[quote user="Sutherlands"]Well, you're certainly correct in that giving guns to bad people makes you less safe.  Also, taking them away from good people makes you less safe.  And anyway, as boomzilla stated above, this has nothing to do with the gun laws.  There are many reasons for our homicide rate (which is ...

[quote user="boomzilla"]Alright, you really are that dumb. So what happens when someone decides to violate your life and / or security of person? Who secures that right? Can you tell the difference between initiating the use of force and using it to defend yourself? For that matter, is it also not acceptable for anyone else to use force ...

[quote user="Sutherlands"][quote user="Severity One"]Did you fix the budget yet?[/quote]Because nobody in Europe is having a budget crisis?[/quote]Because all over Europe, spending is cut and taxes are raised. Whether it helps anything, that's another issue. I'm inclined to say "no, because they're the same ...

[quote user="BC_Programmer"] I've always liked how the Arkis like a quarter of the size of the Titanic. I'm not sure you could fit two of every animal on the Titanic either.[/quote]Well, obviously he wouldn't have to take any fish or aquatic mammals, which already removes a very percentage part of all animals. Insects ...

[quote user="boomzilla"][quote user="Severity One"] Right to life? That's not a basic human right, at least not in the USA. Because you have the death penalty, whereas all of Europe (with the sorry exception of Belarus) does not. [/quote] Now you're being stupid. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and ...

 Right to life? That's not a basic human right, at least not in the USA. Because you have the death penalty, whereas all of Europe (with the sorry exception of Belarus) does not. I understand the American system of government quite well. And I think it sucks. So many checks and balances that you never get anything done. Did you fix the ...

 Thanks for all the help. The concrete problem that I had is that I'd called setNamespaceAware( true ) on the DocumentBuilderFactory instance I added a bit of code so that you can add prefix/URI tuples to the constructor, and it will create a neat little NamespaceContext instance for you. More importantly, the code actually works.

[quote user="boomzilla"]You know you're living in bizzaro world when clear language like "Congress shall make no law" has less force than penumbras and emanations.[/quote]You know you're living in a bizarro country if you have a constitutional right to own and carry weapns; that this right is listed before basic human ...

[quote user="boomzilla"]But the Constitution has provisions for changing it![/quote]Which is why the Second Amendment is on its way out, right? ;)

[quote user="morbiuswilters"]No. One of the things that distinguishes a mediocre engineer from a good engineer is when they realize they are writing code for people, not computers. Sure, obviously we're also telling the computer what to do, but there are so many ways we can successfully abstract this away so it doesn't interfere ...