Ah, but there wouldn't BE any armed civilians, because as soon as they pull their Glock from their concealed carry place, they're now "open carry", and as such become targets themselves. Quick way to weed out everyone carrying a gun, leaving only the police and military with guns.

Oh god, buy a simple dummy load! You shouldn't be using an incandescent as a dummy load anyways!

Simple - DC at 12V would run a huge amperage, which would melt the nice wiring job in your house. Higher voltage = lower amperage = wires not so melty. While I'd like to run a 12VDC circuit in my house for emergency lighting from some deep-cycle batteries, and perhaps run a ham radio or two and some equipment, I'm concerned about the fire potential, and if I install it and it catches fire, my insurance company will have my head mounted on a pole.

Ohh.... I have an awesome idea. Let's institute mandatory background/verification checks for any alcohol to be served. Check they're 21+, and also ensure they don't have a "history" of crashes - too much liability for the bar. Of course, it'll have to be universal, every bar, every restaurant. I think even every house, as otherwise that's a "loophole". Then I guess we can institute mandatory universal registration of alcohol, because how do you REALLY know you're catching everyone.

This!! This!! I'm not a gun nut, but I do believe that fair is fair, so if the 2nd amendment only applies to items extant at that time, so does the whole EFFING constitution and the amendments thereof. So no more internet free speech or right to assemble (bye bye Yahoo Groups, no one will miss you), no more keeping your phone private - the police may take it at any time. For that matter, your car may be stopped at any time and searched as cars didn't exist back then, so clearly they're not covered.

I really enjoyed my job - I learned a *LOT* about network architecture, building and maintaining scalable systems, and we brought mobile donations, passing 100% of the money through, in the US. When I walked into a Tokyo Joe's and saw the call to action for Haiti, I just about cried. I, *I* helped, directly, to make that happen. Without me, it may not have happened. Or been as successful. That kept me there a long time, probably longer than I should have been.

Take a vacation. Seriously. I was at a job for almost 6 years, and about 4 years in we finally started hiring an assistant. Went through 2 idiots before finally getting someone competent. Got him trained up for about 6 weeks, then they laid him off because the C-levels couldn't go basic math. That whole time I couldn't take a vacation because things would go bump and they'd need help. Sometimes even impacting 24x7 4 9s uptime connections (we wanted 5 9s). Now that I'm gone, so much less stress, and they learned their lesson.

Wha? Yagi wifi antennas are certainly NOT 10 feet tall. 18" long - http://www.mfjenterprises.com/Product.php?productid=MFJ-1800. 15 dbi (so if your current antenna is 3 dbi this is a 12 dbi increase, or say 100x+ish). Very directional, though.

And no one sane running a drone "program" would use normal wifi - they'd get a control frequency from the FCC and go that route.

Soldered in RAM is so NOT STANDARD. Before my current job, I worked for almost 6 years at a place where, if we could afford it, we got Lenovo Thinkpads. I could upgrade every single one's memory. Shoot, even my MBP (pre-Retina) can be upgraded. My old Acer laptop, Gateway, shoot even the old Toshiba one (1998?) could all have memory upgraded. Soldered in RAM may be standard in smart phones and tablets, but not laptops.

They're no better - snobish, poor customer service, and the local CUs in this area have savings accounts whose rates are no better than a bank's. I ended up switching to an employee-owned bank. I get pretty good service, and my only complaint is they don't run their own data system, so when I make a deposit it's not instantly credited to my account, I have to wait anywhere from 1-8 hours before any of it shows up on the account, as they batch everything from each branch only twice a day.

Probably because it's HARD WORK to get a company up and running, and no, the government doesn't help us small business owners. We constantly face defeat every week. More laws, more taxes, more "benefits" we have to give employees, that takes money away from the business. Ask almost any small business owner how much TAKE HOME PAY they get - very often it's only enough to pay their bills. Any extra money needs to stay in the business to fund whatever crazy law comes down the pipe next. Yes, society may make it easier here than elsewhere (like Soviet Russia or Iran), but that doesn't mean it's not hard work. Society is so not organized to help startups at all, in fact it favors large businesses that can afford economies of scale as well as lobbyists.

We are already there. Case in point - my wife and I. My family is poor, my mom's already had one bankruptcy, and I now make more than the rest of my family DOUBLED. My wife comes from a solid middle class family, both her mom and her dad have 50K credit cards (real Platinum-class cards back then). She and I married, moved in together, and after a few years started to get credit cards. I got a $300 credit line, she got 5K. My second card eventually got approved, $500. Her second? Over $4000. At this point she has $12k in credit and I have around $4. The only one with a job is me - when she got her cards she was working part-time in a book store making 8.50/hour, prior to that she was in college. I was making 50k a year as a computer programmer.

I got saddled with my family's credit "worthiness" and she benefited from her family's. I *still* cannot get as much credit as she can, even though we've been married for 13 years, my name is on the mortgage, the car loans (one already paid off), and I'm still the only one with a job (she's a stay at home mom), but she keeps getting the card offers in the mail and I don't. So, yes, we are ALREADY in a class-style system for credit.

No one's stupid enough to only run IPv6, but you will find plenty of dual stack servers - like Comcast's email servers (run dig comcast.net MX to see what I mean).

And when the government decides not to pay for it? Ever heard of Medicare? Plenty of things it won't pay for, or won't pay market value for.

Yeah, if you fire a gun at a government building, or landmark, and hit it, yeah, you're in trouble. Also, remember one of the cardinal rules of using guns - where will the bullet go AFTER it hits (or misses) the target? You shoot up, the bullet will eventually come down, possibly in a residential area (ok, it's Deer Trail, but still).

While I like the sentiment, I think it sets a dangerous mindset in play.