You are saying then that there should be laws governing what a person can or cannot do with their own body in a medical sense. Very curious about your feelings on abortion laws.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a book 10 years ago, before the housing boom and bust, about how education and safety were killing middle America. In a short summary (to a detailed book):

Prior to women entering the workforce, families were more stable, because in surviving off one income, if the breadwinner was sick, mom could get a job, so you lost some income.

After women entered the workforce, family finances became less stable, because now EITHER parent losing the job was a catastrophe. And two jobs might reduce the likelihood that both are unemployed, but drastically increases the likelihood that EITHER becomes unemployed, and that was destabilizing finances.

The main driver of the middle class squeeze has been housing, and housing is driven by safe neighborhoods and good schools. To live in such a neighborhood has required two incomes, because the two income families bid up prices. This has absolutely killed single income families, because they can't compete.

The neighborhood based schooling encourages families to struggle for neighborhoods with good schools, which amps up the arms race for the housing.

Charter Schools aren't something she advocates, but detaching schooling from housing helps put the breaks on the housing run up.

The fact that you can live in a neighborhood you can afford and send to a good school is a HUGE thing. My kids attend a top rated charter in our city, but a few miles from our home. There are students from all sorts of neighborhoods. But the fact that our school competes with schools in millionaire zones has meant that people don't need to take out obscene mortgages they can't afford to educate their children.

The astronomical cost of private education (as a result of education inflation everywhere) has taken away private schooling from the upper middle class with multiple children. The charter schools has allowed us to have a family size we are happy with, a good education for our children, and stay in a house we can afford instead of needing to trade up.

The kicker, our charter school gets 95% of the funding as a traditional school, and our charter rents its building instead of getting it for free. The taxpayers save, the families get a good school, and the housing pressure for elite neighborhoods is lessoned. Now, our charter isn't a great solution for the truly poor. There is a required volunteer/financial contribution (either/or) per family, the school fundraises for stuff that might be provided in a public school, etc., there is no bussing. But if you are working class and willing to make a real sacrifice, or middle class and willing to give up some luxuries, you get a GREAT education.

But things like art classes are gone, and offered as after school programs, etc. But for many of us, an extra $300-$2500/year/student - depending on add-ons chose - is way more affordable than either private schooling ($15k-$20k/student) or fancier housing, $10k-$15k or more per year. I fail to see the downside.

A fully plastic gun is lighter than a gun with an add-on mass of metal for the required detection requirement. Easier to carry.

That's not in code. There are a few ways of things becoming law. The first is that it is in code as a statute. This is from the legislature. The other is from the courts. That's the law in precedent. If you're going with Roe v. Wade then it's in precedent and not code.

Roe v Wade privacy is in regards to the law interfering with life, liberty, or property. The life in question is the individual's. In other words, medical decision. Privacy of communication is subject to wiretap laws which can be superseded by a court order. Roe v Wade offers nothing for the sort of privacy you're arguing about.

> Privacy has *long* been established as a natural right and is codified in the highest legal document in the nation.

Citation please.

The purpose is not US-centric. The real value of the Liberator is in places where guns are illegal. The fact that Liberators are being printed in China is of significant value.

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+44-1

"The militia of the Commonwealth of Virginia shall consist of all able-bodied residents of the Commonwealth who are citizens of the United States and all other able-bodied persons resident in the Commonwealth who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States"

Google dominating for what, 8 years now?

Our young geeks may NOT remember a time before Google, but there was a time where the "hot" search engine changed every two years, and there were new engines launching all the time.

The Wild West phase of the Internet is over, but we're still on the frontier.

> figure out who registered the gun it was fired from

There's your first problem. There isn't a registry of guns. Some states have them. Others don't.

For example, Virginia doesn't have a registry of guns. When the police find a gun they reference it to the manufacturer and that traces back to the FFL dealer that sold the gun. The dealer then provides law enforcement with the identity of the person who purchased it. Now, after that it gets all fuzzy. In Virginia's case, private sales do not have any paper work. I could say "Yeah I sold that gun. Don't remember who I sold it to. Sorry." That'd be the end of that.

Getting states to approve a registry of guns is a bit of a challenge. Best of luck getting that done in the majority of states.

I'm a gun dealer.

> I just pick up brass at the police range and reload it when I murder people.

The stamping is going to be on the primer. If you're reloading, you'll end up popping the old primer out anyway.

> It's an aid to crime solving, in the same way serial numbers on the gun itself are an aid.

The serial numbers on a gun doesn't aid in solving a crime at all. It's there mostly as an identification and tracking system. There aren't any effective matching systems between shell casing/bullet "fingerprint" and serial numbers. Maryland tried it. It failed.

Citation: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/marylands-ballistic-fingerprinting-system-proves-cumbersome

A project carrying an "open source" or "free software" license is not necessarily an "open source" project. Plenty of "Cathedral" projects with paid developers with an open source license that may (or may not) get downstream patches kicked up. Those projects are going to look like any other corporate development group. These are really the core projects.

The "open source projects" of people hacking code make up the bulk of developers in open source, and is the hobbyist developers. People that have a lot of time to devote to a hobby are either single, or older empty nesters. Men can hang out in the single realm and start a family @ 40, women cannot. This limits women from engaging in serious time commitments like open source projects.

The pool of women available to do this is pretty small.

That's without dealing with the fact that women tend to have tighter deviations from the norm in various areas, which means that any group that is selected from extreme outliers is going to be disproportionately male. This is true whether you are selecting politicians that reach Federal office, people that are extremely interested in programming to pursue as a hobby, moving to America as a day laboring immigrant, or criminally oriented men to form a gang. The outliers are predominately (but not exclusively) male.

In local politics, where the time commitment is NOT as extreme and the skill set needed to be elected is NOT that extreme, we have a pretty good mix of men and women on city counsels, school boards, mayoral seats, etc. Not 50-50, but a pretty good representation. We have plenty of female mayors, but we've NEVER had a female governor. Outliers in general are predominately male.

No period between the sentences... that's what is being [sic]'d out.

No. It expects people to be able to act rationally and in their long-term best interest. That's still not how people work.

You presume to know what their long-term best interest is. A bit of fatal conceit?

The lesson you probably learned is that buttkissing gets you further in today's society than delivering good work.

At the same time, if a customer tells you what features he wants and you keep not building it, are you surprised when he's unhappy with what you delivered?

Feedback is a valuable tool. What you do with said feedback is up to you.