My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.
This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.
<button>
<type>XBMC</type>
<text>XBMC</text>
<description>Launch XBMC</description>
<action>EXEC /usr/bin/xbmc -q</action>
</button>
(Alternatively, grab this file, but there's a risk of missing intervening updates.) As written, this will give you a button with the unsightly white on black text "No image available" (note that you'll need to leave and re-enter the menu to see the new button, but you don't need to restart MythTV). To give it an image, save the two images here as (left) xbmc_off.png and (right) xbmc_on.png in /usr/share/mythtv/themes/Terra/watermarks. To have them show up, add the following to both the end of the <state name="active"> / <statetype name="icons> and the <state name="selected" from="active"> / <statetype name="icons> blocks (i.e. after the <state name="ZM_EVENT_VIEWER" from="ZOOMFINDER"> block):
<state name="XBMC" from="default">
<imagetype name="icon">
<filename>watermarks/xbmc_on.png</filename>
</imagetype>
</state>
Alternately (again risking missing an intervening update) you can use this file. Note that you unfortunately can't use a local version of this file as was possible with library.xml. You need to restart MythTV (exit it and depending on your setup, it should auto-restart, if not, relaunch it by restarting X, usually with startx; if you've disabled exiting, you may need to kill X with ctrl-alt-backspace; if that's disabled (as newer X.org servers do), you may need to kill X remotely. The image should now show up in Media Library, with the lightning bolt overlay when selected; clicking it will launch XBMC. Default ("confluence" skinned) XBMC can be exited by moving left to the "Power" button and selecting the red "X" (my remote "just worked" for moving and selecting; YMMV).They don't understand my naming convention. For example, I group some movies into directories and remove redundancies, e.g. Harry Potter/1 The Philosopher's Stone (the 1 keeps the order correct; there isn't a sort override field in the videometadata database). The script tries to find a movie called "1 The Philosopher's Stone" rather than keeping the directory and stripping the numeric prefix. If I used the full names (Harry Potter and …) they'd still be out of order (alpha-sorted). Possibly fixable by modifying the script itself, but then I'm doomed when I upgrade.
It picks the first movie poster available; I'd like to be able to select one (see above regarding PyGTK). E.g., the first poster for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is pretty dark and gloomy and uninformative.
When the database is rescanned, old metadata is destroyed and has to be re-fetched from scratch, meaning unnecessary and slow network traffic, and items with multiple matches have to be user-selected again. Granted, one fix is to just not run "Scan for changes", although I don't know what MythTV will do to the database in future. But this can be overcome by automated database backups.
I want to tie it in with my DVD watch list.
The author means well, and most of the principles are good: but there are some few contradictions where he fails to fully realize the definition of a free people, and goes back on his support for natural law and property rights and espouses the tyranny of a majority: however on the whole it the book is a good compendium of the American founder's ideals in a modern context.I'd like to expand on that and examine the 28 principles listed in the book as they relate to libertarian philosophy in general and mine in particular.
"Natural law" is a bit vague but the theory is of a common law that civilized people recognize: of course, nobody agrees entirely as to what it is. Certainly non-initiation of aggression would be included, though, which would also cover things like respect for another's property. As examples he lists unalienable rights (see #8), unalienable duties (#9), habeas corpus, limited government (how limited? the non-aggression principle (NAP) is sufficient here too!), separation of powers, self-preservation, right to contract, and others; in short, it gets your whites whiter and gets bloodstains out of carpet. But it is all unnecessary with (or flows from) the non-aggression principle, a much more succinct axiom on which to build a civilized (voluntary) society.
Also somewhat vague. The converse is certainly true: following Tyler's dictum, envious and greedy people of little virtue feel entitled to the product of their hard-working betters. I'd like to live among moral people—specifically, those that follow my morals, as would most people. But I'd also be happy to live among people that followed the NAP: they are then moral by definition.
Better still to have leaders that can't do any harm—i.e., can't initiate aggression against anyone either by direct application of force (assault, confiscation) or threat thereof (taxation).
Many nations manage to stay "free" in today's terms (i.e., they can vote to change the names of their overlords every few years) without particular virtue (in fact scandals involving politicians are legion) or religion. Certainly one would hope that faith in Christ and a devotion to sound Biblical teachings would inspire a leader to do well, but there have been a number of public failures even of Christian leaders.
I believe this, but he does a disservice to Christians everywhere with his hand-waving in this section; furthermore, it is not a principle but a statement.
This chapter is excellent: it emphasizes that people should be treated equally by the law and have equal rights, but that people are not born with equal faculties, and are not entitled to equal influence, property, or other advantages. To that I add people make themselves unequal by their choices in life: someone with a better credit record will legitimately be treated better than a profligate debtor, or a felon. But some of the examples he gives look good but are wanting: he says that people's right should be protected equally… "at the print shop", for example, without regard to the rights of the owner of said shop, who should not be required to do business with anybody and should be free to discriminate as he wishes in his private business (and suffer the consequences if he does so unfairly).
An extension of the previous.
Most of his examples are true and good, and are derivable from the NAP and self-ownership: rights to self-government, bear arms, own, develop, and dispose of property, make personal choices, free conscience, choose a profession, choose a mate, beget one's kind, assemble, petition, free speech, free press*, enjoy the fruits of one's labors, barter and trade, invent, explore*, privacy, provide personal security, nature's necessities (air, food, water, clothing, shelter)*, fair trial, free association, contract. I would take issue with the starred positive rights listed, e.g. there is no right to explore if it requires trespassing, or to food via theft.
Also vague.
No! This is the same tyranny of the majority that subjects us to so much redistributive theft today, to pay for so many programs that are not only unused and unwanted, but also unhelpful, e.g., welfare introducing a generational spiral of dependency and disincentives to ambition and work.
True, with the caveat that it would be immoral to attempt to replace a NAP-following minimal government that efficiently handles national defense (not military adventurism), police to prevent or stop initiation of force or fraud (but not to hassle people for victimless crimes) with one of another type, that will initiate force against people and steal from them.
Although this enhances scalability it didn't manage to stop legalization of slavery, passage of the Federal income tax, Japanese internment, Social Security/Medicare, and massive taxation, spending, and debts. Since we have the technology, direct democracy could hardly be worse. Presence or absence of the NAP as a governing principle would vastly overshadow republicanism.
Indeed. Include the NAP; it's the only way to be sure.
Property rights are key. The NAP extends to others not violating your property rights: trespassing and theft are aggressive acts.
Amen!
It seems to work. This is more about the deck chairs than the course of the ship.
Better to use one big gun: the NAP. Checks and balances haven't always worked out so well.
Absolutely. But be careful who you allow to interpret it.
Very limited. No initiation of aggression, for example. Not far enough, Skousen; go further!
False; see above. If there's a threat, people will react: if, for example, the limited defensive military detected a great threat, patriots would, as in the days of the Minutemen, rally to provide "blood and treasure."
Subsidiarity is a sound principle, all the way to the individual.
Of course.
Maybe, maybe not: not government's business to rob people to provide it. Diligent parents and virtuous citizens will make it available; and if not, then it is not desired and robbery is no legitimate way to source it.
Agreed. While initiation of aggression is frowned upon by libertarians, tempered self-defense constitutes a valid response to aggression.
Definitely. He uses a good term, too: separatism, not isolationism. Read Ron Paul's speeches; you'll see it all the time; see, for example, his books A Foreign Policy of Freedom and Pillars of Prosperity.
False. The government should protect everybody, and should not be in the business of favoring any special interest group, even one as basic as the family. Not everyone should marry or have children; some may not want them or cannot provide for them, and should not be maltreated because of it. Marriage or any union should be a contract; the government's only role is to provide courts to enforce it.
Overly dramatic, perhaps, but I never consented to any debt: it is aggression visited upon us and our descendants.
Sure—but so does everyone else. For a while, though, we shone the brightest: may we continue to do so.
I looked it up and it turns out that although it's not fixed in Flex itself, it is logged and fixed as Debian bug 466793 in the Debian package: the YY_INPUT macro in the generated code (scanner.cc here) should have size_t in one place where it has int. Since my system is Gentoo, not Debian, I couldn't (consistently) install the patched Flex, but I could patch the generated scanner.cc file before compilation in the SCons build file, by adding a post-processing step to the action list for .l (Flex lexer definition) files as follows:flex --header-file=scanner.h -DECHO= -t scanner.l > scanner.cc g++ -o scanner.o -c -ggdb -Wall scanner.cc <stdout>: In function 'int yy_get_next_buffer()': <stdout>:1340: warning: comparison between signed and unsigned integer expressions
Now the relevant build steps become:c_file, cxx_file = SCons.Tool.createCFileBuilders(env)…cxx_file.cmdgen['.l'] += [ r"perl -pwli -e 's/^(\t\t)int( n; \\)$/$1size_t$2/" + r" if /^#define YY_INPUT/ .. /^#endif/' $TARGET"]
I have, of course, glossed over exactly how I knew to call SCons.Tool.createCFileBuilders, and that adding to cxx_file.cmdgen['.l'] would work and do what I wanted; as it happens, I had to browse the sources for that, although it's all in the inline documentation. On my system the SCons modules are under /usr/lib64/scons-1.2.0/SCons. It turns out that cxx_file is a SCons Builder.CompositeBuilder object, whose cmdgen field is a Builder.DictCmdGenerator whose values are SCons action lists. It might be better if it were not necessary to access the un(py)documented cmdgen field (one might assume that the add_action method would do what I wanted, but unfortunately it replaces the old action, that of running Flex in this case).flex --header-file=scanner.h -DECHO= -t scanner.l > scanner.cc perl -pwli -e 's/^(\t\t)int( n; \\)$/$1size_t$2/ if /^#define YY_INPUT/ .. /^#endif/' scanner.cc g++ -o scanner.o -c -ggdb -Wall scanner.cc
Thanks to everyone who showed up and helped out. The day began at 12:30pm with Richard teaching safety guidelines and handling techniques. We had a break to give an interview with KIRO 7 and the Seattle Times. After that, we continued our meeting with Richard leading the discussion on legal issues, ramifications, and several case studies of self-defense scenarios. Overall, yesterday was a great forum in raising our awareness of gun rights and safety, and ended with us shooting at the range. Special thanks to Black Dawg for their pro-bono training and Champion Arms in Kent for hosting us.This is what I sent to msgun Monday:Next time, we will try to have an event closer to campus. If we had one on campus, there would definitely be a large turnout but we would all have to go unarmed because of the regulations there.
I attended—free training, not too far way (~30 mins), what's not to like?, plus I wanted to meet some of the people in the group.The session Sunday got the group some better coverage; the image now should be of a group of serious people armed and able to protect themselves and others from grave bodily harm. DVDs finished: Butterfly Effect: Revelation, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.First, the group has indeed toned down. There was some hare-brained scheme proposed in the Facebook group to cruise around with a "decoy" wearing an iPod and several other shadowy figures with nonlethal weapons ready to pounce, so I did my best to shoot that down (no pun intended) and point out its many flaws (you're not the police, you're not trained, if you're in fear of grave bodily injury you don't want to bring anything less than deadly force, you could be hurt/killed, you could hurt someone else, jail, civil court costs, even with a "good shoot", etc.). The original poster agreed that his was a foolish idea.
Second, this training outfit looked legit—Rick Walker (http://www.blackdawgpartners.com - not the most pro site in the world though) is a class act and knows his stuff, ex-military (weapons expert), certified as instructor by several reputable groups, etc. He teaches various courses including the Utah permit course. He went over some basics of weapons and CCW with a PowerPoint deck in a classroom at Champion Arms (they offered the room free)—starting from Cooper's 4 rules, then things like where you may or may not carry, Castle doctrine, reacting to scenarios—run if you can, call 911 if you're not in immediate danger; importance of practice; all stuff I've seen but nice to have it all in one place. He went over some cases, what people did, what they were convicted of, and their civil costs. I can reproduce the quiz he passed out before the class and discussed if people want. I believe it was sufficiently sobering to cause the "Defenders" to change their course, which is great:
more armed good guys on the streets that know the law and practice with their particular defense weapon is a good thing .I also talked to him about doing training for a Microsoft group; he said he could do something similar (a basic CCW class) for just cost of gas and materials; perhaps if we were interested he could give us a rate on doing a Utah permit course or something else for those interested.
At an irreducible minimum, Art. III requires the party who invokes the court's authority to "show that the personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant," Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood (1979), and that the injury "is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision," Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. (1976). … But the "cases and controversies" language of Art. III forecloses the conversion of courts of the United States into judicial versions of college debating forums…. The exercise of judicial power, which can so profoundly affect the lives, liberty, and property of those to whom it extends, is therefore restricted to litigants who can show "injury in fact" resulting from the action which they seek to have the Court adjudicate.The court claimed that this case was different from Flast because:
Unlike the plaintiffs in Flast, the respondents fail the first prong of the test for taxpayer standing. Their claim is deficient in two respects. First, the source of their complaint is not a congressional action, but a decision by HEW to transfer a parcel of federal property. Flast limited taxpayer standing to challenges directed "only [at] exercises of congressional power." See Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War [1974] (denying standing because the taxpayer plaintiffs "did not challenge an enactment under Art. I, § 8, but rather the action of the Executive Branch").Some precedents are perhaps better observed in the breach than in the observance, including this "test for taxpayer standing." The fact that the originating act was executive in nature does make the court any less able to rule on it if it violates the Constitution. Any taxpayer should have standing in any case involving the smallest amount of their money (despite the inconvenience to the court), and the presumption should be that spending less will redress the wrong by lowering taxes by the amount saved (even though in practice government tends to spend anything "saved.") While there are more egregious violations, stopping this gift of taxpayer money and requiring the government to sell the property for fair market value (and better still, remit the increase as at least a token tax reduction) would have set valuable positive precedent.Second, and perhaps redundantly, the property transfer about which respondents complain was not an exercise of the authority conferred by the Taxing and Spending Clause of Art. I, § 8. The authorizing legislation, the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, was an evident exercise of Congress' power under the Property Clause, Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2. Respondents do not dispute this conclusion, and it is decisive of any claim of taxpayer standing under the Flast precedent.