The post to which you reply was not talking about celebratory gunfire, as you seem to be. (i.e. randomly shooting into the air.) Arizona, for example, has a law against that known as Shannon's Law. However, I was unable to find a specific law against celebratory gunfire here in Virginia. The fact is, few states have laws against it. Generally, shooting randomly into the air, will get you charged with negligent discharge of a firearm, as it should. But, no, " Shooting bullets into the air," is not illegal in most states.

Aimed fire into the air, however, is another matter. exhibition shooters have been know to do this quite often. To my knowledge, there is not a single law against this anywhere in the US where shooting is otherwise permitted, and the exhibition is conducted with appropriate due diligence.

I once had to put a 30-35 degree angle on a shot when I was trying to shoot steel plates at 200 yards with a handgun. It was interesting to watch the math of parabolic motion play out in real life. It was also completely safe given the conditions.

I think, perhaps, you need to check your "facts" a little more closely.

I remember a school house rock episode called three ring government. Rather insightful, I think.

I did not assert a motive. I wouldn't presume to know. I did, however, assign a political affiliation. That may be in error since I have no absolute proof of one. It's been notoriously difficult to find anything at all about BatNut's personal life. As if someone wants to hide it.

I do notice, however, that when suspected right wingers go nuts and kill people their philosophies, ideologies, and even sexual proclivities are writ large in the sky for us all to see. Of course, crazy doesn't have a political party so it probably doesn't matter in the end. But it seems odd that the big mass shootings seem to be carried out by leftists, and always in a victim disarmament (gun free) zone.

Realistically, armed morons with poor judgement hurting bystanders is a lot less of a problem than those same morons getting behind the wheel of a 2000 pound four-wheeled weapon and killing a whole family. At least I can shoot back at stupid or evil gun owners. There's not a lot I can do about stupid, evil, or impaired drivers.

IIRC it was in the same week as that leftist nut-job shot up the Bat Man premier, that a pickup truck carrying more than 20 passengers overturned, killing 14 people. The same number as were killed in the mass shooting. One armed citizen could have stopped BatNut. What do you do about 20 morons in the back of a pickup? Guns truly are not the problem. Stupid and Evil are the problems. And keeping guns out of the hands of responsible citizens because it is thought that it will save lives is both stupid and evil.

So we probably are turning a corner. And, when it's perfected, I hope every law abiding citizen in the world can get their hand on this technology and make at least one gun. No individual, armed or not, can physically force another armed individual to do anything he doesn't want to do. Disarming people simply leaves them at the mercy or those stronger than them. Whereas arming everyone just makes them all equally strong.

Is your rifle an AR style firearm? The AR is a modular design in which the reciever is split. The upper-half can be completly detached, and put on a different gun. You could be in trouble is you have an AR without a serial number on the lower receiver in the US. Or do you have a manufacturers license?

Out of curiosity, what performance enhancing drugs are the skeet and trap shooters using?

Hoppe's #9

It is not the job of the police to prevent crime. Nor is it their job to protect you as an individual. (don't believe me? check with SCOTUS.) Regardless, the only reason anyone is even working on predictive analysis is because the public is demanding it.

The job of the police is to take reports, conduct investigations, and apprehend suspects. If an individual officer feels it is his/her duty to help someone out, or protect them, then that's wonderful and I'm glad there are officers willing to do that. However, it's not their job, and you shouldn't expect it. The problem is people do expect it, and the more we expect the police to look out for individuals, the less freedom we're going to have. That's the only way for them to do the job we're asking them to do.

The coming police state (some say it's already here) will be the result of ordinary citizens refusing to take responsibility for their own safety. By foisting the job off on the police, you attempt to make them responsibile for your welbeing. In doing so, you compromise your rights. So if you don't like fascism, then stop asking for it.

You don't have to compromise your principles to be flexible. Nor must you lie to manage perceptions. Above all, don't give in and start doing what you think they want you to. Because then, instead of feeling some measure of respect for you, they can simply condecend to and pitty you.

I don't hate liers because it's too much effort direct too many ways. Instead I save my energy for the few people I can respect, and leave the rest to fail on their own.

I never lie at any interview, nor on my resume. However, I VERY carefully weigh what I say before saying it in order to manage perceptions. Of course one must be completely forthcoming during an interview, yet say very little. Otherwise they'll move on the next guy until they find one who fits their template. This next guy is going to have roughly the same skills as you unless one of you lied on your resume. If you've been honest on your resume, then it may as well be you that gets the job. It makes no difference to the company.

During employment you must continue to manage your image. And above all, never actually try to make things better. You were hired to do a job and it wasn't to fix the company. This is true even if you were told otherwise by the owner himself. There is a reason things are the way they are. "Good enough" makes money, and the customer is buying the perception of quality. If the markets were truly free, and the customer well educated then the lowest price for the best quality would win. Instead, a million small emperrors buy new high-priced clothes every day while government, investors, and the tech press cheer them on. If you're the guy trying to tell your boss that what he sees is what he gets, then you're going to get fired. Because while you're telling your boss that he's being stupid, the "smart" people are telling him he's brilliant.

Tree hugger luddites sing same old tune; Losing my religion.

(Don't mod it if you don't understand it.)

A GUI is a metaphor. Metaphors are fine when you don't need to be specific, or need to perform physical input like gestures (i.e. pointing with a mouse.) However, when I want to give specific instructions to, and expect perfect execution by, an electronic idiot savant then I give instructions in chronological order using a limited vocabulary. In other words, I find it easer to use a CLI to instruct both stupid people and computers.

I use metaphors to convey complex ideas which are subject to interpretation, or to convey relative spacial coordinates. (e.g. data visualization, or pointing on a map)

Actually, they are trying to catch stupid criminals, not ALL criminals.

Actually, they are trying to make it nearly impossible to not accidentally break the law in an effort to comply. The law abiding are much easier to catch because they don't know that they've done anything wrong until a sheriff's deputy kicks in their door, and shoots their dog.

The typical stupid criminal will be using a stolen gun when he shoots you. It will be the legal owner, who may not even know that his gun was stolen, who will have his door kicked in.

Not sure about the current stuff, but I remember way back in the early days of Linux, if you set up your X config incorrectly you could actually fry video cards by feeding them values they couldn't happen.

As another poster pointed out, it was the CRT not the video adapter. As far as modern stuff, it doesn't hurt LCD's since the back-light is unaffected by video timing signals.

I actually tried to burn out a CRT once by putting in bad mode lines. It was mildly interesting, but I shut it off before I did any real damage for fear of personal injury. Based on my experience, I doubt that anyone actually fried their monitor without trying.

> A stock iphone without a ton of poorly written fartapps on it is as robust and stable as your BB.

That's true. In addition to that, the iphone does about twice as many things out of the box as BB.

The problem is that my friends with iphones complain of ending the call early and other unintentional actions because of the damned touch screen. Most of them also complain of poor interface design (functionality not appearance) preventing them from working as efficiently.

I'm glad to hear that it's working well for you though, and that you like it so much. I still don't want one.

> Dont kid yourself.

I constantly kid myself. It's how I deal with all of the Apple fanboys.

I want to make calls, check my e-mail, and keep my schedule and contacts; in that order. My Blackberry does that exceptionally well.

Everyone I know with iPhones and Androids tells me about all of the "cool stuff"(tm) their phones will do. The awesome apps, amazing games, and wasted time. Other times they tell me about the dropped calls, crashes, and reboots. They never talk about these things in the same conversation.

I want a tool to communicate and make my job easier. I don't want a toy. Enjoy your toys if that's your thing. I have my Blackberry, and I like it.

BES 5, on the other hand, is a pile of steaming horse crap.