You're actually wrong on both counts. It's unlawful for an unlicensed person to transfer a firearm (be it handgun or longarm) to an unlicensed person who is not a resident of their state, and it is perfectly lawful for an unlicensed person to acquire a longarm (though not a handgun) from a licensee in any state. See the BATF FAQ.

While I'm not a fan of abortion, I'll point out that Roe v. Wade rests on the right to privacy, "whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."

I also would point out that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" sounds an awful lot like privacy to me.

As addressed in my comment, you are one of the 'many shooters" who have been "exposed to the concept." I'll ask directly:do you habitually practice these techniques? The answer may be yes (I know several people who do), but the most likely answer is "no." I still stand behind my statement that this is not the "standard training for putting down a threat."

Also, if your "concealed carry" class (by which I assume you mean the class that many states mandate before you can obtain a carry permit) is teaching this, it's definitely not your run of the mill class, because no state requires such training, thus most classes (honestly, none that I have ever heard of in the state of Tennessee) don't teach it. If you're talking about a level I or II defensive handgun class, this is more normal, but I'll guarantee you spent a LOT more time on other things like basic accuracy, retention, malfunction drills, cover, etc, and did not spend the necessary time training muscle memory.

"Shoot it to the ground" has been harped on in every defensive class I've ever taken. NOT, "Two to the chest, one to the head" or similar.

I'm throwing this back at you, AC, in that I doubt you've had any real firearms training, either. Double taps, failure drills, etc, are NOT standard training by any stretch of the imagination, and are typically only practiced by those who kill people and break things for a living. Police, regular military, civilians leaning armed self-defense, are typically trained to shoot center mass, and keep shooting until the target is no longer a threat (i.e. until they hit the ground). I'll grant that more advanced techniques are taught in more advanced classes (I've been through a few), and many shooters have been at least been exposed to the concepts and (briefly!) run through them, but this is by no means "standard."

I agree with almost all of this, except for:

• Tablets. These are not going anywhere, I think--we've finally hit the point where computing power, battery life, weight, etc have hit a "good enough" point and produced a genuinely useful, handy device. They will get lighter, and (once they are light enough and foldable) larger, and most people five years from now will not have a "PC" on the desktop.
• Car interfaces. Nav systems are definitely obsolete (especially the "insert the DVD into the optical drive to use me" types), and these will go away over the next few years (but not THIS year--it will take a while for them to die). That said, while touch screens are suboptimal in cars, I expect to see more of them and not less. They're everywhere, and the lack of them will be seen as a cut-rate/budget/obsolescent option, and undesirable to most of the advertising influenced public.

Final thought: when did slashcode stop properly handling the <UL> and <OL> tags?

Its more likely this is actually modelling the passage of a new batch of guns through the criminal underworld.

I always find it hailarious that you in the states cite the ability to own firarms as something that keeps you safe when your obscenely high murder rate points to the opposite in my opinion.

The state of New Jersey requires one to have a permit to own firearms, and an additional permit to purchase a handgun. One needs to obtain a new permit for each handgun, there is a fee, a fingerprinting process.etc. Carrying a handgun in the state of New Jersey is effectively illegal, essentially requiring one to either be a retired police office, private detective, security guard, or politically connected.

Yet somehow criminals manage to get firearms anyway. It's amazing to me, because of the laws I mentioned above--it's almost like these criminals have no respect for the law, and are just circumventing it (which is a rather fatal flaw in the "you need more laws" argument).

That said, I agree with you that the murder rate in the US is abysmal. The sad truth is that we just seem to like killing each other--take away the guns, and we STILL kill each other at rates far exceeding the rest of the civilized world. Michael Moore touched on this in Bowling for Columbine, but instead of exploring the reasons, he decided to blame the whole thing on an old man with alzheimers disease instead.

So, given the following: 1. many americans are violent, and 2. many criminals have or can easily obtain firearms, I propose that the law abiding should also be free to arm themselves, so as to afford some measure of protection.

I think the issue isn't that he was involved in litigation, I think the issue is that he concealed it, regardless of his motivation for doing so..

When further Coupled with his statements to the press, which paint a picture of, at best, improper conduct in the jury room, I think it raises questions about how impartial the jury was, and it's worth the judge's time to consider the matter..

I don't believe that is the point--the issue is that he lied (by omission) during jury questioning. His motives for doing so are less clear, and the Seagate connection has been suggested as a possibility. Regardless, it appears that the jury foreman (based on his own statements to the press) acted, at best, improperly... and that opens up the question, "was this a fair trial?"

I haven't stated a position on whether or not I "want" a retrial, and I think my (or your) wishes on the subject really have no bearing on the issue (as they shouldn't). I merely provided an answer to someone else asking "why isn't there a mistrial here?"

The issue is that Apple says that a mistrial is inappropriate, because Samsung "should have known" about this. Hence Samsung's response, "Well, when did YOU know about this?"

It's win-win for Samsung, I think--if Apple knew about it, then they're shown to (possibly) have unclean hands. If Apple did NOT know about it, then it's absurd for them suggest that Samsung should have.

I think you completely missed what the GP was saying. Sure, the ITU can decide that DNS servers will be regional. So they pass their resolution and go to, for example, Telekom in Germany, and say, "You will blackhole all traffic on port 53 sent to hosts outside of Germany." At which point, Telekom will reply, "Who the hell are you to decide this? Fuck off."

So, what's not right for Open Source? I helped to make feature films at Pixar and have an IMDB credit on two of them. While you can create stories in an Open Source paradigm, the best of them seem to be made in the conventional one. I believe that films should be playable on any device and should not be encumbered with DRM. I don't see a problem with an artist being paid for each copy of a film or music.

Bruce, I'm wondering if you didn't really state this the way you meant, because it comes across as pretty strange in a historical context. Copyright is a relatively new construct, and most "stories" that come to mind really do have an "open source" lineage, if you will--they have been told, retold, embellished, modified, and retold again, with each new storyteller bringing something to the whole, creating something new which would have been impossible without the work of countless others before them. Using movie studios as an example, since you mention Pixar, look back at the last few decades and ask yourself: what, if anything, in cinema is truly new? Aren't we just telling the same stories over, and over again? Sure, we may tell them in new and interesting ways, but most of it is hundreds, if not thousands of years old at heart.

I get the point that people who create things need to make a living, too (and I agree), but bringing that ideal into a conversation about "open source" seems forced, at best.

"Fixed in place" is (mostly) true, but "predefined area" does not have to be. PTZ cameras abound, also high megapixel cameras offer digital PTZ, so just because it's pointed at a fixed area doesn't mean that it's somehow limited. One extreme example is Avigilon, which offers a 29MP digital camera. Believe me when I say that the level of detail offered here, and what you can look at is fairly impressive (I've seen a nice demo setup where a single camera with a fairly wide lens is set up on a video wall offering a couple of dozen discrete views).

Also, I would argue with the logic that "to spot crimes and identify perpetrators" holds any real water. I can cover my neighborhood with cameras just to be a nosy ass, without any real contribution to security.

While I think this guy's actions are assholish at best, he does raise an excellent point.

If I may quote Monty Python's 'Life of Brian': "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? "

Honestly, if you can't find anything that Google has brought to the table that the market "really wants" you just aren't paying attention.

"Composers, Authors, and Publishers" aren't performers. Granted, someone can be both a performer and an author, but they don't have to be. As such, the statement that performers don't get paid for radio performances is not refuted by this.

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To be fair, I don't think NASA is at that level anymore, either.