regardless if it was the last 5 years or the last 14 years, its fairly obvious that they are a shadow of what they used to be.

United States v. Verdugo-Urquirdez, 110 S. Ct. 3039 (1990). This case involved the meaning of the term "the people" in the Fourth Amendment. The Court unanimously held that the term "the people" in the Second Amendment had the same meaning as in the Preamble to the Constitution and in the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, i.e., that "the people" means at least all citizens and legal aliens while in the United States. This case thus resolves any doubt that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right.

even before our constitution every settler was REQUIRED to have at least TWO muskets, a bag of powder, and so many pounds of ball shot. It was expected that every able-bodied male of 14 years old or older (at the time that was enough to be considered a man enough to fight) to participate in the defense of your town, state, or property from invaders.

Even field artillery was considered a 2nd amendment issue

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876). This was the first case in which the Supreme Court had the opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment. The Court recognized that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was a right which existed prior to the Constitution when it stated that such a right "is not a right granted by the Constitution...[n]either is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." The indictment in Cruikshank charged, inter alia, a conspiracy by Klansmen to prevent blacks from exercising their civil rights, including the bearing of arms for lawful purposes. The Court held, however, that because the right to keep and bear arms existed independent of the Constitution, and the Second Amendment guaranteed only that the right shall not be infringed by Congress, the federal government had no power to punish a violation of the right by a private individual; rather, citizens had "to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens" of their right to keep and bear arms to the police power of the state.

Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886). Although the Supreme Court affirmed the holding in Cruikshank that the Second Amendment, standing alone, applied only to action by the federal government, it nonetheless found the states without power to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms, holding that "the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, as so to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government."

U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). This is the only case in which the Supreme Court has had the opportunity to apply the Second Amendment to a federal firearms statute. The Court, however, carefully avoided making an unconditional decision regarding the statute's constitutionality; it instead devised a test by which to measure the constitutionality of statutes relating to firearms and remanded the case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing (the trial court had held that Section 11 of the National Firearms Act was unconstitutional). The Court remanded to the case because it had concluded that:
** In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
  Thus, for the keeping and bearing of a firearm to be constitutionally protected, the firearm should be a militia-type arm

it takes a 2/3rd majority of both house and senate to amend the constitution. Thats never going to happen. We cant even get enough to agree in order to override a veto from the POTUS. You also have the 1936 SCOTUS ruling that says that you should be allowed to have the same weapons used by the military of the day. At the time, a short barreled shotgun was NOT used by the standing army. So he violated the NFA by not registering it and paying his $200 tax stamp. The ONLY reason the 1986 full-auto ban still exists is because NOBODY has yet brought it before the courts and sited the 1936 SCOTUS ruling. Clearly 3-shot burst and full-auto M4's are widely used by many branches of our military.

btw today's state militia is the Sheriff's department and by extension the local police forces granted their authority from said sheriff's departments.

while I agree on principle to what you are writing, I completely disagree that this requires the sort of response being afforded to some assholes in hollywood.

      If I owned a product and someone else started copying and selling it, the most protection I am afforded is a Civil lawsuit to prove I am damaged and then financial compensation is awarded against the defendant.

        Yet the exact same crime done to big studios suddenly comes with a jail sentence and violation of about half a dozen civil rights. I would say that would be a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, since by way of financial discrimination, my rights are treated differently than those major studios; except that the 14th amendment only seems to tell individual states what they could do. No one had any idea of a federal police state (FBI) in 1868. So they appear to operate outside the law.

Depends on the concentration and distance. It has a 33yr half life. So every 33yrs half of its mass decayed from the previous 33yr. As a thumb rule we say 5 half lives is enough to completely decay away.

Exposure is an inverse square law. So as you move away the exposure reduces exponentially.

Geiger-Mueller detectors work on the photoelectric effect. Point source radiation is an inverse square law. You wouldn't detect this stuff even a few miles away. Reactors hardly release any isotopes. It's the thermals that show up on satellites

All too aware of Cobalt -60. Iron 59 will undergo neutron proton reaction and become cobalt 60. It's the most common isotope of concern in reactor compartments. It has a long half life but it's decay produces a gamma of 7 MeV (mega electron volts).

If this is really source material for X-ray equipment, then why wasn't it well marked and locked in a relatively difficult container requiring a blow torch to cut through?

password recovery on cisco routers is a relatively simple process involving only a few minutes of outage. I should find it hard to believe the city of SF was using any other brand. That would be like buying everything made in china and complain that american laborers are out of work... oh wait, we do that.

given that this is slashdot and not linkedIN or MyTwitFace I would take that as a given

i would have empathized with her, but according to the article it was their complete apathy and bragging that they drove her to suicide, as if it was some achievement, that brought everything to light. Had it been a complete wakup call for them that they indirectly caused someone's death (defined as 'probable cause' for criminal charges) and they were now going through their own depression, I think you probably would be reading a different story with different comments in the threads.

this used to be the solution that worked well for millennia. Now the anti-violence zero-tolerance groups have squashed school fights to such a degree that this other problem is now unchecked. I would rather my child get suspended and send another kid home with a broken nose or limb than internalize the problem over and over until they snap, either internally (suicide) or externally (columbine).

perhaps not courageous, but I agree it goes against every animal instinct. There are some cases, possibly many arguably, that someone who succeeds in suicide didnt do it by overcoming this interlock. Its that this interlock simply wasnt there at the time they succeeded. Perhaps dispair, or medication. Seriously, you could take a hand full of sleeping pills and then go lap swimming in a pool. Theres a pretty good chance you wont be able to back out of that one, the medication wont let the interlock work.

12 year olds are not mature adults. they do not reason the same as we do. I know its been a long time since some of us were 12, some more than others; but accurately predicting the consequences of ones actions is not something they do very well. I have a 10yr old daughter and I am constantly amazed and some of the things she does as if she has no foresight at all.. then I realize; she doesn't. This situation and many like it are evolving because we are already trying to force adult situations and adult responsibilities on non-adults. 25yrs ago kids would solve this on the playground and it would get chalked up to 'kids being kids' and 'establishing a pecking order'. Now there is suspension and explusion for something humans have been doing for over 10k years. In this vacuum an even more sadistic and tormenting behavior has evolved in its place.

agreed, people tend to assign adult thinking processes to a child... we arent fully cognitive until we reach 25 and even then some still arent. I agree completely with seeking an escape from what may have felt like total despair. I only wish she had enrolled in some martial arts classes and kicked the shit out of those picking on her... worse case scenario she gets labeled 'violent' for a few years until she 'outgrows' it. In the meantime people will back the hell off.