Alternatively, since they have to follow court rulings, we could try: OBVIOUSNESS TEST FOR SOFTWARE PATENTS SHOULD BE DONE BY SOMEONE WHOSE EXPERTISE IN THE FIELD INVOLVES MORE THAN SENDING E-MAIL IN OUTLOOK. Seriously, where do they find these people? If it's software to do X, it should be examined by someone with expertise in the field of software AND the field of X.

That's how my parents did it. Didn't do much for my morale, but my morals have kept me out of prison!

Transformative works are (theoretically) exempt from such a claim under fair use. In practice, YMMV.

TIL that the Second Amendment is the only one we've watched get chipped away over the years.

While I believe this is a good thing for evolution, I know it will be abused.

If all it takes to pick up an object with a limb is an opposable thumb, this will surely be abused by people.

Instead of picking up a banana, one could pick up a deadly rock. The appendage could also be used to deliver a choke where they would no longer require both limbs. You'd get grappling.

How easy would it be to make a pointy stick. You don't have to get as close to people to strike any more just don't wear thin hide.

Browser exploits are used to gain access to systems. This doesn't mean that all they got ahold of was browser history.

Does anyone know if Maria is a MySQL fork?
Signs point to "yes."

How would you even know if nothing bad came of it?

I guess that works if you want to pretend nails don't exist.

You and I alone? We can't. The public at large has to start calling violations of the Constitution what they are, no matter how small, even if it's for a popular cause that they support, and demanding that it be fixed. But people in general are fine with it as long as it's a cause they support. SCOTUS justices frequently rule the way they want things to go, and then use contorted logic to justify it as Constitutional. Or just decide it doesn't apply. DUI checkpoints are one great example. SCOTUS ruled that despite them violating the Fourth Amendment, the small inconvenience to drivers was outweighed by a "substantial government interest" in reducing drunk driving. And nobody likes drunk driving, so it's "legal" despite being unconstitutional. And this is just one example of many. The public at large is okay with the Constitution being ignored so long as it suits them. And as long as a little temporary security is held to be more important than liberty, liberty being fairly dangerous, it's going to continue. Personally, I do not see this trend reversing.

We're slowly turning into one. The Constitution is routinely violated, and violations upheld, not through the Amendment process that's supposed to be required, but by a majority vote. Everyone's complicit in it when it's for a cause they support, and then they act flabbergasted when a different group does the same thing for a cause they don't support.

Semi-auto handguns are also an efficient way to kill people. Virginia Tech ring a bell? No rifles, higher body count than Sandy Hook, and that was perpetrated against adults. The way I see it, there are two possible reasons for wanting to ban the rifles.

1. Banning them for the sake of "doing something."
2. Banning them with the intention of coming back for more later.

Neither one of those strikes me as a particularly good reason, though given the rhetoric from the anti-gun side, I'm inclined to think it's a combination of the two.

Don't call the cops on people squatting on your property either.

There is no shortage of people in America who do not value human life.

I agree. Sort of, I guess. It's definitely important to know how to use it. It's even more important to know when not to use it. I have the benefit of having had a healthy respect for them taught to me when I was still a child, and over 20 years handling them safely. Honestly, any training course you throw at me would pretty much be a joke, because it's nature to me by now. But that same course, to somebody without any experience, is going to be insufficient at best. What I consider to be common sense is, to a lot of people, completely alien. And before you can handle a gun safely, it needs to be common sense. Just like handling a car safely. For a truly viable "training course," you're talking years' worth of instruction for some people, months, weeks, days or hours for others, depending on both how well they learn and how seriously they take the responsibility.

I'm reminded of a recent story about a father who "accidentally" shot his 7 or 9 year old son outside a gun shop. He may have passed some training course or whatever the hell he did. But when it was all said and done, he pointed a loaded firearm at a child and pulled the trigger. And that's not an accident. That's negligence. And it keeps happening. Most car accidents involve negligence on the part of at least one party, and how many of those are there every day? Be it guns or cars, people fail to realize the gravity of the situation when they're in control of machines capable of causing death and mayhem. And that's not going to be fixed with a quick course, or often times, even with an extended course. My "training course" for firearms lasted 12 years and started when I was 6. A lot of the lessons I learned, especially the situational awareness involved in safe firearm handling, translated well to driving, and has kept my ass out of a few accidents.

Simply put, be it with guns or cars, a lot of people just don't give them the necessary respect until it's too late. I don't know if it's an "it could never happen to me" attitude, whether they're just so focused on the shiny new iShit that they can't be bothered to consider the seriousness of being in control of such things, or if they're just generally stupid. But I'd expect a firearms training course to be more or less as effective as driver's ed.

"When you're looking at a nail, you might start to wish you had a hammer instead of a flower."