horribly large cell phone bills.
Even if Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were to come to an agreement about common online elements tomorrow, it'd still be nontrivial to merge all the player data, handle duplicate usernames, handle comparisons of records between different platforms and the such. Even if we disregard the political aspects, the technical aspects are daunting, and likely to grow even more so as these services continue to grow independently of one another.
Why? As has been pointed out above, Palm itself dropped OSX support years ago. Why should Apple support Palm's products for it?
Apple isn't using its clout in the MP3 player market to drive other MP3 player manufacturers out of business. Creative, iRiver, SanDisk, and host of other manufacturers (even Microsoft) share the market along with Apple. Same thing with iTunes. Its hardly the only music management software out there. You're free to use Windows Media Player, WinAmp, or whatever you want to manage your music library.
Now, if Apple started giving away MP3 players to try and push the other market players out of business, that'd be a different matter. In that case, I'm sure the Justice Department would be fairly quick to intervene.
Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of the operating systems market and, therefore, cannot drive competitors out of business through sheer price/compatibility pressure alone. The DoJ went after Microsoft because its monopoly over the operating systems market allowed it to distort the market in web browsers to its own advantage. That was illegal. Now, unless you can show that Apple's market power is sufficient to distort the market in PDAs/smartphones, then Apple hasn't done anything illegal.
I think its much snappier to say "Therac'd". As in:
From TFA:
The Web page will provide everything a plugged-in investigator would have, including activity on my frequent flier, credit card, and ATM accounts â" if Iâ(TM)m foolish enough to use them.
I'm pretty sure he knows enough about tracking to not use credit cards.
These public officials are members of a drug-related unit, whose work entail some pretty nasty, violent shit to be dealt (like homicide and sex crime units). And you do not think that secrecy of movement for these units is necessary to reduce the risk of loss of life?
If the need for secrecy is as self-evident as you claim it is, then why isn't the woman being charged appropriately (like with obstruction of justice)? In dealing with the government as citizens our default perspective must lean towards openness and lack of secrecy, not closed minded thinking and classification of information. Otherwise, agents of the government gain legislative and judicial cover for abuse of people's rights.
And how can you justify that this woman published a man's address, with pictures and all (even if that information is available should you pursue a process of discovery), in light that this is a LEO, and that as such is at risk, always at risk, for enforcing the law? As the article notes, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or interference with an officer of the law. This implies that the police department did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws.
If they did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws, then they don't have enough evidence to charge her with any crime, in my opinion. The law against identifying police officers with intent to harass is far too broadly worded and can cover all sorts of legitimate activities. According to a strict interpretation of that statute, even filming officers in the line of duty could be construed as identifying officers with intent to harass. It makes illegal all sorts of activities that serve as legitimate checks against abuses of power by the police.
Lets not forget that officers aren't exactly helpless. They have the right to use force, even deadly force if they are threatened or if they feel that someone else is being threatened. With that right comes the responsibility to submit to examination by the populace. Otherwise, there is very little stopping widespread abuse of power.
I don't agree with what this lady was doing. However, I agree with the law even less. The blogger's activities in this case were the lesser of two evils, and the law being used to charge her is the greater.
US Citizens don't have the right to go on military bases, and top secret facilities and publish pictures and information about what they see and the personnel.
That I agree with, but, the blogger wasn't going onto secret military facilities or compromising classified information. She was following public officials around as they executed their duties. As the article notes, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or interference with an officer of the law. This implies that the police department did not have enough evidence to charge her under those laws. The fact that they had to rely on such a broadly worded statute to make their case highlights the weakness of their position.
She was not just writing a blog about police activities. She was putting DEA agents at risk by disclosing their operations and locations.
Again, if there was any evidence of that, the police department would have charged with obstruction of justice, not "identifying a police officer with intent to harass".
That would make sense if she was charged with obstruction of justice or interference with the duties of a police officer. However, she wasn't charged with any of those statutes. She was charged with a very vaguely worded law that makes it illegal to even publicly identify a police officer.
Yes, what she did wasn't exactly ethical. But, in this case, the law is even less ethical.
If rigidity is so good, I assume all of these companies are moving over to Ada?
Well, if they aren't, they should. :-)
More seriously, though, there have been quite a few studies that show that software written in Ada has fewer bugs than software written in looser, more "modern" languages. The reasoning is, as I and the great-grandparent have pointed out, the strict enforcement of type constraints ensures that errors are caught at compile-time, rather than becoming bugs at run time. It is for this reason that safety critical systems are often written in Ada, or other "rigid" languages like Eiffel. The rigidity of these languages also makes it easy to perform static analysis on them, which is another reason they're so prevalent in safety-critical systems.
Languages that are less restrictive than Java result in a smaller source code and more loosely-coupled functions which makes for code that is more easily altered. This makes refactoring easier than in Java.
While I understand your first and third points, I'm not sure I get this one. Java makes it relatively easy to enforce loose coupling with its "private" keyword. Imperative languages that are looser about types (like Python for example) don't do as much to enforce coupling constraints at compile-time. Doesn't this make it more difficult to enforce loose coupling?
Of course, I understand that functional languages like Lisp and Clojure are better for enforcing loose coupling due to the fact that they make it more difficult to make functions with side-effects.
There are refactoring tools for Python, but it's true that they are not as comprehensive as the ones for Java. However, refactoring in a dynamic language like Python or Ruby is, in my experience, less important than it is in Java.
Well, I disagree with that. Its easy to write unmaintainable code in any language. Unfortunately, as the grandparent points out, in languages that aren't as rigid as Java, its more difficult to fix unmaintainable code, since so much about the program is inferred at runtime. This makes static analysis for bugs and common refactoring patterns almost impossible, since each file of the source code is much less independent of other files.
Of course, the easiest way to fix unmaintainable code is to not write it in the first place - a solution that is equally easy (or difficult, as the case may be) to apply across languages.
Add to that the billions in foreign aid...
Erm, what? The USA is one of the most miserly countries in the world when it comes to foreign aid. Out of the G-8 industrialized nations, we spend the least on foreign aid, as a percentage of our national income. Arguably, we need to start spending a hell of a lot more, or we'll have to start conducting even more interventions to root out terrorists, like we're doing right now in Afghanistan.
As the noted counterinsurgency expert Col. David Kilcullen states, "Insurgency is not a military contest. It is a governance contest." Right now, insurgents the world over are doing a much better job bringing stability and order to the bottom billion than forces sponsored by the West. Unless we do much more to bring peace, liberty, and basic goods to those people, the West could soon find itself besieged by an increasingly hostile crowd who feels it has been shut out from the tools of wealth creation. Given that many resource constraints (e.g. water, oil, arable land) will be even more acute in the future than they are today, it won't take much to spark terrorist assaults and even use of chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons. Leaders who have nothing to lose and everything to gain are much more likely to resort to those desperate measures.
Foreign aid, in that respect, is like preventive medicine or scheduled maintenance. It only looks expensive until you consider the alternative. If, at the end of the Cold War, we'd spent a few billion dollars and helped the anti-Soviet guerrillas transform themselves into a proper government, think of how many more billions we'd have saved today, not to mention all the lives lost on September 11, 2001.
Scrimping on foreign aid helped get us into this mess. Scrimping further isn't going to help us get out.
I'm not sure you understand the fact that scientists have a different meaning for the word 'theory' than average people. In science, a theory is a system of interrelated laws. For example, the theory of evolution encompasses the laws of natural selection and transmission of traits through genetic means. The interaction of these two laws describes how species change and branch into new species.
Another example is the theory of quantum mechanics. It consists of the laws governing the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and electricity and magnetism. The interaction of these laws explains and governs the motion of particles at the atomic and subatomic levels. One of the great open problems in physics today is integrating gravity into this framework, so all the fundamental laws can be encompassed by a single theory.
In everyday language, a theory is something that is less certain than a law - something unproven. In science, however, theories are greater than individual laws. Theories are frameworks that show how phenomena in the natural world arise from the interaction of distinct laws. It is this difference between everyday language and scientific language that is responsible for the confusion of many people regarding evolution. Yes, evolution is a theory. So are relativity and quantum mechanics. Yet, no one ever charges relativity with being "just a theory", despite the fact that relativity (in many important respects) has less supporting evidence than evolution.
You would if you were willing to let others run detailed tests on your machine.
The reason many people complain about "prejudices" or "scientific conspiracies" with regard to "revolutionary" inventions like cars that run on water or perpetual motion is that they're not willing to let independent scientists evaluate their inventions. If these folks were as altruistic as they claim to be, they'd be willing to give away their invention for independent testing.
First, let's call this "intelligent force" what everyone else calls it: God. Now, the problem with stating that God designed the universe is that its impossible to get into the mind of God. What I say is a "random" event, you could say is part of God's greater plan. In other words, there is no way to disprove your theory.
That is the key problem with Intelligent Design.
Does that Act still apply even if the contract contains a clause allowing one party to change the contract at will? In other words, what if the contract contains language allowing for its own mutability.
You don't have to give away the source code with every copy to comply with the GPL. You have to make the source available. This could be as simple as putting up a tarball of the source code on your web site and including a note with the binary notifying users that they can download the source code from your site if they wish to do so.
One would assume that if the shit ever hit the fan to the point that rebellion had the support of a majority of the American people that the military (or at least parts of it) would side with the population.
Yeah, but as you point out, if things ever get that bad, the Constitution is worth little more than toilet paper anyway.
I might argue the issue in the other direction too. Does the military really need to be as large as it currently is? For most of American history the military was an extremely small professional force that mainly existed as a counter-insurgency force (the actions out West) and training force for the militia that would be called up in the event of serious hostilities. It remained this way until WW2 -- in the 1930s the US Army was ranked below Portugal of all places.
Oh yeah, I fully agree, but I'd replace size with sophistication. There are plenty of countries (even in Europe) that have militaries larger than ours in strictly numerical terms (especially those countries with mandatory military service). However, those countries could not effectively engage the US military because of the lack of sophistication in their equipment.
The Founding Fathers tended to believe that large standing armies were a threat to liberty. Given the corruption of Congress at the behest of the military-industrial complex I'd tend to think that they were correct. Obviously the 21st century is a little bit different than the 18th century but I see no reason why we couldn't get by with a small Army modeled on what we had during the beginning of the Republic. The Air Force and Navy could be kept larger -- it takes time to build/train them, they are our first line of defense and don't pose the same threat to liberty that a large Army does -- but the Army should mainly be focused on training and the defense of our overseas possessions.
Fully agree. Frankly, I'd like to have the navy restructured as well - moving away from large, expensive, difficult to defend carriers and towards a force of smaller ships better structured to defend America's merchant shipping (but that's definitely another discussion).
The problem with looking at the Second Amendment from the perspective of the Founders is that the Founders never anticipated the modern military-industrial complex. In their time armies were large collections of men wielding the same weapons available to individuals. Today, that is no longer the case - the weapons available to the US Army are far more sophisticated and powerful than the weapons available to individuals.
There are two ways of correcting such a disparity. On one hand, we could reduce the capability of our armed forces - e.g. force them to give up many of the sophisticated elements of artillery and air-power they currently possess. This has the disadvantage of making it much more difficult for the US Army to defend the homeland. After all, the reason no armed power ever considers attacking the US homeland proper is because the US has complete air and naval superiority over itself and over its neighboring countries too.
On the other hand, we could upgrade the level of armaments available to private citizens. Its pretty hard to hold off a despotic regime with small arms alone, but if one has light mortars, RPGs, and access to surplus explosives, one can set up quite an insurgency (as the Iraqis and Afghans have demonstrated). However, this would have the effect of making society more violent. Already, narco-gangs are able to challenge the police in some inner cities. If they had access to heavy armaments, they might attempt an outright takeover - essentially trying to overthrow the government and set up a narco-dictatorship in its place.
Given that these are the two most obvious options when one considers how to "modernize" the Second Amendment for the twenty-first century, its difficult to conclude that the Second Amendment is any more relevant to our daily life than the Third.