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If by "doesn't come up", you mean that it doesn't show up in the Windows task manager, then yes, you're correct. Except "Warden" is just the name for some of the code inside the WoW exe. So it wouldn't show up in the task manager as a seperate application.

In any case, we all think your pretty cool for not playing a game for the above reasons. I bet your a blast at parties as well.

Said better than I ever could.

It is unfortunate to see both sides of the discussion using the same flawed reasoning techniques (and on slashdot, getting high scores for it as being "insightful"). The interests of Patent Hawk do not in themselves imply their assertions are false. However, Patent Hawk's inability to form/express a cogent argument will hopefully lead most readers in that direction.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumsta ntial-ad-hominem.html

Not, really, as it's happened before. [...]

So either one or both agencies in question are simply incompetent, or lying to us.

I noticed you made a grammatical error above with an unnecessary comma. So are you incompetent or are you just lying to us? False dilemmas suck... try to avoid their use.

Definately good news, but if it's not the default browser the impact will likely be limited. Most people will use whatever's the default.

good point I assumed by "shipping with Firefox" defaultness was implied but if they ship with firefox and not have it as default then it begs the question (to turn the phrase) "What's the point?"

Microsoft is always talking about how they're such a big and dominant browser because IE is so great. Let's see what happens if IE is suddenly not the default browswer see how many people switch.

Chimps don't go around publishing dumbass conclusions based on Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacies.

So, when you proclaim "women aren't interested" in being "engineers or scientists or mathemeticians" which of these do you believe to be the cause?

Nurture, of course. At least, nurture has such a big effect that any possible effects of nature cannot be properly studied until its confounding effects are eliminated.

Wow, this statement must be taken to mean you believe it's genetics -- if they weren't made that way, they'd already be equals! It's just their own faults! Of course, any belief that tendancy to education, ambition, or intelligence is genetic leads us straight down the slippery slope.

Hardly. My statement simply means women are less interested in entering the hard fields, as evidenced by the fact that they do not do so, despite ample opportunity to do so. Whether this is cultural or innate is a seperate issue entirely. I personally choose to believe it is a cultural issue, or rather, that there is so much obvious cultural baggage, that it overshadows any innate differences that may be present.

All kidding aside, our culture --pop culture or not-- predisposes girls against science and especially math.

Are we observing the same pop culture? I don't see anything that would predispose girls against science and math any more than it does boys. Pop culture, as far as I can se, predisposes boys and girls fairly equally against science and math. Yet, despite pop culture, boys make it into the hard sciences, and girls don't.

Well, if we can agree that our American culture is patriarchal (and increasingly anti-intellectual) then we could agree that men are the arbiters of culture (and increasingly anti-intellectual men). Hence, men decide for the most part what little girls want to be when they grow up, whether overtly or subtley. This will [probably] change with time as America slowly conforms to its dream of equality, i.e., liberty and justice for all.

Arguing about subtle arbitration of destiny is a futile argument. It's an exercise in laying blame, and doesn't actually help the situation. Modern women do a lot of things against their fathers' wills. Why not choose their own career?

You couldn't be more wrong. The portrayal of people in popular culture is what reinforces the status quo or leads to progress. Your own post gives examples of this for Jews, Muslims, and Indians. Look at how Jews were portrayed in the early parts of the 1900s, or Indians under colonial rule. Why did these stereotypes change? Because culture changed.

You're argument is self defeating. You're merely showing that pop culture is a reflection of society, a point that I'm not arguing. It's quite a step to go from there to saying that pop culture changes society. That I can't agree with, and haven't seen any decent evidence that would make me agree with it. Certainly, I cannot accept that pop culture has such an enormous impact on perception that the best way to solve problems is by changing pop culture!

If blacks are dissatisfied by their place in the world, only they can change it...

Sorry, I'm not playing that game.

Oh, and your "numerous examples to the contrary" is a bullshit point. We're speaking in generalities --- individuals are irrelevant here. The generall trends are that the enrollment of women into the subjects I mentioned is far smaller than anybody would want. The fact that there are women who do enroll into these fields doesn't change the point.

And given that, here's my wild, hasty assertion: women aren't holding themselves back.

Well, you're right about the wild and hasty part. Let's review the facts (and it seems to me that you don't even disagree with the facts I've presented).

1) Men vastly outnumber women in the "hard" sciences, as well as the fields of engineering, economics, and history.
2) Universities in this country are actively courting more female students for these fields.
3) Universitie

Just so you know, what you are describing is called a hasty generalization

Once again you do not know what you are talking about. "An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument." (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-homin em.html) This is not an ad hominem attack, because the attack depends on a relevant fact about you, namely that you do not understand as much about NT as you think you do. This harmed the credibility of your comment. Your followup harmed your credibility in general, since you don't understand what ad hominem means, or even that it does not contain a dash.

ANYWAY back to the subject at hand. NT does indeed have an executable flag. NT appears to set this flag by default for all files. However, since it handles file execution differently from Unix (through its type handler, or something - not sure about that one) this is pretty irrelevant - files not already known to be executables will be looked up by Windows in order to find something to run it. Try opening a command prompt, navigating someplace you store text files, and invoking "filename.txt" where filename.txt is a valid text file. It should pop open your text file in your chosen text editor...

Regardless, I was not making a personal attack on you, it was an attack on your comment. If you don't get your knickers so tightly twisted, you might learn something.

No, it does not.

>>the patriot act gave the DOJ to ability to monitor anything when they invoke a terrorism charge.

Except it didn't. Most of the PA just codified existing practice as Slate's four part analysis piece explains.

What parts were more radical (215) have been struck down as unconstitutional as can be seen on the EFF's (join EFF now!! the sky is falling!!) Patriot Act webpage.
One might want to notice that the PA renewal substantially weakened govt power while demanding new accountability.

Don't let the facts stop a good bout of paranoia. It is more fun to pretend that life is a black and white cyberpunk airport thriller novel than to recognize shades of gray. It makes us feel more important.

Attention slashbots: your next move is the slippery slope. In which you argue that searches approved by judges aren't bad but searches not approved are and therefore we need to freak out about about warranted searches because they might lead to unwarranted searches.

Well, let's take a closer look at the page you are quoting:

A Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy because a person's interests and circumstances have no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made. While a person's interests will provide them with motives to support certain claims, the claims stand or fall on their own. It is also the case that a person's circumstances (religion, political affiliation, etc.) do not affect the truth or falsity of the claim. This is made quite clear by the following example: "Bill claims that 1+1=2. But he is a Republican, so his claim is false."

Fair enough. Just because you have a problem with someone's affiliations that doesn't mean that automatically they are lying about everything. But read the next paragraph:

There are times when it is prudent to suspicious of a person's claims, such as when it is evident that the claims are being biased by the person's interests. For example, if a tobacco company representative claims that tobacco does not cause cancer, it would be prudent to not simply accept the claim. This is because the person has a motivation to make the claim, whether it is true or not.

See? Microsoft has a bias, and so do the people they pay. I agree that it is wrong to reject their claims out-of-hand, but only a fool would say that there couldn't possibly be any connection. It absolutely is relevant. Even your source thinks so.

Anyway. Shotgun posts a great strawman and is more than a little offtopic (we are talking about internet governence, not feeding children). Although you are right in what you say when you clarify shotgun's point, I must add that it becomes the federal government's job (or should become the FG's job) if the other agencies are not doing their job. Some countries of course dont have states or maybe the local authorities have very limited power. Then, after the parents, it is immediately the Government's job.

This gets extended to they must feed the old, too.

Perhaps shotgun would rather the old die from lack of food? (Note: the fabled 'freemarket' will have no problems feeding old people with money, so I'm assuming shotgun was refering to old people without the means to feed themselves.)

Then everybody must eat what the government provides for them, which they do at twice the cost in the form of taxes.

Becareful of that slippery slope: if you go down it you'll slip and then you'll be going so fast when you get to the bottam of the hill you'll carry on going and end up in the centre of the world. And its hot, you'll burn, and worse, you'll be called a cruel and heartless bastard. Shotgun is not a cruel and heartless bastard. Shotgun is merely logically challenged.

Connect to the Net, or create your own, I don't give a damn. But in no way should the UN have any control over how my computer communicates with another. This, however, I agree with. Luckily we have nothing to fear: control of how IPs are mapped to names via the root DNS servers is a policy issue so far removed from actual, technical, "control" of the internet that we should really write to the people concerned and tell them to go and get lessons in word processing, before they tackle the big stuff like "how the internet works".

Ah, a devotee of C.S. Lewis! Here's how he put this:

Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty in disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

And here's my response:

1. First, of course, in disagreeing with what Lewis stated here, one is not necessarily disagreeing with God. One is disagreeing with Lewis' statements about God, something entirely different, and presumably less fraught with logical peril.
2. Second, Lewis is begging the question here by assuming the existence of God to forestall an argument against that very proposition. To put words in his mouth, he's saying something like, "Sure, you may think you've found a problem with this argument for God's existence, but since God exists and He's much smarter than you, you must be wrong somewhere, though I won't specifically point out where or how."
3. But even if one both ignores the circular reasoning, and assumes that God Itself dictated these sentences to Lewis, they are still wrong. Consider the following conversation: Automobile: "I can move faster than you can." Henry Ford: "I am the source from which all your locomotion comes from. You could not be faster and me slower any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source." Consider that none of the computer scientists and chess professionals who collaborated to build Deep Blue could have beaten Garry Kasparov at chess, and yet Deep Blue did so. Creations surpass their creators in some capacities all the time; indeed, that's why we make the class of creations called "tools".

   The example itself is not even technically accurate. If we use a stream to turn a water wheel, which drives a pump, which raises some water, we can raise part of a stream higher than its source. The energy from a larger amount of falling water is used to raise a smaller amount of water.

   (Note: I am not claiming to be smarter than God. I am pointing out Lewis's mistake; creations frequently surpass their creators in specific capacities and for specific purposes. Lewis asserts a logical contradiction where none exists.)

Wow, for such a "prime example" of a supposed "strawman attack" it certainly doesn't meet the standards of such an argument as defined here:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man .html

Please go back and restudy your logic, your cluelessness is showing...

I am not a pirate, although a) you won't believe me, and b) whether I am or not does not change the fact that copyright is currently eternal, which goes completely against the reason that copyright was created, which was to give a temporary monopoly on the ability to sell copies of the work in question.

Public domain was never a privilege. Public domain is the natural state of things; copyright is an artificial human restriction which does not exist in nature.

Let's examine the Berne Convention. Article 7 states that a work will be protected for life of author plus 50 years. So don't even attempt to state that the public domain doesn't matter, because it is specifically written into the very document which you're using to defend your position!

The entire Berne Convention starts here. It appears that this was written into law around 1967, which means that even if an author died the day after it was ratified, their works will not hit the public domain until 2017. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968; I would bet money that his written works will not be placed into the public domain in 2018, but that's 13 years in the future. Here's a list of authors who died in 1968, and whose works I never expect to see in the public domain.

Copyright did not exist a few hundred years ago. The Earth got along fine without it, and we'll get along fine without it in the future as well. This restriction on sharing of information is necessarily temporary, unless we decided to kill all the humans, and then copyright won't matter anyway. But if we decide to let the race survive, we'll hit nanotechnology within 20 years, and then all material goods will be free (the cost of sunlight + dirt), so there won't be any incentive to restrict copying (the producer crying over "loss of profit" is a silly motive when the producer can just create the items that they would have used that money to purchase -- so, in effect, money will be obsolete in 20 years).

You're not thinking far enough into the future, nor are you recalling history. You're fun to play with but I'm done, since obviously we're not convincing each other (I think I'm doing a better job of providing evidence, and you refuse to stop calling me names, so it's obvious we're just going to have to disagree to disagree).

I am not a pirate, although a) you won't believe me, and b) whether I am or not does not change the fact that copyright is currently eternal, which goes completely against the reason that copyright was created, which was to give a temporary monopoly on the ability to sell copies of the work in question.

Public domain was never a privilege. Public domain is the natural state of things; copyright is an artificial human restriction which does not exist in nature.

Let's examine the Berne Convention. Article 7 states that a work will be protected for life of author plus 50 years. So don't even attempt to state that the public domain doesn't matter, because it is specifically written into the very document which you're using to defend your position!

The entire Berne Convention starts here. It appears that this was written into law around 1967, which means that even if an author died the day after it was ratified, their works will not hit the public domain until 2017. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968; I would bet money that his written works will not be placed into the public domain in 2018, but that's 13 years in the future. Here's a list of authors who died in 1968, and whose works I never expect to see in the public domain.

Copyright did not exist a few hundred years ago. The Earth got along fine without it, and we'll get along fine without it in the future as well. This restriction on sharing of information is necessarily temporary, unless we decided to kill all the humans, and then copyright won't matter anyway. But if we decide to let the race survive, we'll hit nanotechnology within 20 years, and then all material goods will be free (the cost of sunlight + dirt), so there won't be any incentive to restrict copying (the producer crying over "loss of profit" is a silly motive when the producer can just create the items that they would have used that money to purchase -- so, in effect, money will be obsolete in 20 years).

You're not thinking far enough into the future, nor are you recalling history. You're fun to play with but I'm done, since obviously we're not convincing each other (I think I'm doing a better job of providing evidence, and you refuse to stop calling me names, so it's obvious we're just going to have to disagree to disagree).

Personal Attack

ALL that matters is that you've accepted a THEORY as FACT without sufficient proof.

It appears that you have as well: it appears that you've accepted the theory that I've accepted a theory as fact without sufficient proof. Especially considering I never claimed it as fact.

Anyway.

There are two claims here: one is "dark matter is the cause of flat light curves+CMBR peaks+gravitational lensing" and the second is "dark matter exists".

The second is essentially fact. The evidence for neutrinos existing is quite overwhelming. So is the evidence for neutrinos having mass. Neutrinos certainly fall under the category of non-baryonic, non-light emitting matter. So they're dark matter, by definition. Whether there exists other weakly interacting massive particles, I don't know. I have no idea, and make no claim. But the existence of "some" dark matter is definitely fact.

The first claim is a theory supported by a lot of evidence, but I definitely don't claim it as fact. I just haven't seen any evidence or reason to discount it. The claims that it's an ad-hoc theory and not elegant are immaterial. Nature is not required to be elegant. This claim is quite simply an appeal to ridicule, and nothing more.

Let me stress this again. I do not hold it as fact. It is merely the best explanation for the data currently, and I haven't seen any compelling reason to discount it.

This is exactly what a scientist is supposed to do. As opposed to blustering loudly and referring to evidence without mentioning it.

(p.s.: using italics tags rather than capitals makes a sentence much easier to read.)

Not trying to be an ass, but I thought you might want to know that begging the question doesn't mean what you (or many other people for that matter) think it does...

Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling is holed up in her thousand acre castle trying to decide whether to buy and sell the queen.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/hasty-gen eralization.html

Ahh I see. I disagree with your worldview and instead of refuting either point one or two you resort to name calling.
Very amusing coming from someone who just posted with a title "the fallacy of the slippery slope "

Contrary to your opinion there is a plethora of evidence of government abuse/surveilence during the vietnam era. Thats the whole reason the CIA and FBI were not allowed to communicate pre-9/11. They had the power once and abused it. So you keep on trusting your officials, chances are they won't notice you if you remain within accepted norms. But hey, what do I know, I'm "crazy" right?

Science is great......until it proves something you don't want to hear, then suddenly all studies are flawed and all science is bullshit.

Where to begin, hmm. Well, first of all, the article's point is that we have two reports, both claiming to be psychologically valid, claiming to prove two different things. One report is a study by the APA, in which the philosopher kings came down from on high and claimed that the ambiguous results from some studies prove 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' In the other one, a professor from the University of Illinois claimed to prove that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'

So, even if we figure that we are all living in Foundation and we ought to be ruled by our psychohistorian (because after all, we have ventured outside of diagnosing individual patients to predicting broad social trends) philospher kings, we have one philospher king contradicting the philospher king establishment. So we can argue as to which study is more valid, etc.

Of course, this doesn't even get to the point that a person may reject psychology, eugenics, phrenology, astrology and other such "sciences" without rejecting actual sciences like physics and geology. In the case of the former, these are sciences with a political agenda (yes, even astrology, see the role of astrology in places like Imperial China), and are therefore not pure sciences. Even if psychology were a science, rather than a philosophy that has managed to convince a lot of people that it is scientific, psychological testing in humans would still be tainted since it is impossible to ethically do repeatable, verifiable experiments. (I.e. just because a person is willing to fill out a test and choose more violent words, doesn't mean he is more likely to shoot someone if the psychologist put him in a room with a loaded gun and a person tied to a chair.)

The psychological establishment should also be viewed with suspicion. In the Soviet Union, psychologist were more than willing to declare people mad if they were considered enemies of the state. In the United States, psychological opinions sway with the political winds. (For example, homosexuality stopped being a form of madness as soon as it became politically controversial to declare it as such. I'm hoping Electroconvulsive Therapy will go the same route soon, but there is money involved in keeping it alive.)

No it doesn't. It raises the question. Begging the question is something else entirely.

The "lightning zapped a glob of primordial ooze, thus forming the first proteins" idea is not only unnatural (life coming from non-life), but also unproven (why can't we reproduce this phenomena today?)

The "lightning zapped a glob of primordial ooze, thus forming the first proteins" idea
This is what's called a strawman argument - misrepresenting the other side to make it sound silly, and to make it refutable.

• There is no "lightning zapped a glob of primordial ooze, thus forming the first proteins" thoery, nobody suggested lightning creates proteins, and you knew this. Yet you took the fact that researchers used lightning to form some of the basic building blocks the abiogenesis theory will need if it's to be demonstrated, and painted the whole idea as some crackpot Frakenstein 'just add lightning' theory.
• You knowingly omit that abiogenesis didn't necessarily start with proteins, while claiming that the theory is busted by a lack of proteins.

but also unproven (why can't we reproduce this phenomena today?)

• Every bit of progress the research has made in this area was proven and is reproducable, but in this line you portray the whole field as being unscientific - unproven and not reproducable. Of course you are right because what you are really doing is...
• You are soundly refuting the strawman misrepresentation you constructed in the first place. And soundly refutable it is.
• We are reproducing much, if not most, of the phenomena today.

Basically you have taken research where they are trying to diligently reproduce, understand, explain and document, every aspect of the formation of an RNA or DNA entity via natural means, with the end goal of being able to demonstrate the entire process, and presented scientists as making some grossly unsubstantiated "lightning struck and magic happened" claim, as if everybody is trying to gloss over the fact we don't have it all figured out yet.

Having read that article, you should have known better, but that you can read that page, miss both its points about the role space may play, and come away thinking it concluded life probably came from Mars or something, makes me wonder if you really just skim read it.

is not only unnatural (life coming from non-life)
They're trying to make complex molecules (RNA, DNA, proteins) from naturally occuring molecules using natural processes, and this is "unnatural"? I'm not sure what to make of this line, I'm currently putting it down to the word "life" meaning something different to you than the scientific definition, and assume you're referring to the gap between a primitive metabolising DNA entity and a modern cell, rather than refering to the chemical ambiogenisis research. But there is still no logical grounds to the statement "life from non-life is unnatural", unless you know something about the origin of life that we don't.

Yet you still point to it as the source for all life, when not only has NO life actually been created, but no proteins have yet been created!
I think you misunderstand why I pointed to it...

• I cited that page because you had made out that lab expirements in this area had failed or suggested it was a dead end, whereas in reality, lab experiments are showing it to be an increasingly promising line of investigation.
• I point to it as strong evidence that ambiogenisis researchers are on the right track. What are the chances eh? We're trying to figure out how life appeared and the building blocks just start assembling themselves for us out of primordial ooze experime

Appeal to authority? That's pretty sad, even by ID standards.

Incidentally, Anthony Flew has said (since his conversion to deism) that he believes that Christianity is false. Do you agree with him? If not, why are you asking people to give credence to the religious position of someone with whom you do not agree?

If you are arguing that Intelligent Design comes from the standpoint of 17th Century science, then I strongly encourage you to use that as a selling point to everyone you come across.

Straw Man fallacy. Read up on your philosophy Here.

• Appeal to Belief

• Appeal to Novelty

• Burden of Proof

• Middle Ground

However, take for example, this quote from Bush in 2003, "Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained." Now you can't say the average person wouldn't read an implied link between SH and 9/11 there. But, he's safe on the technicality.

Hardly. This is a textbook fallacy of composition, arguably also questionable cause, and can even be cast as the spotlight fallacy, if you don't believe Americans are as stupid about the Middle East as the Bush administration would have you believe. Either way, it's a red herring, given that the quote given was as regards justifying his war, when in fact whether the average american holds any given belief about Saddam has approximately nothing to do with us stomping the Taliban flat.

You really shouldn't declare someone's arguments sound until you've actually inspected them. Bush is absolutely rife with nonsense, and the idea that he's "technically correct" is an appalling testament to the low quality of our public schools. You should be able to see through that by third grade.

However, take for example, this quote from Bush in 2003, "Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained." Now you can't say the average person wouldn't read an implied link between SH and 9/11 there. But, he's safe on the technicality.

Hardly. This is a textbook fallacy of composition, arguably also questionable cause, and can even be cast as the spotlight fallacy, if you don't believe Americans are as stupid about the Middle East as the Bush administration would have you believe. Either way, it's a red herring, given that the quote given was as regards justifying his war, when in fact whether the average american holds any given belief about Saddam has approximately nothing to do with us stomping the Taliban flat.

You really shouldn't declare someone's arguments sound until you've actually inspected them. Bush is absolutely rife with nonsense, and the idea that he's "technically correct" is an appalling testament to the low quality of our public schools. You should be able to see through that by third grade.

However, take for example, this quote from Bush in 2003, "Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained." Now you can't say the average person wouldn't read an implied link between SH and 9/11 there. But, he's safe on the technicality.

Hardly. This is a textbook fallacy of composition, arguably also questionable cause, and can even be cast as the spotlight fallacy, if you don't believe Americans are as stupid about the Middle East as the Bush administration would have you believe. Either way, it's a red herring, given that the quote given was as regards justifying his war, when in fact whether the average american holds any given belief about Saddam has approximately nothing to do with us stomping the Taliban flat.

You really shouldn't declare someone's arguments sound until you've actually inspected them. Bush is absolutely rife with nonsense, and the idea that he's "technically correct" is an appalling testament to the low quality of our public schools. You should be able to see through that by third grade.

However, take for example, this quote from Bush in 2003, "Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained." Now you can't say the average person wouldn't read an implied link between SH and 9/11 there. But, he's safe on the technicality.

Hardly. This is a textbook fallacy of composition, arguably also questionable cause, and can even be cast as the spotlight fallacy, if you don't believe Americans are as stupid about the Middle East as the Bush administration would have you believe. Either way, it's a red herring, given that the quote given was as regards justifying his war, when in fact whether the average american holds any given belief about Saddam has approximately nothing to do with us stomping the Taliban flat.

You really shouldn't declare someone's arguments sound until you've actually inspected them. Bush is absolutely rife with nonsense, and the idea that he's "technically correct" is an appalling testament to the low quality of our public schools. You should be able to see through that by third grade.

From TFA:

"Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on 'Lord of the Rings,' " this lawyer said. "But there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."

I think that statement falls under the Ad Hominem fallacy category.

Sure, the US is slipping. Does that make it bad on an objective scale? I say no.

Now, don't get me wrong - it is slipping, and I'm not pleased with it. But we've got a long way to go until we're genuinely repressive.

Incidentally:

(1) Slippery slope is a fallacy.
(2) There is a reason for Godwin's Law. Please do not make Hitler comparisons.

In any case, the courts will blow this law away just like they did last time, so don't worry about it. Even the law's sponsors seem to believe that if video games are speech, the law is unconstitutional. They just don't think video games are speech, which is absolutely ridiculous, and will be found as such by any reasonable court.

You mean like this? (Feeling Lucky link on Google)
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery- slope.html

Yup, but without the "inevitability" part.

You mean like this? (Feeling Lucky link on Google)
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery- slope.html

This is the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy. Namely, the poster believed that since this survey occured after the "Get the Facts" campaign, then the "Get the Facts" campaign is responsible for the survey results. This may or may not be true.

Personally, I found the "Get the Facts" campaign as anything but factual.

Would it help if you saw that the source of these photos is a legitimate news source? Probably not. It comes down to who *you* want to believe. If you want to believe what Castro and his govermnent say about their heathcare system, that is fine with me. Don't call me a "simpleton" just because I don't. That sort of ad hominem attack does not change the fact that not all the evidence points to a health care paradise in Cuba.

Straw man.

No one has ever proposed that memory of copyrighted work constitutes an illegal copy. That position is absurd. Please argue against a position that is actually hold.

On the other hand, if you have an eidetic memory allowing you to precisely reproduce a work from it, and you do so, then try to distribute it, that is probably copyright infringement. You did not create the work, so why should you have the right to distribute it? Create your own work to sell. If you can't, then that only demonstrates that the original creator has a valuable skill and deserves compensation.

No, this does not beg the question.

If I take Linux in it's purest form, the kernal and add a whole bunch of stuff to it (filesytems, device drivers, windowing systems. etc), at the end of the day I have system that people will still identify as Linux (with the exception of pople like RMS, who has an ideological objection).

Here's a cut and paste from another post of mine which discussed how layers are talked about and the difference between saying "-based" and "derived":

***

there's only so much we can do with our company communications

True, but, given your explanation of the relationship between Unix and OS X. I would suggest "Unix Derived" would be a more accurate phrasing that wouldn't clog up even mass market communiques.

To say that something "is" something and that something is "based on" something are two radically different things.

Well, that depends on your context, and given that the domain is operating systems, the contextual interpretation doesn't customarily run the the way you want it to. Remember, tech people have the concept of layers built in. If I say my computer is Intel-based, or PPC-based, it's taken to mean that inside that box is an Intel or PPC CPU, or something that's so close as to make no difference (e.g. an AMD chip instead of an honest-to-God Intel processor). I certainly couldn't get away with saying PPC-based, and then revealing the CPU is an ARM processor, just because PPC and ARM processors both use RISC architectures.

When I read "XYZ OS-based" on the outside of a OS box, while I'm going to expect that the vendors of the OS will have added their own desktop environment, tool set, services, kernel extensions and modifications, etc, I'm also going to expect that under all that stuff beats the heart of a OS that is essentially XYZ.

To use another analogy, no-one ever describes C as B- or BCPL-based, or Unix as "Multics-based" because the the current product and it's ancestor are so radically different that the phrase "-based" is meaningless. "based" is used as much to imply similarity as to imply difference, if not more so. It's unfair to try to blame punters because for refusing "to understand what words mean," when they're using a perfectly valid interpretation. If Apple doesn't want people to draw the conclusion that "OS X equals Unix", it's up to Apple to communicate the distinction unambigously, something "Unix based" fails to do, especially when the word Unix is often used with out any qualification such as "based" e.g. "Combines the power of Unix with..."

***

You just don't understand English very well.

Well, given I earn my paycheck, often have my articles put on college course reading lists, and even won some awards for my writing in the English language, I'd say "Bzzzzzt. Ad Hominen attack. You're not too good at avoiding the logical fallacies." Again, indeed in reality (and as ASOTV has ably argued), OS X and Unix may be quite different, but you can't make that claim based on the Apple documentation you cited.

No, he's saying people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Thank you, that is exactly what I was trying to say ... just substitute the word "copy" for the word "work".

The words 'copy' and 'work' are two different words with two different meanings. Try substituting 'copied' for 'created' in "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth." Not quite the same meaning is it? Are you trying to say you recognize no difference between the rights of the man who creates a work of art and a man who makes a copy that the creator does not want him to make? You can't make an argument by changing a word in my statement then saying 'see - you agree with me'.

I like that deal, "paying for a service" truely is so much better than "imposing copyright monopoly"

Copyrights are a way to insure that I am paid for the service of creating the content. It is a philosophical construct (like all beliefs and laws) that gives me the right to control the use (including copying) of my original intellectual product. Because YOU can not produce that content the only place you can get it is from me. If you take it without my permission you are stealing. Stealing is not " defined by what is no longer in your posession", to steal is defined as " To take (the property of another) without right or permission". And just what property of mine are you taking? You are taking the information contained in the file you copy. It doesn't matter that I also retain that information, if you got it from me and I have not given it, you have 'taken it'. This 'copying is not stealing because you still have a copy' assertion is one of the more self serving bogus arguments used to support your view. Words can not be swapped in and out and redefined to suit your purpose. What matters is what is in YOUR possession that was not, not what remains in mine. Would you assert that a spy who broke into a laboratory and photographed the plans for a nuclear missile did not steal them? Put another way - if the control of the use of my original content is the method I use to secure payment for my efforts, that control represents real world value. When you take that control from me and transfer that control to you, you are stealing real world value. It's irrelevant that you decide not to charge for further copies, every copy you distribute represents potential real world value you have taken from me. You can not possibly know how many of the people who received free copies from you would have paid me for the same information. The media file which contains the information is irrelevant because it is the information (remember information economy?) that represents the value. Even by your definition you have taken potential sales from me - you have stolen them. Please don't be stupid enough to suggest they are not worth anything - Pink Floyd has been around a long time, but people still buy the albums.

"I BEG anyone to show me one goddam musician who will turn away 5000 people paying $50 bucks a head to see him perform live in concert because they won't respect "his copyrights"'.

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The one situation has NOTHING to do with the other. This is another example of a favorite but invalid, technique used to support your arguments i.e. 'the RIAA has a record of ripping off musicians and suing grandmothers, therefore there should be no copyrights'. The conclusion does not logically follow from the premise. Anyone who uses arguments this logically flawed should be ashamed of themselves. The real pity is that there are a great many VALID arguments that support the opinion that the RIAA is not good for creativity and should be watched very closely. Using invalid and transparently flawed arguments just lets them point at their opponents and say "see, they're fanatics - what they say is idiotic and doesn't make sense".

"And one more more thing. BILLY

That said, you have to be careful not to fall into the "slippery slope" fallacy: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery- slope.html

I stopped reading after that, because it was quite stupid.

Oh, it gets stupider, towards the bottom he tries to claim that (I'm paraphrasing) the code inspections of Linux don't provide evidence that the development process has been uncontaminated, and to claim that they do provide such evidence is "the kind of outcomes-based circular reasoning that leads to conspiracy theories", but he never describes what he finds circular about it. I never cease to be disgusted by how effective straw-man attacks can be to the masses.

Ad Hominem

It would help if you knew what the fallacy was.

Guilt by Association. "Guilt by Association is a fallacy in which a person rejects a claim simply because it is pointed out that people she dislikes accept the claim."

I would say your equating one's declaration of themselves as a Christian as being supportive of this pastor's ideas falls right into this fallacy.

Take your pick

Really helps knowing some of these when reading blogs. Some writers are notorious for using them.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

I will most likely get modded down for this but it needs to be stated, this is fallacious reasoning. Your assuming the state of life as of today implies favorable conditions in the past.

More information of Fallacies and Logic.

Anyone, who doesn't think so, is uninformed.

Nice appeal to ridicule you have there.