All of the above. Maybe your sources were just as terribly biased as his. It is certainly not factual information. Please see my long reply to the OP for details.
The fact that it doesn't matter to you means that you're intelligent. Why you disagree is a mystery though, considering the OP has made blatantly false claims as part of a meaningless rant against some religion. I hate to think you are supporting his view simply because it *is* against a religion. That wouldn't be very scientific at all.
You're right, I was just referring to the capability of passing down knowledge/the-fruits-of-scientific-thought via symbolic documentation. No other species has this characteristic. We write; nothing else writes.
Now what everybody is missing here in this discussion is the fact that the muslims never found anything in the quran to contradict discovery, simply because of the way Quranic prose is written. Words have multiple meanings, and anything concerning God..etc is either very obvious/non-challengable or completely abstract. For example, the "6 days" issue is nothing serious to them, because while the book does mention how the earth and "the heavens" were made in 6 days, elsewhere it talks about god doing something in "a day whose magnitude is that of a thousand years of your reckoning".
As a result, muslims inherently learned not to confuse religion with science, and hence generally avoided conflict. Remember, the astronomy that almost got Galileo killed was a big part of islamic-era science. Philosophy is a different game, and they did indeed limit various types of thought.
There are many "hard truths" about Islam that will make many people uncomfortable, but that troll didn't mention any of them. Just because somebody is posting something derogatory about a religion (or about anything in fact) doesn't make it legitimate criticism. I am non-muslim, please see my response to him below.
Good god, what a troll. You may know a little more than most slashdotters, but that doesn't mean you know much. I've lived in the mideast for quite some time, so you're in for a roll.
The Qu'ran, far from being "the unaltered word of God", is actually an horrific and savage compilation of distilled hatred. Work on collecting the verses wasn't even begun until long after Mohammed was dead, and it was pieced together from people who claimed to have known him or known people who knew him. Thus it's put together out of chronological order (already one alteration) and to try to claim "Mohammed" wrote it is laughable.
Actually, Muslims and many others(like myself) who have read the Quran in Arabic are usually in awe of the beauty and uniqueness of the literature. It was learned by heart by thousands (actually scores of thousands) while Muhammad was alive, and it was put together/standardized very early on by one of his friends (the 3rd Caliph, Othman) who outlived him. He called all those who had learned the verses to a large mosque in Al-Medina, then had all 12,000 of them recite the verses one by one, taking only the agreed upon verses to be authentic. To try to claim that Muhammed was NOT the first man who spoke those words is laughable, not the other way round. Chronological order of "revelation" is not relevant, authenticity is. The Quran is filled with challenges to the Arabian poets asking them to bring forth so much as a verse worthy of being likened to the Quran, yet they failed miserably despite being pretty amazing in that regard. Now that may not be proof enough that is "divine", but it sure as hell is proof of its authenticity and uniqueness of source. No pagan ever accused "the arabs" of putting together the book. You are very confused.
The same is true for the other Muslim "holy books", the various collections of hadith (sayings of the so-called "prophet") that various factions believe are more or less authentic (the Sunni and Shi'a have their own favored set each, same for other sects).
First off, hadith is defined by the Muslims as anything the prophet was witnessed to say, do, or agree to without actually speaking. It is a huge study, and the process of judging the authenticity of these narrations is actually a developed "science" which is studied by Muslim scholars alongside jurisprudence..etc. Most westerners have the impression that the narrations passed around by word of mouth and badly kept books(like biblical text), but the early muslims dedicated their lives to preserving the exact syntax of these narrations by studying the *narrators*, their relationship to each other, their individual learning capacity, their accuracy, and the barriers in time and space that may have prevented one from narrating from the other. It is the most intensive, prudent historiography I have ever seen, and it has lead to a largely accurate retention of original "sayings". No other major faith has this luxury.
Still, despite all that effort, different versions of various "authentic" hadiths do exist, whereas the Quran has never been disputed. This again serves to show you how mistaken you are in thinking that the two are produced in the same way. There is no dispute over a single word in the Quran. No 2 versions. To me, and for a 1430-year-old text, that's pretty fucking impressive. And by the way, putting stuff on paper doesn't save it from tampering, because back then you didn't have printing industries, you had single conpies. Muslims regarded the "learners" as better than the "writers" in hadith because the latter had several recorded instances of people coming in their houses and messing with their books. That fact that we know this today is pretty fucking impressive too, I think.
Islam is not simply a religion; it is a design guidebook for the creation of a totalitarian state in which the "supreme leader" (Caliph) and his stooges get to use religion as an excuse to be really crappy to everyone else. And it's a lot easier to keep your popul
Unfortunately it *is* total crap. Arabia and the other conquered lands before Muhammad were almost completely devoid of science. Immense interest in greek sciences developed only after Muhammad's message arrived, which would have been weird considering they were polytheist infidels. Instead, the people who were little more than bedouins and traders became the center of a golden age of thought. The Quran's very first verses are a perfect statement of the only true differentiating criterion between human minds and those of other animals
Read, by they Lord the Most Bounteous He who taught with the pen Taught the human what he knew not When a religion understands the abstraction and documentation of information - the symbols and the ink - you know immediately that it cannot seek to stifle scientific progress. In fact, apart from the burning of one or two libraries during initial conquests, there is very little evidence leading to the belief that *anything* at all was done to prevent scientific progress in the Muslim world. From what I have seen first hand of scholars in the middle east, pursuing "knowledge" is mandatory, not just commendable. Please provide evidence to make the discussion more interesting.
Thank you for the endless, wasted hours Thank you for the projects that could have been finished Thank you for goatse, and natalie, and the borg Thank you for the geeky camaraderie Thank you for immortal discussions and great minds Thank you for the fanboys and the memes Thank you for the flamewars and the tired old men Thank you documenting the wonders of our time Our beautiful, beautiful time
Well, it's pretty stupid to have 15 years of memories on a single medium of storage (or "thing" since we're being nice to non-techies). Don't put your whole life on a "thing". Things break, and get orange juice spilled over them, and stolen by mafia like the ones you make movies about. EVERYBODY knows that. I have many non-geek friends who have 2 or 3 copies of their photos..etc because they know the world of IT is pretty much in it's infancy, so a world-renown director should really know enough about life not to put so much in one place. I do feel sorry for his loss, but he should probably cheer up because I've already found it here I think:
Mod parent funny. DC is locally known as "Hollywood for ugly people." Ha! You must mean ugly-on-the-inside, because they honestly are, at least the white girls. I'm talking about Caucasian females of ages between 19-25 years. Many of them should be shot. They have this high-pitched-voise, high-nosed attitude to life that immediately lets you know they haven't got the foggiest idea what they're talking about, and as soon as they open their mouths open to say something you feel an urgent need to punch them in the face. Just *BAM*. No questions.
The subset of those who happen to be grad students are sometimes even MORE stuck up, you'll be surprised to know. I thought knowledge humbled the spirit and cleared the mind.. not with these dixies. Also, no matter how much they exercise they can't seem to get their bodies in attractive shape. You can be fit as hell, babe, but genes are a blessing you *haven't* got. It's pretty sad really. An incredible number of grad students here work out/jog/exercise in some way though and internationals are almost always genetically superior without all that. I don't know if it's the water, or the ugliness of politics in the air (we're a breeze away from ground zero after all), but despite all the pretty faces in academia here, you are somewhat correct.
You are making the assumption that they all will not want to stay, whereas other people have suggested that the major reason they want to study here in the first place is that they want to work in the US later. Neither viewpoint is correct I think - if foreign nationals "cannot hold jobs" then it is because the US government is preventing them from doing so, hence the argument defeats itself. You can't force them to leave then say they're not contributing to the economy. Those who stay actually contribute to the economy and to science in general more than the average American worker, who in contrast is not pressed to prove his worth in a foreign country.
I agree. Americans on the east coast will gladly take up a DoD contractor's job and work around DC (where I'm at) rather than go for another 2-5 years of studies on a stipend, because we live in the culture of cars and houses and hot dates. Other students from countries abroad will on the other hand clearly see the benefit of being able to enroll - for free i.e scholarship - in some of the worlds top schools of higher education. You need MAs to work if you're a humanities person, but any 16-year old today can get a website up and get paid for it.
In secondary school and even college, schools abroad can compete quite easily with a strong teaching staff. When it comes to research and worldwide academic reputation, however, the US rocks. Here at Georgetown most of the American students in CS grad school are doing it part time, the internationals are actually a minority (it's a small program anyway), and science and math are on the rise in developing nations.. it should come as no surprise that given the scarcity of interest in technical/math oriented research, the worldwide supply of students would find their way here.
Let's just say they're single-threaded. It takes time to do electromagnetic integrals in your head while flapping your wings ya know. No wonder they shit so much.
Not only is it obvious that the submitter didn't read the article but by posting it its obvious that the 'editor' didn't either! Jebus!.. So, I take it you're new here?
If it could do that(depending on what "understand" means), it could probably respond in context too, thus satisfying the Turing Test. Speaking of the turing test, Turing should have talked about a human benchmark for intelligence, because the test has been satisfied years ago when my blonde GF got custom automated messages after sitting at my fedora machine and attempting to log in. She thought she was "in messnger or something".
Incorrect Password: PlEASE LEAVE NOW, BONEHEAD, YOUR FAILED ATTEMPT HAS BEEN LOGGED. I WILL CATCH YOU AND BOY WILL IT BE FUN
LOGIN: lol you're a meanie. you wish LOOL. tell me your passssword you mean boy i want to check my aim
He has a 3 character nickname and a 6 digit ID. Maybe if he had a 3 digit ID as well we could, like, take it as divine revelation. But today doubt will triumph.
This wasn't meant to be parenting advice, it was simply an issue of unhealthy government intervention with peoples lives, at a very young age, in ways that can possibly pave the way for further tampering with our privacy and freedoms (or what is left of them). Others have already commented on your parenting advice remark, but really, I think slashdot is a *great* source of information for a whole range of people in this crazy era. Especially people with children. It's not about being a bastion of professional opinions and overwhelming maturity, it's just that matters of concern are raised and discussed pretty thoroughly, so even if you don't get the best info you are at least *aware* of the controversy.
You may seem be very confident knowing that you're a tech-oriented person, but most people have no friggin clue what is going on in TheWorld 2.0. In order to "question" things, you need to know these things are happening in the first place. People get advice with healthcare, finance, technology, work-habits..but they shouldn't get basic information about things that change everyday around them and their kids? And by the way, raising your kids to "question everything" may sound awesome on paper, but what happens if things don't go perfectly as planned and they hit the teenage years with a little less discipline then most, due to your over-emphasized irreverence? Shouldn't you wait until slightly later before really coming down hard with the question-everything line, telling them that mathematics itself should be doubted? Ah, you see, parenting isn't such a simple thing is it:) And we don't need to wait for your kids to grow up. Some nonsense should be dealt with right away before it serves as precedence for other madness. If schools started following kids around during out-of-state visits with their families, for example, parents associations would not wait for the next generation to tell the government to go to hell.
Now some people on this thread have talked about how everyone should assume all online information is public. This is nonsense. Information on web pages is not necessarily public no matter how bad online security gets, and even though kids should be raised with a healthy dose of security education, being responsible with what you put online is completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about what kids should do. We are talking about institutionalized stalking - breaches of privacy, where schools want to be able to violate TOS for websites and mobile operators under the veil of protecting our children. This is not in any way normal. We shouldn't have to put up with ISPs handing our packet data over to MIB(men in black) and we shouldn't come to terms with the idea that our kids are being constantly stalked online by academic institutions. When your kids are at school they are the school's responsibility; when they are with you then the school, the government, the mobile service providers and anybody else "interested" in their activities should be going through you to solve problems.
Will everybody please stop thinking of our children?
PS: I'm unmarried and in my 20's and have no children ["duh!" jokes not allowed].
"That need to obey is a factor of the ability to enforce only"
No, if you elect someone to a position of command then you are signifying your will to "co-operate" and "comply" with (i.e obey) that authority for a significant length of time. If the non-cooperation of some individual is deemed negative to society, authority has to be enforced, because that's why it's there in the first place.
The recognition of the need to obey an authority's [position of]command is something that is bound by classification of that command (command over the flight of aircraft over some territory) and the duration for which that position of authority holds true. In a democracy, both get chosen by the population to begin with, by some weird mechanism, so the question of "enforcing" only comes into play if a small majority disregard that authority and violate its commands.
You're right that this law stinks of over-control, and we are by no means (in the US) living in an ideal democracy.. but that doesn't mean that we can't change the law if there is a majority of concerned voters who do not "recognize" the command of the governing authority over this matter. We do not have to face the guns to change our collectively chosen authorities in a democracy, the guns are there to protect our collective choice ONCE WE'VE MAE IT. At least I hope so.
So get off my damn lawn and stop posting pointless comments complaining It is our duty as Helpful People to help make slashdot more interesting, and less ridiculous, by pointing these things out.
about something you can easily just NOT CLICK ON IF IT DOES NOT INTERST YOU. You spelled interest wrong.
Fuck, Slashdot is full of whiners the past couple of years. Uh-oh. Please disregard my above grammar nazism:)
No, that's how authority is generally enforced, not what it is. Authority is an economical/social phenomenon.. a natural produce of the human ability to conduct daily affairs in a social context. It is conveyed as the recognition, by one party, of the need to obey the command of another.
Slashdot Mirror
All of the above. Maybe your sources were just as terribly biased as his. It is certainly not factual information. Please see my long reply to the OP for details.
The fact that it doesn't matter to you means that you're intelligent. Why you disagree is a mystery though, considering the OP has made blatantly false claims as part of a meaningless rant against some religion. I hate to think you are supporting his view simply because it *is* against a religion. That wouldn't be very scientific at all.
You're right, I was just referring to the capability of passing down knowledge/the-fruits-of-scientific-thought via symbolic documentation. No other species has this characteristic. We write; nothing else writes.
Now what everybody is missing here in this discussion is the fact that the muslims never found anything in the quran to contradict discovery, simply because of the way Quranic prose is written. Words have multiple meanings, and anything concerning God..etc is either very obvious/non-challengable or completely abstract. For example, the "6 days" issue is nothing serious to them, because while the book does mention how the earth and "the heavens" were made in 6 days, elsewhere it talks about god doing something in "a day whose magnitude is that of a thousand years of your reckoning".
As a result, muslims inherently learned not to confuse religion with science, and hence generally avoided conflict. Remember, the astronomy that almost got Galileo killed was a big part of islamic-era science. Philosophy is a different game, and they did indeed limit various types of thought.
There are many "hard truths" about Islam that will make many people uncomfortable, but that troll didn't mention any of them. Just because somebody is posting something derogatory about a religion (or about anything in fact) doesn't make it legitimate criticism. I am non-muslim, please see my response to him below.
The Qu'ran, far from being "the unaltered word of God", is actually an horrific and savage compilation of distilled hatred. Work on collecting the verses wasn't even begun until long after Mohammed was dead, and it was pieced together from people who claimed to have known him or known people who knew him. Thus it's put together out of chronological order (already one alteration) and to try to claim "Mohammed" wrote it is laughable.
Actually, Muslims and many others(like myself) who have read the Quran in Arabic are usually in awe of the beauty and uniqueness of the literature. It was learned by heart by thousands (actually scores of thousands) while Muhammad was alive, and it was put together/standardized very early on by one of his friends (the 3rd Caliph, Othman) who outlived him. He called all those who had learned the verses to a large mosque in Al-Medina, then had all 12,000 of them recite the verses one by one, taking only the agreed upon verses to be authentic. To try to claim that Muhammed was NOT the first man who spoke those words is laughable, not the other way round. Chronological order of "revelation" is not relevant, authenticity is. The Quran is filled with challenges to the Arabian poets asking them to bring forth so much as a verse worthy of being likened to the Quran, yet they failed miserably despite being pretty amazing in that regard. Now that may not be proof enough that is "divine", but it sure as hell is proof of its authenticity and uniqueness of source. No pagan ever accused "the arabs" of putting together the book. You are very confused.
The same is true for the other Muslim "holy books", the various collections of hadith (sayings of the so-called "prophet") that various factions believe are more or less authentic (the Sunni and Shi'a have their own favored set each, same for other sects).
First off, hadith is defined by the Muslims as anything the prophet was witnessed to say, do, or agree to without actually speaking. It is a huge study, and the process of judging the authenticity of these narrations is actually a developed "science" which is studied by Muslim scholars alongside jurisprudence..etc. Most westerners have the impression that the narrations passed around by word of mouth and badly kept books(like biblical text), but the early muslims dedicated their lives to preserving the exact syntax of these narrations by studying the *narrators*, their relationship to each other, their individual learning capacity, their accuracy, and the barriers in time and space that may have prevented one from narrating from the other. It is the most intensive, prudent historiography I have ever seen, and it has lead to a largely accurate retention of original "sayings". No other major faith has this luxury.
Still, despite all that effort, different versions of various "authentic" hadiths do exist, whereas the Quran has never been disputed. This again serves to show you how mistaken you are in thinking that the two are produced in the same way. There is no dispute over a single word in the Quran. No 2 versions. To me, and for a 1430-year-old text, that's pretty fucking impressive. And by the way, putting stuff on paper doesn't save it from tampering, because back then you didn't have printing industries, you had single conpies. Muslims regarded the "learners" as better than the "writers" in hadith because the latter had several recorded instances of people coming in their houses and messing with their books. That fact that we know this today is pretty fucking impressive too, I think.
Islam is not simply a religion; it is a design guidebook for the creation of a totalitarian state in which the "supreme leader" (Caliph) and his stooges get to use religion as an excuse to be really crappy to everyone else. And it's a lot easier to keep your popul
He who taught with the pen
Taught the human what he knew not When a religion understands the abstraction and documentation of information - the symbols and the ink - you know immediately that it cannot seek to stifle scientific progress. In fact, apart from the burning of one or two libraries during initial conquests, there is very little evidence leading to the belief that *anything* at all was done to prevent scientific progress in the Muslim world. From what I have seen first hand of scholars in the middle east, pursuing "knowledge" is mandatory, not just commendable. Please provide evidence to make the discussion more interesting.
I sense a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of able Perl developers cried out objecting to your insolence and were suddenly silenced.
Thank you for the endless, wasted hours
:)
Thank you for the projects that could have been finished
Thank you for goatse, and natalie, and the borg
Thank you for the geeky camaraderie
Thank you for immortal discussions and great minds
Thank you for the fanboys and the memes
Thank you for the flamewars and the tired old men
Thank you documenting the wonders of our time
Our beautiful, beautiful time
Thank you
Well, it's pretty stupid to have 15 years of memories on a single medium of storage (or "thing" since we're being nice to non-techies). Don't put your whole life on a "thing". Things break, and get orange juice spilled over them, and stolen by mafia like the ones you make movies about. EVERYBODY knows that. I have many non-geek friends who have 2 or 3 copies of their photos..etc because they know the world of IT is pretty much in it's infancy, so a world-renown director should really know enough about life not to put so much in one place. I do feel sorry for his loss, but he should probably cheer up because I've already found it here I think:
www.thepiratebay.org
The subset of those who happen to be grad students are sometimes even MORE stuck up, you'll be surprised to know. I thought knowledge humbled the spirit and cleared the mind.. not with these dixies. Also, no matter how much they exercise they can't seem to get their bodies in attractive shape. You can be fit as hell, babe, but genes are a blessing you *haven't* got. It's pretty sad really. An incredible number of grad students here work out/jog/exercise in some way though and internationals are almost always genetically superior without all that. I don't know if it's the water, or the ugliness of politics in the air (we're a breeze away from ground zero after all), but despite all the pretty faces in academia here, you are somewhat correct.
You are making the assumption that they all will not want to stay, whereas other people have suggested that the major reason they want to study here in the first place is that they want to work in the US later. Neither viewpoint is correct I think - if foreign nationals "cannot hold jobs" then it is because the US government is preventing them from doing so, hence the argument defeats itself. You can't force them to leave then say they're not contributing to the economy. Those who stay actually contribute to the economy and to science in general more than the average American worker, who in contrast is not pressed to prove his worth in a foreign country.
I agree. Americans on the east coast will gladly take up a DoD contractor's job and work around DC (where I'm at) rather than go for another 2-5 years of studies on a stipend, because we live in the culture of cars and houses and hot dates. Other students from countries abroad will on the other hand clearly see the benefit of being able to enroll - for free i.e scholarship - in some of the worlds top schools of higher education. You need MAs to work if you're a humanities person, but any 16-year old today can get a website up and get paid for it.
In secondary school and even college, schools abroad can compete quite easily with a strong teaching staff. When it comes to research and worldwide academic reputation, however, the US rocks. Here at Georgetown most of the American students in CS grad school are doing it part time, the internationals are actually a minority (it's a small program anyway), and science and math are on the rise in developing nations.. it should come as no surprise that given the scarcity of interest in technical/math oriented research, the worldwide supply of students would find their way here.
Let's just say they're single-threaded. It takes time to do electromagnetic integrals in your head while flapping your wings ya know. No wonder they shit so much.
To the moderator: IT WAS A JOKE, BONEHEAD, I WILL CaTCH YOU AND BoY WILL IT BE FuN
If it could do that(depending on what "understand" means), it could probably respond in context too, thus satisfying the Turing Test. Speaking of the turing test, Turing should have talked about a human benchmark for intelligence, because the test has been satisfied years ago when my blonde GF got custom automated messages after sitting at my fedora machine and attempting to log in. She thought she was "in messnger or something".
Incorrect Password: PlEASE LEAVE NOW, BONEHEAD, YOUR FAILED ATTEMPT HAS BEEN LOGGED. I WILL CATCH YOU AND BOY WILL IT BE FUN
LOGIN: lol you're a meanie. you wish LOOL. tell me your passssword you mean boy i want to check my aim
She was a real darling, but I had to let her go.
In Soviet Russia, sorority girls [like,] install [like,] Linux for you!
He has a 3 character nickname and a 6 digit ID. Maybe if he had a 3 digit ID as well we could, like, take it as divine revelation. But today doubt will triumph.
This wasn't meant to be parenting advice, it was simply an issue of unhealthy government intervention with peoples lives, at a very young age, in ways that can possibly pave the way for further tampering with our privacy and freedoms (or what is left of them). Others have already commented on your parenting advice remark, but really, I think slashdot is a *great* source of information for a whole range of people in this crazy era. Especially people with children. It's not about being a bastion of professional opinions and overwhelming maturity, it's just that matters of concern are raised and discussed pretty thoroughly, so even if you don't get the best info you are at least *aware* of the controversy.
:) And we don't need to wait for your kids to grow up. Some nonsense should be dealt with right away before it serves as precedence for other madness. If schools started following kids around during out-of-state visits with their families, for example, parents associations would not wait for the next generation to tell the government to go to hell.
You may seem be very confident knowing that you're a tech-oriented person, but most people have no friggin clue what is going on in TheWorld 2.0. In order to "question" things, you need to know these things are happening in the first place. People get advice with healthcare, finance, technology, work-habits..but they shouldn't get basic information about things that change everyday around them and their kids? And by the way, raising your kids to "question everything" may sound awesome on paper, but what happens if things don't go perfectly as planned and they hit the teenage years with a little less discipline then most, due to your over-emphasized irreverence? Shouldn't you wait until slightly later before really coming down hard with the question-everything line, telling them that mathematics itself should be doubted? Ah, you see, parenting isn't such a simple thing is it
Now some people on this thread have talked about how everyone should assume all online information is public. This is nonsense. Information on web pages is not necessarily public no matter how bad online security gets, and even though kids should be raised with a healthy dose of security education, being responsible with what you put online is completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about what kids should do. We are talking about institutionalized stalking - breaches of privacy, where schools want to be able to violate TOS for websites and mobile operators under the veil of protecting our children. This is not in any way normal. We shouldn't have to put up with ISPs handing our packet data over to MIB(men in black) and we shouldn't come to terms with the idea that our kids are being constantly stalked online by academic institutions. When your kids are at school they are the school's responsibility; when they are with you then the school, the government, the mobile service providers and anybody else "interested" in their activities should be going through you to solve problems.
Will everybody please stop thinking of our children?
PS: I'm unmarried and in my 20's and have no children ["duh!" jokes not allowed].
GP clearly must've never heard of the four color theorem (in graphical vertices).
You must be new here.
"That need to obey is a factor of the ability to enforce only"
No, if you elect someone to a position of command then you are signifying your will to "co-operate" and "comply" with (i.e obey) that authority for a significant length of time. If the non-cooperation of some individual is deemed negative to society, authority has to be enforced, because that's why it's there in the first place.
The recognition of the need to obey an authority's [position of]command is something that is bound by classification of that command (command over the flight of aircraft over some territory) and the duration for which that position of authority holds true. In a democracy, both get chosen by the population to begin with, by some weird mechanism, so the question of "enforcing" only comes into play if a small majority disregard that authority and violate its commands.
You're right that this law stinks of over-control, and we are by no means (in the US) living in an ideal democracy.. but that doesn't mean that we can't change the law if there is a majority of concerned voters who do not "recognize" the command of the governing authority over this matter. We do not have to face the guns to change our collectively chosen authorities in a democracy, the guns are there to protect our collective choice ONCE WE'VE MAE IT. At least I hope so.
No, that's how authority is generally enforced, not what it is. Authority is an economical/social phenomenon.. a natural produce of the human ability to conduct daily affairs in a social context. It is conveyed as the recognition, by one party, of the need to obey the command of another.
..you SUCKERS! If I want to launch myself into orbital demise from my own private property then I will, fascists.