:) decidedly less badass with an assault rifle than with a knife. also, not as sporting. I didn't say guns weren't fun, i said you don't need huge ones or tiny ones to hunt. and as we don't let people drive over the speed limit for kicks, neither must we let people hunt dangerous game for kicks if it is potentially damaging to public safety. there are most likely safer ways to kill boar if it's a pest control thing. there are definitely less thrilling ways. or are you telling me that you own a farm and the boar are hurting your crops, so you and your buddies must go patrol every few months to keep the population down?

i could hunt boar with an minigun too and it would be so much more fun, except that they're illegal in so many ways and so many places, doesn't mean it's necessary or that society should let me have one.

i'm actually fairly tolerant of gun ownership, i was responding to the other guy, which you might not have noticed. They only make me slightly nervous, and shooting paper is fun. i might go buy one myself one day.

but even though i find it fun, i don't consider it my prerogative simply because i enjoy it. And, simply put, I don't care if you've never shot anyone, I care that your neighbor might be really really okay with shooting someone, and his neighbor wouldn't think twice, and his neighbor is thinking those dark niggling thoughts you only think on the edge of madness, and his neighbor just bought a gun to shoot him ex.

we don't allow a lot of things that are fun but we've decided are damaging as a whole to society, like sex in public spaces, drinking and driving, drug abuse of most kinds... why should your kick get special treatment?

I should have the right to buy, sell, and enjoy high explosives, cuz they're cool, and i can defend myself with them, from personal enemies and from the state, and because the constitution said I could. also, i'm fairly sure i could figure out a way to hunt with them.

it's called precedent. once you set the precedent that all records are subject to public scrutiny if you take a dollar of public money... i think you'll have effectively crippled any kind of public funding for... well anything.

just be luckier. also, keep in mind "dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodge", if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge space dust.

US justice system is the only justice system that matters. US citizens can be prosecuted for crimes committed on foreign soil even if it's legal in that country, apparently. you're also apparently constrained by the laws of the foreign country on top of that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

how about dog on man gun violence?

the explicit purpose of guns is to harm others, in this case creatures inclusive. but how many hunters are there? and how many pistols? and how many assault rifles? you don't need 16 rounds to take down a deer, or a handgun. the explicit purpose of guns that aren't meant for hunting, is for harm, or the threat of harm.

also, generally you need someone else's help if you want to kill a man with words, you just need a gun to kill a man with a bullet.

don't be facetious. if nobody had guns, the gubermint still won't take your freedom, your neighbor would be no more murderous than the day before, and you'd go on living the way you've been living... just without as much fun, cuz guns really are awesome. but japan looks fine, and australia hasn't burned to the ground yet... unless you just believe you have more need to defend yourself against those savage americans than australians have to defend themselves from their countrymen, or japanese to defend against japanese.

well, those taxes were owed by individuals, not the gubermint... so, maybe, maybe, all those wasps in new england can pay a pittance on their ancestor's accounts. Also, the taxes weren't really that heavy, the revolution was more the principle of self-governance/having a voice in governance than the actual taxes.

that domestic part is where it gets kinda muddy methinks.

3. Old people are awesome. I've taken some community college level college classes, because apparently my major at university was playing fast and loose with requirements, and it was horrifying. I suck at english, i've sucked at english, I love reading but i'm horrendous at producing volume... but at least i can spell, and my diction is strong. Anyway, I shudder at the thought of a future in which new novels are written in a common tongue, to better cater to a population divided between those who know how things are correctly spelled, and those who do not.

i already shudder at the quality of the writing of some popular contemporary works...

but if they fix it, what will they do tommorow?

i think people would be a bit upset if a charity turned away a person because they weren't the correct race. Or if a catholic charity that distributed food to the poor turned away non-catholic homeless. not only don't i think it'd be legal, i think it'd just be wrong. I don't think many charities of that nature, turn away any needy person comes to them.

:) because i'm a gaming elitists, my argument was more along the lines of, those are things that i have known to generate enthusiasm for programming in my own life and among my own friends. i'm sure there are others, but i refuse to credit casual gaming with anything positive :).

and gaming in general is a good gateway drug for programming, because it's nifty and fun. and because nobody dreams of growing up to program database management systems... unless they're hella atypical.

i responded because i don't check that widget very often, and was surprised that i got a response, then further surprised by the responses, and wanted to use the thread as a private communication, because i'm not entirely familiar with the messaging system, and it's easier for all involved.

in any case, my argument was improperly worded for brevity, it should have been worded "it's only illegal if there actually is collusion." which is the gist i was going for with the rest of the response.

my premise being that, 3 percent might be the natural intersection of cost, risk and negotiating position. no collusion involved.

you have costs associated with processing, costs associated with bad credit, costs associated with marketing, costs associate, costs associated, costs associated.

i apologize for not expressing my point adequately... and provoking a good bit of anger.

best regards

why is gender parity a goal at all?

anecdotally, in highschool, some of the top math students in my classes were female, they were also some of the top science students... at least in terms of grades. truthfully, none of them wowed me, but then i've only really met a handful of people who really wowed me, and almost none of them in HS. anyway, females were represented in non-insignificant quantities in the maths and sciences, but non-existent in CS. You had maybe a handful in VB, but none of them made the leap to c++ and java.

they were not disincentivized in any way from taking those electives, the boys were not incentivized in any external way. We took programming classes, because they were fun, and we liked computer games, and the movie hackers, and, and, and... if my experience is even moderately representative, then the disparity is cultural in origin.

In highschool I didn't take classes with an eye to the future, i took classes because my parents told me too, and I took electives that looked hella fun, or hella not as un-fun as the other classes in that time-slot.

gimme a generation of girls that want to sink 2 hours a night into q3 or sc:bw, and i'll guarantee a higher turnout of female programmers a generation later...

absent that...

monopolistic price fixing would be illegal if they could prove collusion. as it stands now, i'm not convinced that they aren't making a fair profit at their 3 percent. i'm certainly no financial expert, but i'm sure the IRS has some on call. risk is risk.