You know it's funny the way the USA considers itself a) great, b) rich, and c) free.

Some people are rich. Most are not. Many countries are richer, especially at median wealth.
Most people struggle from day to day, desperately trying to stay employed - and keep their health benefits. Too scared to move jobs and actually give that flexibility so much desired by the right wing ... er, what?
And free? Really? A country that imprisons more of its citizens than anywhere else, starts more wars than anyone else, and bullies other countries in a most unpleasant fashion (FATCA, anyone?). Not mention the institutionalised bribery that seems the only reason for the existence of Washington.

So, so far away from the high ideals in that brilliant document, the US Constitution. ... The "Patriot" Act .. OMG. Washington must be spinning in his grave.
It seems to be a country controlled by fear, with an ever more oppressive set of laws, and a growing (but small) group of mega rich who have little concern for the average Joe.

So sad. I'm glad I don't live there.

So come on Americans - stop living in fear. Stop pushing the world about, start educating your people, start keeping them healthy and educated.
And deliver on those great ideals you started with.
Please.

My monitor is a Dell 3007WFP, which was released in the US in December 2005 (so 8 years ago). It's also far from being the only 30" monitor released at that time with that resolution, although most modern 30 inchers seem to be 16:9 instead of my preferred 16:10.

As for pixels, I can definitely see pixels on mine if I disable AA in games, although I only need 2xAA for it to appear totally smooth. 4K would probably take it close to the point where the pixels aren't visible anymore from 3 feet away even with AA disabled, but I haven't used a 4K monitor yet so I'm not positive. I can absolutely guarantee that anyone would be able to make the difference between my monitor and a 4K one though.

I think you're underestimating how much GPU power games need these days. I bought a Dell 30" monitor 5 years ago, which I'm still using for gaming. The native resolution is 2560x1600, so not even close to the new 4K ones. At this resolution, my old 3 years old Radeon 5870 was struggling to get smooth framerates for several games. So I bought the new GTX 780 when it came out for $600. The new card is fantastic, I can finally play The Witcher 2 at full resolution with high settings, same with Bioshock Infinite, etc. Keep in mind, the new 4K resolutions will demand even more out of GPUs, so it's not likely that the demand will go down all that much yet.

Sure, if you're a gamer who fires up a 1080p console port once in a while, a cheap GPU will do. If you're an avid gamer who needs more than 1080p, you still need to buy the $400+ cards to keep up.

I don't recall seeing this when I was at the centre of the Bermuda Triangle some time back. Maybe it was hidden in the mysterious mist that is supposed to arise there.

Pay them in iDollars.

"What evidence do we have that the Roman Empire existed?"

Well, there's all the ruins stretching from Italy to England. And tons of written material left behind.

Try something harder next time.

A lot of 'desktops' these days are things you don't see immediately; the toolkits, internationalization/localization, canvases, setting centralization and management, advanced font handling, notification plumbing etc. that most GUI applications make use of these days (from one desktop or another). Presuming you're using apps other than xterm (and perhaps you are not) you are actually making use of most of this stuff; the part of the `desktop`you`re not using is simply the window manager and the panels which are, ultimately, the tip of the iceberg.

We were discussing human rights in general here, not just your 2nd amendment. I was responding to this idiotic statement by jcr :

The whole "We hold these truths to be self-evident" concept creeps me out so much, especially if people are buying into it without thinking about it. Whenever people are talking about "self-evident truths", you should be extremely wary, especially when they have guns to back their statements up. I happen to agree with the ideals in this case, but I'm under no illusion that these "rights" would exist without the threat of violence to back them up.

I'm not American and I think your 2nd amendment was very poorly worded, especially the part about "bearing" arms. If the aim is to allow the general population to resist a potentially oppressive government, then guaranteeing the right to own weapons is enough. The right to take them with you everywhere is a completely different issue. Personally, I think walking around with a loaded weapon should be extremely illegal. In fact, wielding a loaded weapon should always be treated as if you were intending to use it right then and there. This would allow guns to be allowed for hunting, as well as in all actual self-defense situations, and insure their availability should civil war be necessary. Basically, carrying a loaded weapon with you in all other situations should be treated as criminal intent.

The Amish are only able to hold together without the threat of violence because they dump the responsibility on others. Small, tightly-knit group of people always have an ultimate solution to cases they can't handle : expulsion. These groups will typically use several methods to enforce their rules. Usually it starts with reason (convince people through logic), then shaming (for your Amish example above, that would be the forced beard-cutting and such) and finally when those fail, they expel the offending member from the community. To keep with your Amish example, when a violent offender becomes too much to handle for them, say a serial rapist or murderer, they call outside authorities to deal with them.

Let's pretend that this option wasn't available because the whole world is Amish. What happens when a few pariahs get together and go down the path of banditry? They'll steal and rape and pillage their ways until someone uses violence to stop them. So you start needing people to deal with those cases. So now you need a police force, etc...

To come back to your original statement, you're right that evolution applies to societies in general. The societies with the best set or rules (laws & ideology) will tend to prosper and others will fail. However, the willingness to use violence is the most basic component of every society. If tomorrow, somebody convinces half the people of a country that murder is right, the only option for the other half is to defend themselves. Sure, you can try to convince people through reason, but if that fails, violence is the only last resort that works. If you forgo violence and someone is willing to use it against you, you'll die, and all your nice ideologies about rights and peace and whatnot will go with you.

I understand well the intent behind the "unalienable rights" statement. The problem is that it doesn't reflect the physical reality and as such, it is untrue. I can make a document declaring that humans have the innate power of flight, but when I decide to jump off a cliff to act upon my belief, flapping my arms is not going to help me.

But that's my very point - they are not unalienable. They are made up. Human rights have no basis in reality, there's no fundamental law of nature that grant humans those rights. They are only an ideology and, as soon as someone with different views gathers the most power, they'll cease to exist. In the future, it's possible that technology will enable someone with a different ideology to seize power, and those "unalienable" rights would go away, perhaps never to return until humanity becomes extinct.

If rights effectively go away once you don't own the biggest guns anymore, then by definition they aren't unalienable : they are created by mankind. This is why you have to be willing to kill to defend your ideologies, otherwise people can use violence to enforce their way of life over you.