OMG, this! I know people that will wake up from sleep to run in and answer their cell phone. I've known people who are taking a crap and feel they NEED to answer that call when it comes in. People--most of us are NOT that important, and more importantly, most other people are NOT that important to us that we need to be at your frickin' beck and call when you please!

If you call me and if I feel like talking to you, and I'm not busy, and I'm not doing something else I desire to do more than talk to you, I MIGHT answer it. Otherwise, leave a message (a specific one that says what you want) and I'll get back to you when all of the above conditions are met. Me carrying a cell phone is for MY convenience, NOT for yours! But people don't get this... they sit up and wag their tail like a trained dog when ever their cell phone makes a peep.

Because laws. When cell phones came out, hardly anyone had hands-free earbuds, but once states passed laws that say you get a ticket for even "touching" or "holding" your phone while in the drivers seat of a car that is started (even at a red light, stopped), people have to get them in many situations.

There is no such law that says you have to use a smart-watch.

Yes, the SIM can be changed, and that will change the phone number, but the phones are encoded with a IMEI number, which is like a serial number unique to each phone. The IMEI number is tranmitted to the cell towers and is how the cell providers track what kind of phone you have and other details.

The Feds have made it a FELONY to change the IMEI number of the phone, so even if you have the expensive equipment to do it, they've made it hard to get and illegal to use. This is how many organized theft rings would wipe a phone, they would change the IMEI number from the stolen phone, to either a generic IMEI number, or a legit IMEI number so the phone can't be de-activated on the cell network.

The cell phone companies use the IMEI (ESN) number for several purposes, one of them is to flag stolen phones and de-activate them on the cell network. You could change the SIM, but if the IMEI number has been reported stolen, and flagged in the DB, then the phone won't be allowed on the carrier's network. The other use the cell providers use the IMEI number is to know what phone you have. For instance, ATT requires all smart phones to purchase a data plan for it (even if you only wish to use data over wifi). If you activate ANY smart phone on their network, if you don't have a data plan for it, they will detect it and add a data plan to your account. They detect whether it is a smart phone by the IMEI number on the network.

I looked into this as I wanted to give my teen my old smart phone, but didn't want to put data on the plan for it (just calling+txt). I figured the phone was better than a feature phone, cause she could still use it on wifi, plus it holds tons of MP3's and has a nice camera etc. that aren't on feature phones. I looked into the idea of buying a go-phone (so they didn't add data to my plan), and then putting the SIM from the go-phone into my old smart phone to get it cell service. I quickly learned (from reading, not doing), that as soon as the smart phone is seen on the network (regardless of SIM used), they would add data to the plan. Needless to say, she has a go-phone.

Not ever having a prepaid phone, but living in the US, I am actually surprised too. Not in a bad way though, I don't think you should have to be identifiable to have a phone and I think it's great if you actually can get an anonymous phone if you desire too. I'm just surprised with all the loss of freedoms we've had in the US in the last decade that you are still allowed to buy a prepaid phone without showing ID and giving a SSN or something because "think of the children".

Logically, there is no reason to have to provide ID to buy a prepaid cell phone, since it is by nature, prepaid. The only reason why regular cell phones should/need to have an identity attached to them is for billing/contract reasons. Unfortunately recently, the US government and corporations alike seem to think that anonymity is something to be squashed. Either the gov wants your ID associated with everything for NSA and spying reasons, or corporations want your ID tied to everything for tracking/advertising reasons. Between the two of them, there isn't a whole lot you can do to be anonymous anymore.

Everyone knows you use a wet sponge to moisten the envelope if you don't want your saliva on it. Or now days, you can use peel n' stick envelopes, but have to be careful not to touch the sticky part with your finger. Or you wear latex gloves when creating and sending your "top secret" letters.

Same here. I have a LinkedIn account because I am a freelance contractor, and use it as a means for contact and resume (to supplement my own website)--however even that is not updated often and is mostly static and has no picture. However, I have not had a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account ever, nor do I intend to. Friends and family who post things on Facebook, I tell them straight out, I will not get or see whatever they post, and if they want to share family or baby pictures, or a message to me, they have to do it another way. Email works perfectly fine.

Since I'm in a different employment arrangement than most, it doesn't necessarily apply, but if an employer or prospective employer told me I had to have a facebook account, I'd laugh at them and then explain the dozens of reasons why I don't, and won't, and why they probably shouldn't either.

As for sharing photos and video of memorable close family and friend moments, IMHO the best (most polite) way to do so is a public link to a Cloud folder (like Dropbox/OneDrive/etc.). This is most easiest, and polite way to share that stuff, let me click a link, see the pictures, without having my email clogged with multi-megabite picture, or having to "friend" you to see it, or needing to have an account with your website-of-the-week. Sorry, the stuff someone wants me to see isn't that important.

I believe the phrase is: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter..."

Same in California, the items that are taxed are marked (or the other way around), and so while your total receipt will usually have a sales tax amount on it, it is not a flat % applied to the entire list of items, only the items that are taxable.

Actually, if by 'spoils' you mean we took it from them because we won, you're wrong. The US paid Mexico $24M for the south-western states (in 1800's money value). I wouldn't call land that the US purchased for money, 'spoils of war'.

You cannot buy your own ATT UVerse modems yet. They are holding on to those tightly, and they are not something you can walk into a computer store and buy like you can with a normal DSL or Cable modem. I looked around when I signed up as I wanted to own mine as well, but no luck. Using your own router of your choice in a DMZ behind their's is about the best solution I have found, and works great.

I have ATT-Uverse modem/router at my home as well, and I run my own router behind it just fine, and was fairly easy to setup. I left the TV receivers and everything that was ATT connected to the Uverse modem/router, and then connected my personal router's WAN port to one of the ATT LAN ports.

In the ATT router, you go in, and I disabled WiFi on it (so my router handles all the WiFi in my house), and you setup a DMZ entry in the ATT router, and point it to your home router. This allows your home router to 'act as if' it's connected directly to the internet. IE: all packets will pass through to your router, where you have better control over your network (and most likely more options). You also need to setup the two routers to be on different IP schemes, so I changed the ATT one to use a 192.168.2.xxx subnet, and my home router is still at a 192.168.1.xxx subnet, so that everything works correctly.

Connected to my home router, I can access my router to admin functions, and I can also hit the ATT Uverse router for admin functions, and I have not noticed any drawbacks so far. This way I can be sure that ATT can't get into my network any further than their equipment. I know a lot of these modems/routers can have backdoors for tech support uses, so I feel safer knowing that if this is the case, they can only access the TV equipment I am using and not get to any of my PC's, servers, or mobile devices that using my internal network.

As for the DMZ settings for the ATT routers, the location of these settings can be a little difficult to find (not clearly marked), and will be different depending on what brand modem/router you have from them. I've had 2 different RG devices, and the web interface was different on both of them, so I had to hunt around for it. The web has tons of info on setting this up, just search for it with the make/model of the modem you have and you should be able to find instructions for enabling DMZ to a second router (seems to be a common setup).

That would be great, as long as the licenses aren't made artificially scarce (like the current medallion system), were a reasonable price to obtain (similar to regular permits for things and not millions of dollars), and were open to anyone and everyone that can meet the qualifications and has the couple hundred dollars (or less) for the license and meets background check requirements. That would be a great system, however, that isn't the system that is currently implemented in most cities.

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.