flynn23 wrote:
I think that it's perfectly acceptable to own weapons in your home for sport, protection, or collection. Although I do have serious reservations about the TYPES of weapons owned. You can collect WW2 rifles or even historic machine guns, but there's no reason why someone should have an operational M2 or an AK47, both of which I know of several people who possess.

I've been meaning to get back to this thread. Its been interesting. I want to interject some thoughts.

1. I think the second amendment consists of a purpose and a means to achieve that purpose.

2. I think the means is a near total ban on federal firearms laws. The 14th amendment extends this ban to the states. Certain exceptions such as the case of felons or in certain locations are probably allowable given an over-riding government interest, but I don't think a ban on certain types of weapons is possible and I'm not sure I buy U.S. v. Miller. You can obviously use a sawed off shotgun in a war. Actual wars in the world today involving actual militias are actually fought with all kinds of fucked up weapons. Actual militias have things like RPGs. I think the second amendment cannot achieve its stated purpose if it allows for the federal regulations on the ownership of RPGs.

3. Self defense in the home is not the purpose, nor is hunting, nor is collecting. But the ownership of weapons for those purposes is a given considering the means employed by this amendment. Similarly, the purpose of the first amendment was not to protect porn videos from federal bans, but it does so anyway, due to the means employed (nearly total prohibition on regulation of speech.)

4. The purpose was to protect the right of the people to form armed militia groups capable of challenging the power of any other contemporary armed force. The original federalist structure of the U.S. Government may have put states in the position of regulating such militia, but the 14th amendment set that power aside.

5. Militia of the sort envisioned by the Constitution are not obsolete from a technical standpoint. Generally, we refer to them as terrorist organizations. The closest modern equivalents are Sunni and Shia insurgent groups in Iraq, and Hezbollah. I think thats really what the founders were thinking. In fact, I recall Nanochick making a very insightful analogy between the founding of this Republic and the present bloodshed in Iraq. Looking at the situation there is the closest thing you can get to understanding the context that the Constitution was written in. I doubt very seriously that you'll see any party to any settlement in Iraq agreeing to lay down their arms. The 2nd amendment is an agreement that the federal government of the US would not disarm the militia. Its the same kind of thing.

6. Almost no one in the US today is comfortable with the idea that armed terrorist organizations can rightfully exist here. The actual purpos... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

RE: Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com

Authorities in Afghanistan have sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for having downloaded and shared copies of a report criticizing the oppressive treatment of women in some Islamic societies.

Afghanistan: death sentence for downloading, distributing report on oppression of women - Boing Boing

I went through about a year back in the early part of the decade trying to work with desktop linux on a laptop. It didn't work very well. Eventually I got a mac. The trouble with Apple is that about 30% of the hardware they produce has serious design flaws. After many years of dealing with them I'm tired of the high cost of their stuff and the annual week without a computer.

So I thought I'd give Ubunto a try. I'd been told by many people that it "just works." I installed it on a pretty run of the mill Dell laptop. It did not "just work." Within a few minutes I'm googling around for long winded explanations of how I have to configure this and compile that and download this other thing in order to get this OS working on this extremely ubiquitous hardware.

This HOWTO describes how to get Wifi working on your Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop using Ndiswrapper.

Im sorry, but if in 2007 you STILL have to compile something in order to get a basic thing like wireless networking working on an extremely popular hardware platform, LINUX WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL ON THE DESKTOP.

Ubuntu sucks, nothing has changed.

"Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser. This is to protest the 'notability purges' taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins.

Apparently people around here aren't the only ones grumbling about deletionism.

Slashdot | Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions

I love It's a Wonderful Life because it teaches us that family, friendship, and virtue are the true definitions of wealth. In 1947, however, the FBI considered this anti-consummerist message as subsersive Communist propaganda (read original FBI memo).

FBI Considered 'It's a Wonderful Life' Communist Propaganda

Under the circumstances, any legal consequences for this student must take into account his intent to perform a public service, to publicize a problem as a way of getting it fixed. He picked a lousy way of doing it, but he should not go to jail for his bad judgment.

Thank you Ed Markey! I'm sure that everyone who wrote you appreciates the fact that you are listening and that you took the time to take a closer look at this case.

Congressman Edward Markey - October 29, 2006 - MARKEY: DON'T ARREST STUDENT, USE HIM TO FIX LOOPHOLES

Congressman Markey,

While I'm not one of your constituents, your statements and actions often have an impact that reaches beyond your district. Yesterday you were quoted in several news media outlets as having called for the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, a PHD candidate at the University of Indiana Bloomington, because he created a web page that generates phoney airline boarding passes. As you are likely aware, your call was answered by the FBI who reportedly broke into Soghoian's house last night and seized all of his computer equipment.

I am a professional computer security researcher. I work for one of the worlds largest IT companies. My job involves finding vulnerabilities in software systems and getting them fixed. Responsible vendors are usually very responsive and willing to work with my team when we contact them with information about problems with their products. Through this process we are able to locate and repair vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure before the bad guys can find them and exploit them. However, there are always a few unsophisticated people who seek to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the flaw.

Christopher Soghoian is one of the good guys. He is not a criminal and he is not enabling criminals. He did not create the vulnerability in the boarding pass screening process. This problem has existed for years, and it has been noted in other quarters, most recently by Sen. Chuck Schumer. However, the problem hasn't been fixed. Soghoian's website was intended to demonstrate how simple this is, and he has clearly and repeatedly stated that his intent in creating the site was to raise awareness about the problem so that it will be fixed. His website does not make this much easier than standard desktop publishing software available on anyone's personal computer.

Your call for his arrest, and the subsiquent events that have unfolded over the past 24 hours, have done serious harm to the national security of the United States. You could have simply contacted him, informed him of the legal problems that one could face for operating such a website, and discussed shutting it down. By choosing instead to prosecute him you are sending a message to security professionals in this country that if you observe a problem with national security policies or practices and make people aware of those problems in good faith so that they might be fixed, the government will treat you as an enemy and will prosecute you if possible. The inevitable result will be that people will hold their tongues, and problems will persist until they are discovered by someone who has malicious intent.

I strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this matter. The current course of action is not in the best interests of this country.

Respectfully,
Tom Cross

My Letter to Ed Markey

How to have fun with a simple Squid proxy and ruin your neighbor's day. Well, when they still your intarweb connection.

The Upside-Down Ternet

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Researchers (Hayes, Bloom) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Samuel Johnson thought it took longer than ten years: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Tom makes quite a cogent argument... well said.

RE: Suit: W.Va. Police Chief Denied Gay Man CPR - Yahoo! News