You say that like it's necessarily a bad thing.

We've got to stop acting as if the Founding Fathers were like Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Constitution chiseled on a couple of stone tablets. They were brilliant, enlightened men for their day, but the Constitution is not a document of divine inerrancy.

The US Constitution is the COBOL of constitutions. Yes, it was a tremendous intellectual innovation for its time. Yes, it is still being used successfully today. But nobody *today* would write a constitution that way, *even if their intent was exactly the same* as the founders.

For one thing it's full of confusingly pointless ("To promote the Progress of Science") and hoplessly vague ("securing for *limited times*") phraseology that leaves courts wondering exactly what the framers meant, or whether they were just pointlessly editorializing ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State").

It's also helplessly out of date. The Constitution was drafted before the existence of mass media and advertising; before photography even. It was the appearance of photography in newspapers that woke people up to the idea that they might have privacy rights that were being threatened. A Constitution written in 1900 would almost certainly have clauses explicitly recognizing a right to individual privacy and empowering the government to protect that right. A Constitution written in 2000 would almost certainly have clauses restricting the government from violating individual privacy.

And then there is slavery, an outright *evil* which is enshrined in the founder's version of the Constitution. That alone should disqualify any claim they may have had to superhuman morality.

So if we take it as given that the US Constitution is not divinely ordained, it's not necessarily a bad thing that the current generation should choose to butcher what the founders established. Would you re-institute slavery? Allow *states* to deprive citizens of liberty and property without due process? Eliminate direct election of senators?

So it's perfectly reasonable to butcher anything in the Constitution when you're proposing an *amendment* to the Constitution. That's the whole point. We should think for ourselves. In doing so, we're actually carrying on the work the framers themselves were doing. Every generation should learn from its predecessors, but think for itself.

So in other words, what somebody says is less important than who says it.

That's true of social science research as well. The difference is that social science research has to pass peer review, and stand up to contrary reearch in the literature.

Dealextreme is like BG Micro. Sure, they buy stuff to stock and sell, but much of what they sell is some crap that someone else couldn't sell, which they got for a song. Just because DX got a bunch of tablets nobody wanted to buy in a store for $20/piece doesn't mean someone will sell you new, supported ones for that.

I have the same experience with a Nexus 7 2013, but only since upgrading to kitkat.

That's not at all interesting or relevant. They build offices where their employees can't afford to live, which is why we're even talking about them at all in this discussion.

Or, you know, they could build offices in cities with free capacity.

And yet, I am not amazed that in your world, straw man arguments are considered valid. I must not be new here.

Unfortunately, the very same thing happens in proprietary software. And "isn't supposed to happen" is a misunderstanding. It's just supposed to happen less, and it's supposed to get fixed easier. The latter, at least, has been proven out.

Given how simple USB wiring is, that's trivial to fix. Get a nice buck converter for a few bucks on eBay, and wire in a USB power injection cable.

That's what I put in my truck. You can't listen to optical media in it unless you have a heavy load, because the suspension is too hard. So I have a $20 amplifier with stereo in and four outputs.

Yes, if I had perfect foresight instead of excellent hindsight, I'd have kept my 1960 Dodge. It got over 20 mpg on the freeway and it was stupid simple. But I didn't know how to rebuild a brake system then (dirt simple, as it turns out) and so I couldn't afford to keep it.

It's more reliable. Bluetooth Audio is miserably finicky. The only thing that ever worked right with my JVC was AT&T Fuze. With a couple different Android devices now including the Nexus 4 I get occasional skips. I used to use an Xperia Play, that skipped a lot. Flawless using the headphone cable in my truck instead.

I'm going to try adding bluetooth to my car anyway, switching into the line inputs from the changer with an audio signal relay, and using an ultra-cheap receiver. but i'm also going to have line in, just in case.

Just wait, the city will start to tax you for evaporation for water released into the outside world...

I let my C64 go already. Still have a 1541, can't bear to actually throw it away but they're not really worth much and who knows if it even still works.

It's not just the country, it's the states, too. I moved to Texas for a while, and California had enough information to know this. You're not required to file if you don't owe, but they decided to tax me for my Texan income and then I did owe according to them, and then they came after me for back taxes of thousands when they actually owed me over a hundred bucks.

Corruption weakens governments. We're ripe for plucking.