This mill is only the newest, and probably easiest method to mill your own lowers. Others use normal shop mills, some drill-presses, some routers, and with polymer lowers, all you need is a dremel tool. They certainly couldn't get warrants for anyone owning a dremel, or a drill press on the grounds that they may have made non-serialized weapons with it.

As far as this CNC goes, sure, they may have some kind of record of who has purchased one, and be fairly certain that they probably bought it in order to produce a firearm. However, they won't know all the people who made one on that mill. Suppose for a second that someone buys this CNC machine. They then have a "party" at their house with their buddies, who all bring over 'paperweights'. At the end of the day, a dozen friends all go home with a CNC'd non-tracable lower. While the owner of the mill would have a paper trail, the other dozen guys wouldn't. What if you had a mill, and did this every weekend with an open invite? How many people would be untracable from just a single CNC machine.

In fact, milling parties are quite common, and there are some rules to follow to be legal. Mainly, each person has to manufacture their OWN receiver, without help from another person. With traditional mills and drill presses, this would require each person to know how to operate the equipment all by themselves, without a helping hand. With this CNC, it just requires the person to press a few keys on the keyboard, so doing it without assistance is easier. If you've seen the video of the guy, notice that he sets it all up, and the person who will own the receiver has to be the person that starts and ultimately runs the machine to produce the receiver.

And to your first question, what I am convinced of, is that it would take a lot more work, and research to try to do as you suggest for each and every person in the country, vs. printing off a pre-made database of all registered owners. Personally, I don't think it would take longer than a day or two of raids, before it made news, and you'd have people moving to their "Plan B" whatever that is, and also be ready for search and seizure raids that would be coming to their neighborhood soon.

The point of it is that they won't have a record, paper-trail, or database with the gun in it to use to aid in confiscation. They would have to go house to house, even to houses that have no record of owning a gun to look for possible guns that have to record of ever existing. That's a lot harder, than printing out a database of registered owners and their addresses.

Even if they did go house to house, they don't know if they got them all, since they would have no idea how many are out there. If people caught wind of a confiscation attempt, you could bury your ghost gun in the back yard, or in the woods so they wouldn't find it when they came to your house and searched it.

With a registered gun, this technique wouldn't work, since if they had records that said you owned 3 guns, and can only find 2 in your house, they would probably not leave, or arrest you until you gave up all the ones they know about.

Yes, Cody may be in their face and drawing attention to the "make your own weapon" movement, however, that movement has been underway for some time, and gaining momentum long before Cody, and most of the reasons were because of the lawmakers themselves. The lawmakers that are cranking out these rediculous laws don't seem to understand that they themselves become the number one reason and force behind these movements. I never knew of the concept until about 7-8 years ago, and it's gained lots of momentum since then. People spread the word, and the lawmakers create the conditions themselves that make ordinary people come to the conclusion that they might want a few weapons that aren't in a government database as a precautionary move (just in case).

There is a internet meme that has been around for awhile, stating that Obama is the nations #1 gun salesman. While I agree, I think the lawmakers come in close second. Everytime a government official, congress-critter, or state lawmaker open their mouths about guns, the result is a massive run on gun and ammo purchases... and I can't blame people for that, heck, I've been in on it too. I've purchased more guns and ammo in the last 5 years than I have in all the years before combined myself.

Have you been to California, or Illinois, or DC lately? The anti-gun crowd are just fine coming up with all those repercussions on their own, and then some. It doesn't matter if someone is 'in their face with new technology' or not, these lawmakers that want to regulate and get rid of guns are already out of control.

California already has mandatory micro-stamping, which is technologically infeasible, and will be a de-facto ban on all new hand guns for some time to come (mean while more and more existing gun models fall off the roster while no new ones can be added due to the micro-stamping requirement). In the last couple years, the roster of handgun models have been cut in half. All handguns available for purchase are older models that were already on the roster prior to the micro-stamping law becomming law, AND which haven't undergone ANY functional (and sometimes cosmetic) changes in design.

Since my first languages learned were BASIC, QBASIC, and Pascal, and my current career is programming embedded platforms using mostly derivatives of C. My first inclination is Procedural programming is nice and easy. However, I voted for OOP, since it can be used as Procedural when needed, and has nice bits like encapsulation and things that would be nice in a lot of procedural programming cases.

A lot of OOP can get messy real fast though, especially when it's layers deep of inheritance and interfaces compared to more straight forward procedural programming.

Exactly this! It already bugs me when someone sends me a file over email, that when I save it, the original date/time of the file is now the date/time that I saved it on my machine, rather than the original date/time the file was modified by the person who sent it to me.

This happens when you download files from website as well, and can be a real problem. I have firmware files for lots of hardware gear stored on my PC for gear I deal with everyday, and the problem I see is that the file date/time is related to when I downloaded it from the manufacturer's website, and not when the file was compiled/released. This means I have to remember the LOOONG firmware revision number and not just that the firmware they released in April of this year is stable and hasn't caused issued (what was that version? It was something like v1.123.3321.22.000? boy it would be nice if I could just tell by the file dates!!!)

And how do you expect the OS to know if the text based file is really a "readme.txt" type file, or an .xml file, or a .html file, or a .css file? Since all those file types are basically text based files with different extensions that are treated drastically different, both from what are for, to how they are opened. The OS can't know what every file is just by what it see's inside.

Same with a lot of custom filetype I see daily, which are .zip files that are named something else. In my case, they are compiled embedded programs that have a custom extension, which are really just .zip files that contain all the files neccessary to upload/transfer to an embedded platform to make it run. How the heck is the OS supposed to know what the heck that file is?

And what you describe is the REAL problem, not the fact that the extensions determine what type of file it is. This was never a problem until computers became so ubiquitous that every one had them. I'm on the side, that if you own a tool and want to use a tool, you need to at least know some basics of that tool, and put forth a little effort in learning how to use it. And I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect that if a person has been using a tool everyday at work for 10 years, that they have learned a little more about how to use it better in that 10 years. This would hold true for any tool used by people, whether it be hammers, drills, CNC machines or a FRICKIN COMPUTER!

The REAL problem, is there are so many people that not only don't know a dang thing about how to use a computer, or understand what they are doing AND don't want to take any initiative to learn it. For a beginner to not understand is acceptable, but someone who uses a computer in the job, or who want their daily tasks to benefit from using a computer, I don't believe it is unreasonable to expect them to learn to be somewhat proficient at it to do basic tasks. But many users have taken the stance, that they deserve the benefits of using a computer, but refuse to learn how to use it, and complain loudly when they are required to know the basics of how to use it.

It is a dis-service to all the people who do take the initiative to learn, to be hindered and tied down to an OS that caters to the lowest common denominator of ignorance. That is unacceptable! No matter how idiot proof an OS is made, there will always be bigger idiots and lazy people who still don't 'get it'. I'm not advocating that an OS should cater only to the top 10% of computer guru's here, but certainly don't think it should cater to the lowest 10% either. Some skill, learning and initiative needs to be taken by users to learn the basics of the systems they use, and if they can't or are too lazy too, then they get no sympathy and have no place complaining about how confusing computers are.

This is a horrible idea. I view all files and folders in detail view. The icons are tiny and other than basic color, the details are barely decernable (small icons turned on as well). I don't want to have to view folders with the huge icons on the screen to tell what a file is. Neither do I want columns and columns of meta data about the file filling the detail view. I want to know the full file name (w/ extention), the date/time modified, and the size of the file. This is all I need to know what the hell the file is, what programs I have that will open it, etc.

Also, I have many files with the same name except the extention. For instance, when I make quotes and invoices for clients, I create it in Word, so the original is a .doc (or .docx). However, when it's finilized, I export it to a .pdf in order to send to the client. I'm not going to send an invoice to a client in .doc format so they can edit the amount before paying, or some stupid crap, it's getting sent as non-editable .pdf format, like those types of documents should be. However, because of that, my hard- drive will have 2 versions in that folder of the same file, one being .doc and one being .pdf. The extension are VERY important to know which one to email off to the client, or which one I need to open to make a change to if I made a mistake.

I prefer to see the extension, regardless of if it indicates whether it is executable or not. This is one of the first options I change when setting up a new Windows install. Maybe it's habit, maybe it harkens back to DOS days, but I've been using a computer for 25 years or more, where extension names mean something, and I still want to see them.

If the OS knows what kind of file it is, that is fine, but I still want to know as well. I might have more than one program that can open the same filetype, and need to know what kind of file it is to know if I want to open the file in the default program or in a different program that can open that filetype instead.

Plus, yes, in windows, it makes it a lot easier to spot viruses posing as .pdf's or .jpegs.

Yes, no doubt, there can be popularity about more than 1 thing at the same time. However, the term "Popular Opinion" is usually referred to in this context that it is also the majority opinion, as in the other side is the minority opinion holder. I was simply stating the fact, that despite nightly news coverage and political talk against guns and gun ownership by politicians and other individuals, that it may seem that gun control is the "Majority Opinion", but it is not, and *most* public opinion polls show that pro-gun rights is actually the majority opinion.

Hope that clarifies what I was saying.

"...Shall not be infringed." is not debatable when it comes to gun rights, it says so right there in the Constitution. Starting a debate is pointless. Debates are how we got where we are now, clearly 'infringed' at this point.

I've had to ship high-end HD broadcast cameras through FedEx before, that easily would be on your list as well. These cameras were between $10,000 and $25,000 and were less than 50lbs each. While they said the shipping insurance only covers up to a certain amount, they didn't bat an eye about the actual shipment of those items.

the purpose of buying flowers can't SAVE your family either. Always two sides to a coin, and anti-gun liberals always like to point out murders with guns, but never mention the lives saved because of guns... the truth must be hard to swallow.

Actually despite many corporations anti-gun views, and the media and governemnt's anti-gun views, the actual "Popular Opinion" on guns is either slanted Pro, or at the very least, neutral. It's just the groups with the loudest mouths and most money and power that are the majority of 'anti-' gun, so it only seems that it is the popular opinion.