I think a lot of Christians haven't thought about that. Translating the Bible takes a lot of work. The work on the ESV started in the early 1990s from what I could find on Wikipedia, so we're talking about 7-11 years of work before it was published. I don't know how well donations would cover those costs.
So I think a lenient copyright would be fine such as it expires in 30 years at the most and it allows for copying whole chapters but perhaps not whole books. Even with current copyright restrictions the only people that are impacted are authors using lengthy direct quotes, but with allowing whole chapters to be included that shouldn't be an issue. I would be for a shorter copyright term, but it does take time for new translations to be adopted.
I took a year of Biblical Greek and Hebrew in college. The main reason I think it is required for Theology majors is to show that the translators did a really good job most of the time. There are times knowing both languages has helped clear up a passage, but comparing various translations and reading what other translators have to say about the passage would probably be just as good for that.
I found this paper by Maurice A. Robinson very informative on the subject, but he does advocate for Byzantine priority. http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Robinson2001.html At the very least it's a good introduction to New Testament textual criticism, and it goes further in depth on your points.
My introduction to rollerball pens forced me to learn how to do this, otherwise, I was smearing everything I had written. I did some research and found out that curling my hand around the pen was the wrong way to hold it.
The article states that the reason for them doing this is to help combat foreign influence in elections. Would having access to this information help track trends in real time and investigate who is doing the influencing? What else could they do to counteract foreign influence?
That's definitely one aspect to it. When I played CS:GO briefly, some of the players are just down right toxic. I don't know if it is because they deliberately want to hurt people or they just think it's perfectly fine kidding around like that, but I just stopped playing. Other games have that element to them too, but CS:GO just seemed to have a lot more of it.
I think a voting guide would be more useful in a situation like this that explains the issues at stake on the ballot. If more people used a voting guide instead of the news, I doubt Brexit would have gone through.
I don't think this is a slope you want to go down because the constitution is law. Do we want people to view the law subjectively, especially juries that decide on cases? "When the government is acting in your best interests unwarranted searches and seizures are ok, therefore we can come into your home any time we want as long as we are acting in your best interests." I doubt you would be ok with that. Sadly we have laws in place for exactly that sort of thing, and people are ok with it because are we are really scared of terrorists.
It's a valid question. If we had something like phasers instead of firearms, I'd be more than happy to use those exclusively. The problem is we don't really have a good alternative. Tasers that shoot tend to be one shot solutions, and even then they don't always bring down targets, or they might prove as lethal. Rubber bullets you can fire multiple of, but they could cause serious damage too, especially if shot in succession, and there is no guarantee of taking the target down. There just isn't a solid alternative right now.
Libya and Syria are probably good examples of this not being the case. Libya had the benefit of NATO coming to the aid of the rebellion and stopping the airstrikes, Syria also had outside involvement. When a government goes to war with it's civilians other nations tend to get involved.
Even if that isn't the case, all those weapons are on the ground or in port at some point. Meaning an attack with small arms to get in there and preemptively blow them up will work. These weapons also have to be maintained meaning they need a base. You have millions of citizens with weapons and a military that's a much smaller fraction of that, with bases that have a much smaller fraction of personnel. The base is going to be overrun. There is also the chance of military personnel defecting, so that some of these weapons never get fired.
Chemical and biological weapons are a really bad idea. The problem is a civil war isn't going to be geographically defined in this case. There is no polarization along something like a Mason-Dixon line. You will end up killing people that don't revolt, which will probably make them rethink their not revolting. How would you feel if your family and friends were killed in an attack, and they weren't on the rebel side?
The other problem is even if you increase the military's size to win the civil war, you have the second problem of the very people that you could grab immediately to fight are probably going to be a majority of people who have been opposed to gun ownership, don't have weapons and don't know how to use them. It will take time to become proficient and the other side has both the weapons and training.
Even with advanced military tech, the numbers game combined with a guerrilla approach, and the fact these are civilians and it would be hard to identify civilian combatants from non-combatants, will make it a losing battle. We already haven't done well in Afghanistan or Iraq for similar reasons, and despite the enemy being technologically inferior, we have never been able to secure those regions.
Guns are glorified in TV shows, movies and video games which is what has made them cool. I doubt guns would be viewed as cool if it weren't for those things. Growing up I felt they were cool too, until I had some responsible adults teach me that firearms are not toys, they can be fun to shoot, but they are very lethal and should be treated with the appropriate care and respect to ensure no one is killed or injured while handling. Sadly I think a lot of people haven't had the benefit of responsible adults, but I think a good many of us have.
There is an interesting section that goes into the scholarly interpretation of the 2nd amendment in the Wikipedia article on it, and it's only been in the 20th century and after that we have gotten into what militia, well regulated and whether or not the people have the right or militias.
The main point the founding fathers had for the militias was to defend the country from foreign invaders and from a tyrannical government. I know people think we don't need to worry about tyrannical governments these days, but what if what happened in Libya, Syria and Egypt started happening here? How would we fix that kind of a situation?
Usenet may just be the solution for the time being, especially for some of the displaced subreddits for interest specific discussions and posts. At this point a protocol looks like it will be the answer like email, IRC and XMPP, but for forum discussion instead. If IPFS makes some headway with having dynamic content, that may work better, but I'm not sure where that is at right now.
Have you ever worked with a code base before? Even when you scrutinize for bugs, they still can go unspotted. Sometimes hundreds of people can look at the same code and not see anything wrong with it. Software has the benefit of having higher levels of abstraction, I haven't designed any hardware but as far as I'm aware it's not easy to abstract it. That will make it much harder to find things. While 4 guys in a basement may have found this vulnerability, it doesn't mean they will find every vulnerability or that anyone else would have this as they had. Throwing money at verification will not make it fool proof.
I'm a lefty as well, and initially my hand would smear the ink as I was writing. I think I had that problem with rollerball pens to begin with, so after I did some research on proper handwriting technique, I learned I needed to hold the pen such that my hand was underneath it much like a right handed person holds it by default. It took some time to adjust but I'm more comfortable writing with any pen now than when I used to have more of a claw grip. Once you get that down, using a fountain pen will never be a problem for you and is far more of a pleasure to write with than most other writing implements will give you.
So I think a lenient copyright would be fine such as it expires in 30 years at the most and it allows for copying whole chapters but perhaps not whole books. Even with current copyright restrictions the only people that are impacted are authors using lengthy direct quotes, but with allowing whole chapters to be included that shouldn't be an issue. I would be for a shorter copyright term, but it does take time for new translations to be adopted.